B.C. 45, ÆT. 61 for their fortunes, especially as their case for the retention of civil rights is unusually strong: first, because by the blessing of heaven they contrived to elude the vindictive measures of the Sullan epoch; and secondly, because my defence of them in my consulship received the hearty approval of the Roman people.[1] For the tribunes having promulgated an exceedingly unfair law about their lands, I easily persuaded the senate and people of Rome to allow citizens, whom fortune had spared, to retain their rights. This policy of mine was confirmed by the agrarian law of Gaius Cæsar in his first consulship, which freed the territory and town of Volaterræ from all danger for ever. This makes me feel sure that a man who seeks the support of new adherents will wish that old benefits conferred by him should be maintained. It is only therefore what your prudence would dictate, either to keep to the precedent set by the man to whose party and authority you have with so much personal honour adhered, or at least to reserve the whole case for his decision. There is one thing about which you can have no hesitation: you would wish to have a town of such sound and well-established credit and of so honourable a character for ever bound to you by a service of the highest utility on your part.
Thus far the purpose of my words is to exhort and persuade you. What remains will be of the nature of a personal request. For I don't wish you to think that I offer you advice for your own sake only, but that I am also preferring a request to you and asking for what is of consequence to myself. Well then, you will oblige me in the highest degree, if you decide that the Volaterrani are to be left intact in
- ↑ The circumstances were these. Volaterræ had taken the side of Marius against Sulla, and offered a refuge to many of the defeated party. Owing to the advantages of its position, it had held out against a two years' siege by Sulla (B.C. 81-80, Strabo, 5, 2, 6; Livy, Ep. 89; Cic. pro Sext. Am. § 20). Sulla therefore carried a law disfranchising it and declaring its lands forfeited (pro Cæc. §§ 18, 104); but for some reason the lands thus made "public" were never divided among new owners (vol. i., p. 54; Att. i. 19). Attempts were, however, made by various land reformers to deal with the territory as public land. Cicero here says that he successfully resisted one of these in B.C. 63, and that in Cæsar's lex agraria of B.C. 59 it was specially exempted, and the full citizenship of the Volaterrani acknowledged.
