Here will you dare to say also, “Among my judges that one is my intimate friend, that one is a friend of my father?” Is it not the case that the more acquainted or connected with you any one is, the more he is ashamed at the charges brought against you? He is your father's friend—If your father himself were your judge, what, in the name of the immortal gods, could you do when he said this to you? ldquo;You, being in a province as praetor of the Roman people, when you had to carry on a naval war, three years excused the Mamertines from supplying the ship, which by treaty they were bound to supply; by those same Mamertines a transport of the largest size was built for you at the public expense; you exacted money from the cities on the pretest of the fleet; you discharged the rowers for a bribe; when a pirate vessel had been taken by your quaestor, and by your lieutenant, you removed the captain of the pirates from every one's sight; you ventured to put to death men who were called Roman citizens, who were recognised as such by many; you dared to take to your own house pirates, and to bring the captain of the pirates into the court of justice from your own house.

You, in that splendid province, in the sight of our most faithful allies, and of most honourable Roman citizens, lay for many days together on the sea-shore in revelry and debauchery, and that at a time of the greatest alarm and danger to the province. All those days no one could find you at your own house, no one could see you in the forum; you entertained the mothers of families of our allies and friends at those banquets; among women of that sort you placed your youthful son, my grandson, in order that his father's life might furnish examples of iniquity to a time of life which is particularly unsteady and open to temptation; you, while praetor in your province, were seen in a tunic and purple cloak; you, to gratify your passion and lust, took away the command of the fleet from a lieutenant of the Roman people, and gave it to a Syracusan; your soldiers in the province of Sicily were in want of provisions and of corn; owing to your luxury and avarice, a fleet belonging to the Roman people was taken and burnt by pirates;

in your praetorship, for the first time since Syracuse was a city, did pirates sail about in that harbour, which no enemy had ever entered; moreover, you did not seek to cover these numerous and terrible disgraces of yours by any concealment on your part, nor did you seek to make men forget them by keeping silence respecting them, but you even without any cause tore the captains of the ships from the embrace of their parents, who were your own friends and connections, and hurried them to death and torture; nor, in witnessing the grief and tears of those parents, did any recollection of my name soften your heart; the blood of innocent men was not only a pleasure but also a profit to you.” If your own father were to say this to you, could you entreat pardon from him? could you dare to beg even him to forgive you?

Enough has been done by me, O judges, to satisfy the Sicilians, enough to discharge my duty and obligation to them, enough to acquit me of my promise and of the labour which I have undertaken. The remainder of the accusation, O judges, is one which I have not received from any one, but which is, if I may so say, innate in me; it is one which has not been brought to me, but which is deeply fixed and implanted in all my feelings; it is one which concerns not the safety of the allies, but the life and existence of Roman citizens, that is to say, of every one of us. And in urging this, do not, O judges, expect to hear any arguments from me, as if the matter were doubtful. Everything which I am going to say about the punishment of Roman citizens, will be so evident and notorious, that I could produce all Sicily as witnesses to prove it. For some insanity, the frequent companion of wickedness and audacity, urged on that man's unrestrained ferocity of disposition and inhuman nature to such frenzy, that he never hesitated, openly, in the presence of the whole body of citizens and settlers, to employ against Roman citizens those punishments which have been instituted only for slaves convicted of crime.

Why need I tell you how many men he has scourged? I will only say that, most briefly, O judges, while that man was praetor there was no discrimination whatever in the infliction of that sort of punishment; and, accordingly, the hands of the lictor were habitually laid on the persons of the Roman citizens, even without any actual order from Verres. Can you deny this, O Verres, that in the forum, at Lilybaeum, in the presence of a numerous body of inhabitants, Caius Servilius, a Roman citizen, an old trader of the body of settlers at Panormus, was beaten to the ground by rods and scourges before your tribunal, before your very feet? Dare first to deny this, if you can. No one was at Lilybaeum who did not see it. No one was in Sicily who did not hear of it. I assert that a Roman citizen fell down before your eyes, exhausted by the scourging of your lictors.

For what reason? O ye immortal gods!—though in asking that I am doing injury to the common cause of all the citizens, and to the privilege of citizenship, for I am asking what reason there was in the case of Servilius for this treatment, as if there could be any reason for its being legally inflicted on any Roman citizen. Pardon me this one error, O judges, for I will not in the rest of the cases ask for any reason. He had spoken rather freely of the dishonesty and worthlessness of Verres. And as soon as he was informed of this, he orders the man to Lilybaeum to give security in a prosecution instituted against him by one of the slaves of Verres. He gives security. He comes to Lilybaeum. Verres begins to compel him, though no one proceeded with any action against him, though no one made any claim on him, to be bound over in the sum of two thousand sesterces, to appear to a charge brought against him by his own lictor, in the formula,—“If he had made any profit by robbery.”—He says that he will appoint judges out of his own retinue. Servilius demurs, and entreats that he may not be proceeded against by a capital prosecution before unjust judges, and where there is no prosecutor.

