[129]
And that you may not marvel that so great a multitude has fled, as you find, from
the public documents and from the returns of the cultivators, has fled, know that
his cruelty and wickedness towards the cultivators was so excessive, (it is an
incredible statement to make, O judges, but it is both a fact, and one that is
notorious over all Sicily,) that men, on
account of the insults and licentiousness of the collectors, actually killed
themselves. It is proved that Diocles of Centuripa, a wealthy man, hung himself the
very day that it was announced that Apronius had purchased the tenths. A man of high
birth, Archonidas of Elorum, said that Dyrrachinus, the first man of his city, slew
himself in the same way, when he heard that the collector had made a return, that,
according to Verres's edict, he owed him a sum that he could not make good at the
expense of all his property.
Now you, though you always were the most dissolute and cruel of all mortals, still
you never would have allowed, (because the groanings and lamentations of the
province brought danger on your own head,)—you would never, I say, have
allowed men to seek refuge from your injustice in hanging and death, if the matter
had not tended to your profit and to your own acquisition of booty.
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