[54]
and that you may not imagine that the man
wished to heap up such a mass of figures without any reason, just see at what rate
he valued you, and the opinion of the Roman people, and the laws, and the courts of
justice, and the Sicilian witnesses and traders. After he had collected such a vast
number of figures that he had not left one single figure to anybody, he established
an immense shop in the palace at Syracuse; he openly orders all the manufacturers, and carvers, and
goldsmiths to be summoned—and he himself had many in his own employ; he
collects a great multitude of men; he kept them employed uninterruptedly for eight
months, though all that time no vessels were made of anything but gold. In that time
he had so skillfully wrought the figures which he had torn off the goblets and
censers, into golden goblets, or had so ingeniously joined them into golden cups,
that you would say that they had been made for that very purpose; and he, the
praetor, who says that it was owing to his vigilance that peace was maintained in
Sicily, was accustomed to sit in his
tunic and dark cloak the greater part of the day in this workshop.
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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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