Were you to consider what might be got in one year, or in two years, and to
neglect the safety of the province, the well-doing of the corn interest, and the
interests of the republic in future times, though you came to the administration of
affairs when matters were so managed that sufficient corn was supplied to the Roman
people from Sicily, and still it was a
profitable thing for the cultivators to plough and till their land? What have you
brought about? What have you gained? In order that, while you were praetor, some
addition might be made to the revenue derived from the tenths, you have caused the
allotments of land to be deserted and abandoned. Lucius Metellus succeeded you. Were
you more innocent than Metellus? Were you more desirous of credit and honour? For
you were seeking the consulship, but Metellus neglected the renown which he had
inherited from his father and his grandfather. He sold the tenths for much less, not
only than you had done, but even than those had who had sold them before you.
I ask, if he himself
could not contrive any means for selling them at the best possible price, could he
not follow in the fresh steps of you the very last praetor, so as to use your
admirable edicts and regulations, invented and devised by you their author?
But he thought that he should not at all be a Metellus if he imitated you in
anything; he who when he thought that he was to go to that province sent letters to
the cities of Sicily from Rome, a thing which no one in the memory of man
ever did before, in which he exhorts and entreats the Sicilians to plough and sow
their land for the service of the Roman people. He begs this some time before his
arrival, and at the same time declares that he will sell the tenths according to the
law of Hiero; that is to say, that in the whole business of the tenths he will do
nothing like that man. And he writes this, not from being impelled by any
covetousness to send letters into the province before his time, but out of prudence,
lest, if the seed-time passed, we should have not a single grain of corn in the
province of Sicily. See Metellus's letters.
Read the letter of Lucius Metellus. [The letters of Lucius Metellus are read.]
It is these letters, O
judges, of Lucius Metellus, which you have heard, that have raised all the corn that
there in this year in Sicily. No one would
have broken one clod of earth in all the land of Sicily subject to the payment of tenths, if Metellus had not sent
this letter. What? Did this idea occur to Metellus by inspiration, or had he his
information from the Sicilians who had come to Rome in great numbers, and from the traders of Sicily? And who is ignorant what great crowds of
them assembled at the door of the Marcelli, the most ancient patrons of Sicily? what crowds of them thronged to Cnaeus
Pompeius, the consul elect, and to the rest of the men connected with the province?
And such a thing never yet took place in the instance of any one, as for a man to be
openly accused by those people over whose property and families he had supreme
dominion and power. So great was the effect of his injuries, that men preferred to
suffer anything, rather than not to bewail themselves and complain of his wickedness
and injuries.
And when Metellus had sent these letters couched in almost a supplicating tone to
all the cities, still he was far from prevailing with them to sow the land as they
formerly had. For many had fled, as I shall presently show, and had left not only
their allotments of land, but even their paternal homes, being driven away by the
injuries of that man. I will not indeed, O judges, say
anything for the sake of unduly exaggerating my charges. But the sentiments which I
have imbibed through my eyes and in my mind, those I will state to you truly, and,
as far as I can, plainly.
For when four years afterwards I came into Sicily, it appeared to me in such a condition as those countries are
apt to be in, in which a bitter and long war has been carried on. Those plains and
fields which I had formerly seen beautiful and verdant, I now saw so laid waste and
desolate that the very land itself seemed to feel the want of its cultivators, and
to be mourning for its master. The land of Herbita, of Enna, of Morgantia, of Assoria, of Imachara, and of Agyrium, was so deserted as to its principal part,
that we had to look not only for the allotments of land, but also for the body of
owners. But the district of Aetna, which
used to be most highly cultivated, and that which was the very head of the corn
country, the district of Leontini, the character of which was formerly such that
when you had once seen that sown, you did not fear any dearness of provisions, was
so rough and unsightly, that in the most fruitful part of Sicily we were asking where Sicily could be gone? The previous year had, indeed,
greatly shaken the cultivators, but the last one had utterly ruined them.
Will you dare also to make mention to me of the tenths? Do you, after such
wickedness, after such cruelty, after such numerous and serious injuries done to
people, when the whole province of Sicily
entirely depends on its arable land, and on its rights connected with that land;
after the cultivators have been entirely ruined, the fields deserted—after you have
left no one in so wealthy and populous a province—not only no property, but no hope
even remaining; do you, I say, think that you can acquire any popularity by saying
that you have sold the tenths at a better price than the other praetors? As if the
Roman people had formed this wish, or the senate had given you this commission, by
seizing all the fortunes of the cultivators under the name of tenths, to deprive the
Roman people for all future time of that revenue, and of their supply of corn; and,
as if after that, by adding some part of your own plunder to the total amount got
from the tenths, you could appear to have deserved well of the Roman people.
And I say this, as if his injustice was to be reproved in
this particular, that, out of a desire for credit to be got by surpassing others in
the sum derived from tenths, he had put forth a law rather too severe, and edicts
rather too stringent, and rejected the examples of all his predecessors.
You sold the tenths at a high price. What will be said, if I prove that you
appropriated and took to your own house no less a sum than you had sent to
Rome under the name of tenths? What is
there to obtain popularity for you in that plan of yours, when you took for yourself
from a province of the Roman people a share equal to that which you sent to the
Roman people? What will be said if I prove that you took twice as much corn yourself
as you sent to the Roman people? Shall we still expect to see your advocate toss his
head at this accusation, and throw himself on the people, and on the assembly here
present? These things you have heard before, O judges; but perhaps you have heard it
on no other authority than report, and the common conversation of men. Know now that
an enormous sum was taken by him on pretences connected with corn; and consider at
the same time the profligacy of that saying of his, when he said that by the profit
made on the tenths alone, he could buy himself off from all his dangers.
We have heard this for a long time, O judges. I say that there is not one of you
who has not often heard that the collectors of the tenths were that mans partners. I
do not think that anything else has been said against him falsely by those who think
ill of him but this. For they are to be considered partners of a man, with whom the
gains of a business are shared. But I say that the whole of these gains, and the
whole of the fortunes of the cultivators, went to Verres alone. I say that Apronius,
and those slaves of Venus, who were quite a new class of farmers first heard of in
his praetorship! and the other collectors, were only agents of that one man's gains,
and ministers of his plunder. How do you prove that?