[157]
After this loud statement of
theirs,—after this had become known by the common conversation and common
complaints of all men, he began to be, I will not say more merciful in his
punishments, but mere careful. He established the rule of bringing out Roman
citizens for punishment with their heads muffled up, whom, however, he put to death
in the sight of all men, because the citizens (as we have said before) were
calculating the number of pirates with too much accuracy. Was this the condition
that was established for the Roman people while you were praetor? were these the
hopes under which they were to transact their business? was this the danger in which
their lives and condition as freemen were placed? are there not risks enough at the
hands of fortune to be encountered of necessity by merchants, unless they are
threatened also with these terrors by our magistrates, and in our provinces? Was
this the state to which it was decent to reduce that suburban and loyal province of
Sicily, full of most valued allies, and
of most honourable Roman citizens, which has at all times received with the greatest
willingness all Roman citizens within its territories, that those who were sailing
from the most distant parts of Syria or
Egypt, who had been held in some honour, even among barbarians, on account of their
name as Roman citizens, who had escaped from the ambushes of pirates, from the
dangers of tempests, should be publicly executed in Sicily when they thought that they had now reached their home?
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