[61]
Cnaeus Pompeius will make a present of this to Rullus. He has no desire to avail himself of
that kindness of the law, and of the good-nature of the decemvirs. For if it be just for
generals not to devote their spoils and booty either to monuments of the immortal gods, or to
the decorations of the city,—but if they are to carry it all to the decemvirs as
their masters,—then Pompeius wishes for nothing particular for himself; nothing. He
wishes to live under the common law, under the same law as the rest. If it be unjust, O
Romans—if it be shameful, if it be intolerable for these decemvirs to be appointed
as comptrollers of all the money collected by every body, and as plunderers not only of
foreign kings and citizens of foreign nations, but of even our own generals, then they do not
seem to me to have excepted Pompeius for the sake of doing him honour, but to be afraid that
he may not be able to put up with the same insult as the rest.
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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