De Lege Agraria

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.

See, now, how wide is the distance between the counsels of our ancestors and the insane projects of these men. They chose Capua to be a refuge for our farmers,—a market for the country people,—a barn and granary for the Campanian district. These men, having expelled the farmers, have wasted and squandered your revenues, are raising this same Capua into the seat of a new republic, are preparing a vast mass to be an enemy to the old republic. But if our ancestors had thought that any one in such an illustrious empire, in such an admirable constitution as that of the Roman people, would have been like Marcus Brutus or Publius Rullus, (for these are the only two men whom we have hitherto seen, who have wished to transfer all this republic to Capua,) they would not, in truth, have left even the name of that city in existence.

But they thought, that in the case of Corinth and Carthage, even if they had taken away their senates and their magistrates, and deprived the citizens of the lands, still men would not be wanting who would restore those cities, and change the existing state of things in them before we could hear of it. But here, under the very eyes of the senate and Roman people, they thought that nothing could take place which might not be put down and extinguished before it had got to any head, or had assumed any definite shape. Nor did that matter deceive those men, endued as they were with divine wisdom and prudence. For after the consulship of Quintus Fulvius and Quintus Fabius, by whom, when they were consuls, Capua was defeated and taken, I will not say there has been nothing done, but nothing has been even imagined in that city against this republic. Many wars have been waged since that time with kings,—with Philip, and Antiochus, and Perses, and Pseudophilippus, and Aristonicus, and Mithridates, and others. Many terrible wars have existed beside-—the Carthaginian, the Corinthian, and the Numantian wars. There have been also many domestic seditions, which I pass over. There have been wars with our allies,—the Fregellan war, the Marsic war; in all which domestic and foreign wars Capua has not only not been any hindrance to us, but has afforded us most seasonable assistance, in providing the means of war, in equipping our armies, and receiving them in their houses and homes.

There were no men in the city, who, by evil-disposed assemblies, by turbulent resolutions of the senate, or by unjust exertions of authority, threw the republic into confusion, and sought pretexts for revolution. For no one had any power of summoning an assembly, or of convening any public council. Men were not carried away by any desire for renown, because where there are no honours publicly conferred, there there can be no covetous desire of reputation. They were not quarreling with one another out of rivalry or out of ambition; for they had nothing left to quarrel about,—they had nothing which they could seek for in opposition to one another,—they had no room for dissensions. Therefore, it was in accordance with a deliberate system, and with real wisdom, that our ancestors changed the natural arrogance and intolerable ferocity of the Campanians into a thoroughly inactive and lazy tranquillity. And by this means they avoided the reproach of cruelty, because they did not destroy from off the face of Italy a most beautiful city; and they

These designs of our ancestors seemed, as I have said before, blamable in the eyes of Marcus Brutus and Publius Rullus. Nor, O Publius Rullus, do those omens and auspices encountered by Marcus Brutus deter you from similar madness. For both he who led a colony to Capua--- and they who took upon themselves the magistracy there, and who had any share in the conducting a colony to that spot, and in the honours to be had there, or in the offices to be enjoyed there, have all suffered the most terrible punishments allotted to the wicked. And since I have made mention of Brutus and that time, I will also relate what I saw myself when I had arrived at Capua,—when the colony had been just established there by Lucius Considius and Sextus Saltius the praetors, (as they called themselves,) that you may understand how much pride the situation itself inspires its inhabitants with; so great that it was very intelligible and visible when the colony had only been settled there a few days.

For in the first place, as I said, though similar officers in the other colonies are called duumvirs, these men chose to call themselves praetors. But if their first year of office inspired them with such desires as that, do not you suppose that in a few years they would be likely to take a fancy to the name of consuls? In the next place, they were preceded by lictors, not with staves, but with two faces, just as lictors go before the praetors here. The greater victims were placed in the forum, which, after they had been approved by the college of priests, were sacrificed at the voice of the crier, and the music of a flute-player, by the praetors from their tribunal, as they are at Rome by us who are consuls. After that, the conscript fathers were summoned. But after this, it was almost more than one could endure, to see the countenance of Considius. The man whom we had seen at Rome shriveled and wasted away, in a contemptible and abject condition, when we saw him at Capua with Campanian haughtiness and royal pride, we seemed to be looking at the Magii, and Blossii and Jubelii.

