[71]
However, be it so. You like to practise commerce. Why not at Pergamus? at
Smyrna? at Tralles? where there are many Roman citizens, and where magistrates of our own
preside in the courts of justice. You are fond of ease: lawsuits, crowds, and praetors are
odious to you. You delight in the freedom of the Greeks. Why, then, do you alone treat the
people of Apollonides, the allies who of all others are the most attached to the Roman people
and the most faithful, in a more miserable manner than either Mithridates, or
than your own father ever treated them? Why do you prevent them from enjoying their own
liberty? why do you prevent them from being free? They are of all Asia the most frugal, the
most conscientious men, the most remote from the luxury and inconstancy of the Greeks; they
are fathers of families, are content with their own, farmers, country-people. They have lands
excellent by nature, and improved by diligence and cultivation. In this district you wished to
have some farms. I should greatly prefer, (and it would have been more for your interest too,
if you wanted some fertile lands,) that you should have got some here somewhere in the
district of Crustumii, or in the Capenate country.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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