[134]
Know also that that false presence of purchase was more bitter to the cities than
if any one were privately to filch things, or boldly to steal them and carry them
off. For they think it the most excessive baseness, that it should be entered on the
public records that the city was induced by a price, and by a small price too, to
sell and alienate those things which it had received from men of old. In truth, the
Greeks delight to a marvellous degree in those things, which we despise. And
therefore our ancestors willingly allowed those things to remain in numbers among
the allies, in order that they might be as splendid and as flourishing as possible
under our dominion; and among those nations whom they rendered taxable or tributary,
1 still they left these
things, in order that they who take delight in those things which to us seem
insignificant, might have them as pleasures and consolations in slavery.
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1 The Latin is quos vectigales aut stipendiarius fuerant—“Stipendiarii and vectigales are thus distinguished: Stipendiarii are those who pay annually a fixed sum as tribute; vectigales, those who pay in proportion to their property or income.”—Riddle's Dict. v. Stipendiarius.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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