In C. Verrem

Apronius is the farmer. I will speak a little of the people of Aetna; for they themselves at the former pleading spoke in the name of their city. You recollect that Artemidorus of Aetna, the chief of that deputation, said, in the name of his city, that Apronius had come to Aetna with the slaves of Venus; that he had summoned the magistrates before him; that he had ordered a couch to be spread for him in the middle of the forum; that he was accustomed every day to feast not only in public, but at the public expense; that, when at those feasts the concert began to sound, and slaves began to serve him with wine in large goblets, then he used to detain the cultivators of the soil, and not only with injustice, but even with insolence, to extort, from them whatever quantity of corn he had ordered them to supply.

You heard all these things, O judges, all which I now pass by and leave unnoticed. I say nothing of the luxury of Apronius, nothing of his insolence, nothing of his unexampled profligacy and wickedness; I will only speak of the gain and profit made out of one district in one year, so that you may the more easily be able to form your conjectures of the whole three years and of the whole of Sicily; but I do not mean to say much about the people of Aetna, for they have come hither themselves, they have brought with them their public documents; they have proved to you what gains were made by that honest man, the intimate friend of the praetor, Apronius. I pray of you learn this from their own testimony. Read the testimony of the people of Aetna. [The testimony of the people of Aetna is read.] What are you saying? Speak, speak, I pray you, louder, that the Roman people may hear about its revenues, its cultivators of the soil, its allies, and its friends. “Three hundred thousand medimni; and fifty thousand sesterces.” Oh, the immortal gods! Does one district in one year years three hundred thousand modii of wheat, and fifty thousand sesterces besides, as a compliment to Apronius? Did the tenths sell for so much less than they were really worth? or, though they had been sold at a sufficiently high price, was such a quantity of corn and money nevertheless exacted by main force from the cultivators? For whichever of these you say was the truth, blame and criminality will attach to it.

For you certainly will not say (what I wish you would say) that this quantity never came to Apronius. So I will hold you here, not only by the public covenants and letters, but also from the private ones of the cultivators, so as to let you understand that you were not mere diligent in executing robberies, than I have been in detecting them. Will you be able to bear this? Will any one defend you? Will these men be able to endure this, if they are inclined to pronounce a sentence favourable to you,—that Quintus Apronius, at one visit, out of one district, (besides all the money which was paid him, and which I have mentioned,) should have taken three hundred thousand modii of wheat, under the name of a compliment?

What! are they the men of Aetna alone who say this? Yes, the Centuripans also, who are in occupation of far the largest part of the Aetnaean district, to whose ambassadors, most noble men, Andron and Artemon, their senate gave commissions which had reference to their city in his public capacity, concerning those injuries which the citizens of Centuripa sustained not in their own territories, but in those of others. The senate and people of Centuripa did not choose to send ambassadors; but the Centuripan cultivators of the soil, which is the greatest body of such men in Sicily, a body of most honourable and most wealthy men, themselves selected three ambassadors, fellow citizens of their own, in order that by their evidence you might be made aware of the calamities, not of one district only, but of almost all Sicily. For the Centuripans are engaged as cultivators of the soil in almost every part of Sicily. And they are the more important and the more trustworthy witnesses against you, because, the other cities ore influenced by their own distresses alone, the Centuripans as they occupy land in almost every district, have felt the injuries and wrongs of the other cities also.

But as I have said, the case of the men of Aetna is clear enough, and established both by public and by private documents. The task allotted to my diligence is to be required of me rather in the district of Leontini, for this reason, because the Leontini themselves have not assisted me much by their public authority. Nor, in truth, while that fellow was praetor, did these injuries of the farmers very greatly affect them, or rather, I might say, they did them good. This may, perhaps, appear a marvellous or even an incredible thing to you, that in such general distress of the cultivators of the soil, the Leontini, who were the heads of the corn interest, should have been free from injury and calamity. This is the reason, O judges, that in the territory of Leontini, no one of the Leontini, with the exception of the single family of Mnasistratus, occupies any land. And so, O judges, you shall hear the evidence of Mnasistratus, a most honest and virtuous man. Do not expect to hear any others of the Leontini, whom not only Apronius, but whom even a tempest in their fields could not injure. They in truth not only suffered no inconvenience, but even in the rapine of Apronius they found gain and advantage.

