M. Tullius Cicero, For Flaccus
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

[33] What does he gain by that? for when he takes on himself the burden of having levied the money, he avows what you wish to have considered as a crime. How then can any one be induced to believe that by not returning an account of that money, he deserves to bring an accusation on himself, when there would be no crime at all in the business if he made the return? But you deny that my brother, who succeeded Lucius Flaccus, levied any money for the purpose of crews for the fleet. Indeed, I am delighted to hear this praise of my brother Quintus, but I am still more pleased at other and more important reasons for praise of him. He decided on a different course; he saw a different state of things. He thought that whenever any intelligence of pirates was received, he could get together a fleet as suddenly as he could wish. And lastly, my brother was the very first man in Asia who ventured to relieve the cities from this expense of furnishing crews. But it is usual to think that a crime, when any one establishes charges which had not been established before; not when a successor merely changes some of the charges established by his predecessors. Flaccus could not know what others would do after his time; he only saw what others had done.