[38]
But what follows is not only contrary to the law of Hiero, not only contrary to the
customs of all former praetors, but even contrary to all the rights of the
Sicilians, which they have as granted them by the senate and people of Rome,—that they shall not be forced to
give security to appear in any courts of justice but their own. Verres made a
regulation that the cultivator should appear to an action brought by a collector in
any court which the collector might choose. So that in this way also gain might
accrue to Apronius, when he dragged a defendant all the way from Leontini to
Lilybaeum to appear before the court
there, by making false accusations against the wretched cultivators. Although that
device for false accusation was also contrived with singular cunning, when he
ordered that the cultivators should make a return of their acres, as to what they
were sown with. And this had not only great power in causing most iniquitous claims
to be submitted to, as we shall show hereafter, and that too without any advantage
to the republic, but at the same time it gave a great handle to false accusations,
which all men were liable to if Apronius chose.
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