And now, in what alarm all the common people were! In the Alban and Seplasian road, what crowds assembled, of men inquiring what edict the praetor had issued? where he was supping? what he had said? And we who had come to Capua from Rome, were not called guests, but foreigners and strangers.

Ought we not to think that those men who foresaw all these things, O Romans, ought to be venerated and worshipped by us, and classed almost in the number of the immortal gods? For what was it which they saw? They saw this, which I entreat you now to remark and take notice of. Manners are not implanted in men so much by the blood and family, as by those things which are supplied by the nature of the plan towards forming habits of life, by which we are nourished, and by which we live. The Carthaginians, a fraudulent and lying nation, were tempted to a fondness for deceiving by a desire of gain, not by their blood, but by the character of their situation because, owing to the number of their harbours, they had frequent intercourse with merchants and foreigners. The Ligurians, being mountaineers, are a hardy and rustic tribe. The land itself taught them to be so by producing nothing which was not extracted from it by skillful cultivation, and by great labour. The Campanians were always proud from the excellence of their soil, and the magnitude of their crops, and the healthiness, and position, and beauty of their city. From that abundance, and from this affluence in all things, in the first place, originated those qualities; arrogance, which demanded of our ancestors that one of the consuls should be chosen from Capua: and in the second place, that luxury which conquered Hannibal himself by pleasure, who up to that time had proved invincible in arms.

When those decemvirs shall, in accordance with the law of Rullus, have led six hundred colonists to that place; when they shall have established there a hundred decurions, ten augurs, and six priests, what do you suppose their courage, and violence, and ferocity will be then? They will laugh at and despise Rome, situated among mountains and valleys, stuck up, as it were, and raised aloft, amid garrets, with not very good roads, and with very narrow streets, in comparison with their own Capua, stretched out along a most open plain, and in comparison of their own beautiful thoroughfares. And as for the lands, they will not think the Vatican or Pupinian district fit to be compared at all to their fertile and luxuriant plains. And all the abundance of neigbouring towns which surround us they will compare in laughter and scorn with their neighbours. They will compare Labici, Fidenae, Collatia,—even Lanuvium itself, and Aricia, and Tusculum, with Cales, and Teanum, and Naples, and Puteoli, and Cumae, and Pompeii, and Nuceria.

By all these things they will be elated and puffed up, perhaps not at once, but certainly when they have got a little more age and vigour they will not be able to restrain themselves; they will go on further and further. A single individual, unless he be a man of great wisdom, can scarcely, when placed in situations of great wealth or power, contain himself within the limits of propriety; much less will those colonists, sought out and selected by Rullus, and others like Rullus, when established at Capua, in that abode of pride, and in the very home of luxury, refrain from immediately contracting some wickedness and iniquity. Yes, and it will be much more the case with them, than with the old genuine Campanians, because they were born and trained up in a fortune which was theirs of old, but were depraved by a too great abundance of everything; but these men, being transferred from the most extreme indigence to a corresponding affluence, will be affected, not only by the extent of their riches, but also by the strangeness of them.

You, O Publius Rullus, have chosen to follow in the footsteps of Marcus Brutus's wickedness, rather than to be guided by the monuments of the wisdom of our ancestors. You have flavoured all this with these advices of yours—to sell the old revenues, and to waste the new ones,—to oppose Capua to this city in a rivalry of dignity—to subject all cities, nations and provinces, all free peoples, and kings, and the whole world in short, to your laws, and jurisdiction, and power, in order that, when you have drained all the money out of the treasury, and exacted all that may be due from the taxes, and extorted all that you can from kings, and nations, and even from our own generals, all men may still be forced to pay money to you at your nod; that you, also, or your friends, may buy up from those who have become possessed of them, as members of Sulla's party, their lands—some of which produce too much unpopularity to their owners to be worth keeping; some of which are unhealthy, and deserted on that account and charge them to the Roman people at whatever price you please; that you may occupy all the municipalities and colonies of Italy with new settlers; that you may establish colonies in whatever places you think fit, and in as many places as seems desirable to you,

