In C. Verrem

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.