But this city was the Phaselis for that robber and pirate of Sicily. Hither everything was brought from all
quarters; with them it was left; whatever required to be concealed, they kept
separate and stored away. By their agency he contrived everything which he wished
put on board ship privately, and exported secretly; and in their harbour he
contrived to have a vessel of the largest size built for him to send to Italyloaded with plunder. In return for these
services, he gave them immunity from all expense, all labour, all military service,
in short, from everything. For three years they were the only people, not only in
Sicily, but, according to my opinion, in
the whole world at such a time, who enjoyed excuse, relief, freedom, and immunity
from every sort of expense, and trouble, and office.
Hence arose that Verrean festival; hence it was that he ventured to order Sextus
Cominius to be dragged before him at a banquet, at whom he attempted to throw a
goblet, whom he ordered to be seized by the throat, and to be hurried from the
banquet and thrown into a dark prison; hence came that cross, on which, in the sight
of many men, he suspended a Roman citizen; that cross which he never ventured to
erect anywhere except among that people, whom he had made sharers in all his crimes
and robberies. Do you, O
Mamertines, dare to come to praise any one? By what authority? by that which you
ought to have with the Senatorial order? by that which you ought to have with the
Roman people?
Is there any city, not only in our provinces, but in the most distant nations,
either so powerful, or so free, or so savage and uncivilized? is there any king, who
would not invite a Senator of the Roman people to his house and to his home? An
honour which is paid not only to the man, but in the first place to the Roman
people, by whose indulgence we have risen to this order, and secondly to the
authority of this order; and unless that is respected among our allies, where will
be the name and dignity of the empire among foreign nations? The Mamertines did not
give me any public invitation—when I say me, that is a trifle, but when they did not
invite a Senator of the Roman people, they withheld an honour due not to the man but
to his order. For to Tullius himself, the most splendid and magnificent house of
Cnaeus Pompeius Basilicus was opened; with whom he would have lodged even if he had
been invited by you. There was also the most honourable house of the Percennii, who
are now also called Pompeius; where Lucius my brother lodged and was received by
them with the greatest eagerness. A Senator of the Roman people, as far as depended
on you as a body, lay in your town, and passed the night in the public streets. No
other city ever did such a thing. “Yes,” say you, “for you were instituting a
prosecution against our friend.” Will you put your own interpretation on what
private business I have of my own, by diminishing the honour due to the Senate?
But I will make my complaint of this conduct, if ever the time comes that there is
any discussion concerning you among that body, which, up to this time, has been
affronted by no one but you. With what face have you presented yourself before the
eyes of the Roman people? when you have not yet pulled down that cross, which is
even now stained with the blood of a Roman citizen, which is fixed up in your city
by the harbour, and have not thrown it into the sea and purified all that place,
before you came to Rome, and before this
tribunal. On the territory of the Mamertines, connected with us by treaty, at peace
with us, is that monument of your cruelty raised. Is not your city the only one
where, when any one arrives at it from Italy, he sees the cross of a Roman citizen before he sees any friend
of the Roman people? which you are in the habit of displaying to the people of
Rhegium, whose city you envy, and to your
inhabitants, Roman citizens as they are, to make them think less of themselves, and
be less inclined to despise you, when they see the privileges of our citizenship
extinguished by such a punishment.
But you say you bought these things? What? did you forget to purchase of the same
Heius that Attalic Attalus, king of Pergamus, had been the inventor of weaving gold
thread into tapestry work, and therefore tapestry with gold threads interwoven in
it was called by his name.tapestry, celebrated over the whole of Sicily? You might have bought them in the same way
as you did the statues. For what did you do? Did you wish to spare the account
books? This escaped the notice of that stupid man; he thought that what he stole
from the wardrobe would be less notorious than what he had stolen from the private
chapel. But how did he get it? I cannot relate it more plainly than Heius himself
related it before you. When I asked, whether any other part of his property had come
to Verres, he answered that he had sent him orders to send the tapestry to
Agrigentumto him. I asked whether he had
sent it. He replied as he must, that is, that he had been obedient to the praetor;
that he had sent it.—I asked whether it had arrived at Agrigentum; he said it had arrived.—I asked in what condition it had
returned; he said it had not returned yet.—There was a laugh and a murmur from all
the people.
Did it never occur to you in this instance to order him to make an entry in his
books, that he had sold you this tapestry too, for six thousand five hundred
sesterces? Did you fear that your debts would
increase, if these things were to cost you six thousand five hundred sesterces, which you could easily sell for two hundred
thousand? It was worth that, believe me. You would have been able to defend yourself
if you had given that sum for it. No one would then have asked how much it was
worth. If you could only prove that you had bought it, you could easily make your
cause and your conduct appear reasonable to any one. But as it is, you have no way
of getting out of your difficulty about the tapestry. What shall I say next?
Did you take away by force some splendid harness, which is said to have belonged to
King Hiero, from Philarchus of Centuripa, a wealthy and high-born man, or did you
buy it of him? When I was in Sicily, this
is what I heard from the Centuripans and from everybody else, for the case was very
notorious; people said that you had taken away this harness from Philarchus of
Centuripa, and other very beautiful harness from Aristus of Panormus, and a third set from Gratippus of
Tyndarus. Indeed, if Philarchus had sold it to you, you would not, after the
prosecution was instituted against you, have promised to restore it. But because you
saw that many people knew of it, you thought that if you restored it to him, you
would only have so much the less, but the original transaction would be proved
against you nevertheless; and so you did not restore it. Philarchus said in his
evidence, that when he became acquainted with this disease of yours, as your friends
call it, he wished to conceal from you the knowledge of the existence of this
harness; that when he was summoned by you, he said that he had not got any; and
indeed, that he had removed them to another person's house, that they might not be
found; but that your instinct was so great, that you saw them by the assistance of
the very man in whose custody they were deposited; that then he could not deny that
you had found him out, and so that the harness was taken from him against his will,
and without any payment.
Now, O judges, it is worth your while to know how he was accustomed to find and
trace out all these things. There are two brothers, citizens of Cibyra, Tlepolemus and Hiero, one of whom, I
believe, was accustomed to model in wax, the other was a painter. I fancy these men,
as they had become suspected by their fellow-citizens of having plundered the temple
of Apollo at Cibyra, fearing a trial and
the punishment of the law, had fled from their homes. As they had known that Verres
was a great connoisseur of such works as theirs, at the time that he, as you learnt
from the witnesses, came to Cibyrawith
fictitious bills of exchange, they, when flying from their homes as exiles, came to
him when he was in Asia. He has kept them
with him ever since that time; and in the robberies he committed, and in the booty
he acquired during his lieutenancy, he greatly availed himself of their assistance
and their advice.