[46]
Is there any terror in absolute power? they will
endure it;—is there any expense entailed by the arrival of such men? they will bear
it;—are any presents exacted from them? they will not refuse them. But what a
business is that, O Romans, when a decemvir, who either has come to some city after being
expected, as a guest, or unexpectedly, as a master, pronounces that very place to which he
has come, that identical hospitable house in which he is received, to be the public property
of the Roman people? How great will be the misery of the people if he says that it is so! How
great will be his own private gain, if he says that it is not! And the same men who desire
all this, are accustomed sometimes to complain that every land and every sea has been put
under the power of Cnaeus Pompeius. But are these two cases, the one, of many things being
entrusted to a man, the other, of everything being sacrificed to him, at all similar? Is
there any resemblance between a man's being appointed as chief manager of a business
requiring toil and labour, and a man's having the chief share in booty and gain allotted to
him? in a man's being sent to deliver allies, and a man's being sent to oppress them? Lastly,
if there be airy extraordinary honour in question, does it make no difference whether the
Roman people confers that honour on any one it chooses, or whether he impudently filches it
from the Roman people by an underhand trick of law?
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.
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