[51]
How much labour, and
trouble, and money, do you suppose the Mamertines at the time of making this treaty
would willingly have devoted to the object of preventing this bireme from being
mentioned in it, if they could by any possibility have obtained such a favour from
our ancestors? For when this heavy burden was imposed on the city, there was
contained somehow or other in that treaty of alliance some badge, as it were, of
slavery. That which then, when their services were recent, before the matter was
finally determined, when the Roman people were in no difficulties, they could not
obtain by treaty from our ancestors; that now, when they have done us no new
service, after so many years,—now that it has been enforced every year by
our right of sovereignty, and has been invariably observed—now, I say,
when we are in great want of vessels, they have obtained from Caius Verres by
bribery.
Oh! but this is all that they have gained, exemption from furnishing a ship! Have
the Mamertines for the last three years furnished one sailor, one soldier, to serve
either in fleet or in garrison, all the time you have been praetor?
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