Wherefore, since the city and embassy of the Leontini has failed me on account of the cause which I have mentioned, I must devise a plan and contrive a way for myself by which I may get at the gain of Apronius, or even at his enormous and wicked booty. The tenths of the Leontini territory were sold in the third year of Verres's praetorship for thirty-six thousand medimni of wheat; that is, for two hundred and twenty-six thousand modii of wheat. A great price, O judges, a great price; and I cannot deny it. Therefore it is certain that there must have been a loss, or at all events not a great gain to the farmers. For this very often happens to men who have taken a contract at a high rate.

What will you think if I prove to you that, by this one purchase, there were made a hundred thousand modii of profit? what if it was two hundred thousand? what if three? what if four hundred thousand was the sum? Will you still doubt for whom that immense booty was acquired? Will any one say that I am unfair if from the mere magnitude of the gain made I form a conjecture as to the direction of the stolen goods and plunder? What if I prove to you, O judges, that those men who are making four hundred thousand modii of profit would have suffered a loss if your iniquity, O Verres, if judges of your retinue had not stepped in? Can any one doubt, in a case of so much gain and so much iniquity, that you made such immense profit by dishonest means? that for such immense gains you were willing to be dishonest?

How then, O judges, am I to arrive at this knowledge of how much profit was made? Not from the accounts of Apronius, for when I sought for them, I could not find them, and when I brought him into court, I made him deny that he kept any accounts at all. If he was telling lies, why did he remove them out of the way, if they were likely to do you no harm? If he really had kept any accounts at all, does not that alone prove plainly enough, that it was not his own business that he was conducting? For it is a quality of tenths, that they cannot be managed without many papers; for it is necessary to keep an account of, and to set down in books the names of all the cultivators, and with each name the amount of their tenth. All the cultivators made returns of their acres according to your command and regulation; I do not believe that any one made a return of a smaller quantity than he had in cultivation, when there were so many crosses, so many penalties, so many judges of that retinue before his eyes. On an acre of Leontini ground about a medimnus of wheat is usually sown, according to the regular and constant allowance of seed. The land returns about eightfold on a fair average, but in an extraordinarily favourable season, about tenfold. And whenever that is the case, it then happens that the tenth is just the same quantity as was sown; that is to say, as many acres as are sown, so many medimni are due.

As this was the case, I say first of all, that the tenths of the territory of Leontini were sold for many more thousand medimni than there were thousands of acres sown in the district of Leontini. But if it was impossible for them to produce more than ten medimni on an acre, and if it was fair that a medimnus should be paid out of each acre liable to the payment of tenths, when the land produced a tenfold crop, which however very seldom happened, what was the calculation of the farmer if indeed it was the tenths of the cultivator that were being sold, and no his whole property, when he bought the tenths for many more medimni than there had been acres sown? In the Lecutini district the list and return made of acres is not more than thirty thousand. The tenths were sold for thirty-six thousand medimni. Did Apronius make a blunder, or rather was he mad? Yes, he would indeed have been mad if it had been lawful for the cultivators to give only what was due from them, and had not rather been compulsory on them to give whatever Apronius commanded.

If I prove that no man gave less for his tenths than three medimni to the acre, you will admit, I suppose, that, even supposing the produce amounted to a tenfold crop, no one paid less than three tenths. And indeed this was begged as a favour from Apronius, that they might be allowed to compound at three medimni an acre. For, as four and even five were exacted from many people, and as many had not only not a grain of corn, but not even a wisp of straw left out of all their crop and after all their year's labour; then the cultivators of Centuripa, which are the main body of agriculturists in the Leontini district, assembled in one place. They sent as a delegate to Apronius, Andron of Centuripa, a man among the first of his state for honour and nobility, (the same man whom now the city of Centuripa has sent to this trial as a deputy and as a witness,) in order that he might plead with him the cause of the cultivators of the soil, and beg of him not to exact of the Centuripan cultivators more than three medimni for each acre.

This request was with difficulty obtained from Apronius, as a most excessive kindness to those men who were even then safe. And when this was obtained, this is what was obtained, forsooth, that they might be allowed to pay three tenths instead of one. But if your own interest had not been at stake in the matter, O Verres, they would rather have entreated you not to be made to pay more than one tenth, than have begged of a promise not to be made to pay more than three. Now, that at the present time I may pass over those rules which Apronius, in a kingly, or rather in a tyrannical spirit, made with respect to the cultivators, and that I may not at present call those men from whom he took all their corn, and to whom he left nothing not only of their corn, but nothing even of their property; just see how much gain is made of these three medimni, which he considered as a great favour and indulgence.