[127]
In our most
beautiful and highly decorated city what statue, or what painting is there, which
has not been taken and brought away from conquered enemies? But the villas of those
men are adorned and filled with numerous and most beautiful spoils of our most
faithful allies. Where do you think is the wealth of foreign nations, which they are
all now deprived of, when you see Athens, Pergamos, Cyzicus, Miletus, Chios, Samos, all Asia in short, and Achaia,
and Greece, and Sicily, now all contained in a few villas? But all
these things, as I was saying, your allies abandon and are indifferent to now. They
took care by their own services and loyalty not to be deprived of their property by
the public authority of the Roman people; though they were unable to resist the
covetousness of a few individuals, yet they could in some degree satiate it; but now
not only as all their power of resisting taken away, but also all their means also
of supplying such demands. Therefore they do not care about their property; they do
not seek to recover their money, though that is nominally the subject of this
prosecution; that they abandon and are indifferent to;—in this dress in
which you see them they now fly to you.
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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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