Is there any terror
 in absolute power? they will endure it;—is there any expense entailed by the arrival of such
 men? they will bear it;—are any presents exacted from them? they will not refuse them. But what
 a business is that, O Romans, when a decemvir, who either has come to some city after being
 expected, as a guest, or unexpectedly, as a master, pronounces that very place to which he has
 come, that identical hospitable house in which he is received, to be the public property of the
 Roman people? How great will be the misery of the people if he says that it is so! How great
 will be his own private gain, if he says that it is not! And the same men who desire all this,
 are accustomed sometimes to complain that every land and every sea has been put under the power
 of Cnaeus Pompeius. But are these two cases, the one, of many things being entrusted to a man,
 the other, of everything being sacrificed to him, at all similar? Is there any resemblance
 between a man's being appointed as chief manager of a business requiring toil and labour, and a
 man's having the chief share in booty and gain allotted to him? in a man's being sent to
 deliver allies, and a man's being sent to oppress them? Lastly, if there be airy extraordinary
 honour in question, does it make no difference whether the Roman people confers that honour on
 any one it chooses, or whether he impudently filches it from the Roman people by an underhand
 trick of law? You have now seen how many things and what valuable things the decemvirs are likely to sell
 with the sanction of the law. That is not enough. When they have sated themselves with the
 blood of the allies, and of foreign nations, and of kings, they will then cut the sinews of the
 Roman people; they will lay hands on your revenues; they will break into your treasury. For a
 clause follows, in which he is not content with permitting, if by chance any money should be
 wanting, (which, however, can be amassed in such quantities from the effect of the previous
 clauses, that it ought not to be wanting,) but which actually (as if that was likely to be the
 salvation of you all) orders and compels the decemvirs to sell all your revenues, naming each
 item separately.