[61]
You see me
who have returned from the same province on returning from which Titus
Flamininus, and Lucius Paullus, and Quintus Metellus, and Titus Didius, and
multitudes of others, inflamed with empty desires, have celebrated triumphs;
you see me, I say, returning in such a spirit, that I trampled my Macedonian
laurels under foot at the Esquiline
gate,—that I arrived with fifteen ill-dressed men thirsting at the
Coelimontane gate, where my freedman had a couple of days before hired me a
house suited to so great a general; and if that house had not been to be
let, I should have pitched myself a tent in the Campus Martius. Meanwhile, O Caesar, in
consequence of my neglect of all that triumphal pomp, my money remains safe
at home, and will remain there. Immediately on my return, I gave in my
accounts to the treasury, as your law required; but in no other particular
have I complied with your law. And if you examine those accounts, you will
see that no one has ever gained greater advantage from his learning than I
have. For they are drawn up so learnedly and so cleverly, that the clerk who
made the return to the treasury, when he had written them all out,
scratching his head with his left hand, murmured out, ‘Indeed, the
accounts are wonderfully clear, the money οἴχεται.’”1 If you
make him this speech, I have no doubt that you will be able to recall him to
his senses even when actually stepping into his chariot.
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1 A Greek word signifying “is gone, perished.”
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