M. Tullius Cicero, For Marcus Tullius
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

[15] I will add this also, which is very important to the matter. When the commander-in-chief died, though he wished to invest a sum of money, got I know not how, in a farm, he did not so invest it, but he squandered it. I do not very greatly wonder that, hampered as he was by his own folly, he wished to extricate himself how he could. But this I cannot marvel at sufficiently, this I am indignant at, that he strives to remedy his own folly at the expense of his neighbours, and that he endeavoured to pacify his own ill-temper by the injury of Tullius.

There is in that farm a field of two hundred acres, which is called the Popilian field, O judges, which had always belonged to Marcus Tullius, and which even his father had possessed. That new neighbour of his, full of wicked hope, and the more confident because Marcus Tullius was away, began to wish for this field, as it appeared to him to lie very conveniently for him, and to be a convenient addition to his own farm. And at first, because he repented of the whole business and of his purchase, he advertised the farm for sale. But he had had a partner in the purchase, Cnaeus Acerronius a most excellent man. He was at Rome, when on a sudden messengers came to Marcus Tullius from his villa, to say that Publius Fabius had advertised that neighbouring farm of his for sale, offering a much larger quantity of land than he and Cnaeus Acerronius had lately purchased.