[36]
Why is this so obscure and
so concealed? What is the meaning of it? Could not those matters concerning which the senate
passed resolutions, be mentioned in the law by name? There are two reasons for this
obscurity, O Romans; one, a reason of modesty, if there can be any modesty in such inordinate
impudence; the other, a reason of wickedness. For it does not dare to name those things which
the senate resolved were to he sold, mentioning them by name; for they are public places in
the city, they are shrines, which since the restoration of the tribunitian power no one has
touched, and which our ancestors partly intended to be refuges in times of danger in the
heart of the city. But all these things the decemvirs will sell by this law of this tribune
of the people. Besides them, there will be Mount Gaurus; besides that, there will be the
osier-beds at Minturnae; besides them, that
very salable road to Herculaneum, a road of
many delights and of considerable value; and many other things which the senate considered it
advisable to sell on account of the straits to which the treasury was reduced, but which the
consuls did not sell on account of the unpopularity which would have attended such a measure.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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