Marcus Tullius Cicero

“ Is it a great undertaking to say anything against a man, who while he was passing by a place, having his litter put down to rest for a little time, plundered a whole city, house by house; without condescending to any pretences, openly, by his own authority, and by an absolute command? But still, that he might be able to say that he had bought them, he orders Archagathus to give those men, to whom the plate had belonged, some little money, just for form's sake. Archagathus found a few who would accept the money, and those he paid. And still Verres never paid Archagathus that money. ”

“ Know that your name and that of the Roman people will be an object of hatred and detestation to foreign nations. If this unheard-of insolence of Verres is to pass unpunished, all men will think, especially as the reputation of our men for avarice and covetousness has been very extensively spread, that this is not his crime only, but that of those who have approved of it. Many kings, many free cities, many opulent and powerful private men, cherish intentions of ornamenting the Capitol in such a way as the dignity of the temple and the reputation of our empire requires. ”

“ I know not by what name to call the crime which he committed with respect to the statue of Caius Marcellus. What is the meaning of it? Is it because he was the patron of the Sicilians? What then? What has that to do with it? Ought that fact to have had influence to procure assistance, or to bring disaster on his clients and friends? Was it your object to show that patrons were no protection against your violence? Who is there who would not be aware that there is greater power in the authority of a bad man who is present, than in the protection of good men who are absent? ”

“ Shall Verres adorn his house, full of adultery, full of debauchery, full of infamy, with the monuments of Africanus? Shall Verres face the memorial of that most temperate and religious man, the image of the ever virgin Diana, in that house in which the iniquities of harlots and pimps are incessantly being practised?
39 84But is this the only monument of Africanus which you have violated? What! did you take away from the people of Tyndaris an image of Mercury most beautifully made, and placed there by the beneficence of the same Scipio? And how? O ye immortal gods! ”

“ Have we not seen at an auction a brazen statue of no great size sold for a hundred and twenty thousand sesterces? What if I were to choose to name men who have bought similar things for no less a price, or even for a higher one? Can I not do so? In truth, the only limit to the valuation of such things is the desire which any one has for them, for it is difficult to set bounds to the price unless you first set bounds to the wish. I see then that Heius was neither led by his inclination, nor by any temporary difficulties, nor by the greatness of the sum given, to sell these statues ”

“ If any one of us, who are not as happy, who cannot be as refined as that man, should wish to behold anything of the sort, let him go to the temple of Good Fortune, to the monument of Catulus, to the portico of Metellus; let him take pains to get admittance into the Tusculan villa of any one of those men; let him see the forum when decorated, if Verres is ever so kind as to lend any of his treasures to the aediles. Shall Verres have all these things at home? shall Verres have his house full of his villas crammed with, the ornaments of temples and cities? ”

“ 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 man, against the will of the immortal gods, or what god, when you so trample on all the religious reverence due to them, do you think will come to your assistance? Has that Diana inspired you, while in quiet and at leisure, with no religious awe;—she, who though she had seen two cities, in which she was placed stormed and burnt, was yet twice preserved from the flames and weapons of two wars; she who, though she changed her situation owing to the victory of the Carthaginians, yet did not lose her holy character ”

“ And therefore now the Marcelli are not the patrons of the Sicilians. Verres has been substituted in their place. 90What virtue or what dignity did you think existed in you, that you should attempt to transfer to yourself, and to take away from these most trusty and most ancient patrons, so illustrious a body of clients as that splendid province? Can you with your stupidity, and worthlessness, and laziness defend the cause, I will not say of all Sicily, but even of one, the very meanest of the Sicilians? ”

“ Let that proud aristocracy give up complaining that the Roman people willingly gives, and at all times has given, honours to new and diligent men. It is a foolish complaint that virtue should be of the greatest influence in that city which by its virtue governs all nations. Let the image of Publius Africanus be in the houses of other men ”

“ They cried out that the immortal gods themselves would avenge the act, and that in the meantime it was not fit that an innocent man should be murdered. Then the senate comes to him in a body, and promises him the statue. And so Sopater is taken down scarcely alive from the statue of Marcellus, to which he had almost become frozen. I cannot adequately accuse that man if I were to wish to do so; it requires not only genius, but an extraordinary amount of skill. ”

“ And when this crime had been executed, as the pedestal was empty, and the name of Publius Africanus carved on it, the affair appeared scandalous and intolerable to every one, that not only was religion trampled on, but also that Caius Verres had taken away the glory of the exploits, the memorial of the virtues, the monument of the victory of Publius Africanus, that most gallant of men. ”

“ 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. 45For 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.” ”

“ I am not afraid of its displeasing you, O Quintus Catulus, to whom the most superb and splendid monument in the whole world belongs, that there should be as many guardians of such monuments as possible, or that all good men should think it was a part of their duty to defend the glory of another. 83And indeed I am so far moved by the other robberies and atrocities of that fellow, as to think them worthy of great reproof; but that might be sufficient for them. But in this instance I am roused to such indignation, that nothing appears to me possible to be more scandalous or more intolerable. ”

