hich were
purchased of different people, not without your knowledge; but there
was one excellent decree posted up in the Capitol affecting king
Deiotarus, a most devoted friend to the Roman people. And when that
decree was posted up, there was no one who, amid all his indignation,
could restrain his laughter. For who ever was a more bitter enemy to
another than Caesar was to Deiotarus? He was as hostile to him as he
was to this order, to the equestrian order, to the people of Massilia,
and to all men whom he knew to look on the republic of the Roman
people with attachment. But this man, who neither present nor absent
could ever obtain from him any favour or justice while he was alive,
became quite an influential man with him when he was dead. When
present with him in his house he had called for him though he was his
host, he had made him give in his accounts of his revenue, he had
exacted money from him; he had established one of his Greek retainers
in his tetrarchy, and he had taken Armenia from him, which had been
given to him by the senate. While he was alive he deprived him of all
these things; now that he is dead, he gives them back again. And in
what words? At one time he says, "that it appears to him to be just,
..." at another, "that it appears not to be unjust...." What a strange
combination of words! But while alive, (I know this, for I always
supported Deiotarus, who was at a distance,) he never said that
anything which we were asking for, for him, appeared just to him. A
bond for ten millions of sesterces was entered into in the women's
apartment, (where many things have been sold, and are still
being sold,) by his ambassadors, well-meaning men, but timid and
inexperienced in business, without my advice or that of the rest of
the hereditary friends of the monarch. And I advise you to consider
carefully what you intend to do with reference to this bond. For the
king himself, of his own accord, without waiting for any of Caesar's
memoranda, the moment that he heard of his death, recovered his own
rights by his own courage and energy. He, like a wise man, knew that
this was always the law, that those men from whom the things which
tyrants had taken away had been taken, might recover them when the
tyrants were slain. No lawyer, therefore, not even he who is your
lawyer and yours alone, and by whose advice you do all these things,
will say that anything is due to you by virtue of that bond for those
things which