M. Tullius Cicero, On the Consular Provinces
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

But who is there who is ignorant that the city of the Byzantines was entirely filled and superbly decorated with statues? which the citizens, even when exhausted by the great expenses of important wars, while sustaining the attacks of Mithridates, and the whole force of Pontus, boiling over and pouring itself over all Asia which they repulsed with difficulty at their own great risk,—even then, I say, and afterwards, the Byzantines preserved those statues and all the other ornaments of their city and guarded them most religiously. [7] But when you, O most unhappy and most infamous of men, became the commander there, O Caesoninus Calventius then a free city, and one which had been made so by the senate and people of Rome, on account of its recent services, was so plundered and stripped of everything, that, if Caius Virgilius the lieutenant, a very brave and incorruptible man, had not interfered, the Byzantines would not have retained one single statue out of all their great number.

What temple in all Achaia? what spot or what grove in the whole of Greece, was there of such sanctity that a single statue or a single ornament has been left in it? You purchased from a most infamous tribune of the people, at the time of that general shipwreck of the city, which you, the very man who were bound to govern it rightly, had been the main agent in overturning; you purchased, I say, at that time, for an immense sum of money, the power of pronouncing judgment on the people of the free cities, with respect to the moneys which had been advanced, contrary to the resolutions of the senate, and the law of your own son-in-law. What you had bought, you sold in such a manner that you either never gave any decision at all, or else you deprived Roman citizens of their property. [8] But I am not bringing forward these facts at this moment, O conscript fathers, as charges against this man, I am merely arguing with respect to the province. Therefore I pass over all those things which you have often heard of and which you are well aware of, even when you do not hear of them. I say nothing of his audacious conduct in the city, which he has fixed deep in the recollection of your eyes and minds; I say nothing of his arrogance, of his insolence, of his cruelty. Let those dark acts of lust of his lie hid, acts which he tried to conceal by his stern countenance and supercilious look, not by modesty and temperance. I am arguing about the province, the welfare of which is at stake in this matter. Will you not send a successor to such a man as this? Will you allow him to remain any longer? a man whose fortune, from the very moment that he first reached the province, has so vied with his wickedness, that no one could decide whether he was more undeserving or more unfortunate. [9]

But as for Syria, is that Semiramis any longer to be retained there? a man whose march into the province bore the appearance of king Ariobarzanes having hired your consul to come and commit murder, as if he were some Thracian. His very first arrival in Syria was signalized by the destruction of the cavalry; after that, all his best cohorts were cut to pieces. Therefore, in Syria, since he has been the commander-in-chief, nothing has been done beyond making money-bargains with tyrants, and selling decisions, and committing robbery and piracy and massacre; while the general of the Roman people, with his army in battle array, stretching forth his right hand, did not exhort his soldiers to the pursuit of glory, but only kept crying out that everything had been bought by him and was to be bought still.