For what is it that you ask, O Verres? What do you hope for? What do you expect? What god or man do you think will come to your assistance? Did you send slaves to that place to plunder a temple, where it was not lawful for free citizens to go, not even for the purpose of praying? Did you not hesitate to lay violent hands on those things from which the laws of religion enjoined you to keep even your eyes? Although it was not even because you were charmed by the eye that you were led into this wicked and nefarious conduct; for you coveted what you had never seen. You took a violent fancy, I say, to that which you had not previously beheld. From your ears did you conceive this covetousness, so violent that no fear, no religious scruple, no power of the gods, no regard for the opinion of men could restrain it.

Oh! but you had heard of it, I suppose, from some good man, from some good authority. How could you have done that, when you could never have heard of it from any man at all? You heard of it, therefore, from a woman; since men could not have seen it nor known of it. What sort of woman do you think that she must have been, O judges? What a modest woman must she have been to converse with Verres! What a pious woman, to show him a plan for robbing a temple! But it is no great wonder if those sacred ceremonies which are performed by the most extreme chastity of virgins and matrons were violated by his adultery and profligacy. What, then, are we to think? Is this the only thing that he began to desire from mere hearing, when he had never seen it himself? No, there were many other things besides; of which I will select the plundering of that most noble and ancient temple, concerning which you heard witnesses give their evidence at the former pleading. Now, I beseech you, listen to the same story once more, and attend carefully as you hitherto have done.

There is an island called Melita, O judges, separated from Sicilyby a sufficiently wide and perilous navigation, in which there is a town of the same name, to which Verres never went, though it was for three years a manufactory to him for weaving women's garments. Not far from that town, on a promontory, is an ancient temple of Juno, which was always considered so holy, that it was not only always kept inviolate and sacred in those Punic wars, which in those regions were carried on almost wholly by the naval forces, but even by the bands of pirates which ravage those seas. Moreover, it has been handed down to us by tradition, that once, when the fleet of King Masinissa was forced to put into these ports, the king's lieutenant took away some ivory teeth of an incredible size out of the temple, and carried them into Africa, and gave them to Masinissa; that at first the king was delighted with the present, but afterwards, when he heard where they had come from, he immediately sent trustworthy men in a quinquereme to take those teeth back; and that there was engraved on them in Punic characters, “that Masinissa the king had accepted them ignorantly; but that, when he knew the truth, he had taken care that they should be replaced and restored.” There was besides an immense quantity of ivory, and many ornaments, among which were some ivory victories of ancient workmanship, and wrought with exquisite skill.

Not to dwell too long on this, he took care to have all these things taken down and carried off at one swoop by means of the slaves of the Venus whom he had sent thither for that purpose. O ye immortal gods! what sort of man is it that I am accusing? Who is it that I am prosecuting according to our laws, and by this regular process? Concerning whom is it that you are going to give your judicial decision? The deputies from Melitasent by the public authority of their state, say that the shrine of Juno was plundered; that that man left nothing in that most holy temple; that that place, to which the fleets of enemies often came, where pirates are accustomed to winter almost every year, and which no pirate ever violated, no enemy ever attacked before, was so plundered by that single man, that nothing whatever was left in it. What, then, now are we to say of him as a defendant, of me as an accuser, of this tribunal? Is he proved guilty of grave crimes, or is he brought into this court on mere suspicion? Gods are proved to have been carried off, temples to have been plundered, cities to have been stripped of everything. And of those actions he has left himself no power of denying one, no plea for defending one. In every particular he is convicted by me; he is detected by the witnesses; he is overwhelmed by his own admissions; he is caught in the evident commission of guilt; and even now he remains here, and in silence recognises his own crimes as I enumerate them.

I seem to myself to have been too long occupied with one class of crime. I am aware, O judges, that I have to encounter the weariness of your ears and eyes at such a repetition of similar cases; I will, therefore, pass over many instances. But I entreat you, O judges, in the name of the immortal gods, in the name of these very gods of whose honour and worship we have been so long speaking, refresh your minds so as to attend to what I am about to mention, while I bring forward and detail to you that crime of his by which the whole province was roused, and in speaking of which you will pardon me if I appear to go back rather far, and trace the earliest recollections of the religious observances in question. The importance of the affair will not allow me to pass over the atrocity of his guilt with brevity.