[125]
When Sicily was harassed in the
Carthaginian wars, and afterwards, in our fathers' and our own recollection, when
great bands of fugitive slaves twice occupied the province, still there was no
destruction of the cultivators of the soil; then, if the sowing was hindered, or the
crop lost, the yearly revenue was lost too, but the number of owners and cultivators
of the land remained undiminished. Then those officers who succeeded the praetors
Marcus Laevinus, or Publius Rupilius, or Marcus Aquillius in that province, had not
to collect the cultivators who were left. Did Verres and Apronius bring so much more
distress on the province of Sicily than
either Hasdrubal with his army of Carthaginians, or Athenio with his numerous bands
of runaway slaves, that in those times, as soon as the enemy was subdued, all the
land was ploughed, and the praetor had not to send letters to beg the cultivator to
come to him, and entreat him to sow as much land as he could; but now, even after
the departure of this most ill-omened pestilence, no one could be found who would
till his land of his own free-will; and very few were left to return to their farms
and their own familiar household gods, even when urged by the authority of Lucius
Metellus?
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