“ You have lately, judges, heard the deputies from Tyndaris, most honourable men, and the chief men of that city, say that the Mercury, which in their sacred anniversaries was worshipped among them with the extremest religious reverence, which Publius Africanus, after he had taken Carthage, had given to the Tyndaritans, not only as a monument of his victory, but as a memorial and evidence of their loyalty to and alliance with the Roman people, had been taken away by the violence, and wickedness, and arbitrary power of this man ”

“ The statues which I am speaking of, before they were taken away by you, no commander ever came to Messana without seeing So many praetors, so many consuls as there have been in Sicily, in time of peace, and in time of war; so many men of every sort as there have been—I do not speak of upright, innocent, conscientious men, but so many covetous, so many audacious, so many infamous men as there have been, not one of them all was violent enough, or seemed to himself powerful enough or noble enough, to venture to ask for, or to take away, or even to touch anything in that chapel. ”

“ Then the king sends to Verres to beg him to return it, if he will be so good. He bids the slaves come again. The king begins to think it strange. He sends a second time. It is not returned. He himself calls on the man; he begs him to restore it to him. Think of the face and marvellous impudence of the man. That thing which he knew, and which he had heard from the king himself was to be placed in the Capitol, which he knew was being kept for the great and good Jupiter, and for the Roman people, that he began to ask and entreat earnestly to have given to him. ”

“ Do you think that Verres would scourge without any reason an ally and friend of the Roman people? He is not so wicked. All vices are not to be found in that man; he was never cruel. He treated the man with great gentleness and clemency. In the middle of the forum there are some statues of the Marcelli, as there are in most of the other towns of Sicily; out of these he selected the statue of Caius Marcellus, whose services to that city and to the whole province were most recent and most important. ”

“ There is a shrine of Ceres among the Catenans of the same holy nature as the one at home, and worshipped as the goddess is worshipped among foreign nations, and in almost every country in the world. In the inmost part of that shrine there was an extremely ancient statue of Ceres, as to which men were not only ignorant of what sort it was, but even of its existence. For the entrance into that shrine does not belong to men, the sacred ceremonies are accustomed to be performed by women and virgins. Verres's slaves stole this statue by night out of that most holy and most ancient temple. ”

“ He had by this time struck his camp, packed up his baggage, and left Sicily. Verres, in order by some means or other to bring the man back to the province, devises this plan, if it is to be called a plan, and not rather a piece of madness. He sets up one of the men he calls his hounds, to say that he wishes to institute a prosecution against Diodorus of Melita for a capital offence. At first all men wondered at such a thing being imputed to Diodorus, a most quiet man, and as far removed as any man from all suspicion, not only of crime, but of even the slightest irregularity. ”

“ He put nothing in his own house, nothing in his gardens, nothing in his suburban villa; he thought that his house could only be an ornament to the city if he abstained from carrying the ornaments which belonged to the city to his own house. But he left many things of extraordinary beauty at Syracuse; he violated not the respect due to any god; he laid hands on none. Compare Verres with him; not to compare the man with the man,—no such injury must be done to such a man as that, dead though he be ”

“ But if he did not restore them, then they were to go before the tribunal, to inform the judges of the injuries they had received, but, far above all things, to complain of the insults to their religion. And, in the name of the immortal gods I entreat you, O judges, do not you despise, do not you scorn or think lightly of their complaints. The injuries done to our allies are the present question; the authority of the laws is at stake; the reputation and the honesty of our courts of justice is at stake. ”

“ When the king said that he was prevented from complying by the reverence due to Jupiter Capitolinus, and by his regard for the opinion of men, because many nations were witnesses to the fact of the candelabrum having been made for a present to the god, the fellow began to threaten him most violently. When he sees that he is no more influenced by threats than he had been by prayers, on a sadden he orders him to leave his province before night. He says, that he has found out that pirates from his kingdom were coming against Sicily. ”

“ Do we marvel that Minerva at Athens, Apollo at Delos, Juno at Samos, Diana at Perga, and that many other gods besides all over Asia and Greece, were plundered by him, when he could not keep his hands off the Capitol? That temple which private men are decorating and are intending to decorate out of their own riches, that Caius Verres would not suffer to be decorated by a king. 72And, accordingly, after he had once conceived this nefarious wickedness, he considered nothing in all Sicily afterwards sacred or hallowed ”

“ When I produce my witnesses from Sicily he 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 ”

“ Although there is a law for recovering money which has been unjustly extorted, he says that he does not seem to recover any money; which though it has been taken from him, he does not so much care about: but he says he does demand back from you the sacred images belonging to his ancestors, he does demand back from you his hereditary household god? 18Have you any shame, O Verres? have you any religion? have you any fear, You have lived in Heius's house at Messana; you saw him almost daily performing sacred rites in his private chapel before those gods. He is not influenced by money ”