[226]
Wherefore, now that you have heard the whole business of the corn, O judges, you
can easily see that Sicily, that most
productive and most desirable province, has been lost to the Roman people, unless
you recover it by your condemnation of that man. For what is Sicily, if you take away the cultivation of its
land, and if you extinguish the multitude and the very name of the cultivators of
the soil? For what can there be left of disaster which has not come to those unhappy
cultivators, with every circumstance of injury and insult? They were liable, indeed,
to pay tenths, but they have scarcely had a tenth left for themselves. When money
has been due to them, it has not been paid; though the senate intended them to
supply corn for the granary according to a very equitable valuation, they have been
compelled to sell even the tools with which they cultivate their lands.
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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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