[80]
But if that land could possibly come to you, would you not rather that it remained as part
of your patrimony? Will you allow the most beautiful estate belonging to the Roman
people—the main source of your riches, your chief ornament in time of peace, your
chief source of supply in time of war, the foundation of your revenues, the granary from
which your legions are fed, your consolation in time of scarcity—to be ruined? Have
you forgotten what great armies you supported by means of the produce of Campania, in the Italian war, when you had lost all your
ordinary sources of revenue? Are you ignorant that all those magnificent revenues of the
Roman people are often dependent on a very slight impulse of fortune-on a critical moment?
What will all the harbours of Asia, what will the
plains of Syria, what will all our transmarine
revenues avail us, if the very slightest alarm of pirates or enemies be once given?
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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