[16]
When a most powerful and noble tribune of the people, Marcus Drusus, proposed
one formula of inquiry affecting the equestrian
order,—“If any one had taken money on account of a
judicial decision,”—the Roman knights openly resisted
it. Why? Did they wish to be allowed to act in such a manner? Far from it.
They thought this cause of receiving money not only shameful, but actually
impious. But they argued in this way: that those men only ought to be made
liable to the operation of any law, who of their own judgment submitted to
such conditions of life. “The highest rank,” say they,
“in the state is a great pleasure; and the curule chair, and the
fasces, and supreme command, and a province, and priesthoods, and triumphs, and even the fact of
having an image to keep alive the recollection of one with posterity.
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