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.
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.
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
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.