duct of our private and everyday business: in
such an important government, where morals are so debased and the
province has such a corrupting influence, they must needs seem divine.
Such principles and conduct on your part are sufficient to justify the
strictness which you have displayed in some acts of administration,
owing to which I have encountered certain personal disputes with great
satisfaction, unless, indeed, you suppose me to be annoyed by the
complaints of a fellow like Paconius--who is not even a Greek, but in
reality a Mysian or Phrygian--or by the words of Tuscenius, a madman and
a knave, from whose abominable jaws you snatched the fruits of a most
infamous piece of extortion with the most complete justice.

VII. These and similar instances of your strict administration in your
province we shall find difficulty in justifying, unless they are
accompanied by the most perfect integrity: wherefore let there be the
greatest strictness in your administration of justice, provided only
that it is never varied from favour, but is kept up with impartiality.
But it is of little avail that justice is administered by yourself with
impartiality and care, unless the same is done by those to whom you have
intrusted any portion of this duty. And, indeed, in my view there is no
very great variety of business in the government of Asia: the entire
province mainly depends on the administration of justice. In it we have
the whole theory of government, especially of provincial government,
clearly displayed: all that a governor has to do is to shew consistency
and firmness enough, not only to resist favouritism, but even the
suspicion of it. To this also must be added courtesy in listening to
pleaders, consideration in pronouncing a decision, and painstaking
efforts to convince suitors of its justice, and to answer their
arguments. It is by such habits that C. Octavius has recently made
himself very popular;[186] in whose court, for the first time,[187] the
lictor did not interfere, and the marshal kept silence, while every
suitor spoke as often and as long as he chose. In which conduct he would
perhaps have been thought over-lax, had it not been that this laxity
enabled him to maintain the following instance of severity. The
partisans of Sulla were forced to restore what they had taken by
violence and terrorism. Those who had made inequitable decrees, while in
office, were now as private citizens forced to submit to the principl