Kitap 3
13
Very few cities of Sicily were subdued in war by our ancestors, and even in the case of those which were, though their land was made the public domain of the Roman people, still it was afterwards restored to them. That domain is regularly let out to farmers by the censors. There are two federate cities, whose tenths are not put up to auction; the city of the Mamertines and Taurominium. Besides these, there are five cities without any treaty, free and enfranchised; Centuripa, Halesa, Segesta, Halicya, and Panormus. All the land of the other states of Sicily is subject to the payment of tenths; and was so, before the sovereignty of the Roman people, by the will and laws of the Sicilians themselves.
14
See now the wisdom of our ancestors, who, when they had added Sicily, so valuable an assistant both in war and peace, to the republic, were so careful to defend the Sicilians and to retain them in their allegiance, that they not only imposed no new tax upon their lands, but did not even alter the law of putting up for sale the contracts of the farmers of the tenths, or the time or place of selling them; so that they were to put them up for sale at the regular time of year, at the same place, in Sicily,—in short, in every respect as the law of Hiero directed; they permitted them still to manage their own affairs, and were not willing that their minds should be disturbed even by a new name to a law, much less by an actual new law.
