[13]
For do you mean that
he acted in violation of the treaties ignorantly, or knowingly? If you say
that he did so knowingly, O, for the name of our empire! O, for the
preeminent dignity of the Roman people! O, for the glory of Cnaeus Pompeius,
so widely and universally diffused, in such a manner that the home of his
renown has but the same boundaries and limits as our common empire! O you
nations and cities; and peoples, and kings, and tetrarchs, and tyrants, you
witnesses not only of the valour of Cnaeus Pompeius in war, but also of his
conscientiousness in peace! You too I implore, you, O voiceless lands, and
you, O soil of the most remote districts; you, O seas, O harbours, O
islands, O shores! For what land is there what place of habitation what spot
in which there are not the deeply imprinted traces of this man's courage,
and humanity, and spirit and wisdom? Will any one venture to say that this
man endued with such incredible and unheard of dignity and wisdom and virtue
and consistency, has knowingly neglected and violated and broken treaties!
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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