29.
[79]
I asked him on the first of January, to what men he was going to distribute that land, and
on what principles. He answered that he should begin with the Romilian tribe. In the first
place now, what is the object of such pride and arrogance as to cut off one portion of the
people, and to neglect the order of the tribes? to contrive to give land to the country
people who have it already, before any is given to the city people, to whom the hope of land
and the pleasure they are to derive from it is held out as an inducement ? Or if he says that
this is not what he said, and if he has some plan in his head to satisfy all of you, let him
produce it; let him allot it in divisions of ten acres; let him put forth your names in a
regular arrangement from the district of the Subura to that of the Arnus. If you perceive not
only that ten acres are not given to you, but that it is actually impossible for such a body
of men to be collected together in the district of Campania, will you nevertheless allow the republic to be harassed, the majesty
of the Roman people to be despised, and you yourselves to be deluded any longer by the
tribune of the people?
[80]
But if that land could possibly come to you, would you not rather that it remained as part
of your patrimony? Will you allow the most beautiful estate belonging to the Roman
people—the main source of your riches, your chief ornament in time of peace, your
chief source of supply in time of war, the foundation of your revenues, the granary from
which your legions are fed, your consolation in time of scarcity—to be ruined? Have
you forgotten what great armies you supported by means of the produce of Campania, in the Italian war, when you had lost all your
ordinary sources of revenue? Are you ignorant that all those magnificent revenues of the
Roman people are often dependent on a very slight impulse of fortune-on a critical moment?
What will all the harbours of Asia, what will the
plains of Syria, what will all our transmarine
revenues avail us, if the very slightest alarm of pirates or enemies be once given?
[81]
But as our revenues derived from the territory of
Campania are of such a nature that they are always
at home, and that they are protected by the bulwark of all our Italian towns, so they are
neither hostile to us in time of war, nor variable in their productiveness, nor unfortunate
from any accidents of climate or soil.
Our ancestors were so far from diminishing what they had taken from the Campanians, that
they even bought additional lands to be added to it, from those from whom they could not
reasonably take it without purchase. For which reason, neither the two Gracchi, who thought a
great deal of what was advantageous for the Roman people, nor Lucius Sulla, who gave away
everything without the slightest scruple to any one he pleased, ever ventured to touch the
Campanian territory. Rullus was the first man to venture to remove the republic from that
property, of which neither the liberality of the Gracchi nor the uncontrolled power of Sulla
had deprived it.
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