M. Tullius Cicero, For Rabirius Postumus
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

The king was a suppliant to him. He asked him every sort of favour; he promised him every sort of recompense. So that Postumus was at last compelled to fear that he might lose what he had already lent if he put a stop to his loans. But no one could possibly be more affable, no one could be more kind than the king; so that it was easier to repent having begun to lend than to find out how to stop. [6]

Here first rises a charge against my client. They say that the senate was bribed. O ye immortal gods! is this that much-desired impartiality of the courts of justice? Those who have bribed us are put on their trial, we who have been bribed are exposed to no such dangers. What, then, shall I do? Shall I here defend the senate, O judges? I ought indeed, to do so here and everywhere, so well has that body deserved at my hands. But that is not the question at the present moment; nor is that affair in the least connected with the cause of Postumus. Although money was supplied by Postumus for the expense of his journey, and for the splendour of his appointments, and for the royal retinue, and though contracts were drawn up in the Alban villa of Cnaeus Pompeius when he left Rome; still he who supplied the money had no right to ask on what he who received the money was spending it. For he was lending it not to a robber, but to a king; nor to a king who was an enemy of the Roman people, but to him whose return to his kingdom he saw was granted to him by the senate, and entrusted to the consul to provide for; nor to a king who was a stranger to this empire, but to one with whom he had seen a treaty made in the Capitol.

[7] But if the man who lends money is to blame, and not the man who has made a scandalous use of the money which has been lent to him, then let that man be condemned who has made a sword and sold it and not the man who with that sword has slain a citizen. Wherefore, neither you, O Caius Memmius, ought to wish the senate, to support the authority of which you have devoted yourself from your youth upwards, to labour under such disrepute, nor ought I to speak in defence of conduct which is not the subject of the present inquiry. For the cause of Postumus, whatever it is, is at all events unconnected with the cause of the senate. [8] And if I show that it has no connection with Gabinius either, then certainly you will have not a leg to stand upon.