[99]
And how did he wander through it? He threw down around him the
roots of the wild palms which he had found in our ships, in order that all men might
become acquainted with the dishonesty of Verres, and the disaster of Sicily. O that Sicilian soldiers, children of those
cultivators of the soil whose fathers produced such crops of corn by their labour
that they were able to supply the Roman people and the whole of Italy,—that they, born in the island of
Ceres, where corn is said to have been
first discovered, should have been driven to use such food as their ancestors, by
the discovery of corn, had delivered all other nations from! While you were praetor
the Sicilian soldiers were fed on the roots of wild palms, pirates on Sicilian corn.
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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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