And that these things were done in this manner, you may know, O judges, both from the public documents of the cities, and from their public testimonies; in all which you will find nothing false, nothing invented as suited to the times. Everything which we speak of is entered in the returns and made up in a regular manner, without any interpolations or irregularities being foisted into the people's accounts, but while they are all made up with deliberation and accuracy. Read the accounts of the people of Halesa. To whom does he say that money was paid? Speak, speak, I say, a little louder. “To Volcatius, to Timarchides, to Maevius.” What is all this, O Verres? have you not left yourself even this argument in your defence, that they are the managers of the companies who have been concerned in those matters? that they are the managers who have rejected the corn? that they are the managers who have settled the affair with the cities for money? and that it is they also who have taken money from you in the name of those cities? and, moreover, that they have bought corn for themselves; and that all these things do not at all concern you? It would, in truth, be an insufficient and a wretched defence for a praetor to say this, “I never touched the corn, I never saw it, I gave the managers of the companies the power of approving of rejecting it; the managers extorted money from the cities but I paid to the managers the money which I ought to have paid to the people.”

This is, as I have said, an insufficient, or rather, a profligate defence against an accusation. But still, even this one, if you were to wish to use it, you cannot use. Volcatius, the delight of yourself and your friends, forbids you to make mention of the manager; and Timarchides, the prop of your household, stops the mouth of your defence; who, as well as Volcatius, had money paid to him from the cities. But now your clerk, with that golden ring of his, which he procured out of these matters, will not allow you to avail yourself of that argument. What then remains for you, except to confess that you sent to Rome corn which had been bought with the money of the Sicilians? that you appropriated the public money to your own purposes? O you habit of sinning, what delight you afford to the wicked and the audacious, when chastisement is afar off, and when impunity attends you!

This is not the first time that that man has been guilty of that sort of peculation, but now for the first time is he convicted. We have seen money paid to him from the treasury, while he was quaestor, for the expense of a consular army; we saw, a few months afterwards, both army and consul stripped of everything All that money lay hid in that obscurity and darkness which at that time had seized upon the whole republic. After that, he discharged the duties of the quaestorship to which he succeeded under Dolabella. He embezzled a vast sum of money; but he mixed up his accounts of that money with the confusion consequent on the conviction of Dolabella. Immense sums of money were entrusted to him when praetor. You will not find him a man to lick up these most infamous profits nervously and gently; he did not hesitate to swallow up at a gulp the whole of the public money. That wicked covetousness, when it is implanted in a man's nature, creeps on in such a way, when the habit of sinning has emancipated itself from restraint, that it is not able to put any limits to its audacity.

At length it is detected, and it is detected in affairs of great importance, and of undoubted certainty. And it seems to me that, by the interposition of the gods, this man too has become involved in such dishonesty, as not only to suffer punishment for the crimes which he has lately committed, but also to be overwhelmed with the vengeance due to the sins which he committed against Carbo and against Dolabella. There is in truth also another new feature in this crime, O judges, which will remove all doubts as to his criminality on the former charge respecting the tenths. For, to say nothing of this fact, that very many of the cultivators of the soil had not corn enough for the second tenths, and for those eight thousand modii which they were bound to sell to the Roman people, but that they bought them of your agent, that is, of Apronius; which is a clear proof that you had left the cultivators actually nothing: to pass over this, which teas been clearly set forth in many men's evidence, can anything be more certain than this,—that all the corn of Sicily, and all the crops of the land liable to the payment of tenths, were for three years in your power and in your barns?

for when you were demanding of the cities money for corn, whence was the corn to be procured for you to send to Rome, if you had it not all collected and locked up? Therefore, in the affair of that corn, the first profit of all was that of the corn itself, which had been taken by violence from the cultivators; the next profit was because that very corn which had been procured by you during your three years, you sold not once, but twice; not for one payment, but for two, though it was one and the same lot of corn; once to the cities, for fifteen sesterces a medimnus, a second time to the Roman people, from whom you got eighteen sesterces a medimus for the very same corn.

But perhaps you approved besides of the corn of the Centuripans, of the Agrigentines, and of some others, and paid money to these nations. There may be some cities in that number whose corn you were unwilling to object to. What then? Was all the money that was owed for corn paid to these cities? Find me one—not one people, but one cultivator. See, seek, look around, if perchance there is any single man in that province in which you were governor for three years, who does not wish you to be ruined. Produce me one, I say, out of all those cultivators who contributed money even to raise a statue to you, who will say that everything that was due for corn was paid. I pledge myself, O judges, that none will say so.

