Pro L. Flacco

But still you saw that Lurco was angry with Flaccus, although out of regard to his own dignity he was guided by some moderation in giving his evidence. For he did not conceal, or think it at all necessary to be silent about the cause of his anger. He complained that his freedman had been condemned by Flaccus when he was praetor. O how miserable is the condition of those who have the government of provinces! in which diligence is sure to bring enmity; carelessness is sure to incur reproach; severity is dangerous; liberality meets only with ingratitude. The conversation addressed to one is insidious; the flattery with which one is courted is mischievous; the countenance which every one wears towards you is friendly; the disposition of numbers is hostile; dislikes are secret; caresses are open; they wait with eagerness for the coming praetors, they fawn on those who are present, they abandon and betray those who are departing. But let us give over complaining, lest we should seem to be extolling our own wisdom in declining all provinces.

He sent letters about the steward of Publius Septimius, a man of great accomplishments, which steward had committed murder. You might have seen Septimius burning with anger. He allowed (in accordance with his edict) an action against a freedman of Lurco to proceed. Lurco is his enemy. What then? Was Asia to be abandoned to the freedmen of influential and powerful men? or has Flaccus any personal hostility of any sort with your freedmen? or do you hate his severity when displayed in your own causes, and in those of your freedmen, though you praise impartiality when it is we who are on our trial? But that man Andro, who was stripped of all his property, as you say, has not come forward to give his evidence. What if he had? Suppose he had come.

Caius Caecilius was the arbitrator of the settlement come to in that case. How noble, how upright, how conscientious a man! Caius Sextilius was a witness to it, the son of Lurco's sister—a modest, and consistent, and sensible man. If there was any violence employed in the business, any fraud, any fear, any trickery, still who compelled any arrangement to be made at all? who compelled the parties to have recourse to an arbitrator? What will you say, if all that money was restored to this young man by Lucius Flaccus? if it was claimed by him? if it was collected for him? and if this was done through the agency of this Antiochus who is here in court the freedman of this youth's father, and a man most highly esteemed by the elder Flaccus? Do we not then seem not only to escape from the charge of covetousness, but even to deserve the credit of very extraordinary liberality? For he gave up to the young man his relation the whole of their joint inheritance, which by law ought to have belonged to both of them in equal shares; and he himself touched none of Valeria's property. What he had resolved to do, being influenced by the young man's amiable character, and not by the great amount of his patrimony, that he not only did, but did most liberally and courteously. From which it ought to be understood that he had not taken the money in violation of the laws, when he was so very liberal in abandoning the inheritance.

But the charge respecting Falcidius is a serious one. He says that he gave fifty talents to Flaccus. Let us hear the man himself. He is not here. How then does he say it? His mother produces one letter, and his sister produces a second; and they say that he had written to them to say that he had given this large sum to Flaccus. Therefore he, whom, if he were to swear while holding by the altar, no one would believe, is to be allowed to prove whatever he pleases by a letter without being put on his oath at all! And what a man he is! how unfriendly to his fellow-citizens; a man who preferred squandering a sufficiently ample patrimony, which he might have spent among us here, in Grecian banquets!