Miramini hominem aut errare potuisse in lege condenda aut resipuisse in reprobanda? Non enim et ipsius Lycurgi leges a Lacedaemoniis emendatae tantum auctori suo doloris incusserunt, ut in secessu inedia de semetipso iudicarit? Nonne et vos cotidie experimentis inluminantibus tenebras antiquitatis totam illam veterem et squalentem silvam legum novis principalium rescriptorum et edictorum securibus truncatis et caeditis?.
Do you wonder that a man may have made a mistake in framing a law, or returned to sense in disallowing his law? Is it not the fact that the laws of Lycurgus himself were altered by the Spartans and that this caused their author such grief that he withdrew and condemned himself to starve to death? Yes, and you yourselves, as experiment every day lightens the darkness of antiquity, do you not lop and fell all that old and squalid jungle of laws with the new axes of imperial rescripts and edicts?
final_alignments\Tertullian_Apology.json