.” printing it all in large letters, as if they were the words of a decree of Verres. XXXVII. And if Cleomenes had not run away so long before, there would have been some means of making resistance, for that ship was the only one with a deck, and was large enough to have been a bulwark to the rest, and if it had been engaged in battle with the pirates, it would have looked like a city among those piratical galleys; but at that time the sailors being helpless, and deserted by their commander and prefect of the fleet, began of necessity to hold the same course that he had held; accordingly they all sailed towards Elorum, as Cleomenes had done; but they indeed were not so much flying from the attack of the pirates as following their commander. Sopater, being summoned by the prætor’s messenger, informs him of the state of the case, and says that it is absolutely impossible. No valuation can be found fault with, which is not only not disadvantageous, but which is even pleasing to the cultivator. With this plan, and urged on to such a degree by this madness, they have handed the man over to you to be put to death, whom they themselves, when they wished, were unable to murder. Indeed, if I know the men properly, they will not speak falsely. It is therefore the part of a most abandoned man, at the same time to dissolve friendship and to deceive him who would not have been injured unless he had trusted him. Will it be possible for me to be silent, O Hortensius? First, therefore, I will cite the whole of Sicily as a witness on this point; and Sicily declares to me with one voice that an immense sum of money was extorted from her by force under the name of providing statues. Did you wish to spare the account-books? In truth, O judges, the republic ought to be such, and shall be such, being established by the impartiality of the tribunals, that an enemy shall never be wanting to the guilty, and shall never be able to injure the innocent. Do you deny it? Was not more extorted, under the name of a compliment, from the people of Tissa, a very small and poor city, but inhabited by very hardworking agriculturists and most frugal men, than the whole crop of corn which they had extracted from their land? His enemies began to consider that he too might be easily turned out of his property by the same prætor as Heraclius had been stripped of his by; they plan the affair secretly; they suggest it to Verres by his emissaries. did you not take away out of the temple of Jupiter that most holy statue of Jupiter Imperator, which the Greeks call Οὔριος, most beautifully made? Here, too, you must deliberate and consider even much more than you did in the case of the agriculturists, what you intend. It happened, when he had prevailed on Cnæus Dolabella to send him to king Nicomedes and to king Sadala, and when he had begged this expedition, more with a view to his own gain than to any advantage for the republic, that in that journey he came to Lampsacus, to the great misfortune and almost ruin of the city. And if nature had been bountiful to you in such qualities, and if from your childhood you had studied the best arts and systems, and worked hard at them;—if you had learnt Greek literature at Athens, not at Lilybæum, and Latin literature at Rome, and not in Sicily; still it would be a great undertaking to approach so important a cause, and one about which there is such great expectation, and having approached it, to follow it up with the requisite diligence; to have all the particulars always fresh in your memory; to discuss it properly in your speech, and to support it adequately with your voice and your faculties. LXXXIV. The matter appeared trifling to Sopater, both because he was innocent, and because he thought that Verres would never dare to overturn the decision of Sacerdos. where were the tents? What more shall I say? How much greater reverence ought to be paid to her by those people among whom it is certain that she was born, and first discovered corn. Not so, O judges: in the first place, because all men are influenced by religious feeling, and think that their paternal gods, whom they have received from their ancestors, are to be carefully worshipped and retained by themselves; and secondly, because this sort of ornament, these works and specimens of art, these statues and paintings, delight men of Greek extraction to an excessive degree; therefore by their complaints we can understand that these things appear most bitter to those men, which perhaps may seem trifling and contemptible to us. How great a multitude, how vast a concourse of men is said to have been present when his statues were pulled down and overturned! What can you do with such a man? None. And therefore I went in the first place to Lucius Vibius, a Roman knight, a man of the highest consideration, who, I ascertained, had been collector that very year about which I particularly had to inquire. When he writes that he had sold them according to the law of Hiero, what is he writing? In short, everything which you have impeached in another must be earnestly avoided by you your self. You bought the goods of Sextus Alphenus when Lucius Sylla, the dictator, sold them. It is incredible how many Greeks have left written accounts of the beauty of these doors: they, perhaps, may admire and extol them too much; be it so, still it is more honourable for our republic, O judges, that our general, in a time of war, should have left those things which appeared to them so beautiful, than that our prætor should have carried them off in a time of peace. I well know, O judges, that all this was done without the knowledge of Lucius Sylla; and it is not strange that while he is surveying at the same time both the things which are past, and those which seem to be impending; when he alone has the authority to establish peace, and the power of carrying on war; when all are looking to him alone, and Edition: current; Page: [44]he alone is directing all things; when he is occupied incessantly by such numerous and such important affairs that he cannot breathe freely, it is not strange, I say, if he fails to notice some things; especially when so many men are watching his busy condition, and catch their opportunity of doing something of this sort the moment he looks away. I will produce witnesses, and I will produce many at the same time; since they were together when this took place, they shall be together now also. He is close at hand, he is a witness, by the command of Sopater the Proagorus.