Res Gestae

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English translation, Vols. I-III. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1935-1940 (printing).

After these Cicero, the most eminent of them all, by the floods of his all-conquering oratory often saved the oppressed from the fiery ordeal of the courts, and declared: It might perhaps be pardonable to refuse to defend some men, but to defend them negligently could be nothing but criminal.[*](Preserved only here; cf. In Caec. 18, 60.)

But now it is possible to see in all the regions of the Orient powerful and rapacious classes of men flitting from one forum to another, besieging the home

v3.p.325

hounds[*](Cf. xxix. 3, 3; these were famous breeds; see Virg., Georg. iii. 405; Aelian, De Natura Animalium, iii. 2.) sagaciously picking up the tracks until they come to the very lairs of lawsuits.