[120]
By what, then, can this be made evident? Chiefly by this fact, that the land of the
province of Sicily liable to the payment of
tenths is deserted through the avarice of that man. Nor does it happen only that
those who have remained on their lands are now cultivating a smaller number of
acres, but also very many rich men, farmers on a large scale, and skillful men, have
deserted large and productive farms, and abandoned their whole allotments. That may
be very easily ascertained from the public documents of the states; because
according to the law of Hiero the number of cultivators is every year entered in the
books by public authority before the magistrates. Read now how many cultivators of
the Leontine district there were when Verres took the government. Eighty-three. And
how many made returns in his third year? Thirty-two. I see that there were fifty-one
cultivators so entirely got rid of that they had no successors. How many cultivators
were there of the district of Mutyca, when you arrived? Let us see from the public
documents. A hundred and eighty-eight. How many in your third year? A hundred and
one. That one district has to regret eighty-seven cultivators, owing to that man's
ill-treatment, and to that extent our republic has to regret the loss of so many
heads of families, and demands them back at his hand, since they are the real
revenues of the Roman people. The district of Herbita had in his first year two
hundred and fifty-seven cultivators; in his third, a hundred and twenty. From this
region a hundred and thirty-seven heads of families have fled like banished men. The
district of Agyrium—what men lived in that land! how honourable, how
wealthy they were? —had two hundred and fifty cultivators in the first
year of your praetorship. What had it in the third year? Eighty,—as you
have heard the Agyrian deputies read from their public documents.
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