[2]
See, now, in the second chapter of this law, how
that profligate debauchee is disturbing the republic,—how he is ruining and
dissipating the possessions left us by our ancestors; so as to be not less a spendthrift in
the patrimony of the Roman people than in his own. He is advertising for sale by his law all
the revenues, for the decemvirs to sell them; that is to say, he is advertising an auction of
the property of the state. He wants lands to be bought, in order to be distributed; he is
seeking money. No doubt he will devise something, and bring it forward; for in the preceding
chapters the dignity of the Roman people was attacked; the name of our dominion was held up
as an object of common hatred to all the nations of the earth; cities which were at peace
with us, lands belonging to the allies, the ranks of kings in alliance with us, were all made
a present of to the decemvirs; and now they want actual ready money paid down to them.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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.