[204]
Sophocles of Agrigentum, a most eloquent
man, adorned with every sort of learning and with every virtue, is said to have
spoken lately before Cnaeus Pompeius, when he was consul, on behalf of all
Sicily, concerning the miseries of the
cultivators, with great earnestness and great variety of arguments, and to have
lamented their condition to him. And of all the things which he mentioned, this
appeared the most scandalous to those who were present, (for the matter was
discussed in the presence of a numerous assembly,) that, in the very matter in which
the senate had dealt most honestly and most kindly with the cultivators, in that the
praetor should plunder, and the cultivators be ruined and that should not only be
done, but done in such a manner as if it were lawful and permitted.
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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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