And is it strange that those men who abominate the sight of our faces, who
 detest our name, who hate our tax on pastures, and our tenths, and our harbour dues, more than
 death itself, should gladly seize on every opportunity of injuring us that presents itself?
 Remember, therefore, that when you hear decrees you are not hearing evidence; that you are
 listening to the rashness of the common people; that you are listening to the assertions of all
 the most worthless men; that you are listening to the murmurs of the ignorant, to the voice of
 an inflamed assembly of a most worthless nation. Therefore examine closely into the nature and
 motive of all their accusations, and you will find no reason for them except the hopes by which
 they have been led on, or the terrors and threats by which they have been driven 
 The cities have nothing in the treasury, nothing in their revenues. There are two ways of
 raising money,—by tribute, or by loan. No lists of creditors are brought forward; no exaction of
 tribute is accounted for. But I pray you to remark how cheerfully they are in the habit of
 producing false accounts, and of entering in their accounts whatever suits them, forming your
 opinions by the letters of Cnaeus Pompeius to Hypsaeus, and of Hypsaeus to Pompeius. [The
 letters of Pompeius and of Hypsaeus are read.] Do not we appear to prove to you clearly enough,
 by the authority of these men, the profligate habits and impudent licentiousness of the Greeks?
 Unless, perchance, we suppose that those men who deceived Cnaeus Pompeius, and that too, when he
 was on the spot and when there was no one tempting them to do so, were likely now to be either
 timid or scrupulous, when Laelius urged them to bear witness against Lucius Flaccus in his
 absence.