[40]
So also to
buyers and sellers, to employers and employed, and
to those who are engaged in commercial dealings
generally, justice is indispensable for the conduct of
business. Its importance is so great, that not even1
those who live by wickedness and crime can get on
without some small element of justice. For if a robber takes anything by force or by fraud from another
member of the gang, he loses his standing even in a
band of robbers; and if the one called the “Pirate
Captain” should not divide the plunder impartially,
he would be either deserted or murdered by his
comrades. Why, they say that robbers even have a
code of laws to observe and obey. And so, because
of his impartial division of booty, Bardulis, the Illyrian bandit, of whom we read in Theopompus,
acquired great power, Viriathus, of Lusitania, much
greater. He actually defied even our armies and
generals. But Gaius Laelius—the one surnamed
“the Wise”—in his praetorship crushed his power,
reduced him to terms, and so checked his intrepid
daring, that he left to his successors an easy conquest.
Since, therefore, the efficacy of justice is so great
that it strengthens and augments the power even of
robbers, how great do we think its power will be in
a constitutional government with its laws and courts?
1 Honour among thieves.
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