[158]
What
man ever lived of whom such a thing was heard as has happened to you, that his
statues in his province, erected in the public places, and some of them even in the
holy temples, were thrown down by force by the whole population? There have been
many guilty magistrates in Asia, many in
Africa, many in Spain, in Gaul, in Sardinia, many in
Sicily itself, but did we ever hear such
a thing as this of any of them? It is an unexampled thing, O judges, a sort of
prodigy amazing the Sicilians, and among all the Greeks. I would not have believed
that story about the statues, if I had not seen them myself uprooted and lying on
the ground; because it is a custom among all the Greeks to think that honours paid
to men by monuments of that sort, are, to some extent, consecrated, and under the
protection of the gods.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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