While he is urging this with a loud voice, six of the most vigorous lictors surround him, men in full practice in beating and scourging men; they beat him most furiously with rods; then the lictor who was nearest to him, the man whom I have already often mentioned, Sextus, turning his stick round, began to beat the wretched man violently on the eyes. Therefore, when blood had filled his mouth and eyes, he fell down, and they, nevertheless, continued to beat him on the sides while lying on the ground, till he said at last he would give security. He, having been treated in this manner, was taken away from the place as dead, and, in a short time afterwards, he died. But that devoted servant of Venus, that man so rich in wit and politeness, erected a silver Cupid out of his property in the temple of Venus. And in this way he misused the fortunes of men to fulfil the nightly vows made by him for the accomplishment of his desires.

For why should I speak separately of all the other punishments inflicted on Roman citizens, rather than generally, and in the lump? That prison which was built at Syracuse, by that most cruel tyrant Dionysius, which is called the stone-quarries, was, under his government, the home of Roman citizens. As any one of them offended his eyes or his mind, he was instantly thrown into the stone-quarries. I see that this appears a scandalous thing to you, O judges; and I had observed that, at the former pleading, when the witnesses stated these things; for you thought that the privileges of freedom ought to be maintained, not only here, where there are tribunes of the people, where there are other magistrates, where there is a forum with many courts of justice, where there is the authority of the senate, where there is the opinion of the Roman people to hold a man in check, where the Roman people itself is present in great numbers; but, in whatever country or nation the privileges of Roman citizens are violated, you, O judges, decide that that violation concerns the common cause of freedom, and of your dignity.

Did you, O Verres, dare to confine such a number of Roman citizens in a prison built for foreigners, for wicked men, for pirates, and for enemies? Did no thoughts of this tribunal, or of the public assembly, or of this numerous multitude which I see around me, and which is now regarding you with a most hostile and inimical disposition, occur to your mind? Did not the dignity of the Roman people, though absent, did not the appearance of such a concourse as this ever present itself to your eyes or to your thoughts? Did you never think that you should have to return home to the sight of these men, that you should have to come into the forum of the Roman people, that you should have to submit yourself to the power of the laws and courts of justice?

But what, O Verres, was that passion of yours for practicing cruelty? what was your reason for undertaking so many wicked actions? It was nothing, O judges, except a new and unprecedented system of plundering. For like those men whose histories we have learnt from the poets, who are said to have occupied some bays on the sea-coast, or some promontories, or some precipitous rocks, in order to be able to murder those who had been driven to such places in their vessels, this man also looked down as an enemy over every sea, from every part of Sicily. Every ship that came from Asia, from Syria, from Tyre, from Alexandria, was immediately seized by informers and guards that he could rely upon; their crews were all thrown into the stone-quarries; their freights and merchandise carried up into the praetor's house. After a long interval there was seen to range through Sicily, not another Dionysius, not another Phalaris, (for their island has at one time or another produced many inhuman tyrants,) but a new sort of monster, endowed with all the ancient savage barbarity which is said to have formerly existed in those same districts;

for I do not think that either Scylla or Charybdis was such an enemy to sailors, as that man has been in the same waters. And in one respect he is far more to be dreaded than they, because he is girdled with more numerous and more powerful hounds than they were. He is a second Cyclops, far more savage than the first; for Verres had possession of the whole island; Polyphemus is said to have occupied only Aetna and that part of Sicily. But what pretext was alleged at the time by that man for this outrageous cruelty? The same which is now going to be stated in his defence. He used to say whenever any one came to Sicily a little better off than usual, that they were soldiers of Sertorius, and that they were flying from Dianium. Dianium was a town in Spain which had been occupied by Sertorius. They brought him presents to gain his protection from danger; some brought him Tyrian purple, others brought frankincense, perfumes, and linen robes; others gave jewels and pearls; some offered great bribes and Asiatic slaves, so that it was seen by their very goods from what place they came. They were not aware that those very things which they thought that they were employing as aids to ensure their safety, were the causes of their danger. For he would say that they had acquired those things by partnership with pirates, he would order the men themselves to be led away to the stone-quarries, he would see that their ships and their freights were diligently taken care of.

When by these practices his prison had become full of merchants, then those scenes took place which you have heard related by Lucius Suetius, a Roman knight, and a most virtuous man, and by others. The necks of Roman citizens were broken in a most infamous manner in the prison; so that very expression and form of entreaty, “I am a Roman citizen,” which has often brought to many, in the most distant countries, succour and assistance, even among the barbarians, only brought to these men a more bitter death and a more immediate execution. What is this, O Verres? What reply are you thinking of making to this? That I am telling lies? that I am inventing things? that I am exaggerating this accusation? Will you dare to say any one of these things to those men who are defending you? Give me, I pray you, the documents of the Syracusans taken from his own bosom, which, methinks, were drawn up according to his will; give me the register of the prison, which is most carefully made up, stating in what day each individual was committed to prison, when he died, how he was executed. [The documents of the Syracusans are read.]

