[32]
Besides all this, he gives them authority praetorian in name, but kingly in reality. He
describes their power, as a power for five years; but he makes it perpetual. For he
strengthens it with such bulwarks and defences that it will be quite impossible to deprive
them of it against their own consent. Then he adorns them with apparitors, and secretaries,
and clerks, and criers, and architects; besides that, with mules, and tents, and centuries,
1 and all
sorts of furniture; he draws money for their expenses from the treasury; he supplies them
with more money from the allies; he appoints them two hundred surveyors from the equestrian
body every year as their personal attendants, and also as ministers and satellites of their
power. You have now, O Romans, the form and very appearance of tyrants; you see all the
ensigns of power, but not yet the power itself. For, perhaps, some one may say,
“Well, what harm do all those men, secretary, lictor, crier, and chicken-feeder do
me?” I will tell you. These things are of such a nature that the man who has them
without their being conferred by your vote, must seem either a monarch with intolerable
power, or if he assumes them as a private individual, a madman.
1 There is, no doubt, some corruption here in the text.
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