In C. Verrem

But what, O Verres, was that passion of yours for practicing cruelty? what was your reason for undertaking so many wicked actions? It was nothing, O judges, except a new and unprecedented system of plundering. For like those men whose histories we have learnt from the poets, who are said to have occupied some bays on the sea-coast, or some promontories, or some precipitous rocks, in order to be able to murder those who had been driven to such places in their vessels, this man also looked down as an enemy over every sea, from every part of Sicily. Every ship that came from Asia, from Syria, from Tyre, from Alexandria, was immediately seized by informers and guards that he could rely upon; their crews were all thrown into the stone-quarries; their freights and merchandise carried up into the praetor's house. After a long interval there was seen to range through Sicily, not another Dionysius, not another Phalaris, (for their island has at one time or another produced many inhuman tyrants,) but a new sort of monster, endowed with all the ancient savage barbarity which is said to have formerly existed in those same districts;

for I do not think that either Scylla or Charybdis was such an enemy to sailors, as that man has been in the same waters. And in one respect he is far more to be dreaded than they, because he is girdled with more numerous and more powerful hounds than they were. He is a second Cyclops, far more savage than the first; for Verres had possession of the whole island; Polyphemus is said to have occupied only Aetna and that part of Sicily. But what pretext was alleged at the time by that man for this outrageous cruelty? The same which is now going to be stated in his defence. He used to say whenever any one came to Sicily a little better off than usual, that they were soldiers of Sertorius, and that they were flying from Dianium. [*](Dianium was a town in Spain which had been occupied by Sertorius.) They brought him presents to gain his protection from danger; some brought him Tyrian purple, others brought frankincense, perfumes, and linen robes; others gave jewels and pearls; some offered great bribes and Asiatic slaves, so that it was seen by their very goods from what place they came. They were not aware that those very things which they thought that they were employing as aids to ensure their safety, were the causes of their danger. For he would say that they had acquired those things by partnership with pirates, he would order the men themselves to be led away to the stone-quarries, he would see that their ships and their freights were diligently taken care of.

When by these practices his prison had become full of merchants, then those scenes took place which you have heard related by Lucius Suetius, a Roman knight, and a most virtuous man, and by others. The necks of Roman citizens were broken in a most infamous manner in the prison; so that very expression and form of entreaty, “I am a Roman citizen,” which has often brought to many, in the most distant countries, succour and assistance, even among the barbarians, only brought to these men a more bitter death and a more immediate execution. What is this, O Verres? What reply are you thinking of making to this? That I am telling lies? that I am inventing things? that I am exaggerating this accusation? Will you dare to say any one of these things to those men who are defending you? Give me, I pray you, the documents of the Syracusans taken from his own bosom, which, methinks, were drawn up according to his will; give me the register of the prison, which is most carefully made up, stating in what day each individual was committed to prison, when he died, how he was executed. [The documents of the Syracusans are read.]

You see that Roman citizens were thrown in crowds into the stone quarries; you see a multitude of your fellow-citizens heaped together in a most unworthy place. Look now for all the traces of their departure from that place, which are to be seen. There are none. Are they all dead of disease? If he were able to urge this in his defence, still such a defence would find credit with no one. But there is a word written in those documents, which that ignorant and profligate man never noticed, and would not have understood if he had. *)ekdikaiw/qhsan, it says that is, according to the Sicilian language, they were punished and put to death.

If any king, if any city among foreign nations, in any nation had done anything of this sort to a Roman citizen, should we not avenge that act by a public resolution? should we not prosecute our revenge by war? Could we leave such injury and insult offered the Roman name unavenged and unpunished? How many wars, and what serious ones do you think that our ancestors undertook, because Roman citizens were said to have been ill-treated, or Roman vessels detained, or Roman merchants plundered? But I am not complaining that men have been detained; I think one might endure their having been plundered; I am impeaching Verres because after their ships, their slaves, and their merchandise had been taken from them, the merchants themselves were thrown into prison—because Roman citizens were imprisoned and executed.

If I were saying this among Scythians, not before such a multitude of Roman citizens, not before the most select senators of the city, not in the forum of the Roman people,—if I were relating such numerous and bitter punishments inflicted on Roman citizens, I should move the pity of even those barbarous men. For so great is the dignity of this empire, so great is the honour in which the Roman name is held among all nations, that the exercise of such cruelty towards our citizens seems to be permitted to no one. Can I think that there is any safety or any refuge for you, when I see you hemmed in by the severity of the judges, and entangled as it were in the meshes of a net by the concourse of the Roman people here present?

If, indeed, (though I have no idea that that is possible,) you were to escape from these toils, and effect your escape by any way or any method, you will then fall into that still greater net, in which you must be caught and destroyed by me from the elevation in which I stand. For even if I were to grant to him all that he urges in his defence, yet that very defence must turn out not less injurious to him than my true accusation. For what does he urge in his defence? He says that he arrested men flying from Spain, and put them to death. Who gave you leave to do so? By what right did you do so? Who else did the same thing? How was it lawful for you to do so?

We see the forum and the porticoes full of those men, and we are contented to see them there. For the end of civil dissensions, and of the (shall I say) insanity, or destiny, or calamity in which they take their rise, is not so grievous as to make it unlawful for us to preserve the rest of our citizens in safety. That Verres there, that ancient betrayer of his consul, that transferrer [*](See the first book of this second pleading against Verres, c. 37.) of the quaestorship, that embezzler of the public money, has taken upon himself so much authority in the republic, that he would have inflicted a bitter and cruel death on all those men whom the senate, and the Roman people, and the magistrates allowed to remain in the forum, in the exercise of their rights as voters' in the city and in the republic, if fortune had brought them to any part of Sicily.

After Perperna was slain, many of the number of Sertorius's soldiers fled to Cnaeus Pompeius, that most illustrious and gallant man. Was there one of them whom he did not preserve safe and unhurt with the greatest kindness? was there one suppliant citizen to whom that invincible right hand was not stretched out as a pledge of his faith, and as a sure token of safety? Was it then so? Was death and torture appointed by you, who had never done one important service to the republic, for those who found a harbour of refuge in that man against whom they had borne arms? See what an admirable defence you have imagined for yourself. I had rather, I had rather in truth, that the truth of this defence of yours were proved to these judges and to the Roman people, than the truth of my accusation. I had rather, I say, that you were thought a foe and an enemy to that class of men than to merchants and seafaring men. For the accusation I bring against you impeaches you of excessive avarice: the defence that you make for yourself accuses you of a sort of frenzy, of savage ferocity, of unheard-of cruelty, and of almost a new proscription.