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[12]
It was the act of a sufficiently
rash man, not to say an audacious one, to touch a single particle of that
property; but who will have the face to endeavor to retain it, when its most
illustrious owner is restored to his country? Will not that man restore his
plunder, who, enfolding the patrimony of his master in his embrace, clinging to
the treasure like a dragon, the slave of Pompeius, the freedman of Caesar, has
seized upon his estates in the Lucanian district? And as for those seven hundred
millions of sesterces which you, O conscript fathers, promised to the young man,
they will be recovered in such a manner that the son of Cnaeus Pompeius will
appear to have been established by you in his patrimony. This is what the senate
must do; the Roman people will do the rest with respect to that family which was
at one time one of the most honorable it ever saw. In the first place, it will
invest him with his father's honor as an augur, for which rank I will nominate
him and promote his election, in order that I may restore to the son what I
received from the father. Which of these men will the Roman people most
willingly sanction as the augur of the all powerful and all great Jupiter, whose interpreters and messengers we
have been appointed,—Pompeius or Antonius? It seems indeed, to me,
that Fortune has managed this by the divine aid of the immortal gods, that,
leaving the acts of Caesar firmly ratified, the son of Cnaeus Pompeius might
still be able to recover the dignities and fortunes of his father.
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