In C. Verrem

While we were examining this matter thoroughly, and holding the documents actually in our hands, we see on a sudden erasures of such a sort as to appear to be fresh wounds inflicted on papers. Immediately, having a suspicion of something wrong, we bent our eyes and attention on the names themselves. Money was entered as having been received from Caius Verrutius the son of Caius, in such a way that the letters had been let stand down to the second R, all the rest was an erasure. A second, a third, a fourth—there were a great many names in the same state. As the matter was plain, so also was the abominable and scandalous worthlessness of the accounts. We began to inquire of Carpinatius who that Verrutius was, with whom he had such extensive pecuniary dealings. The man began to hesitate, to look away, to colour. Because there is a provision made by law with respect to the accounts of the farmers, forbidding their being taken to Rome; in order that the matter might be as clear and as completely proved as possible, I summon Carpinatius before the tribunal of Metellus and produce the accounts of the company in the forum. There is a great rush of people to the place; and as the partnership existing between Carpinatius and that praetor, and his usury, were well known, all people were watching with the most eager expectation to see what was contained in the accounts

I bring the matter before Metellus; I state to him that I have seen the accounts of the shareholders, that in these there is a long account of one Caius Verrutius made up of many items, and that I saw, by a computation of the years and months, that this Verrutius had had no account at all with Carpinatius, either before the arrival of Caius Verres, or after his departure. I demand that Carpinatius shall give me an answer who that Verrutius is; whether he is a merchant, or a broker, or an agriculturist, or a grazier; whether he is in Sicily, or whether he has now left it. All who were in the court cried out at once that there had never been any one in Sicily of the name of Verrutius. I began to press the man to answer me who he was, where he was, whence he came; why the servant of the company who made up the accounts always made a blunder in the name of Verrutius at the same place?

And I made this demand, not because I thought it of any consequence that he should be compelled to answer me these things against his will, but that the robberies of one, the dishonesty of the other, and the audacity of both might be made evident to all the world. And so I leave him in the court, dumb from fear and the consciousness of his crimes, terrified out of his wits, and almost frightened to death; I take a copy of the accounts in the forum, with a great crowd of men standing round me; the most eminent men in the assembly are employed in making the copy; the letters and the erasures are faithfully copied and imitated, and transferred from the accounts into books.

The copy was examined and compared with the original with the greatest care and diligence, and then sealed up by most honourable men. If Carpinatius would not answer me then, do you, O Verres, answer me now, who you imagine this Verrutius, who must almost be one of your own family, to be. It is quite impossible that you should not have known a man in your own province, who, I see, was in Sicily while you were praetor, and who, I perceive from the accounts themselves, was a very wealthy man. And now, that this may not be longer in obscurity, advance into the middle, [*](This is said of the officers of the court who have the account in their keeping during the trial.) open the volume, the copy of the accounts, so that every one may be able to see now, not the traces only of that man's avarice, but the very bed in which it lay.

You see the word Verrutius?—You see the first letters untouched? you see the last part of the name, the tail of Verres, smothered in the erasure, as in the mud. The original accounts, O judges, are in exactly the same state as this copy.—What are you waiting for? What more do you want? You, Verres, why are you sitting there? Why do you delay? for either you must show us Verrutius, or confess that you yourself are Verrutius. The ancient orators are extolled, the Crassi and Antonii, because they had the skill to efface the impression made by an accusation with great clearness, and to defend the causes of accused persons with eloquence. It was not, forsooth, in ability only that they surpassed those who are now employed here as counsel, but also in good fortune. No one, in those times, committed such crimes as to leave no room for any defence; no one lived in such a manner that no part of his life was free from the most extreme infamy; no one was detected in such manifest guilt, that, shameless as he had been in the action, he seemed still more shameless if he denied it.

But now what can Hortensius do? Can he argue against the charges of avarice by panegyrics on his client's economy? He is defending a man thoroughly profligate, thoroughly licentious, thoroughly wicked. Can he lead your attention away from this infamy and profligacy of his, and turn them into some other direction by a mention of his bravery? But a man more inactive, more lazy, one who is more a man among women, a debauched woman among men, cannot be found.—But his manners are affable. Who is more obstinate more rude? more arrogant?—But still all this is without any injury to any one. Who has ever been more furious, more treacherous, and more cruel? With such a defendant and such a cause, what could all the Crassus's and Antonius's in the world do? This is all they would do, as I think, O Hortensius; they would have nothing to do with the cause at all, lest by contact with the impudence of another they might lose their own characters for virtue. For they come to plead causes free and unshackled, so as not, if they did not choose to act shamelessly in defending people, to be thought ungrateful for abandoning them.

Every man, O judges, who, without being prompted by any enmity, or stung by any private injury, or tempted by any reward, prosecutes another for the good of the republic, ought to consider, not only how great a burden he is liking upon himself at the time, but also how much trouble he is courting for the remainder of his life. For he imposes on himself a law of innocence, of moderation, and of all virtues, who demands from another an account of his life; and he does so the more if, as I said before, he does this being urges by no other motive except a desire for the common good.

For if any one assumes to himself to correct the manners of others, and to reprove their faults, who will pardon him, if he himself turn aside in any particular from the strict line of duty? Wherefore, a citizen of this sort is the more to he praised and beloved by all men for this reason also,—that he does not only remove a worthless citizen from the republic, but he also promises and binds himself to be such a man as to be compelled, not only by an ordinary inclination to virtue and duty, but by even some more unavoidable principle, to live virtuously and honourably.

And, therefore, O judges, that most illustrious and most eloquent man, Lucius Crassus, was often heard to say that he did not repent of anything so much as having ever proceeded against Caius Carbo: for by so doing he had his inclination as to everything less uncontrolled, and he thought, too, that his way of life was remarked by more people than he liked. And he, fortified as he was by the protection of his own genius and fortune, was yet hampered by this anxiety which he had brought upon himself, before his judgment was fully formed, at his entrance into life; on which account virtue and integrity is less, looked for from those who undertake this business as young men, than from those who do so at a riper age; for they, for the sake of credit and ostentation, become accusers of others before they have had time to take notice how much more free the life of those who have accused no one is. We who have already shown both what we could do, and what judgment we had, unless we could easily restrain our desires, should never, of our own accord, deprive ourselves of all liberty and freedom in our way of life.

And I have a greater burden on me than those who have accused other men, (if that deserve to be called a burden which you bear with pleasure and delight,)—but still I have in one respect undertaken a greater burden than others who have done the same thing, because all men are required to abstain most especially from those vices for which they have reproved another. Have you accused any thief or rapacious man? You must for ever avoid all suspicion of avarice. Have you prosecuted any spiteful or cruel man? You must for ever take care not to appear in any matter the least harsh or severe. A seducer? an adulterer? You must, take care most diligently that no trace of licentiousness be ever seen in your conduct. In short, everything which you have impeached in another must be earnestly avoided by you your self. In truth, not only no accuser, but no reprover even can be endured, who is himself detected in the vice which he reproves in another.

I, in the case of one man, am finding fault with every vice which can exist in a wicked and abandoned man. I say that there is no indication of lust, of wickedness, of audacity, which you cannot see clearly in the life of that one man. In the case of this criminal, I, O judges, establish this law against myself; that I must so live as to appear to be, and always to have been, utterly unlike that man, not only in all my actions and words, but even in that arrogance and haughtiness of countenance and eyes which you see before you. I will bear without uneasiness, O judges, that that course of life which was previously agreeable to me of my own accord, shall now, by the law and conditions I hare laid down for myself, become necessary for me.