*75* But the chief thing in all public administration and public service is to avoid even the slightest suspicion of self-seeking. "I would," says Gaius Pontius, the Samnite, "that fortune had withheld my appearance until a time when the Romans began to accept bribes, and that I had been born in those days! I should then have suffered them to hold their supremacy no longer." Aye, but he would have had many generations to wait; for this plague has only recently infected our nation. And so I rejoice that Pontius lived then instead of now, seeing that he was so mighty a man! It is not yet a hundred and ten years since the enactment of Lucius Piso's bill to punish extortion; there had been no such law before. But afterward came so many laws, each more stringent than the other, so many men were accused and so many convicted, so horrible a war[AW] was stirred up on account of the fear of what our courts would do to still others, so frightful was the pillaging and plundering of the allies when the laws and courts were suppressed,[AX] that now we find ourselves strong not in our own strength but in the weakness of others. [AW] The Italian or Social War, B.C. 100-88. [AX] During the dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar. *76* XXII. Laudat Africanum Panaetius, quod fuerit abstinens. Quidni laudet? Sed in illo alia maiora; laus abstinentiae[245] non hominis est solum, sed etiam temporum illorum. Omni Macedonum gaza, quae fuit maxima, potitus [est][246] Paulus tantum in aerarium pecuniae invexit, ut unius imperatoris praeda finem attulerit tributorum. At hic nihil domum suam intulit[247] praeter memoriam nominis sempiternam. Imitatus patrem Africanus nihilo locupletior Carthagine eversa. Quid? qui eius collega fuit in censura, L. Mummius, numquid copiosior, cum copiosissimam urbem funditus sustulisset? Italiam ornare quam domum suam maluit; quamquam Italia ornata domus ipsa mihi videtur ornatior. *77* Nullum igitur vitium taetrius est, ut eo, unde egressa est, referat se oratio, quam avaritia, praesertim in principibus et rem publicam gubernantibus. Habere enim quaestui rem publicam non modo turpe est, sed sceleratum etiam et nefarium. #Plut. Inst. Lacon. 239 F# Itaque, quod Apollo Pythius oraclum edidit, Spartam nulla re alia nisi avaritia esse perituram, id videtur non solum Lacedaemoniis, sed etiam omnibus opulentis populis praedixisse. Nulla autem re conciliare facilius benivolentiam multitudinis possunt ii, qui rei publicae praesunt, quam abstinentia et continentia.