Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/50

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many a one found it fatal to him to have acted in any way against the wishes and interests of the order. There was observed among them a strict understanding that any one who had thought himself at liberty to treat with indignity a single Roman Knight should be treated as a malefactor by the whole order." These equestrian juries were naturally disliked and feared by the Nobles. It was against them that the famous appeal of the great orator Lucius Crassus was urged. "Snatch us away from this torture; tear us out of the jaws of those whose cruelty cannot be satiated with our blood; suffer us not to be in bondage to any, saving to yourselves as a nation, to bear whose yoke is within our endurance and within our duty."

To secure this control over the official class was the first object of equestrian policy; the second was as purely selfish and far more perverse. The Roman Knights claimed for themselves an immunity from all State-prosecutions. The senators, such was their contention, are the governing class, and against them alone should such prosecutions be directed. Cicero puts their pretension as plausibly as he can when pleading at the bar for an equestrian client. "There is a charm in the most exalted rank in the State, in the curule chair, the fasces, the commands, governments, priesthoods, triumphs, and, last of all, in the effigy which hands down your memory to posterity. Along with these come some anxieties,