In C. Verrem

Now that most audacious and most senseless man thinks this. He is aware that I am come into court so thoroughly prepared and armed, that I shall fix all his thefts and crimes not only in your ears, but in the very eyes of all men. He sees that many senators are witnesses of his audacity, he sees that many Roman knights are so too, and many citizens, and many of the allies besides to whom he has done unmistakable injuries. He sees also that very numerous and very important deputations have come here at the same time from most friendly cities, armed with the public authority and evidence collected by their states.

And though this is the case, still he thinks so ill of all virtuous men, to such an extent does he believe the decisions of the senators to be corrupt and profligate, that he makes a custom of openly boasting that it was not without reason that he was greedy of money, since he now finds that there is such protection in money, and that he has bought (what was the hardest thing of all) the very time of his trial, in order to be able to buy everything else more easily; so that, as he could not by any possibility shirk the force of the accusations altogether, he might avoid the most violent gusts of the storm.

But if he had placed any hope at all, not only in his cause, but in any honourable defence, or in the eloquence or in the influence of any one, he would not be so eager in collecting and catching at all these things; he would not scorn and despise the senatorial body to such a degree, as to procure a man to be selected out of the senate at his will to be made a criminal of, who should plead his cause [*](This refers to the same subject as the previous note.) before him, while he in the meantime was preparing whatever he had need of.

And what the circumstances are on which he founds his hopes, and what hopes he builds on them, and what he is fixing his mind on. I see clearly. But how he can have the confidence to think that he can effect anything with the present praetor, and the present bench of Judges, I cannot conceive. This one thing I know, which the Roman people perceived too when he rejected [*](“In any given case the litigant parties agreed upon a judex, or accepted him whom the magistrates proposed; a party had the power of rejecting a proposed judex, though there must have been some limit to this power.” (Cic. Pro Cluent. 43.) Smith, Dict. Ant. v. Judex. What the limits to this power were, or under what restrictions it was exercised, we do not now know.) the judges, that his hopes were of that nature that he placed all his expectations of safety in his money; and that if this protection were taken from him, he thought nothing would be any help to him. In truth, what genius is there so powerful, what faculty of speaking, what eloquence so mighty, as to be in any particular able to defend the life of that man, convicted as it is of so many vices and crimes, and long since condemned by the inclinations and private sentiments of every one?

And, to say nothing of the stains and disgraces of his youth, what other remarkable event is there in his quaestorship, that first step to honour, except that Cnaeus Carbo was robbed by his quaestor of the public money? that the consul was plundered and betrayed? his army deserted? his province abandoned? the holy nature and obligations imposed on him by lot [*](Because the provinces which involved all these obligations were distributed by lot to the different magistrates.) violated?—whose lieutenancy was the ruin of all Asia and Pamphylia, in which provinces he plundered many houses, very many cities, all the shrines and temples; when he renewed and repeated against Cnaeus Dolabella his ancient wicked tricks when he had been quaestor, and did not only in his danger desert, but even attack and betray the man to whom he had been lieutenant, and proquaestor, [*](“The proconsul or praetor who had the administration of a province was attended by a quaestor. This quaestor had undoubtedly to perform the same offices as those who accompanied the armies into the field..They had also to levy those parts of the public revenue which were not farmed by the publicani.... In the provinces they had the same jurisdiction as the curule aediles at Rome.... The relation existing between a praetor or proconsul and his quaestor was according to ancient custom regarded as resembling that between a father and his son. When a quaestor died in his province, the praetor had the right to appoint a proquaestor in his stead.”—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 814, v. Quaestor.) and whom he had brought into odium by his crimes;

—whose only praetorship was the destruction of the sacred temples and the public works, and, as to his legal decisions, was the adjudging and awarding of property contrary to all established rules and precedents. But now he has established great and numerous monuments and proofs of all his vices in the province of Sicily, which he for three years so harassed and ruined that it can by no possibility be restored to its former condition, and appears scarcely able to be at all recovered after a long series of years, and a long succession of virtuous praetors.