In C. Verrem

The matter was notorious over all Sicily, that men were prosecuted for capital offences because the praetor coveted their chased silver plate; and that prosecutions were instituted against them not only when they were present, but even in their absence. Diodorus goes to Rome, and putting on mourning, calls on all his patrons and friends; relates the affair to every one. Earnest letters are written to Verres by his father, and by his friends, warning him to take care what he did, and what steps he took respecting Diodorus; that the matter was notorious and very unpopular; that he must be out of his senses; that this one charge would ruin him if he did not take care. At that time he considered his father, if not in the light of a parent, at least in that of a man. He had not yet sufficiently prepared himself for a trial; it was his first year in the province; he was not, as he was by the time of the affair of Sthenius, loaded with money. And so his frenzy was checked a little, not by shame, but by fear and alarm. He does not dare to condemn Diodorus; he takes his name out of the list of defendants while he is absent. In the meantime Diodorus, for nearly three years, as long as that man was praetor, was banished from the province and from his home.

Every one else, not only Sicilians, but Roman citizens too, settled this in their minds, that, since he had carried his covetousness to such an extent, there was nothing which any one could expect to preserve or retain in his own possession if it was admired ever so little by Verres. But after they understood that that brave man, Quintus Arrius, whom the province was eagerly looking for, was not his successor, they then settled that they could keep nothing so carefully shut up or hidden away, as not to be most open and visible to his covetousness. After that, he took away from an honourable and highly esteemed Roman knight, named Cnaeus Salidius, whose son he knew to be a senator of the Roman people and a judge, some beautiful silver horses which had belonged to Quintus Maximus. I did not mean to say this, O judges, for he bought those, he did not steal them;

I wish I had not mentioned them. Now he will boast, and have a fine ride on these horses. “I bought them, I have paid the money for them.” I have no doubt account books also will be produced. It is well worth while. Give me then the account-books. You are at liberty to get rid of this charge respecting Calidius, as long as I can get a sight of these accounts; still, if you had bought them, what ground had Calidius for complaining at Rome, that, though he had been living so many years in Sicilyas a trader, you were the only person who had so despised and so insulted him, as to plunder him in common with all the rest of the Sicilians? what ground had he for declaring that he would demand his plate back again from you, if he had sold it to you of his own free will? Moreover, how could you avoid restoring it to Cnaeus Calidius; especially when he was such an intimate friend of Lucius Sisenna, your defender, and as you had restored their property to the other friends of Sisenna?

Lastly, I do not suppose you will deny that by the intervention of Potamo, a friend of yours, you restored his plate to Lucius Cordius, an honourable man, but not more highly esteemed than Cnaeus Calidius; and it was he who made the cause of the rest more difficult to plead before you; for though you had promised many men to restore them their property, yet, after Cordius had stated in his evidence that you had restored him his, you desisted from making any more restorations, because you saw that you lost your plunder, and yet could not escape the evidence against you. Under all other praetors Cnaeus Calidius, a Roman knight, was allowed to have plate finely wrought; he was permitted to be able from his own stores to adorn and furnish a banquet handsomely, when he had invited a magistrate or any superior officer. Many men in power and authority have been with Cnaeus Calidius at his house; no one was ever found so mad as to take from him that admirable and splendid plate; no one was found bold enough to ask for it; no one impudent enough to beg him to sell it.

For it is an arrogant thing, an intolerable thing, O judges, for a praetor to say to an honourable, and rich, and well-appointed man in his province, “Sell me those chased goblets.” For it is saying, “You do not deserve to have things which are so beautifully made; they are better suited to a man of my stamp.” Are you, O Verres, more worthy than Calidius? whom (not to compare your way of life with his, for they are not to be compared, but) I will compare you with in respect of this very dignity owing to which you make yourself out his superior. You gave eighty thousand sestercesto canvassing agents to procure your election as praetor; you gave three hundred thousand to an accuser not to press hardly upon you: do you, on that account, look down upon and despise the equestrian order? Is it on that account that it seemed to you a scandalous thing that Calidius should have anything that you admired rather than that you should?

He has been long boasting of this transaction with Calidius, and telling every one that he bought the things. Did you also buy that censer of Lucius Papilius, a man of the highest reputation, wealth, and honour, and a Roman knight? who stated in his evidence that, when you had begged for it to look at, you returned it with the emblems torn off; so that you may understand that it is all taste in that man, not avarice; that it is the fine work that he covets, not the silver. Nor was this abstinence exercised only in the case of Papirius; he practiced exactly the same conduct with respect to every censer in Sicily; and it is quite incredible how many beautifully wrought censers there were. I imagine that, when Sicilywas at the height of its power and opulence, there were extensive workshops in that island; for before that man went thither as praetor there was no house tolerably rich, in which there were not these things, even if there was no other silver plate besides; namely, a large dish with figures and images of the gods embossed on it, a goblet which the women used for sacred purposes, and a censer. And all these were antique, and executed with the most admirable skill, so that one may suspect everything else in Sicilywas on a similar scale of magnificence; but that though fortune had deprived them of much, those things were still preserved among them which were retained for purposes of religion.

I said just now, O judges, that there were many censers, in almost every house in fact; I assert also, that now there is not even one left. What is the meaning of this? what monster, what prodigy did we send into the province? Does it not appear to you that he desired, when he returned to Rome, to satisfy not the covetousness of one man, not his own eyes only, but the insane passion of every covetous man, for as soon as he ever came into any city, immediately the Cibyratic hounds of his were slipped, to search and find cut everything. If they found any large vessel, any considerable work, they brought it to him with joy; if they could hunt out any smaller vessel of the same sort, they looked on those as a sort of lesser game, whether they were dishes, cups, censers, or anything else. What weepings of women, what lamentations do you suppose took place over these things? things which may perhaps seem insignificant to you, but which excite great and bitter indignation, especially among women, who grieve when those things are torn from their hands which they have been accustomed to use in religious ceremonies, which they have received from their ancestors, and which have always been in their family.

Do not now wait while I follow up this charge from door to door, and show you that he stole a goblet from Aeschylus, the Tyndaritan; a dish from another citizen of Tyndarisnamed Thraso; a censer from Nymphodorus of Agrigentum. When I produce my witnesses from Sicilyhe may select whom he pleases for me to examine about dishes, goblets, and censers. Not only no town, no single house that is tolerably well off will be found to have been free from the injurious treatment of this man; who, even if he had come to a banquet, if he saw any finely wrought plate, could not, O judges, keep his hands from it. There is a man named Cnaeus Pompeius Philo, who was a native of Tyndaris; he gave Verres a supper at his visa in the country near Tyndaris; he did what Sicilians did not dare to do, but what, because he was a citizen of Rome, he thought he could do with impunity, he put before him a dish on which were some exceedingly beautiful figures. Verres, the moment he saw it, determined to rob his host's table of that memorial of the Penates and of the gods of hospitality. But yet, in accordance with what I have said before of his great moderation, he restored the rest of the silver after he had torn off the figures; so free was he from all avarice!