[89]
Read extracts from the public letters. [The public letters are read.] By what decree
of the senate was this permission given to the deputy? By none. Why did he do so? He
was compelled. Who says this? The whole city. Read the public testimony. [The public
testimony is read.] By the same evidence you see that there was extorted from the
same city in the second year a sum of money in a similar manner, and given to Sextus
Vennonius. But you compel the Amestratines, needy men, after you have sold their
tenths for eight hundred medimni to Banobalis, a slave
of Venus, (just notice the names of the farmers,) to add more still as a compliment,
than they had been sold for, though they had been sold at a high price. They gave
Banobalis eight hundred medimni of wheat, and fifteen
hundred sesterces. Surely that man would never have
been so senseless, as to allow more corn to be given out of the domain of the Roman
people to a slave of Venus than to the Roman people itself, unless all that plunder
had, under the name of the slave, come in reality to himself.
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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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