[47]
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.
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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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