Divinatio in Q. Caecilium

For I see that there are many charges in which you are so implicated with Verres, that in accusing him, you would not dare to touch upon them. All Sicily complains that Caius Verres, when he had ordered corn to be brought into his granary for him, and when a bushel of wheat was two sesterces, demanded of the farmers twelve sesterces a bushel for wheat. [*](The praetor had the power to make an annual demand on the farmers for corn for be state, and the quaestor was to pay a fair market price for it; but in some cases the praetor allowed or compelled the farmer to pay a composition in money, instead of delivering corn, and Verres when the market price of wheat was only two sesterces a bushel compelled the farmers to pay twelve sesterces a bushel by way of composition) It was a great crime, an immense sum, an impudent theft, an intolerable injustice. I must inevitably convict him of this charge; what will you do, O Caecilius?