THE LAND OF SICILY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 90, 13 October 1939, Page 3

THE LAND OF SICILY

ffel. 52-497.

■ , ■ ■ - m - ' ■ ; .-.■ :: ; LONG A PROBLEM TO ROME

Signor Mussolini's project for breaking ,up the large landed estates of Sicily into small farms throws into relief a problem which occupied the attention of Italian statesmen as long ago as the later years of the.Roman Republic; says the "Manchester Guardian." - Roman Sicily became a vast landed estate of the propraetor, wheri . he pillaged and practised extortion a$ will. Caius Verres governed Sicily from 73 to 71 B.C. and was impeached by Cicero for malversation at the close. Cicero, who first established his. great . reputation in. this case, attacked the injustice of Verres under the punning . title of Jus verrihum, "the wild boar's broth," "verres""being,, a wild boar: in Latin. . The exactions oi Verres in, Sicily were enormities of an unprecedented character and form a landmark of Rbman guilt. "He sold everything',"; writes an authority, "both his patronage ■ and his decisions, making sport of the laws of the country and of his own edicts. He imposed arbitrary re- , quisitiohs of many hundred thousand ; bushels of grpin upon the communities already overburdened with their authorised tithes. He distributed cities among his favourites with the air of a Persian despot. These exactions rapidly depopulated the country." Roman administration had confessedly great virtues, but it is as well t» remember the darker side when a comparison is made between the Roman and the British Empires. When Signor Mussolini announced that his agrarian reform in Sicily is "destined to remain among the fateful dates of Italian history," consciously or unconsciously he showed himself determined to grapple with an age-long problem in the annals of the peninsula and the .island;- -'•'■ v> • " ■.-' '•■■:'' '.'''■ . '■■:"■ • -.: ■'.' '-.-