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

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.