De Lege Agraria

Here I ask, if sufficient protection is afforded to Hiempsal by the treaty and if the Recentoric district is private property, what was use of excepting these lands by name in the law? If that treaty itself has some obscurity in it, and if the Recentoric is sometimes said to be public property, who do you suppose will believe that there have been two interests found in the world, and only two, which he spared for nothing? Does there appear to have been any coin in the world so carefully hidden that the architects of this law have failed to scent it out? They are draining the provinces, the free cities, our allies, our friends, and even the kings who are confederate with us. They are laying bands on the revenue of the Roman people.

That is not enough. Listen—listen, you who, by the most honourable vote of the people and senate, have commanded armies and carried on wars:—“Whatever has come or shall come to anyone, of booty, of spoils, of money given for gold crowns, which has neither been spent on a monument, nor paid into the treasury, is all to be paid over to the decemvirs.” From this chapter they expect a great deal. The propose by their resolution an investigation into the affairs of all our generals and all their heirs. But they expect to go the greatest quantity of money from Faustus. That cause which the judges upon their oath would not undertake, these decemvirs have undertaken. They think, perhaps, that it was declined by the judges, on purpose to be reserved to them.

After that, the law most carefully provides for the future, that, whatever money any general receives, he is at once to pay over to the decemvirs. But here he excepts Pompeius, very much as, as it seems to me, in that law by which aliens are sent away from Rome an exception is made in favour of Glaucippus. For the effect of this exception is not to confer a kindness on one man, but merely to save one man from injustice. But the man whose spoils the law thus spares, has his revenues invaded by the same law. For it orders all the money which is received after our consulship from the new revenues, to be placed to the use of the decemvirs. As if we did not see that they were thinking of selling the revenues which Cnaeus Pompeius has added to the wealth of the Roman people.