In view of these considerations, just wherein does the accusation lie? You do not anywhere charge theft; you do not attack the edict; you admit due process of law; you do not deny that the moneys were openly confiscated upon official investigation. The testimony itself discloses that the whole matter was carried on by men of rank and position. At Apamea, Sextus Caesius, a Roman knight and a gentleman of whose honor and integrity there can be no question, openly seized and weighed out in the forum at the feet of the praetor a little less than a hundred pounds of gold. At Laodicea an amount somewhat more than twenty was seized by Lucius Peducaeus, a member of this very jury; at Adramytus, ... by the governor’s representative, L. Domitius. A small quantity was also seized at Pergamon. The accounts of the gold so seized have been audited. The gold is in the treasury. There is no charge of theft. The purpose of the charge is to excite odium against my client. It is not the jury that the prosecution is addressing, but the audience, the crowd about us. Religious scruples, my dear Laelius, are primarily national concerns. We have our own, and other states have theirs. And as a matter of fact, even while Jerusalem was standing, and the Jews were at peace with us, there was very little in common between the religious customs of which their rites are examples and those which befit an empire as splendid as ours, or a people of our character and dignity. Our ancestral institutions are as different from theirs as they well can be. Now, however, there surely can be all the less obligation upon us to respect Jewish religious observances when the nation has demonstrated in arms what its feelings are toward Rome, and has made clear how far it enjoyed divine protection by the fact that it has been conquered, scattered, enslaved. There are a number of difficulties with the passage. The text of the final sentence is doubtful—but the discussion of that point will be reserved for the Notes.[237] We cannot suppose that Cicero was guilty of deliberate misstatement on matters about which he could be immediately confuted. We must therefore accept his assertion that this count in the indictment did not charge theft or malversation, but merely public confiscation of the funds in question. It is undoubtedly a fact that the exportation of the precious metals had been frequently forbidden, although the senatorial resolution to this effect was far from being a law, but with this precedent and even without it no one could very well deny that it was within the imperium of a proconsul to make such a regulation if he saw fit.[238]