De Lege Agraria

Wherefore, when I perceive that nearly the whole of this law is made ready, as if it were an engine, for the object of overthrowing his power, I will both resist the designs of the men who have contrived it, and I will enable you not only to perceive, but to be entire masters of the whole plot which I now see in preparation. He orders everything to be sold which belonged to the people of Attalia, and of Phaselus, and of Olympus, and the land of Agera, of Orindia, and of Gedusa. All this became your property owing to the campaigns and victory of that most illustrious man, Publius Servilius. He adds the royal domain of Bithynia, which is at present farmed by the public contractors; after that, he adds the lands belonging to Attalus in the Chersonesus; and those in Macedonia, which belonged to king Philip or king Perses; which also were let out to contractors by the censors, and which are a most certain revenue.

He also puts up to auction the lands of the Corinthians, rich and fertile lands; and those of the Cyrenaeans, which did belong to Apion; and the lands in Spain near Carthagena; and those in Africa near the old Carthage itself—a place which Publius Africanus consecrated, not on account of any religious feeling for the place itself and for its antiquity, but in accordance with the advice of his counselors, in order that the place itself might bear record of the disasters of that people which had contended with us for the empire of the world. But Scipio was not as diligent as Rullus is; or else, perhaps, he could not find a purchaser for that place. However, among these royal districts, taken in our ancient wars by the consummate valour of our generals, he adds the royal lands of Mithridates, which were in Paphlagonia, and in Pontus, and in Cappadocia, and orders the decemvirs to sell them.

Is it so indeed? when no law has been passed to that effect, when the words of our commander-in-chief have not yet been heard, when the war is not yet over, when king Mithridates, having lost his army, having been driven from his kingdom, is even now planning something against us in the most distant corners of the earth, and while he is still defended by the Maeotis, and by those marshes, and by the narrow defiles through which the only passes lie in those countries, and by the height of the mountains, from the invincible band of Cnaeus Pompeius; when our general is actually engaged in the war against him; and while the name of war still lingers in those districts; shall the decemvirs sell those lands over which the military command and civil authority of Cnaeus Pompeius still extends and ought to extend, according to the principles and usages of our ancestors?