[91] What was his object in leaving this city? in depriving himself of the glorious liberty existing here? in undergoing all the danger of a voyage? just as if he might not have devoured his property here at Rome. Now at last this jolly son writes to his mother, an old woman not very likely to suspect him, and clears himself by a letter, in order to appear not to have spent all that money with which he had crossed the sea, but to have given it to Flaccus.
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But those crops of the Trallians had been sold when Globulus was praetor. Falcidius had bought them for nine hundred thousand sesterces. If he gives so much money to Flaccus, he assuredly gives it to secure the ratification of that purchase. He then buys something which certainly was worth a great deal more than he gave for it; he pays for it out of his profit; he never touches his capital. Therefore he makes the less profit.
But those crops of the Trallians had been sold when Globulus was praetor. Falcidius had bought them for nine hundred thousand sesterces. If he gives so much money to Flaccus, he assuredly gives it to secure the ratification of that purchase. He then buys something which certainly was worth a great deal more than he gave for it; he pays for it out of his profit; he never touches his capital. Therefore he makes the less profit.
Pro L. Flacco. M. Tullius Cicero. Charles Duke Yonge (Translator). London. 1856.
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