[53]
See, O judges, how easily injustice, and the habit of doing wrong creeps on; see
how difficult it is to check. There is a town called Bidis, an insignificant one
indeed, not far from Syracuse. By far
the first man of that city is a man of the name of Epicrates. An inheritance of five
hundred thousand sesterces had come to him from some
woman who was a relation of his, and so near a relation, that even if she had died
intestate, Epicrates must have been her heir according to the laws of Bidis. The
transaction at Syracuse which I have
just mentioned was fresh in men's memories,—the affair I mean of Heraclius
the Syracusan, who would not have lost his property if an inheritance had not come
to him. To this Epicrates too an inheritance had come, as I have said.
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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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