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28“Why now do I say this? Because although you have provisions in abundance,—I am going to speak frankly and without disguise: you get your pay in full and in season and you are always and everywhere supplied with food in plenty,—and although you endure no inglorious toil nor useless danger, and furthermore reap many great rewards for your bravery and are rebuked little, if at all, for your errors, yet you do not see fit to be satisfied with these things. 2I say this, now, not to all of you, for you are not all like this, but only to those who by their own greed are casting reproach on the rest. Most of you obey my orders very scrupulously and satisfactorily and abide by your ancestral customs, and in that way have acquired so much land as well as wealth and glory; but some few are bringing much disgrace and dishonour upon all of us. 3And yet, though I understood clearly before this that they were that sort of persons,—for there is none of your concerns that I fail to notice,—still I pretended not to know it, thinking that they would reform if they believed they would not be observed in some of their evil deeds, through the fear that if ever they presumed too far they might be punished also for the deeds which had been pardoned them. 4Since, however, they themselves, assuming that they may do whatever they wish because they were not brought to book at the very outset, wax overbold, and are trying to make the rest of you, who are guilty of no irregularity, mutinous likewise, it becomes necessary for me to devote some care to them and to give them my attention.
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