[97]
By all these things they will be elated and puffed up,
perhaps not at once, but certainly when they have got a little more age and vigour they will
not be able to restrain themselves; they will go on further and further. A single individual,
unless he be a man of great wisdom, can scarcely, when placed in situations of great wealth
or power, contain himself within the limits of propriety; much less will those colonists,
sought out and selected by Rullus, and others like Rullus, when established at Capua, in that abode of pride, and in the very home of
luxury, refrain from immediately contracting some wickedness and iniquity. Yes, and it will
be much more the case with them, than with the old genuine Campanians, because they were born
and trained up in a fortune which was theirs of old, but were depraved by a too great
abundance of everything; but these men, being transferred from the most extreme indigence to
a corresponding affluence, will be affected, not only by the extent of their riches, but also
by the strangeness of 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.
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