[5]
And therefore we have always so esteemed the
island of Sicily for every purpose, as to
think that whatever she could produce was not so much raised among the Sicilians as
stored up in our own homes. When did she not deliver the corn which she was bound to
deliver, by the proper day? When did she fail to promise us, of her own accord,
whatever she thought we stood in need of? When did she ever refuse anything which
was exacted of her? Therefore that illustrious Marcus Cato the wise called
Sicily a storehouse of provisions for our
republic—the nurse of the Roman people. But we experienced, in that long
and difficult Italian war which we encountered, that Sicily was not only a storehouse of provisions to us, but was also an
old and well-filled treasury left us by our ancestors; for, supplying us with hides,
with tunics, and with corn, it clothed, armed, and fed our most numerous armies,
without any expense at all to us.
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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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