[117]
Will
he now dare to tell me, that he sold the tenths at a high price, when he took for
himself more than twice as much as he sent to the Roman people out of the same
district? You sold the tenths of the Leontine district for two hundred and sixteen
thousand modii of wheat? If you did so according to
law, it was a fine price; if your caprice was the law, it was a low price; if you
sold them so that those were called tenths which were in reality a half, you sold
them at a very low price. For the yearly produce of all Sicily might be sold for much more, if that was what the senate or
people of Rome had desired you to do.
Indeed, the tenths were often sold for as much, when they were sold according to the
law of Hiero, as they have been sold for now under the law of Verres. Let me have
the accounts of the sale of tenths under Caius Norbanus. [The account of the sale of
the tenths in the Leontine district under Caius Norbanus is read.] And yet, then,
there were no trials about the return of acres; nor was Artemidorus Cornelius a
judge, nor did a Sicilian magistrate exact from a cultivator whatever the farmer
demanded; nor was it entreated as a favour from the farmer to be allowed to compound
at three medimni an acre; nor was a cultivator obliged
to give an additional present of money, nor to add three-fiftieths of corn. And yet
a area, quantity of corn was sent to the Roman people.
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