Out of all the money which it was your duty to pay to the cultivators, you were in the habit of making deductions on certain pretexts; first of all for the examination, and for the difference in the exchanges; secondly, for some stealing money or other. All these names, O judges, do not belong to any legal demand, but to the most infamous robberies. For what difference of exchange can there be when all use one kind of money? And what is sealing money How has this name got introduced into the accounts of a magistrate? how came it to be connected with the public money? For the third description of deduction was such as if it were not only lawful, but even proper; and not only proper, but absolutely necessary. Two fiftieths were deducted from the entire sum in the name of the clerk. Who gave you leave to do this?—what law? what authority of the senate? Moreover where was the justice of your clerk taking such a sum, whether it was taken from the property of the cultivators, or from the revenues of the Roman people?

For if that sum can he deducted without injury to the cultivators of the soil, let the Roman people have it, especially in the existing difficulties of the treasury; but if the Roman people intended it to be paid to the cultivators, and if it is just that it should be, then shall your officer, hired at small wages paid by the people, plunder the property of the cultivators? And shall Hortensius excite against me in this cause the whole body of clerks? and shall he say that their interests are undermined by me, and their lights opposed? as if this were allowed to the clerks by any precedent or by any right. Why should I go back to old times? or why should I make mention of those clerks, who, it is evident, were most upright and conscientious men? It does not escape my observation, O judges, that old examples are now listened to and considered as imaginary fables I will go only to the present wretched and profligate time. You, O Hortensius, have lately been quaestor. You can say what your clerks did; I say this of mine; when, in that same Sicily, I was paying the cities money for their corn, and had with me two most economical men as clerks, Lucius Manilius and Lucius Sergius, then I say that not only these two fiftieths were not deducted, but that not one single coin was deducted from any one. I would say that all the credit of this was to be attributed to me, O judges, if they had ever asked this of me, if they had ever thought of it.

For why should a clerk make this deduction, and not rather the muleteer who brought the corn down? or the courier, by whose arrival they heard of its coming and made the demand? or the crier, who ordered them to appear? or the lictor and the slave of Venus, who carried the money? What part of the business or what seasonable assistance can a scrivener pretend to, that, I will not say such high wages should be given him, but, that a division of such a large sum should take place with him? Oh they are a very honourable body of men;—who denies it? or what has that to do with this business? But they are an honourable body, because to their integrity are entrusted the public accounts and the safety of the magistrates. Ask, therefore, of those scriveners who are worthy of their body, masters of households, virtuous and honourable men, what is the meaning of those fiftieths? In a moment you will all clearly see that the whole affair is unprecedented and scandalous.

Bring me back to those scriveners, if you please; do not get together those men who when with a little money scraped together from the presents of spendthrifts and the gratuities to actors, they have bought themselves a place in some decury, These decuries were colleges, or guilds, in which the different bodies of inferior officers, librarians, clerks, lictors, accensi, nomenclators, &c were enrolled. think that they have mounted from the first class of hissed buffoons into the second class of the citizens. Those scriveners I will have as arbitrators in this business between you and me, men who are indignant that those other fellows should be scriveners at ale Although, when we see that there are many unfit men in that order, an order which is held out as a reward for industry and good conduct, are we to wonder that there are some base men in that order also, a place in which any one can purchase for money? When you confess that your clerk, with your leave, took thirteen hundred thousand sesterces of the public money, do you think that you have any defence left? that any one can endure this? Do you think that even any one of those who are at this moment your own advocates can listen to this with equanimity? Do you think that, in the same city in which an action was brought against Caius Cato, Caius Cato was the grandson of Marcus Cato the censor, and nephew of the younger Scipio Africanus; he had been praetor of Sicily, but was convicted of having received eighteen thousand sesterces illegally. a most illustrious man, a man of consular rank, to recover a sum of eighteen thousand sesterces; in that same city it could be permitted to your clerk to carry off at one swoop thirteen hundred thousand sesterces?