You see that Roman citizens were thrown in crowds into the stone quarries; you see a multitude of your fellow-citizens heaped together in a most unworthy place. Look now for all the traces of their departure from that place, which are to be seen. There are none. Are they all dead of disease? If he were able to urge this in his defence, still such a defence would find credit with no one. But there is a word written in those documents, which that ignorant and profligate man never noticed, and would not have understood if he had. *)ekdikaiw/qhsan, it says that is, according to the Sicilian language, they were punished and put to death.

If any king, if any city among foreign nations, in any nation had done anything of this sort to a Roman citizen, should we not avenge that act by a public resolution? should we not prosecute our revenge by war? Could we leave such injury and insult offered the Roman name unavenged and unpunished? How many wars, and what serious ones do you think that our ancestors undertook, because Roman citizens were said to have been ill-treated, or Roman vessels detained, or Roman merchants plundered? But I am not complaining that men have been detained; I think one might endure their having been plundered; I am impeaching Verres because after their ships, their slaves, and their merchandise had been taken from them, the merchants themselves were thrown into prison—because Roman citizens were imprisoned and executed.

If I were saying this among Scythians, not before such a multitude of Roman citizens, not before the most select senators of the city, not in the forum of the Roman people,—if I were relating such numerous and bitter punishments inflicted on Roman citizens, I should move the pity of even those barbarous men. For so great is the dignity of this empire, so great is the honour in which the Roman name is held among all nations, that the exercise of such cruelty towards our citizens seems to be permitted to no one. Can I think that there is any safety or any refuge for you, when I see you hemmed in by the severity of the judges, and entangled as it were in the meshes of a net by the concourse of the Roman people here present?

If, indeed, (though I have no idea that that is possible,) you were to escape from these toils, and effect your escape by any way or any method, you will then fall into that still greater net, in which you must be caught and destroyed by me from the elevation in which I stand. For even if I were to grant to him all that he urges in his defence, yet that very defence must turn out not less injurious to him than my true accusation. For what does he urge in his defence? He says that he arrested men flying from Spain, and put them to death. Who gave you leave to do so? By what right did you do so? Who else did the same thing? How was it lawful for you to do so?

We see the forum and the porticoes full of those men, and we are contented to see them there. For the end of civil dissensions, and of the (shall I say) insanity, or destiny, or calamity in which they take their rise, is not so grievous as to make it unlawful for us to preserve the rest of our citizens in safety. That Verres there, that ancient betrayer of his consul, that transferrer See the first book of this second pleading against Verres, c. 37. of the quaestorship, that embezzler of the public money, has taken upon himself so much authority in the republic, that he would have inflicted a bitter and cruel death on all those men whom the senate, and the Roman people, and the magistrates allowed to remain in the forum, in the exercise of their rights as voters' in the city and in the republic, if fortune had brought them to any part of Sicily.

After Perperna was slain, many of the number of Sertorius's soldiers fled to Cnaeus Pompeius, that most illustrious and gallant man. Was there one of them whom he did not preserve safe and unhurt with the greatest kindness? was there one suppliant citizen to whom that invincible right hand was not stretched out as a pledge of his faith, and as a sure token of safety? Was it then so? Was death and torture appointed by you, who had never done one important service to the republic, for those who found a harbour of refuge in that man against whom they had borne arms? See what an admirable defence you have imagined for yourself. I had rather, I had rather in truth, that the truth of this defence of yours were proved to these judges and to the Roman people, than the truth of my accusation. I had rather, I say, that you were thought a foe and an enemy to that class of men than to merchants and seafaring men. For the accusation I bring against you impeaches you of excessive avarice: the defence that you make for yourself accuses you of a sort of frenzy, of savage ferocity, of unheard-of cruelty, and of almost a new proscription.

But I may not avail myself of such an advantage as that, O judges; I may not; for all Puteoli is here; merchants in crowds have come to this trial, wealthy and honourable men, who will tell you, some that their partners, some that their freedmen were plundered by that man, were thrown into prison, that some were privately murdered in prison, some publicly executed. See now how impartially I will behave to you. When I produce Publius Granius as a witness to state that his freedmen were publicly executed by you, to demand back his ship and his merchandise from you, refute him if you can; I will abandon my own witness and will take your part; I will assist you, I say, prove that those men have been with Sertorius, and that, when flying from Dianium, they were driven to Sicily. There is nothing which I would rather have you prove. For no crime can be imagined or produced against you which is worthy of a greater punishment.

I will call back the Roman knight, Lucius Flavius, if you wish; since at the previous pleading, being influenced, as your advocates are in the habit of saying, by some unusual prudence, but, (as all men are aware,) being overpowered by your own conscience, and by the authority of my witnesses, you did not put a question to any single witness. Let Flavius be asked, if you like, who Lucius Herennius was, the man who, he says, was a money-changer at Leptis; who, though he had more than a hundred Roman citizens in the body of settlers at Syracuse, who not only knew him, but defended him with their tears and with entreaties to you, was still publicly executed by you in the sight of all the Syracusans. I am very willing that this witness of mine should also be refuted, and that it should be demonstrated end proved by you that that Herennius had been one of Sertorius's soldiers.