In C. Verrem

Will he now dare to tell me, that he sold the tenths at a high price, when he took for himself more than twice as much as he sent to the Roman people out of the same district? You sold the tenths of the Leontine district for two hundred and sixteen thousand modii of wheat? If you did so according to law, it was a fine price; if your caprice was the law, it was a low price; if you sold them so that those were called tenths which were in reality a half, you sold them at a very low price. For the yearly produce of all Sicily might be sold for much more, if that was what the senate or people of Rome had desired you to do. Indeed, the tenths were often sold for as much, when they were sold according to the law of Hiero, as they have been sold for now under the law of Verres. Let me have the accounts of the sale of tenths under Caius Norbanus. [The account of the sale of the tenths in the Leontine district under Caius Norbanus is read.] And yet, then, there were no trials about the return of acres; nor was Artemidorus Cornelius a judge, nor did a Sicilian magistrate exact from a cultivator whatever the farmer demanded; nor was it entreated as a favour from the farmer to be allowed to compound at three medimni an acre; nor was a cultivator obliged to give an additional present of money, nor to add three-fiftieths of corn. And yet a area, quantity of corn was sent to the Roman people.

But what is the meaning of these fiftieths? what is the meaning of these additional presents of money? By what right, and, what is more, in what manner did you do this The cultivator gave the money. How or whence did he get it? If he had wished to be very liberal, he would have used a more heaped up measure, as men formerly used to do in the matter of the tenths, when they were sold by fair laws, and on fair terms. He gave the money. Where did he get it? from his corn? As if, while you were praetor, he had anything to sell. Something, then, must be taken from his principal, in order to add this pecuniary gratuity for Apronius to all the profit which he derived from the lands. The next thing is, Did they give it willingly or unwillingly? Willingly? They were very fond, I suppose, of Apronius. Unwillingly? How, then, were they compelled to do so, except by violence and ill-treatment? Again; that man, that most senseless man, in the selling of the tenths, caused additional sums to be added to every tenth. It was not much; he added two or three thousand sesterces. In the three years he made about five hundred thousand sesterces. He did this neither according to any precedent, nor by any right; nor did he make any return of that money; nor can any man ever imagine how he is going to defend himself against this petty charge.

And, as this is the case, do you dare to say that you sold the tenths at a high price, when it is evident that you sold the property and fortunes of the cultivators, not for the cake of the Roman people, but with a view to your own gain. As if any steward, from a farm which had been used to produce ten thousand sesterces, having cut down and sold the trees, having taken away the buildings and the stock, and having driven off all the cattle, sent his master twenty thousand sesterces instead of ten, and made a hundred thousand more for himself. At first the master, not knowing the injury that had been done to him, would be glad, and be delighted with his steward, because he had got so much more profit out of the farm; but afterwards, when he heard that all those things on which the profit and cultivation of his farm depends have been removed and sold, he would punish his steward with the greatest severity, and think himself very ill used. So also, the Roman people, when it hears that Caius Verres has sold the tenths for more than that most innocent man, Caius Sacerdos, whom he succeeded, thinks that it has got a good steward and guardian over its lands and crops; but when it finds out that he has sold all the stock of the cultivators, all the resources of the revenue, and has destroyed all the hopes of their posterity by his avarice,—that he has devastated and drained the allotments and the Lands subject to tribute,—that he has made himself most enormous gain and booty,—it will perceive that it has been shamefully treated, and will think that man worthy of the severest punishment.

By what, then, can this be made evident? Chiefly by this fact, that the land of the province of Sicily liable to the payment of tenths is deserted through the avarice of that man. Nor does it happen only that those who have remained on their lands are now cultivating a smaller number of acres, but also very many rich men, farmers on a large scale, and skillful men, have deserted large and productive farms, and abandoned their whole allotments. That may be very easily ascertained from the public documents of the states; because according to the law of Hiero the number of cultivators is every year entered in the books by public authority before the magistrates. Read now how many cultivators of the Leontine district there were when Verres took the government. Eighty-three. And how many made returns in his third year? Thirty-two. I see that there were fifty-one cultivators so entirely got rid of that they had no successors. How many cultivators were there of the district of Mutyca, when you arrived? Let us see from the public documents. A hundred and eighty-eight. How many in your third year? A hundred and one. That one district has to regret eighty-seven cultivators, owing to that man's ill-treatment, and to that extent our republic has to regret the loss of so many heads of families, and demands them back at his hand, since they are the real revenues of the Roman people. The district of Herbita had in his first year two hundred and fifty-seven cultivators; in his third, a hundred and twenty. From this region a hundred and thirty-seven heads of families have fled like banished men. The district of Agyrium—what men lived in that land! how honourable, how wealthy they were? —had two hundred and fifty cultivators in the first year of your praetorship. What had it in the third year? Eighty,—as you have heard the Agyrian deputies read from their public documents.

O ye immortal gods! If you had driven away out of the whole of Sicily a hundred and seventy cultivators of the soil, could you, with impartial judges, escape condemnation? When the one district of Agyrium is less populous by a hundred and seventy cultivators, will not you, O judges, form your conjectures of the state of the whole province? And you will find nearly the same state of things in every district liable to the payment of tenths, and that those to whom anything has been left out of a large patrimony, have remained behind with a much smaller stock, and cultivating a much smaller number of acres, because they were afraid, if they departed, that they should lose all the rest of their fortunes; but as for those to whom he had left nothing remaining which they could lose, they have fled not only from their farms, but from their cities. The very men who have remained—scarcely a tenth part of the old cultivators of the soil—were about to leave all their lands too, if Metellus had not sent letters to them from Rome, saying that he would sell the tenths according to the law of Hiero; and if he had not entreated them to sow as much land as they could, which they had always done for their own sakes, when no one entreated them, as long as they understood that they were sowing, and labouring, and going to expense for themselves and for the Roman people,—not for Verres and Apronius.

But now, O judges, if you neglect the fortunes of the Sicilians,—if you show no anxiety about the treatment the allies of the Roman people receive from our magistrates,—at all events undertake and defend the common cause of the Roman people. I say that the cultivators have been driven out,—that the lands subject to tribute have been devastated and drained by Verres—that the whole province has been depopulated and tyrannised over. All these things I prove by the public documents of the cities, and by the private evidence of most unimpeachable men. What would you have more? Do you wait till Lucius Metellus, who by his commands and by his power has deterred many witnesses from appearing against Verres shall himself, though absent, bear testimony to his wickedness, and dishonesty, and audacity? I think not. But he, who was his successor, has had the best opportunity of knowing the truth. That is true, but he is hindered by his friendship for him. Still, he ought to inform us accurately in what state the province is. He ought, still he is not forced to do so.