[74]
Do you
wonder that you could not get Flaccus to approve of this conduct? I should like to know who
you did persuade to approve of it? You contrived fictitious purchases, you put up
advertisements of estates in concert with some wretched women,—open frauds.
According to the laws of the Greeks it was necessary to name a guardian to look after these
matters. You named Polemocrates a hired slave and minister of your designs. Polemocrates was
prosecuted by Dion for treachery and fraud on account of this very guardianship. What a crowd
was there from all the neighbouring towns on every side! What was their indignation! How
universal were their complaints! Polemocrates was convicted by every single vote; the sales
were annulled, the advertisements were canceled. Do you restore the property? You bring to the
men of Pergamus, and beg them to enter in their public registers, those beautiful
advertisements and purchases of yours. They refuse, they reject them. And yet who were the men
who did so? The men of Pergamus, your own panegyrists. For you appear to me to boast as much
of the panegyric of the citizens of Pergamus, as if you had arrived at all the honours which
had been attained by your ancestors. And you thought yourself in this respect better off than
Laelius, that the city of Pergamus praised you. Is the city of Pergamus more honourable than
that of Smyrna? Even the men of Pergamus themselves do not assert that.
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