30.
That land which now, as you pass by it, you say is yours, and which foreigners whose road
lies through it hear is yours, when it is divided will neither be nor be said to be yours.
[82]
And who are the men who will possess it? In the first
place they are active men, prepared for deeds of violence, willing for sedition, who, the
very moment the decemvirs clap their hands, may be armed against the citizens and ready for
slaughter. In the next place, you will see the whole district of Campania distributed among a few men already rich in wealth and power.
Meanwhile you, who have received from your ancestors those most beautiful homes, if I may so
say, of your revenues, which they won by their arms, will not have left to you one single
clod of earth of all your paternal hereditary possessions. And there will be this difference
between your diligence and that or private individuals, that when Publius Lentulus, while he
was chief of the senate, had been sent into those parts by our ancestors, in order to
purchase at the public expense those lands, being private property, which projected into the
public domain in Campania, he is said to have
reported that he had not been able to purchase a certain man's estate for money; and that he
who had refused to sell it, had given this reason why he could not possibly be induced to
sell it, that, though he had many farms, this was the only farm from which he never had had
any bad news.
[83]
Is it so? Did this reason weigh with a
private individual and shall it not weigh with the Roman people to prevent their giving up
the district of Campania to private individuals for
nothing, at the request of Rullus? And the Roman people may say the very same thing about
this revenue, that he is said to have said about his farm. Asia for many years during the Mithridatic war produced you no revenue. There
was no revenue from the Spains in the time of Sertorius. Manius Aquilius even lent corn to
the Sicilian cities at the time of the Servile war. But from this tributary land no bad news
was ever heard. Other of our revenues are at times weighed down by the distresses of war; but
the sinews of war are even supplied to us by this tributary land.
[84]
Besides, in this allotment of lands which is to take place, even that,
which is said in other cases, cannot be said here, namely, that lands ought not to be left
deserted by the people, and without the cultivation of free men.
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