De Lege Agraria

And now a multitude is sought out, by which those towns are to be peopled. For I have said before that leave is given by the law for them to occupy with their settlers whatever municipalities and whatever old colonies they choose. They will fill the municipality of Cales; they will overwhelm Teanum; they will extend a chain of garrisons through Atella, and Cumae, and Naples, and Pompeii, and Nuceria; and the whole of Puteoli, which is at present a free city, in the full enjoyment of its ancient rights and liberties, they will occupy with a new people, and with a foreign body of men. Then that standard of a Campanian colony, greatly to be dreaded by this empire, will be erected at Capua by the decemvirs. Then that other Rome, which has been heard of before, will be sought in opposition to this Rome, the common country of all of us.

Impious men are endeavouring to transfer our republic to that town in which our ancestors decided that there should be no republic at all, when they resolved that there were but three cities in the whole earth, Carthage, Corinth, and Capua, which could aspire to the power and name of the imperial city. Carthage has been destroyed, because, both from its vast population, and from the natural advantages of its situation, being surrounded with harbours, and fortified with walls, it appeared to project out of Africa, and to threaten the most productive islands of the Roman people. Of Corinth there is scarcely a vestige left. For it was situated on the straits and in the very jaws of Greece, in such a way that by land it held the keys of many countries, and that it almost connected two seas, equally desirable for purposes of navigation, which were separated by the smallest possible distance. These towns, though they were out of the sight of the empire, our ancestors not only crushed, but, as I have said before, utterly destroyed, that they might never be able to recover and rise again and flourish.

Concerning Capua they deliberated much and long. Public documents are extant, O Romans; many resolutions of the senate are extant. Those wise men decided that, if they took away from the Campanians their lands, their magistrates, their senate, and the public council of that city, they would leave no image whatever of the republic; there would be no reason whatever for their fearing Capua. Therefore you will find this written in ancient records, that there should be a city which might be able to supply the means for the cultivation of the Campanian district, that there should be a place for collecting the crops in, and storing them, in order that the farmers, when wearied with the cultivation of the lands, might avail themselves of the homes afforded them by the city; and that on that account the buildings of the city were not destroyed.