[58]
For what is more disgraceful for a well-born man—what more unworthy of a
free man, than to be compelled by the magistrate before a numerous assembly to
restore what has been stolen; and if he had been of the disposition of which not
only a Roman knight, but every free man ought to be, he would not have been able
after that to look you in the face. He would have been a foe, an enemy, after he had
been subjected to such an insult; unless, indeed, it had been done through collusion
with you, and he had been serving your reputation rather than his own. And how great
a friend he not only was to you then as long as he was with you in the province, but
how great a friend he is even now, when you have long since been deserted by all the
rest, you know yourself, and we can conceive. But is this the only argument that
nothing was done without his knowledge, that Volcatius was not offended with him?
that he punished neither Volcatius nor the men of Bidis?
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.