In C. Verrem

And for the present I omit those things which will be mentioned, and have been already mentioned by me in an irregular manner in different parts of my speech—what the market-place of the Syracusans, which at the entrance of Marcellus was preserved unpolluted by slaughter, on the arrival of Verres overflowed with the blood of innocent Sicilians; that the harbour of the Syracusans, which at that time was shut against both our fleets and those of the Carthaginians, was, while Verres was praetor, open to Cilician pirates, or even to a single piratical galley. I say nothing of the violence offered to people of noble birth, of the ravishment of matrons, atrocities which then, when the city was taken, were not committed, neither through the hatred of enemies, nor through military licence, nor through the customs of war or the rights of victory. I pass over, I say, all these things which were done by that man for three whole years. Listen rather to acts which are connected with those matters of which I have hitherto been speaking.

You have often heard that the city of Syracuseis the greatest of the Greek cities, and the most beautiful of all. It is so, O judges, as it is said to be; for it is so by its situation, which is strongly fortified, and which is on every side by which you can approach it, whether by sea or land, very beautiful to behold. And it has harbours almost enclosed within the walls, and in the sight of the whole city, harbours which have different entrances, but which meet together, and are connected at the other end. By their union a part of the town, which is called the island, being separated from the rest by a narrow arm of the sea, is again joined to and connected with the other by a bridge.

That city is so great that it may be said to consist of four cities of the largest size; one of which, as I have said, is that “Island,” which, surrounded by two harbours, projects out towards the mouth and entrance of each. In it there is a palace which did belong to king Hiero, which our praetors are in the habit of using; in it are many sacred buildings, but two, which have a great pre-eminence over all the others,—one a temple of Diana, and the other one, which before the arrival of that man was the most ornamented of all, sacred to Minerva. At the end of this island is a fountain of sweet water, the name of which is Arethusa, of incredible size, very full of fish, which would be entirely overwhelmed by the waves of the sea, if it were not protected from the sea by a rampart and dam of stone.

There is also another city at Syracuse, the name of which is Achradina, in which there is a very large forum, most beautiful porticoes, a highly decorated town-hall, a most spacious senate-house, and a superb temple of Jupiter Olympius; and the other districts of the city are joined together by one broad unbroken street, and divided by many cross streets, and by private houses. There is a third city, which because in that district there is an ancient temple of Fortune, is called Tyche, in which there is a spacious gymnasium, and many sacred buildings, and that district is the most frequented and the most populous. There is also a fourth city, which, because it is the last built, is called Neapolis, [*](Neapolismeaning “new city,” or as we might say, Newtown, from the Greek words *ne/a po/lis, as Tyche is the Greek name of Fortune—*tu/xhcompare with this passage the description of Syracusegiven by Thucydides in his sixth and seventh books.)in the highest part of which there is a very large theatre, and, besides that there are two temples of great beauty, one of Ceres, the other of Libera, and a statue of Apollo, which is called Temenites, very beautiful and of colossal size; which, if he could have moved them, he would not have hesitated to carry off.

Now I will return to Marcellus, that I may not appear to have entered into this statement without any reason. He, when with his powerful army he had taken this splendid city, did not think it for the credit of the Roman people to destroy and extinguish this splendour, especially as no danger could possibly arise from it, and therefore he spared all the buildings, public as well as private, sacred as well as ordinary, as if he had come with his army for the purpose of defending them, not of taking them by storm. With respect to the decorations of the city, he had a regard to his own victory, and a regard to humanity, he thought it was due to his victory to transport man, things to Romewhich might be an ornament to this city, and due to humanity not utterly to strip the city, especially as it was one which he was anxious to preserve.

In this division of the ornaments, the victory of Marcellus did not covet more for the Roman people than his humanity reserved to the Syracusans. The things which were transported to Romewe see before the temples of Honour and of Virtue, and also in other places. 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 to compare a state of peace with one of war, a state of law and order, and regular jurisdiction, with one of violence and martial law, and the supremacy of arms; to compare the arrival and retinue of the one with the victory and army of the other.

There is a temple of Minerva in the island, of which I have already spoken, which Marcellus did not touch, which he left full of its treasures and ornaments, but which was so stripped and plundered by Verres, that it seems to have been in the hands, not of any enemy,—for enemies, even in war, respect the rites of religion, and the customs of the country,—but of some barbarian pirates. There was a cavalry battle of their king Agathocles, exquisitely painted in a series of pictures, and with these pictures the inside walls of the temple were covered. Nothing could be more noble than those paintings; there was nothing at Syracusethat was thought more worthy going to see. These pictures, Marcus Marcellus, though by that victory of his he had divested everything of its sacred inviolability of character, still, out of respect for religion, never touched; Verres, though, in consequence of the long peace, and the loyalty of the Syracusan people, he had received them as sacred and under the protection of religion, took away all those pictures, and left naked and unsightly those walls whose decorations had remained inviolate for so many ages, and had escaped so many wars:

Marcellus, who had vowed that if he took Syracusehe would erect two temples at Rome, was unwilling to adorn the temple which he was going to build with these treasures which were his by right of capture; Verres, who was bound by no vows to Honour or Virtue, as Marcellus was, but only to Venus and to Cupid, attempted to plunder the temple of Minerva. The one was unwilling to adorn gods in the spoil taken from gods, the other transferred the decorations of the virgin Minerva to the house of a prostitute. Besides this, he took away out of the same temple twenty-seven more pictures beautifully painted; among which were likenesses of the kings and tyrants of Sicily, which delighted one, not only by the skill of the painter, but also by reminding us of the men, and by enabling us to recognise their persons. And see now, how much worse a tyrant this man proved to the Syracusans than any of the old ones, as they, cruel as they were, still adorned the temples of the immortal gods, while this man took away the monuments and ornaments from the gods.

But now what shall I say of the folding-doors of that temple? I am afraid that those who have not seen these things may think that I am speaking too highly of, and exaggerating everything, though no one ought to suspect that I should be so inconsiderate as to be selling that so many men of the highest reputation, especially when they are judges in this cause, who have been at Syracuse, and who have seen all these things themselves, should be witnesses to my rashness and falsehood. I am able to prove this distinctly, O judges, that no more magnificent doors, none more beautifully wrought of gold and ivory, ever existed in an, temple. It is incredible how many Greeks have left written accounts of the beauty of these doors: they, perhaps, may admire and extol them too much; be it so, still it is more honourable for our republic, O judges, that our general, in a time of war, should have left those things which appeared to them so beautiful, than that our praetor should have carried them off in a time of peace. On the folding-doors were some subjects most minutely executed in ivory; all these he caused to be taken out; he tore off and took away a very tine head of the Gorgon with snakes for hair; and he showed, too, that he was influenced not only by admiration for the workmanship, but by a desire of money and gain; for he did not hesitate to take away also all the golden knobs from these folding-doors, which were numerous and heavy; and it was not the workmanship of these, but the weight which pleased him. And so he left the folding-doors in such state, that, though they had formerly contributed greatly to the ornament of the temple, they now seemed to have been made only for the purpose of shutting it up.