In C. Verrem

When you were sent as quaestor to the army, not only as guardian of the money, but also of the consul; when you were the sharer in all his business and of all his counsels, when you were considered by him as one of his own children, according to the tenor of the principles of our ancestors; could you on a sudden leave him? desert him? pass over to the enemy? O wickedness! O monster to be banished to the very end of the world! For that nature which has committed such an atrocity as this cannot be contented with this one crime alone. It must be always contriving something of this sort; it must be occupied in similar audacity and perfidy.

Therefore, that same fellow whom Cnaeus Dolabella afterwards, when Caius Malleolus had been slain, had for his quaestor, (I know not whether this connection was not even a closer one than the connection with Carbo, and whether the consideration of his having been voluntarily chosen is not stronger than that of his having been chosen by lot,) behaved to Cnaeus Dolabella in the same manner as he had behaved in to Cnaeus Carbo. For, the charges which properly touched himself, he transferred to his shoulders; and gave information of everything connected with his cause to his enemies and accusers. He himself gave most hostile and most infamous evidence against the man to whom he had been lieutenant and pro-quaestor. Dolabella, unfortunate as he was, through his abominable betrayal, through his infamous and false testimony, was injured far more than by either, by the odium created by that fellow's own thefts and atrocities.

What can you do with such a man? or what hope can you allow so perfidious, so ill-omened an animal to entertain? One who despised and trampled on the lot which bound him to Cnaeus Carbo, the choice which connected him with Cnaeus Dolabella, and not only deserted them both, but also betrayed and attacked them. Do not, I beg of you, O judges, judge of his crimes by the brevity of my speech rather than by the magnitude of the actions themselves. For I am forced to make haste in order to have time to set before you all the things which I have resolved to relate to you. Wherefore, now that his quaestorship has been put before you, saw that the dishonesty and wickedness of his first conduct in his first office has been thoroughly seen, listen, I pray you, to the remainder.

And in this I will pass over that period of proscription and rapine which took place under Sulla; nor will I allow him to derive any argument for his own defence from that time of common calamity to all men. I will accuse him of nothing but his own peculiar and well-proved crimes. Therefore, omitting all mention of the time of Sulla from the accusation, consider that splendid lieutenancy of his. After Cilicia was appointed to Cnaeus Dolabella as his province, O ye immortal gods! with what covetousness, with what incessant applications, did he force from him that lieutenancy for himself, which was indeed the beginning of the greatest calamity to Dolabella. For as he proceeded on his journey to the province, wherever he went his conduct was such, that it was not some lieutenant of the Roman people, but rather some calamity that seemed to be going through the country.

In Achaia, (I will omit all minor things, to some of which perhaps some one else may some time or other have done something like; I will mention nothing except what is unprecedented, nothing except what would appear incredible, if it were alleged against any other criminal,) he demanded money from a Sicyonian magistrate. Do not let this be considered a crime in Verres; others have done the tame. When he could not give it, he punished him; a scandalous, but still not an unheard-of act. Listen to the sort of punishment; you will ask, of what race of men you are to think him a specimen. He ordered a fire to be made of green and damp wood in a narrow place. There he left a free man, a noble in his own country, an ally and friend of the Roman people, tortured with smoke, half dead.