[142]
But where in the world, or on what statues, was that enormous sum of money spent?
It will be spent, you will say. Let us, forsooth, wait for the recurrence of that
regular five years. If in this interval he has not spent it then at last we will
impeach him for embezzlement in the article of statues. He is brought before the
court as a criminal on many most important charges. We see that a hundred and twenty
thousand sesterces have been taken on this one account.
If you are condemned, you will not, I presume, trouble yourself about having that
money spent on statues within five years. If you are acquitted, who will be so
insane as to attack you in five years' time on the subject of the statues, after you
have escaped from so many and such grave charges? If, therefore, this money has not
been spent as yet, and if it is evident that it will not be spent, we may understand
that a plan has been found out by which he may take and appropriate to himself a
hundred and twenty thousand sesterces at one swoop, and
by which others too, if this is sanctioned by you, may take as large sums as ever
they please on similar grounds; so that we shall appear not to deter men from taking
money, but, as we approve of some methods of taking money, we shall seem rather to
be giving decent names to the basest actions.
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