[137]
I have no business to find
fault with punishment having been inflicted on those who laboured with all their
energies on the other side; and I approve of honours having been paid to the brave men
whose assistance was eminent in the transaction of all these matters. And I consider
that the struggle was to a great extent with this object, and I confess that I shared in
that desire in the part I took. But if the object was, and if arms were taken with the
view of causing the lowest of the people to be enriched with the property of others, and
of enabling them to make attacks on the fortunes of every one, and if it is unlawful not
only to hinder that by deed, but even to blame it in words, then the Roman people seems
to me not to have been strengthened and restored by that war, but to have been subdued
and crushed.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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