Cicero would have done the Cilicians an ill turn by embroiling them with Appius, and of this they were fully conscious. They were anxious to stand well with their late oppressor, and eager to render him thanks for having harried them. Thus the corrupt judge was tenderly treated while his decrees were reversed, a process which we find going on as late as March in the year 50 B.C. "If Appius, as Brutus' letters indicate, is grateful to me, I am glad to hear it. For all that, this very day, which is dawning as I write, will be largely spent in cancelling unjust arrangements and decisions of his."[1] Such were the necessities of Roman politics.
It would have been well if the demands on a proconsul had been limited to the salving over of past iniquities. It required no little firmness to resist the appeals of friends at home to perpetrate all manner of fresh injustice on their behalf. "When any one applies to you," Cicero writes[2] to Atticus, "unless you feel quite sure that it is something which I can grant, pray give an absolute denial." One specimen of such applications will be sufficient. A certain Scaptius, armed with strong letters of introduction from Marcus Brutus, applied to Cicero for an appointment as prefect in Cyprus, where he was owed money by the State of Salamis. Cicero refused absolutely on two grounds: in the first place he would never give such an office to any one who was trading in his province; secondly, Scaptius had already shown how he understood the functions of prefect.
