Etruria [pro Caecina] 191 



for purpose of division among legatees. His widow, advised to buy in 

 the parcel of land adjoining her own farm, employed as agent a man 

 who had ingratiated himself with her. Under this commission the land 

 was bought. Cicero declares that it was bought for the widow, who 

 paid the price, took possession, let it to a tenant, and held it till her 

 death. She left her second husband Caecina heir to nearly all her 

 property, and it was between him and the agent Aebutius that troubles 

 now arose. For Aebutius declared that the land had been bought by 

 him for himself, and that the lady had only enjoyed the profits of it 

 for life in usufruct under her first husband's will. This was legally 

 quite possible. At the same time he suggested that Caecina had lost 

 the legal capacity of taking the succession at all. For Sulla had 

 degraded the citizens belonging to Volaterrae, of whom Caecina was 

 one. Cicero is more successful in dealing with this side-issue than in 

 establishing his client's claim to the land. The dispute arising out of 

 that claim, the armed violence used by Aebutius to defeat Caecina's 

 attempt to assert possession, and the interdict granted to Caecina, were 

 the stages by which the case came into court. Its merits are not certain. 

 But the greedy characters on both sides, the trickery employed by one 

 side or other (perhaps both), and the artful handling of the depositions 

 of witnesses, may incline the reader to believe that the great orator had 

 but a poor case. At all events farming in Etruria appears as bound up 

 with slave labour and as liable to be disturbed by the violence of slaves 

 in arms. 



In the above cases it suited Cicero's purpose to lay stress on the 

 perils that beset defenceless persons who were interested in farms in 

 out-of-the-way 1 places. Yet the use of armed force was probably most 

 habitual on the waste uplands, and his references to the lawless doings 

 of the brigand slave-bands fully confirm the warnings of Varro. His 

 tone varies according to the requirements of his client's case, but he has 

 to admit 2 that wayfarers were murdered and bloody affrays between 

 rival bands ever liable to occur. He can on occasion 8 boldly charge a 

 political opponent with deliberate reliance on such forces for revolu- 

 tionary ends. Thus of C Antonius he asserts 'he has sold all his live 

 stock and as good as parted with his open pastures, but he is keeping 

 his herdsmen; and he boasts that he can mobilize these and start a 

 slave-rebellion whenever he chooses.' There was no point in saying 



1 pro Caecina i in agro locisque desertis. 



2 pro Vareno fragm 5, pro Cluentio 161, cf pro Tullio 8. 



3 in toga Candida fragm 1 1 alter pecore omni vendito et saltibus prope addictis pastores 

 retinet, ex quibus ait se cum velit stibito fugitivorum bellum excitaturum. For the fugitivi in 

 Sicily cf II in Verrem II 27, III 66, iv 112, V passim, and the famous inscription of 

 Popilius, Wilmanns 797 and Wordsworth specimens pp 221, 475, CIL I 551, referring to 

 first Sicilian slave-war. 



