For when four years afterwards I came into Sicily, it appeared to me in such a condition as those countries are
apt to be in, in which a bitter and long war has been carried on. Those plains and
fields which I had formerly seen beautiful and verdant, I now saw so laid waste and
desolate that the very land itself seemed to feel the want of its cultivators, and
to be mourning for its master. The land of Herbita, of Enna, of Morgantia, of Assoria, of Imachara, and of Agyrium, was so deserted as to its principal part,
that we had to look not only for the allotments of land, but also for the body of
owners. But the district of Aetna, which
used to be most highly cultivated, and that which was the very head of the corn
country, the district of Leontini, the character of which was formerly such that
when you had once seen that sown, you did not fear any dearness of provisions, was
so rough and unsightly, that in the most fruitful part of Sicily we were asking where Sicily could be gone? The previous year had, indeed,
greatly shaken the cultivators, but the last one had utterly ruined them.
Will you dare also to make mention to me of the tenths? Do you, after such
wickedness, after such cruelty, after such numerous and serious injuries done to
people, when the whole province of Sicily
entirely depends on its arable land, and on its rights connected with that land;
after the cultivators have been entirely ruined, the fields deserted—after you have
left no one in so wealthy and populous a province—not only no property, but no hope
even remaining; do you, I say, think that you can acquire any popularity by saying
that you have sold the tenths at a better price than the other praetors? As if the
Roman people had formed this wish, or the senate had given you this commission, by
seizing all the fortunes of the cultivators under the name of tenths, to deprive the
Roman people for all future time of that revenue, and of their supply of corn; and,
as if after that, by adding some part of your own plunder to the total amount got
from the tenths, you could appear to have deserved well of the Roman people.
And I say this, as if his injustice was to be reproved in
this particular, that, out of a desire for credit to be got by surpassing others in
the sum derived from tenths, he had put forth a law rather too severe, and edicts
rather too stringent, and rejected the examples of all his predecessors.
You sold the tenths at a high price. What will be said, if I prove that you
appropriated and took to your own house no less a sum than you had sent to
Rome under the name of tenths? What is
there to obtain popularity for you in that plan of yours, when you took for yourself
from a province of the Roman people a share equal to that which you sent to the
Roman people? What will be said if I prove that you took twice as much corn yourself
as you sent to the Roman people? Shall we still expect to see your advocate toss his
head at this accusation, and throw himself on the people, and on the assembly here
present? These things you have heard before, O judges; but perhaps you have heard it
on no other authority than report, and the common conversation of men. Know now that
an enormous sum was taken by him on pretences connected with corn; and consider at
the same time the profligacy of that saying of his, when he said that by the profit
made on the tenths alone, he could buy himself off from all his dangers.
We have heard this for a long time, O judges. I say that there is not one of you
who has not often heard that the collectors of the tenths were that mans partners. I
do not think that anything else has been said against him falsely by those who think
ill of him but this. For they are to be considered partners of a man, with whom the
gains of a business are shared. But I say that the whole of these gains, and the
whole of the fortunes of the cultivators, went to Verres alone. I say that Apronius,
and those slaves of Venus, who were quite a new class of farmers first heard of in
his praetorship! and the other collectors, were only agents of that one man's gains,
and ministers of his plunder. How do you prove that?
How did I prove that he had committed robbery in the contract for those pillars?
Chiefly, I think, by this fact, that he had put forth an unjust and unprecedented
law. For who ever attempted to change all the rights of people, and the customs of
all men, getting great blame for so doing, except for some gain? I will proceed and
carry this matter further. You sold the tenths according to an unjust law, in order
to sell them for more money. Why, when the tenths were now knocked down and
sold,—when nothing could now be added to their sum total, but much might be to your
own gains,—why did new edicts appear, made on a sudden and to meet an emergency? For
I say, that in your third year you issued edicts, that a collector might summon a
man before the court anywhere he liked; that the cultivator might not remove his
corn from the threshing-floor, before he had settled the claims of the collector;
that they should have the tenths delivered at the water-side before the first of
August. All these edicts, I say, you issued after the tenths had been sold. But if
you had issued them for the sake of the republic, notice would have been given of
them at the time of selling; because you were acting with a view to your own
interest, you, being prompted by your love of gain and by the emergency, repaired
the omission which had unintentionally occurred.
But who can be induced to believe this—that you, without any profit, or even
without the greatest profit to yourself, disregarded the great disgrace, the great
danger to your position as a free man, and to your fortunes, which you were
incurring, so far as, though you were daily hearing the groans and complaints of all
Sicily,—though, as you yourself have
said, you expected to be brought to trial for this,—though the hazard of this
present trial is not at all inconsistent with the opinion you yourself had
formed,—still to allow the cultivators of the soil to be harassed and plundered with
circumstances of the most scandalous injustice? In truth, though you are a man of
singular cruelty and audacity, still you would be unwilling for a whole province to
be alienated from you,—for so many most honourable men to be made your greatest
enemies, if your desire for money and present booty had not overcome all reason and
all consideration of safety.