De Lege Agraria

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,