But before I come to that part of my speech which especially belongs to this trial, it seems necessary to refute those things which have been often said, both in the senate by our enemies, and in the assembly of the people by wicked men, and lately, too, by our prosecutors; so that when every cause of alarm is removed, you may be able distinctly to see the matter which is the subject of this trial. They say that that man ought no longer to see the light who confesses that another man has been slain by him. In what city, then, are these most foolish men using this argument? In this one, forsooth, where the first trial for a man's life that took place at all was that of Marcus Horatius, a most brave man, who even before the city was free was yet acquitted by the assembly of the Roman people, though he avowed that his sister had been slain by his hand. [8]