of desire yourself,
there will, I am to be told, be a risk of your not being able to
suppress some fraudulent banker or some rather over-extortionate
tax-collector! For as to the Greeks, they will think, as they behold the
innocence of your life, that one of the heroes of their history, or a
demigod from heaven, has come down into the province. And this I say,
not to induce you to act thus, but to make you glad that you are acting
or have acted so. It is a splendid thing to have been three years in
supreme power in Asia without allowing statue, picture, plate, napery,
slave, anyone's good looks, or any offer of money--all of which are
plentiful in your province--to cause you to swerve from the most
absolute honesty and purity of life. What can be imagined so striking or
so desirable as that a virtue, a command over the passions, a
self-control such as yours, are not remaining in darkness and obscurity,
but have been set in the broad daylight of Asia, before the eyes of a
famous province, and in the hearing of all nations and peoples? That the
inhabitants are not being ruined by your progresses, drained by your
charges, agitated by your approach? That there is the liveliest joy,
public and private, wheresoever you come, the city regarding you as a
protector and not a tyrant, the private house as a guest and not a
plunderer?

III. But in these matters I am sure that mere experience has by this
time taught you that it is by no means sufficient to have these virtues
yourself, but that you must keep your eyes open and vigilant, in order
that in the guardianship of your province you may be considered to vouch
to the allies, the citizens, and the state, not for yourself alone, but
for all the subordinates of your government. However, you have in the
persons of your _legati_ men likely to have a regard for their own
reputation. Of these in rank, position, and age Tubero is first; who, I
think, particularly as he is a writer of history, could select from his
own Annals many whom he would like and would be able to imitate.
Allienus, again, is ours, as well in heart and affection, as in his
conformity to our principles. I need not speak of Gratidius: I am sure
that, while taking pains to preserve his own reputation, his fraternal
affection for us makes him take pains for ours also.[183] Your quaestor
is not of your own selection, but the one assigned you by lot. He is
bound both to act with propriety of his own accord, and to conf