In C. Verrem

Even if you were not aware that this body excelled all others in dignity, were you not at least aware of this, that it furnished the judges? Previously, when the equestrian order furnished the judges, infamous and rapacious magistrates in the provinces were subservient to the farmers; they honoured all who were in their employ; every Roman knight whom they saw in the province they pursued with attentions and courtesies; and that conduct was not so advantageous to the guilty, as it was a hindrance to many if they had acted in any respect contrary to the advantage or inclination of that body. This sort of principle was somehow or other diligently reserved among them as if by common consent, that whoever had thought any Roman knight deserving of any affront, was to be considered by their whole order as deserving of every possible misfortune.

Did you so despise the order of senators, did you so reduce everything to the standard of your own insults and caprices, had you so deliberated and fixed it in your own mind as an invariable rule, to reject as judges every one who dwelt in Sicily, or who had been in Sicily while you were praetor, that it never occurred to you that still you must come before judges of the same order? in whose minds, even if there were no indignation from any personal injury done to themselves, still there would be this thought, that they were affronted in the affront offered to another, and that the dignity of their order was contemptuously treated and trampled on, which, O judges, appears to me not to be endured with patience, for insult has in it a sting which modest and virtuous men can with difficulty put up with.

You have plundered the Sicilians, for indeed the provincials are accustomed to obtain no revenge amid their wrongs. You have harassed the brokers, for they seldom come to Rome, and never of their own accord. You gave up a Roman knight to the ill-treatment of Apronius. To be sure; for what harm can they do you now, when they cannot be judges? What will you say when you treat senators also with the greatest violence? what else can you say but this, “Give me up that senator also, in order that the most honourable name of senator may appear to exist not only to excite the envy of the ignorant, but also to attract the insults of the worthless.”

Nor did he do this in the case of Anneius alone, but in the instance of every senator, so that the name of that order had not so much influence in procuring honour as insult for its members. In the case of Caius Cassius, a most illustrious and most gallant man, though he was consul at that very time, in the first year of his praetorship, he behaved with such injustice, that, as his wife, a woman of the highest respectability, had lands in Leontini, inherited from her father, he ordered all her crops to be taken away for tenths. You shall have him as a witness in this cause, O Verres, since you have taken care not to have him as a judge.

But you, O judges, ought to think that there is some community of interests, some close connection existing between the members of our body; many offices are imposed on this our order, many toils, many dangers, not only from the laws and courts of justice, but also from vague reports, and from the critical character of the times; so that this order is, as it were, exposed to view, and set on an eminence, in order, as it seems, to be the more easily caught by every blast of envy. In so miserable and unfair a condition of life, shall we not retain even the honour of not appearing vile and contemptible in the eyes of our own magistrates, when we appear before them to obtain our rights?

The men of Thermae sent agents to purchase the tenths of their district. They thought it was much better for them, that they should be purchased by their own state at ever so high a price, than that they should get into the hands of some emissary of his. A man of the name of Venuleius had been put up to buy them. He did not cease from bidding. They went on competing with him, as long as the price appeared such as could by any possibility be borne. At last they gave up bidding. They are knocked down to Venuleius at eight thousand modii of wheat. Possidorus, the deputy of Thermae, sends notice home. Although it appeared to every one a most intolerable hardship, still there were given to Venuleius eight thousand modii of wheat, and two thousand sesterces besides, not to come near them. From which it is very evident which part was the wages of the farmer, and which the booty of the praetor. Give me the letters and testimony of the people of Thermae. [The accounts of the people of Thermae, and their evidence, are read.]

You compelled the Imacharans after you had taken away all their corn, after they had been impoverished by your incessant injuries, miserable and ruined as they were, to pay tribute so as to give Apronius twenty thousand sesterces. Read the decree about the tributes, and the public testimony. [The Resolution of the Senate about the tribute to be paid, is read. [The testimony of the Imacharans is read.] The people of Enna, though the tenths of the territory of Enna had been sold for three thousand two hundred medimni, were compelled to give Apronius eighteen thousand modii of wheat, and three thousand sesterces. I entreat you to remark what an enormous quantity of corn is extorted from every district liable to the payment of tenths; for my speech extends over every city which is so liable. And I am at present engaged about this class of injuries, O judges, in which it is not a case of single cultivators being stripped of all their property, but of compliments being exacted from the public treasury of each city, for the farmers, in order that at last they may depart from the lands and cities glutted and satiated with this immense heap of gain.

Why in the third year of your praetorship did you order the Calactans to carry the tenths of their land, which they had been accustomed to pay at Calacta, to Marcus Caesius the farmer of Amestratus, a thing which they had never done before you were praetor, and which you yourself had never ordered in the two years preceding? Why was Theomnastus the Syracusan sent by you into the district of Mutyca, where he so harassed the cultivators, that for their second teethe they were unavoidably forced to buy wheat, because they had actually none of their own, (a thing which I shall prove happened also in the case of other cities.)

But now, from the agreements made with the people of Hybla, which were made with the farmer Cnaeus Sergius, you will perceive that six times as much corn as was sown was exacted of the cultivators Read the accounts of the sowings and the agreements, extracted from the public registers. Read. [The agreements of the people of Hybla with Cnaeus Sergius, extracted out of the public registers, are read.] Listen also to the returns of the sowings, and the agreements of the men of Mena with that slave of Venus. Read them out of the public registers. [The returns of the Sowings, arid the agreements of the Menans with the servant of Venus, extracted from the public registers, are read.] Will you, O judges, endure that a great deal more than has been produced should be exacted from our allies, from the cultivators of the domain of the Roman people, from those who are labouring for you, are in your service, who are so eager that the Roman people should be fed by them, that they only retain for themselves and their children enough for their actual subsistence, and should be exacted too with the greatest violence, and the most bitter insults?

I feel, O judges, that I must now set some bounds to the length of my speech, and that I must avoid wearying you. I will no longer dwell on one kind of injury alone, and I will leave the other instances out of my speech, though they will still make a part of my accusation. You shall hear the complaints of the Agregentines, most gallant, and most industrious men; you shall become acquainted, O judges, with the sufferings and the injuries of the Entellans, a people of the greatest perseverance and the greatest industry; the wrongs of the men of Heraclea, and Gela, and Solentum shall be mentioned: you shall be told of the fields of the Catanians, a most wealthy people and most friendly to us, ravaged by Apronius: you shall be made aware that the cities of Tyndaris, that most noble city, of Cephalaedis, of Halentia, of Apollonia, of Enguina, of Capitia, have been ruined by the iniquity of these farmers; that actually nothing is left to the citizens of Ina, of Murgentia, of Assoria, of Elorum, of Enna, and of Ietum; that the people of Cetaria and Acheria, small cities, are wholly crushed and destroyed; in short, that all the lands liable to the payment of tenths have been for three years tributary to the Roman people, to the extent of one tenth of their produce, and to Caius Verres to the extent of all the rest; that to most of the cultivators nothing at all is left, that if anything was either remitted to or left to any one, it was only just so much as remained of that property by which the avarice of that man had bees satiated.

I have reserved the territories of two cities, O judges, to speak of last, the best and noblest of all, the territory of Aetna and that of Leontini: I will say nothing of the gains made out of these districts in his three years; I will select one year in order that I more easily may be able to explain what I have settled to mention. I will take the third year, because it is both the most recent, and because it has been managed by him in such a way that, since he knew that he was certainly going to depart, he evidently did not care if he left behind him not one cultivator of the soil in all Sicily. We will speak of the tenths of the territory of Aetna and Leontini. Give heed, O judges, carefully. The lands are fertile; it is the third year;