that you may surround, and hold in subjection, the whole republic with your soldiers, and your cities and your garrisons , that you may be able to proscribe and to deprive of the sight of these men Cnaeus Pompeius himself by whose protection and assistance the Roman people has repeatedly been triumphant over its most active enemies and its most worthless citizens that there may be nothing, which is either capable of being tampered with by means of gold and silver, or carried by numbers and votes, or accomplished by force and violence, which you do not hold in your own power, and under your dominion; that meanwhile you may go at full speed through every nation and every kingdom with the most absolute power,—with unrestricted authority as judges, and with immense sums of money; that you may come into the camp of Cnaeus Pompeius, and sell his very camp itself, if it be desirable for you to do so; that in the meantime, you, being freed from every restraint of law, and from all fear of the courts of justice, and from all danger, may be able to stand for all the other magistracies; so that no one may be able to bring you before the Roman people, or summon you before any court,—so that the senate may not be able to compel you, nor the consul to restrain you, nor the tribune of the people to offer any impediment to you.

I do not wonder that you, men of such folly and intemperance as you are, should have desired these things—I do marvel that you should have hoped that you could obtain them while I am consul. For as all consuls ought to exercise the greatest care and diligence in the protection of the republic, so, above all others, ought they to do so who have not been made consuls in their cradles, but in the Campus. No ancestors of mine went bail to the Roman people for me; you gave credit to me; it is from me that you must claim what I am bound to pay; all your demands must be made on me. As, when I stood for the consulship, no authors of my family recommended me to you; so, if. I commit any fault, there are no images of my ancestors which can beg me off from you. Wherefore, if only life be granted me, as far as I can I will defend the state from the wickedness and insidious designs of those men. I promise you this, O Romans, with good faith; you have entrusted the republic to a vigilant man, not to a timid one; to a diligent man, not to an idle one.

I am consul; how should I fear an assembly of the people? How should I be afraid of the tribunes of the people? How should I be frequently or causelessly agitated? How should I fear lest I may have to dwell in a prison, if a tribune of the people orders me to be led thither? for I, armed with your arms, adorned with your most honourable ensigns, and with command and authority conferred by you, have not been afraid to advance into this place, and, with you for my backers, to resist the wickedness of man; nor do I fear lest the republic, being fortified with such strong protection, may be conquered or overwhelmed by those men. If I had been afraid before, still now, with this assembly, and this people, I should not fear. For who ever had an assembly so well inclined to hear him while advocating an agrarian law, as I have had while arguing against one? if, indeed, I can be said to be arguing against one, and not rather upsetting and destroying one.

From which, O Romans, it may be easily understood that there is nothing so popular, as that which I, the consul of the people, am this year bringing to you; namely, peace, tranquillity and ease. All the things which when we were elected you were afraid might happen, have been guarded against by my prudence and caution. You not only will enjoy ease,—you who have always wished for it; but I will even make those men quiet, to whom our quiet has been a source of annoyance. In truth, however, power, riches, are accustomed to be acquired by them out of the tumults and dissensions of the citizens. You, whose interest consists in the votes of the people, whose liberty is based on the laws, whose honours depend on the courts of justice and on the equity of the magistrates, and whose enjoyment of your properties depends on peace, ought to preserve tranquillity by every means.

For if those men who, on account of indolence, are living in tranquillity, still take pleasure in their own base indolence; you, if in the calm quiet with which you govern fortune, you think such a condition as you enjoy better, should maintain it diligently; not as one that has been acquired by laziness, but as one that has been earned by virtue. [*]( This and the next sentence are given up as corrupt by every one. Many different readings have been proposed; and I have endeavoured to extract what appears to have been Cicero's meaning from them, keeping as closely as possible to the text of Orellius.) And I, by the unanimity which I have established between myself and my colleague, have provided against those men whom I knew to be hostile to my consulship both in their dispositions and actions. I have provided against everything; and I have sought to recall those men to their loyalty. I have also given notice to the tribunes of the people, to try no disorderly conduct while I am consul. My greatest and firmest support in our common fortunes, O Romans, will be, if you for the future behave, for the sake of it, to the republic in the same manner as you have this day behaved to me in this most numerous assembly, for the sake of your own safety. I promise you most certainly, and pledge myself to manage matters so that they who have envied the honours which I have gained, shall at last confess, that in selecting a consul you all showed the greatest possible foresight.