[75]
But the chief thing in all public administration1
and public service is to avoid even the slightest
suspicion of self-seeking. “I would,” says Gaius
Pontius, the Samnite, “that fortune had withheld
my appearance until a time when the Romans began
to accept bribes, and that I had been born in those
days! I should then have suffered them to hold
their supremacy no longer.” Aye, but he would
have had many generations to wait; for this plague
has only recently infected our nation. And so I
rejoice that Pontius lived then instead of now, seeing
that he was so mighty a man! It is not yet a hundred and ten years since the enactment of Lucius
Piso's bill to punish extortion; there had been no
such law before. But afterward came so many laws,
each more stringent than the other, so many men
were accused and so many convicted, so horrible a
war2 was stirred up on account of the fear of what
our courts would do to still others, so frightful was
the pillaging and plundering of the allies when the
laws and courts were suppressed,3 that how we
find ourselves strong not in our own strength but in
the weakness of others.
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