For Publius Quinctius (80-83)

O incredible thing! O inconsiderate covetousness! O winged messenger! The agents and satellites of Sextus Naevius come from Rome, across the Alps, among the Segusiani in two days. O happy man who has such messengers, or rather Pegasi.

Did you, before you made the demand to be allowed to take possession of his goods, send any one to take care that the master should be driven by force off the estate by his own slaves? Choose whichever you like; the one is incredible; the other abominable; and both are unheard-of before this time. Do you mean that any one ran over seven hundred miles in two days? Tell me. Do you deny it? Then you sent some one beforehand. I had rather you did. For if you were to say that, you would be seen to tell an impudent lie: when you confess this, you admit that you did a thing which you cannot conceal even by a lies. Will such a design, so covetous, so audacious, so precipitate, be approved of by Aquillius and by such men as he is?

What does this madness, what does this baste, what does this precipitation intimate? Does it not prove violence? does it not prove wickedness? does it not prove robbery? does it not, in short, prove everything rather than right, than duty, or than modesty? You send some one without the command of the praetor. With what intention? You knew he would order it. What then? When he had ordered it, could you not have sent then? You were about to ask him. When? Thirty days after. Yes, if nothing hindered you; if the same intention existed; if you were well; in short, if you were alive. The praetor would have made the order, I suppose, if he chose, if he was well, if he was in court, if no one objected, by giving security according to his decree, and by being willing to stand a trial.

For, by the immortal gods, if Alphenus, the agent of Publius Quinctius, were then willing to give security and to stand a trial, and in short to do everything which you chose, what would you do? Would you recall him whom you had sent into Gaul? But this man would have been already expelled from his farm, already driven headlong from his home, already (the most unworthy thing of all) assaulted by the hands of his own slaves, in obedience to your messenger and command. You would, forsooth, make amends for these things afterwards. Do you dare to speak of the life of any man, you who must admit this,—that you were so blinded by covetousness and avarice, that, though you did not know what would happen afterwards, but many things might happen, you placed your hope from a present crime in the uncertain event of the future? And I say this, just as if, at that very time when the praetor had ordered you to take possession according to his edict, you had sent any one to take possession, you either ought to, or could have ejected Publius Quinctius from possession.