For L. Flaccus (13-14)

We have got a most zealous prosecutor, O judges, and an enemy in every respect violent and furious against us. I trust that he may be of great use to his friends and to the republic; but at all events, he has undertaken this case and this prosecution, as if he were impelled by some most extraordinary eagerness. What a company attended him while pursuing his investigations! company, do I say? rather, what an army! what profusion! what expense! what prodigality was there! And though these statements are of service to my case, still I do not make them without apprehension lest Laelius should think that I am seeking by my oration to make him talked about, or to excite odium against him, in a business which he has undertaken for the sole object of acquiring credit. Therefore, I will pass over all this part of the subject. I will only beg of you, O judges, if you have heard anything yourselves by common report and in ordinary conversation about force, and violence, and arms, and troops, to recollect it and to remember, because of the unpopularity of such conduct, that by this recent law, a certain number of companions has been fixed as the greatest number that ought to attend a man while prosecuting such an inquiry.

However, to say nothing of violence, what conduct is this? which, since it was adopted according to the privileges and customs of prosecutors we cannot impeach, but still we are compelled to complain if it. I mean, first of all, the making a statement which has been bruited abroad over all Asia, (different people having had regular districts assigned to them, in which they were to

spread the report,) that Cnaeus Pompeius, because he is a most zealous enemy to Lucius Flaccus, had begged of Decimus Laelius, his father's and his own most intimate friend, to prosecute him on this charge, and that he placed at his disposal for the furtherance of this business, all his own authority, and influence, and resources, and riches. And this appeared all the more probable to the Greeks, because a little before they had seen Laelius in the same province with Flaccus, and on terms of great intimacy with him. And as the authority of Pompeius is great with every one, as indeed it ought to be, so especially is it predominant in that province which he has lately delivered from the war which pirates and kings were waging against it. He did this besides: those who did not wish to leave their homes he terrified with a summons to give their evidence; those who could not remain at home, he provided with a large and liberal sum for travelling expenses.