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As your friend Cincius told me that I could take them without breaking the lex Cincia , I told him that I should have great pleasure in accepting them, if he brought them to Italy. Wherefore, as you love me, as you know that I love you, do try by means of friends, clients, guests, or even your freedmen or slaves, to prevent the loss of a single leaf.
Indeed, the myth of honorary work, which is in itself absurd, was no more practicable in Rome than it has been found to be in England, where every barrister is theoretically presumed to work for nothing. That the "Lex Cincia," as far as the payment of advocates went, was absurd, may be allowed by us all.
It was illegal, such payment having been forbidden by the "Lex Cincia De Muneribus," passed more than a century before Cicero began his pleadings. But the law had become a dead letter in the majority of cases. There can be no doubt that Hortensius, the predecessor and great rival of Cicero, took presents, if not absolute payment.
His profession as a barrister only brought him a return indirectly in the form of an occasional legacy or gift, since fees were forbidden by a lex Cincia; his books could hardly have paid him, at least in the form of money; his inherited property was small, and his Italian villas were not profitable farms, nor was it the practice to let such country houses, as we do now, when not occupying them; he declined a provincial government, the usual source of wealth, and when at last compelled to undertake one, only realised what was then a paltry sum, some £17,500, all of which, while in deposit at Ephesus, was seized by the Pompeians in the Civil War.
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