[14]
O
splendid general, not to be compared now to Marcus Aquillius, a most valiant man,
but to the Paulli, the Scipios, and the Marii! That a man should have had such
foresight at a time of such alarm and danger to the province! As he saw that the
minds of all the slaves in Sicily were in
an unsettled state on account of the war of the runaway slaves in Italy, what was the great terror he struck into them
to prevent any one's daring to stir? He ordered them to be arrested—who
would not he alarmed? He ordered their masters to plead their cause—what
could be so terrible to slaves? He pronounced “That they appeared to have
done....” He seems to have extinguished the rising flame by the pain and
death of a few. What follows next? Scourgings, and burnings, and all those extreme
agonies which are part of the punishment of condemned criminals, and which strike
terror into the rest, torture and the cross? From all these punishments they are
released. Who can doubt that he must have overwhelmed the minds of the slaves with
the most abject fear, when they saw a praetor so good-natured as to allow the lives
of men condemned of wickedness and conspiracy to be redeemed from punishment, the
very executioner acting as the go-between to negotiate the terms?
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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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