The punishments of Roman citizens are driving him mad, some of whom he has delivered to the executioner, others he has put to death in prison, others he has crucified while demanding their rights as freemen and as Roman citizens. The gods of his fathers are hurrying him away to punishment, because he alone has been found to lead to execution sons torn from the embraces of their fathers, and to demand of parents payment for leave to bury their sons. The reverence due to, and the holy ceremonies practiced in, every shrine and every temple—but all violated by him; and the images of the gods, which have not only been taken away from their temples, but which are even lying in darkness, having been cast aside and thrown away by him—do not allow his mind to rest free from frenzy and madness.

Nor does he appear to me merely to offer himself to condemnation, nor to be content with the common punishment of avarice, when he has involved himself in so many atrocities; his savage and monstrous nature wishes for some extraordinary punishment. It is not alone demanded that, by his condemnation, their property may be restored to those from whom it has been taken away; but the insults offered to the religion of the immortal gods must be expiated, and the tortures of Roman citizens, and the blood of many innocent men, must be atoned for by that man's punishment.

For we have brought before your tribunal not only a thief, but a wholesale robber; not only an adulterer, but a ravisher of chastity; not only a sacrilegious man, but an open enemy to all sacred things and all religion; not only an assassin, but a most barbarous murderer of both citizens and allies; so that I think him the only criminal in the memory of man so atrocious, that it is even for his own good to be condemned. For who is there who does not see this, that though he be acquitted, against the will of gods and men, yet that he cannot possibly be taken out of the hands of the Roman people? Who does not see that it would be an excellent thing for us in that case, if the Roman people were content with the punishment of that one criminal alone, and did not decide that he had not committed any greater wickedness against them when he plundered temples, when he murdered so many innocent men, when he destroyed Roman citizens by execution, by torture, by the cross,—when he released leaders of banditti for bribes,—than they, who, when on their oaths, acquitted a man covered with so many, with such enormous, with such unspeakable wickednesses?

There is, there is, O judges, no room for any one to err in respect of this man. He is not such a criminal, this is not such a time, this is not such a tribunal, (I fear to seem to say anything too arrogant before such men,) even the advocate is not such a man, that a criminal so guilty, so abandoned, so plainly convicted, can be either stealthily or openly snatched out of his hands with impunity. When such men as these are judges, shall I not be able to prove that Caius Verres has taken bribes contrary to the laws? Will such men venture to assert that they have not believed so many senators, so many Roman knights, so many cities, so many men of the highest honour from so illustrious a province, so many letters of whole nations and of private individuals? that they have resisted so general a wish of the Roman people?

Let them venture. We will find, if we are able to bring that fellow alive before another tribunal, men to whom we can prove that he in his quaestorship embezzled the public money which was given to Cnaeus Carbo the consul; men whom we can persuade that he got money under false pretences from the quaestors of the city, as you have learnt in my former pleadings. There will be some men, too, who will blame his boldness in having released some of the contractors from supplying the corn due to the public, when they could make it for his own interest. There will even, perhaps, be some men who will think that robbery of his most especially to be punished, when he did not hesitate to carry off out of the most holy temples and out of the cities of our allies and friends, the monuments of Marcus Marcellus and of Publius Africanus, which in name indeed belonged to them, but in reality both belonged and were always considered to belong to the Roman people.