[44]
But he thought that he should not
at all be a Metellus if he imitated you in anything; he who when he thought that he
was to go to that province sent letters to the cities of Sicily from Rome, a thing which no one in the memory of man ever did before, in
which he exhorts and entreats the Sicilians to plough and sow their land for the
service of the Roman people. He begs this some time before his arrival, and at the
same time declares that he will sell the tenths according to the law of Hiero; that
is to say, that in the whole business of the tenths he will do nothing like that
man. And he writes this, not from being impelled by any covetousness to send letters
into the province before his time, but out of prudence, lest, if the seed-time
passed, we should have not a single grain of corn in the province of Sicily. See Metellus's letters.
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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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