by letters, that your successor was not named last year. This I did unwisely, with a view of consulting the welfare of our allies, of crushing the presumptuousness of certain traders,' and with the desire of increasing my own glory through your merits; especially as I effected the result of a third year being added to that second.

you exert

Having thus frankly acknowledged that it was my fault, it is the part of your wisdom and kindness to take care and manage that this which has been unwisely schemed by me may be corrected by your diligence; and surely, if yourself in all the duties of government so as to seem to vie not only with others but with yourself, if you call in use all your faculties, all your attention, all your thought, to that love of glory, which is so powerfully prevalent in all transactions, believe me, that one year added to your toil will bring many years of pleasure to us, and even glory to our posterity. Wherefore, I in the first place beg of you, that you will not suffer your spirit to be damped or diminished, nor yourself to be overwhelmed, as with a flood, by the multitude of business; but that, on the contrary, you will arouse yourself, and make a firm stand, even if you spontaneously incur it; for you do not bear a part in such a government as is governed by fortune, but one in which discretion and diligence has the greatest influence. Had I seen your command prolonged at a time when you were involved in the management of some great and dangerous war, then I should have been disquieted in my mind, because I should have been sensible that the power of fortuue over us was prolonged at the same time. But since that department of the state has been committed to you in which fortune has very little or no part, it seems to me to depend entirely on your own virtue and wisdom. We apprehend, I think, no treachery of enemies; no revolt of our allies; no want of money or scarcity of provisions, and no mutiny in the army. Yet these have often happened to the wisest of men, who are forced to yield to the assaults of

1 Traders. "Several complaints had been carried to Rome against Quintus, and Cicero thought that his brother remaining another year in his government might have stifled them. The reader is to observe that this government was the province of Asia Minor, one of the best the Romans had, and that a great many merchants resided there for the benefit of commerce."-Guthrie.

fortune, as the best of pilots sometimes are to the violence of a tempest.

1

The most profound peace and perfect tranquillity has fallen to your lot; but though those are circumstances that may well give pleasure to a vigilant steersman, yet they may be fatal to a sleeping one. For your province is composed, first of that kind of allies, who of all the human race are the most humanized; and in the next place of those Roman citizens, who either as farmers of the public revenues, are most intimately connected with me,' or, having so traded as to have become rich, consider they possess their fortunes in security through the beneficial influence of my consular administration. Yet even among these very men serious disputes exist, many injustices are committed, and great contentions are the consequence; and, thinking thus, I am sensible that you have not a little business upon your hands. I know that this business is very important, and requires great wisdom. But still remember that I maintain that this is a business which rather requires wisdom than good fortune. If you restrain yourself, how easy is it to restrain those you govern. This may indeed be a great and difficult matter to others, as indeed it is a most difficult achievement; but the practice of it was ever easy to you; and well it might be, as your disposition is such that it seems capable of moderation even without harming; while such an education has been enjoyed by you as would be capable of correcting the most vicious nature. When you check, as you do, the passion for money, for pleasure, and for all other things, can there be forsooth any danger of your being unable to restrain a dishonest trader, or a too rapacious publican ? For even the Greeks, when they behold your living in this manner, will think that some one

So Cicero in his speech in support of the Manilian Law, says, in speaking of this same class :- Equitibus Romanis honestissimis viris, afferuntur ex Asia quotidie literæ quorum magnæ res aguntur, in vestris vectigalibus exercendis occupatæ; qui ad me, pro neccessitudine, quæ mihi est cum illo ordine, causam rei publicæ periculaque rerum suarum detulerunt."

"Letters are daily brought from Asia, from Roman knights, most honorable men largely engaged in the farming of your revenues, who, in consideration of the close relationship which subsists between me and that order, have laid before me the cause of the state and the jeopardy of their own interests."

from the records of their ancient history, or some divine person from heaven has descended upon that province.'

I write to you in this strain, not that you might practice these things, but that you may rejoice that you do practice them, and that you have ever done so. For it is a glorious thing for a man to have been invested with a three years' sovereign power in Asia, in such a manner that no statue, no picture, no plate, no garment, no slave, no beauty, no hoard of money, in which things this province abounds, ever caused him to swerve from his continence and moderation!' Again

1 We have a striking parallel passage to this in Cicero's oration, "Pro Lege Manilia." In eulogizing the continence of Pompey in Asia Minor, he says, "Non avaritia ab instituto cursu ad prædam aliquam devocavit, non libido ad voluptatem, non amonitas ad delectationem, non nobilitas urbis ad cognitionem, non denique labor ipse ad quietem Postremo signa, et tabulas, ceteraque ornamenta Græcorum oppidorum, quæ ceteri tollenda esse arbitrantur, ea sibi ille ne visenda quidem existimavit. Itaque omnes quidem, nunc in his locis Cn. Pompeium, sicut aliquem non ex hac urbe missum, sed de cœlo delapsum, intuentur."

"Neither did avarice call him away from the course he had laid down, to the acquisition of any gain, nor his passions to any pleasure, nor the magnificence of a city to acquaint himself with it, nor fatigue itself to repose. Moreover those statues and paintings and other ornaments of Greek towns, which others consider as things to be carried away, he did not even regard as objects to be visited, and thus indeed all men now in these regions look upon Cneius Pompey, not as a certain individual dispatched from this city, but as one descended from heaven."

