That is the right way to deal with one's fellow-citizens, and not, as we have already witnessed on two occasions, to plant the spear in the forum and knock down the property of citizens under the auctioneer's hammer.
Cicero contrasts a just method of resolving property disputes with the violent confiscations seen in Roman history.
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But the trouble about this matter is that it is in the greatest souls and in the most brilliant geniuses that we usually find ambitions for civil and military authority, for power, and for glory, springing up; and therefore we must be the…
In my opinion, at least, we should always strive to secure a peace that shall not admit of guile.
Still, I do not mean to find fault with the accumulation of property, provided it hurts nobody, but unjust acquisition of it is always to be avoided.
So, then, it is truth that is, as it were, the stuff with which this virtue has to deal and on which it employs itself.
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