Oh, the good faith of gods and men! no witness is found in a case involving a sum of three million two hundred thousand sesterces! Among how many men? Among more than six hundred. In what countries did this transaction take place? In this place, in this very place which you see. Was the money given irregularly? No money at all was touched without many memoranda. What, then, is the meaning of this accusation, which finds it easier to ascend the Alps than a few steps of the treasury; which defends the treasury of the Ruteni with more anxiety than that of the Roman people; which prefers using unknown witnesses to known ones, foreign witnesses to citizens; which thinks that it is establishing a charge more plainly by the capricious evidence of barbarians than by documents written by our fellow citizens?
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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