to buy land in Italy for distribution. The project seems so extraordinary that we could hardly believe it, if the very words of this clause had not been preserved to us by Cicero.[1] "All lands, places, buildings—what is there besides? Well there is much property in slaves, cattle, gold, silver, ivory, raiment, furniture and so forth. What are we to say? Did he think it would not look modest if he named all these things? He has never shown any signs of such scrupulosity. What then? He thought it would be tedious, and feared that he might omit something; so he simply added, or anything else. Everything therefore outside Italy, which has become the property of the Roman People in the first consulship of Sulla or since that date, is ordered to be sold by the decemvirs. I say, Romans, that by this clause all peoples, nations, provinces and kingdoms are granted away and committed to the sole authority, judgment, and power of the decemvirs. For first I would ask, what place in the world is there of which they may not assert that it has become the property of the Roman People? For when the person who asserts has the power of pronouncing judicially on the question, where need he draw the line in his assertions? It will be convenient to maintain that Pergamus, Smyrna, Tralles, Ephesus, Miletus, Cyzicus, in fact the whole of Asia, which has been recovered since that consulship, has become the property of the Roman People. . . Then there is Alexandria and the whole of Egypt; how secretly it is smuggled
- ↑ Contra Rullum., ii., 15, 38, et seq.