—Who is he? The remainder of the trial is not now about my good faith, which has been amply proved, nor about that fellow’s way of life, which has been fully condemned; but it is the judges, and if I am to tell the truth, it is yourself, who will now be passed sentence on. Can we so prosecute our business, as to leave the life of our relation in safety? The house was not more an ornament to its master, than it was to the city. XXX. Ant. He has produced his account-books, by which he proves that he had given him money. He says Edition: current; Page: [134]that once only in his life has he felt fear, at the time when he was first impeached as a criminal by me; because he was only lately arrived from his province, and was branded with unpopularity and infamy, not modern but ancient and of long standing; and, besides that, the time was unlucky, being very ill-suited for corrupting the judges. How can any one be induced Edition: current; Page: [279]to believe that such great honours were paid to him by people against their will? All his actions we not only still maintain, but out of fear of greater inconveniences and calamities, we defend them by the public authority. In such a matter, Verres did not choose to do any thing obscurely, nor to play tricks in the drawing of lots, nor to take days out of the calendar. What can you, O judges, suppose that this man did while on his journey? He said that he did not wish to have any trouble, but that, when he had got his money, he would depart as soon as possible to some other city. His attendant Timarchides was constantly stooping down to his ear. He had brought with him also his prefects, and his military tribunes, all of whom Nero invited to take their places on the bench. As an heir prefers a claim for himself alone, and not for his co-heirs, so a partner prefers a claim for himself alone, and not for his partners. If he could not, how did he get it? As in a well-trained army the reserved forces rush in to fill the places of the fallen, so in the battle of life the ranks of the dying are recruited by those who are biding their time. But he loaded him with all sorts of kindnesses. Nor did it move you so much that he had come with the prætexta, as that he had come without the bulla.2 For no one was influenced by that dress which custom and the right of his free birth allowed him to wear. Neapolis meaning “new city,” or as we might say, Newtown, from the Greek words Νέα πόλις, as Tyche is the Greek name of Fortune—Τύχη. There is, O judges, this difference between Sicily and other provinces, in the matter of tribute derived from the lands; that in the other provinces, either the tribute imposed is of a fixed amount, which is called stipendiarium, as in the case of the Spaniards and most of the Carthaginian provinces, being a sort of reward of victory, and penalty for war; or else a contract exists between the state and the farmers, settled by the censor, as is the case in Asia, by the Sempronian law. . You must plead; the time must be fixed at our pleasure; the judge himself shall be removed. And this usury, O judges, was such that even the profit from the other transactions was inferior to the gain obtained by it. he means those who are credulous, forgetful, weakminded,2 and these are the faults, not of old age, but of lazy, indolent, drowsy old age. When the business appeared to Rubrius to have got warm enough, “I would know of you, O Philodamus,” says he, “why you do not bid your daughter to be invited in hither to us?” The man, who was both a most dignified man, and of mature age, and a parent, was amazed at the speech of the rascal. At this time Cornelius, the lictor of Verres, who had been placed with his slaves by Rubrius, as if on guard, for the purpose of carrying off the woman, is slain; some of the slaves are wounded; Rubrius himself is wounded in the crowd. Wherefore they entered on their public records, that one of the ten had been lost, not by the sudden attack of pirates, but by the robbery of a lieutenant,—not by the violence of a storm, but by this horrible tempest which fell upon the allies. Cleomenes, although it was night, still does not dare to show himself in public. Yes, I suppose to procure his acquittal. For you have always fancied, and especially in Sicily, that you had taken sufficient precautions for your defence, when you had either forbidden anything to be mentioned in the public records, or had compelled that which had been so mentioned to be erased. As in the one case there was no reason why he should pass an unfavourable sentence on himself (for sentence passed by oneself is the hardest sentence of all), but in the other case there was hope of coming before such a man as a judge, as would show him the more favour the more without interest he was, he preferred to give a bond. Scandilius does not cease to demand judges; then that innocent man, who was so eager to efface that suspicion, and to remove it from himself, says that he will assign judges from his own retinue. For I myself, though all Sicily told me of it, still should not dare to affirm this to you, if I was not able to recite to you these edicts from his own documents in those very words—as I will do.

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