M. Tullius Cicero, Against Verres
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

[174] But now you see that all that money out of the treasury, which ought to have been given to these cities for corn, has been made profit of by that man. For you take fifteen sesterces for a medimus of wheat; for that is the value of a medimus at that time. You keep eighteen sesterces; for that is the price of Sicilian corn, estimated according to law. What difference does it make whether you did this, or whether you did not reject the corn, but, after the corn was approved and accepted, detained all the public money, and paid none to any city whatever? when the valuation of the law is such that while it is tolerable to the Sicilians at other times, it ought also to be pleasant to them during your praetorship. For a modius is valued by law at three sesterces. But, while you were praetor, it was, as you boast in many letters to your friends, valued at two sesterces. But suppose it was three sesterces, since you exacted that price from the cities for every modius. When, if you had paid the Sicilians as much as the Roman people had ordered you to pay, it might have been most pleasing to the cultivators, you not only did not choose them to receive what they ought, but you even compelled them to pay what was not due from them.