[63]
Now remark their other immense and intolerable gains, in order to understand that this popular name of an agrarian law has only been hunted out as a means of gratifying the unreasonable avarice of particular men. He orders lands to be bought with this money, to which you are to be conducted as colonists. I am not accustomed, O Romans, to speak or men with unnecessary harshness unless I am provoked. I wish it were possible for those men to be named by me without speaking ill of them, who hope to be themselves appointed decemvirs; and you should quickly see what sort of men they are to whom you have committed the power of selling and buying everything.
Now remark their other immense and intolerable gains, in order to understand that this popular name of an agrarian law has only been hunted out as a means of gratifying the unreasonable avarice of particular men. He orders lands to be bought with this money, to which you are to be conducted as colonists. I am not accustomed, O Romans, to speak or men with unnecessary harshness unless I am provoked. I wish it were possible for those men to be named by me without speaking ill of them, who hope to be themselves appointed decemvirs; and you should quickly see what sort of men they are to whom you have committed the power of selling and buying everything.
De Lege Agraria. M. Tullius Cicero. Charles Duke Yonge (Translator). London. 1856.
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