Did you so despise the order of senators, did you so reduce everything to the
standard of your own insults and caprices, had you so deliberated and fixed it in
your own mind as an invariable rule, to reject as judges every one who dwelt in
Sicily, or who had been in Sicily while you were praetor, that it never
occurred to you that still you must come before judges of the same order? in whose
minds, even if there were no indignation from any personal injury done to
themselves, still there would be this thought, that they were affronted in the
affront offered to another, and that the dignity of their order was contemptuously
treated and trampled on, which, O judges, appears to me not to be endured with
patience, for insult has in it a sting which modest and virtuous men can with
difficulty put up with.
You have plundered the Sicilians, for indeed the provincials are accustomed to
obtain no revenge amid their wrongs. You have harassed the brokers, for they seldom
come to Rome, and never of their own
accord. You gave up a Roman knight to the ill-treatment of Apronius. To be sure; for
what harm can they do you now, when they cannot be judges? What will you say when
you treat senators also with the greatest violence? what else can you say but this,
“Give me up that senator also, in order that the most honourable name of senator may
appear to exist not only to excite the envy of the ignorant, but also to attract the
insults of the worthless.”
Nor did he do this in the case of Anneius alone, but in the instance of every
senator, so that the name of that order had not so much influence in procuring
honour as insult for its members. In the case of Caius Cassius, a most illustrious
and most gallant man, though he was consul at that very time, in the first year of
his praetorship, he behaved with such injustice, that, as his wife, a woman of the
highest respectability, had lands in Leontini, inherited from her father, he ordered
all her crops to be taken away for tenths. You shall have him as a witness in this
cause, O Verres, since you have taken care not to have him as a judge.
But you, O judges, ought to think that there is some community of interests, some
close connection existing between the members of our body; many offices are imposed
on this our order, many toils, many dangers, not only from the laws and courts of
justice, but also from vague reports, and from the critical character of the times;
so that this order is, as it were, exposed to view, and set on an eminence, in
order, as it seems, to be the more easily caught by every blast of envy. In so
miserable and unfair a condition of life, shall we not retain even the honour of not
appearing vile and contemptible in the eyes of our own magistrates, when we appear
before them to obtain our rights?
The men of Thermae sent agents to purchase the tenths of their district. They
thought it was much better for them, that they should be purchased by their own
state at ever so high a price, than that they should get into the hands of some
emissary of his. A man of the name of Venuleius had been put up to buy them. He did
not cease from bidding. They went on competing with him, as long as the price
appeared such as could by any possibility be borne. At last they gave up bidding.
They are knocked down to Venuleius at eight thousand modii of wheat. Possidorus, the deputy of Thermae, sends notice home.
Although it appeared to every one a most intolerable hardship, still there were
given to Venuleius eight thousand modii of wheat,
and two thousand sesterces besides, not to come
near them. From which it is very evident which part was the wages of the farmer, and
which the booty of the praetor. Give me the letters and testimony of the people of
Thermae. [The accounts of the people of Thermae, and their evidence, are read.]
You compelled the Imacharans after you had taken away all
their corn, after they had been impoverished by your incessant injuries, miserable
and ruined as they were, to pay tribute so as to give Apronius twenty thousand
sesterces. Read the decree about the tributes,
and the public testimony. [The Resolution of the Senate about the tribute to be
paid, is read. [The testimony of the Imacharans is read.] The people of Enna, though the tenths of
the territory of Enna had been sold for
three thousand two hundred medimni, were compelled
to give Apronius eighteen thousand modii of wheat,
and three thousand sesterces. I entreat you to
remark what an enormous quantity of corn is extorted from every district liable to
the payment of tenths; for my speech extends over every city which is so liable. And
I am at present engaged about this class of injuries, O judges, in which it is not a
case of single cultivators being stripped of all their property, but of compliments
being exacted from the public treasury of each city, for the farmers, in order that
at last they may depart from the lands and cities glutted and satiated with this
immense heap of gain.