_Pro Rabirio_. About the year 654, Saturninus, a seditious Tribune, had been slain by a party attached to the interests of the Senate. Thirty-six years afterwards, Rabirius was accused of accession to this murder, by Labienus, subsequently well known as Cæsar's lieutenant in Gaul. Hortensius had pleaded the cause before the Duumvirs, Caius and Lucius Cæsar, by whom Rabirius being condemned, appealed to the people, and was defended by Cicero in the Comitia. The Tribune, it seems, had been slain in a tumult during a season of such danger, that a decree had been passed by the Senate, requiring the Consuls to be careful that the republic received no detriment. This was supposed to sanction every proceeding which followed in consequence; and the design of the popular party, in the impeachment of Rabirius, was to attack this prerogative of the Senate. Cicero's oration on this contention between the Senatorial and Tribunitial power, gives us more the impression of prompt and unstudied eloquence than most of his other harangues. It is, however, a little obscure, partly from the circumstance that the accuser would not permit him to exceed half an hour in the defence. The argument seems to have been, that Rabirius did not kill Saturninus; but that even if he had slain him, the action was not merely legal, but praiseworthy, since all citizens had been required to arm in aid of the Consuls.
It was believed, that in spite of the exertions of Cicero, Rabirius would have been condemned, had not the Prætor Metellus devised an expedient for dissolving the Comitia, before sentence could be passed. The cause was neither farther prosecuted at this time, nor subsequently revived; the public attention being now completely engrossed by the imminent dangers of the Catilinarian Conspiracy, which was discovered during the Consulship of Cicero.