[83]
For,
by the immortal gods, if Alphenus, the agent of Publius Quinctius, were then willing to
give security and to stand a trial, and in short to do everything which you chose, what
would you do? Would you recall him whom you had sent into Gaul? But this man would have been already expelled from his farm,
already driven headlong from his home, already (the most unworthy thing of all)
assaulted by the hands of his own slaves, in obedience to your messenger and command.
You would, forsooth, make amends for these things afterwards. Do you dare to speak of
the life of any man, you who must admit this,—that you were so blinded by
covetousness and avarice, that, though you did not know what would happen afterwards,
but many things might happen, you placed your hope from a present crime in the uncertain
event of the future? And I say this, just as if, at that very time when the praetor had
ordered you to take possession according to his edict, you had sent any one to take
possession, you either ought to, or could have ejected Publius Quinctius from
possession.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.