De Lege Agraria

for there is constantly fluttering before those men's eyes Juba, the king's son, whose purse is every bit as long as his hair. Even now there scarcely appears to be any place capable of containing such vast heaps of money. He increases the sums, he adds to them, he keeps on accumulating. “To whomsoever gold or silver comes, from spoils, from money given for crowns, if it has neither been paid into the public treasury, nor spent in any monument.” Of that treasure he orders a return to be made to the decemvirs, and the treasure is to be paid over to them. By this case you see that an investigation even into the conduct of the most illustrious men, who have carried on the wars of the Roman people, and that judicial examinations into charges of peculation or extortion, are transferred to the decemvirs. They will have a power of deciding what is the value of the spoils which have been gained by each individual, what return he has made, and what he has left. But this law is laid down for all your generals for the future, that, whoever leaves his province, must make a return to these same decemvirs, of how much booty, and spoils, and gold given for the purpose of crowns he has.

But here this admirable man excepts Cnaeus Pompeius, whom he is so fond of. Whence does this affection so sudden and previously unknown originate? for he is excluded from the honour of the decemvirate almost by name; his power of deciding judicially, of giving laws, or of making any formal inquiry respecting the lands which have been taken by his your, is taken from him; decemvirs are sent not only into his province but into his very camp, with military authority, with immense sums of money, with unlimited power, and with a right of deciding on everything. His rights as a general, which have hitherto always been most jealously preserved to every general are for the first time taken from him. But he is excepted as the only one who is not bound to make a return of his booty. Does it seem that the real object of this clause is to do honour to the man, or to excite a feeling of unpopularity against him?

Cnaeus Pompeius will make a present of this to Rullus. He has no desire to avail himself of that kindness of the law, and of the good-nature of the decemvirs. For if it be just for generals not to devote their spoils and booty either to monuments of the immortal gods, or to the decorations of the city,—but if they are to carry it all to the decemvirs as their masters,—then Pompeius wishes for nothing particular for himself; nothing. He wishes to live under the common law, under the same law as the rest. If it be unjust, O Romans—if it be shameful, if it be intolerable for these decemvirs to be appointed as comptrollers of all the money collected by every body, and as plunderers not only of foreign kings and citizens of foreign nations, but of even our own generals, then they do not seem to me to have excepted Pompeius for the sake of doing him honour, but to be afraid that he may not be able to put up with the same insult as the rest.