Here is where that golden ring came from, with which you presented him in the public assembly; a gift which was an act of such extraordinary impudence that it seemed novel to all the Sicilians, and to me incredible. For our generals, after a defeat of the enemy, after some splendid success, have often presented their secretaries with golden rings in a public assembly; but you, for what exploit, for the defeat of what enemy did you dare to summon an assembly for the purpose of making this present? Nor did you only present your clerk with a ring, but you also presented a man of great bravery, a man very unlike yourself, Quintus Rubrius, a man of eminent virtue, and dignity, and riches, with a crown, with horse trappings, and a chain; and also Marcus Cossutius, a most conscientious and honourable man, and Marcus Castritius, a man of the greatest wealth, and ability, and influence.

What was the meaning of these presents made to these three Roman citizens? Besides that, you gave presents also to some of the most powerful and noble of the Sicilians, who have not, as you hoped, been the more slow to come forward, but have only come with more dignity to give their evidence in this trial of yours. Where did all these presents come from? from the spoils of what enemy? gained in what victory? Of what booty or trophies do they make a part? Is it because while you were praetor, a most beautiful fleet, the bulwark of Sicily, the defence of the province, was burnt This has been mentioned before, owing to the way in which Verres had disabled the fleet for his private gain, excusing towns from providing ships who were inclined to pay for the relaxation, and discharging too all the sailors who chose to buy their discharges, it was so powerless that a small squadron of pirates sailed into the harbour of Syracuse and burnt it. Afterwards, a single pirate ship was taken, the officers of which purchased their pardon of Verres, who, not daring to avow it, as the people clamoured for their execution, brought on the scaffold the captains of those Roman ships which had been burnt, and officers who he feared might hereafter bear witness against him, with their heads muffled up so that they could not be recognised, and had them executed as the pirates. by the hands of pirates arriving in a few light galleys? or because the territory of Syracuse was laid waste by the conflagrations of the banditti while you were praetor? or because the forum of the Syracuse overflowed with the blood of the captains? or because a piratical galley sailed about in the harbour of Syracuse? I can find no reason which I can imagine for your having fallen into such madness, unless indeed your object was to prevent men from ever forgetting the disasters of your administration.

A clerk was presented with a golden ring, and an assembly was convoked to witness that presentation. What must have been your face when you saw in the assembly those men out of whose property that golden ring was provided for the present; who themselves had laid aside their golden rings, and had taken them off from their children, in order that your clerk might have the means to support your liberality and kindness? Moreover, what was the preface to this present? Was it the old one used by the generals?—“Since in battle, in war, in military affairs, you....” There never was even any mention of such matters while you were praetor. Was it this, “Since you have never failed me in any act of covetousness, or in any baseness, and since you have been concerned with me in all my wicked actions, both during my lieutenancy, and my praetorship, and here in Sicily; on account of all these things, since I have already made you rich, I now present you with this golden ring?” This would have been the truth. For that golden ring given by you does not prove he was a brave man, but only a rich one. As we should judge that same ring, if given by some one else, to have evidence of virtue when given by you, we consider it only an accompaniment to money.

I have spoken, O judges, of the corn collected as tenths; I have spoken of that which was purchased; the last, the only remaining topic, is the valuation of the corn, which ought to have weight with every one, both from the vastness of the sum involved, and from the description of the injustice done; and more than either, because against this charge he is provided, not with some ingenious defence, but with a most scandalous confession of it. For though it was lawful for him, both by a decree of the senate, and also by the laws, to take corn and lay it up in the granaries, and though the senate had valued that corn at four sesterces for a modius of wheat, two for one of barley, Verres, having first added to the quantity of wheat, valued each modius of wheat with the cultivators at three denarii. A denarius was about eight pence half-penny; a sestertius only fraction over two-pence. My charge is not this, O Hortensius; do not you think about this; I know that many virtuous, and brave, and incorruptible men, have often valued, both with the cultivators of the soil and with cities, the corn which ought to have been taken and laid up in the granary, and have taken money instead of corn; I know what is accustomed to be done; I know what is lawful to be done; nothing which has been previously the custom of virtuous men is found fault with ill the conduct of Verres.