2 "Statues and paintings, and works of art in general, were favorite objects of rapacity with the Roman commanders, and were carried off without any scruple. The statues and pictures which Marcellus transported from Syracuse to Rome, first excited that cupidity which led the Roman provincial magistrates to pillage without scruple or distinction, the houses of private individuals, and the temples of the gods. Marcellus and Mummius, however, despoiled only hostile and conquered countries. They had made over their plunder to the public, and after it was conveyed to Rome, devoted to the embellishment of the capital; but subscquent governors of provinces, having acquired a taste for works of art, began to appropriate to themselves those masterpieces of Greece, which they had formerly neither known nor esteemed. Some contrived plausible pretexts for borrowing valuable works of art from cities and private persons, without any intention of restoring them, while others, less cautious or more shameless, seized whatever pleased them, whether public or private property, without excuse or remuneration. But though this passion was common to most provincial governors, none of them ever came up to the full measure of the rapacity of Verres, when prætor of Sicily. He seized tapestry, pictures, gold and silver, plate, vases, gems, and Corinthian bronzes, till he literally did not leave a single article of

what can be a more distinguished, a more desirable circumstance, than that this virtue, this moderation, this purity of mind, should not be buried or concealed in darkness, but displayed in the sight of Asia, to the eyes of the noblest of our provinces, and to the ears of all people and nations. That the inhabitants aro not alarmed at your journeys!-that they are not impoverished by your expenses!-that they are not frightened by your approach that there is the utmost rejoicing, both public and private, wherever you go?-that every town seems to receive you as its guardian, not as its tyrant!—every house as a guest, not as a robber!1

But upon this subject, experience by this time must have instructed you that it is not sufficient for you alone to practice these virtues, but you are to give careful attention, that invested as you are with this government, not only you, but all officers subordinate to your authority, are to act for the good of our allies, of our fellow-citizens, and of our country. You have, it is true, lieutenants under you, who will themselves have regard to their own dignity; and of these the chief in preferment, in dignity, and in experience, is Tubero, who, I make no doubt, especially while he is writing his history, will be able to choose from his own annals such models of conduct, as he both can and will imitate; and Allienus, too, attached to us as well in affection and inclination, as in imitation of our lives. Need I to mention Gratidius, who, I know for a certainty, labors for his own fame, so as, with a brotherly affection for us, to labor equally for ours. You have a quæstor, whom lot, and value of these descriptions in the whole island."-Dunlop's Roman Literature, vol. ii. page 284.

1 Ejusmodi in provinciam homines cum imperio mittimus, ut, etiam si ab hoste defendant, tamen ipsorum adventus in urbes sociorum non multum ab hostili expugnatione differant. Hunc audiebant antea, nunc præsentem vident, tanta temperantia, tanta mansuetudine, tanta humanitate, ut is beatissimi esse videantur, apud quos ille diutissime commoratur.

"We send out into that province such men with military command, that even if they defend them from the enemy, yet their own entrance into the cities of our allies differs but little from a hostile invasion; but this man, they had heard of before, and now see him present among them distinguished by so much self-control, so much gentleness, so much humanity, that those seem to be the most fortunate with whom he makes the longest stay."-Cicero's Oration for the Manilian Law.

2

Questor. This officer had the charge of the public money, and it

not your own choice, appointed to you. It is necessary that he should both be moderate by his own inclination, and conform himself to your arrangements and directions.

Should any of your officers appear of a more selfish disposition, you should bear with him, so long as he only neglects the laws by which he is bound in his own person, but not if he should prostitute for interest that power which you have annexed to his office. It does not however seem desirable to me, especially as our manners have lately leaned so much to laxity and ambition, that you should scrutinize and dissect out every instance of corruption; but to proportion the trust you repose in every one, according to the degree of honesty he possesses. In like manner you should be answerable for those whom our government has given you as assessors and assistants, only under the restrictions which I have already laid down.

As to those whom you have chosen to belong to your domestic establishment, or to be with you as your necessary retinue, and who are accustomed to be designated as of the prætor's cohort, you are answerable, not only for all their actions, but for all their sayings. But you have about your person those whom you may easily love while they act rightly; and such as but slightly consult your reputation you can most easily coerce. Meanwhile it is natural to suppose that, while you were inexperienced, your generosity might have been imposed upon; for the more virtuous any man is in himself, the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious.

was determined by lot in what province he should serve. Ho likewise paid the soldiers, and acted as contractor for the army.

1 Shakespeare seems to have had this passage in his recollection when ho wrote that passage in his play of Julius Cæsar:

"At such a time as this it is not meet

That every nice offense should bear its comment."

2 This principle of morals has been confirmed by the experience of mankind until it has almost become proverbial; it is asserted by Dr. Johnson in the following passage: "Suspicion, however necessary it may be to our safe passage through ways beset on all sides, by fraud and malice, has been always considered, when it exceeds the common measures, as a token of depravity and corruption; and a Greek writer of sentences has laid down, as a standing maxim, that he who believes not another on his oath, knows himself to be perjured.

"We can form our opinions of that which we know not, only by placing it in comparison with some thing that we know: whoever, therefore,