Kitap 3
173
Be it so. You reject the corn of Halesa, you have corn from another tribe which you approve of. Buy that which pleases you; dismiss those whose corn you have rejected. But from those whom you reject you exact such sum of money as may be equivalent to the quantity of corn which you require of their city. Is there any doubt what your object has been? I see from the public documents that the people of Halesa gave you fifteen sesterces for every medimnus—I will prove from the accounts of the wealthiest of the cultivators, that at the same time no one in Sicily sold corn at a higher price. What, then, is the reason for your rejecting, or rather what madness is it to reject corn which comes from that place from which the senate and the people of Rome ordered it to be brought? which comes from that very heap, a part of which, under the name of tenths, you had actually approved of? and besides, to exact money from the cities for the purchase of cow, when you had already received it from the treasury? Did the Terentian law enjoin you to buy corn from the Sicilians with the money of the Sicilians, or to buy corn from the Sicilians with the money of the Roman people?
