Book 3
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.