This is what I find fault with, that, when a modius of wheat in Sicily cost two sesterces, as his letter which was sent to you declares, or at most, three, as has also already been made clear from all the evidence and all the accounts of the cultivators, he exacted from the cultivators three denarii for every modius of wheat. This is the charge; I wish you to understand, that my accusation turns not on the fact of his having valued the corn, nor even of his having valued it at three denarii but on that of his having increased the quantity of corn, and consequently the amount of the valuation. In truth this valuation originated, O judges, at first not in the convenience of the praetors or consuls, but in the advantage to the cultivators and the cities. For originally, no one was so impudent as to demand money when it was corn that was due; certainly this proceeded in the first instance from the cultivator or from the city which was required to furnish corn; when they had either sold the corn, or wished to keep it, or were not willing to carry it to that place where it was required to be delivered, they begged as a kindness and a favour, that they might be allowed, instead of the corn, to give the value of the corn. From such a commencement as this, and from the liberality and accommodating spirit of the magistrates the custom of valuations was introduced.

More covetous, magistrates succeeded; who, in their avarice, devised not only a plan for their own gain, but also a way of escape, and a plea for their defence. They adopted a custom of always requiring corn to be delivered at the most remote and inconvenient places, in order that, through the difficulty of carriage, the cultivators might be more easily brought to the valuation which they wished. In a case of this kind it is easier to form one's opinion, than to make out a case for blame; because we can think the man who does this avaricious, but we cannot easily make out a charge against him; because it appears that we must grant this to our magistrates, that they may have power to receive the corn in any place they choose; therefore this is what many perhaps have done, not, however, so many out that those whom we recollect, or whom we have heard of as the most upright magistrates, have declined to do it.

I ask of you now, O Hortensius, with which of these classes you are going to compare the conduct of Verres? With those, I suppose, who, influenced by their own kindness, have granted, as a favour and as a convenience to the cities, permission to give money instead of corn. And so I suppose the cultivators begged of him, that, as they could not sell a modius of wheat for three sesterces, they may be allowed to pay three denarii instead of each modius. Or, since you do not dare to say this, will you take refuge in that assertion, that, being influenced by the difficulty of carriage, they preferred to give three denarii? Of what carriage? Wishing not to have to carry it from what place to what place? from Philomelium to Ephesus? I see what is the difference between the price of corn at different places; I see too how many days' journey it is; I see that it is for the advantage of the Philomelians rather to pay in Phrygia the price which corn bears in Ephesus, than to carry it to Ephesus, or to send both money and agents to Ephesus to buy corn.

But what can there be like that in Sicily? Enna is a completely inland town. Compel (that is the utmost stretch of your authority) the people of Enna to deliver their corn at the waterside; they will take it to Phintia, or to Halesa, or to Catina, places all very distant from one another, the same day that you issue the order; though there is not even need of any carriage at all; for all this profit of the valuation, O judges, arises from the variety in the price of corn. For a magistrate in a province can manage this,—namely, to receive it where it is dearest. And therefore that is the way valuations are managed in Asia and in Spain, and in those provinces in which corn is not everywhere the same price. But in Sicily what difference did it make to any one in what place he delivered it? for he had not to carry it; and wherever he was ordered to carry it, there he might buy the same quantity of corn which he sold at home.

Wherefore, if, O Hortensius, you wish to show that anything, in the matter of the valuation, was done by him like what has been done by others, you must show that at any place in Sicily, while Verres was praetor, a modius of wheat ever cost three denarii. See what a defence I have opened to you; how unjust to our allies, how far removed from the good of the republic, how utterly foreign to the intention and meaning of the law. Do you, when I am prepared to deliver you corn on my own farm, in my own city,—in the very place, in short, in which you are, in which you live, in which you manage all your business and conduct the affairs of the province,—do you, I say, select for me some remote and desert corner of the island? Do you bid me deliver it there, whither it is very inconvenient to carry it? where I cannot purchase it?

It is a shameful action, O judges, intolerable, permitted to no one by law, but perhaps not yet punished in any instance. Still this very thing, which I say ought not to be endured, I grant to you, O Verres; I make you a present of it. If in any place of that province corn was at the price at which he valued it, then I think that this charge ought not to have any weight against him. But when it was fetching two sesterces, or even three at the outside, in any district of the province which you choose to name, you exacted twelve. If there cannot be any dispute between you and me either about the price of corn, or about your valuation, why are you sitting there? What are you waiting for? What will you say in your defence? Does money appear to have been appropriated by you contrary to the laws, contrary to the interests of the republic, to the great injury of our allies? Or will you say in your defence, that all this has been done lawfully, regularly, in a manner advantageous to the republic, without injury to any one?