De Lege Agraria

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.

You see now, O conscript fathers, that the money which is to belong to the decemvirs is collected and heaped together from every possible source, and by every imaginable expedient. The unpopularity arising from their possession of this large sum is to be diminished, for it shall be spent in the purchase of lands. Exceedingly well. Who then is to buy those lands? These same decemvirs. You, O Rullus— for I say nothing of the rest of them,—are to buy whatever you like; to sell whatever you like, to buy or sell at whatever price you please. For that admirable man takes care not to buy of any one against his will. As if we did not understand that to buy of a man against his will is an injurious thing to do; but to buy of one who has no objection, is profitable. How much land (to say nothing of other people) will your father-in-law sell you? and, if I have formed a proper estimate of the fairness of his disposition, will have no objection to sell you? The rest will do the same willingly; they will be glad to exchange the unpopularity attaching to the possession of land for money; to receive whatever they demand, and to part with what they can scarcely retain.