Now, O good and great Jupiter, you, whose royal present, worthy of your most splendid temple, worthy of the Capitol and of that citadel of all nations, worthy of being the gift of a king, made for you by a king, dedicated and promised to you, that man by his nefarious wickedness wrested from the hands of a monarch; you whose most holy and most beautiful image he carried away from Syracuse;—And you, O royal Juno, whose two temples, situated in two islands of our allies—at Melita and Samos—temples of the greatest sanctity and the greatest antiquity, that same man, with similar wickedness, stripped of all their presents and ornaments;—And you, O Minerva, whom he also pillaged in two of your most renowned and most venerated temples—at Athens, when he took away a great quantity of gold, and at Syracuse, when he took away everything except the roof and walls;—

And you, O Latona, O Apollo, O Diana, whose (I will not say temples, but, as the universal opinion and religious belief agrees,) ancient birthplace and divine home at Delos he plundered by a nocturnal robbery and attack;—You, also, O Apollo, whose image he carried away from Chios;—You, again and again, O Diana, whom he plundered at Perga; whose most holy image at Segesta, where it had been twice consecrated—once by their own religious gift, and a second time by the victory of Publius Africanus—he dared to take away and remove;—And you, O Mercury, whom Verres had placed in his villa, and in some private palaestra, but whom Publius Africanus had placed in a city of the allies. and in the gymnasium of the Tyndaritans, as a guardian and protector of the youth of the city;—

And you, O Hercules, whom that man endeavoured, on a stormy night, with a band of slaves properly equipped and armed, to tear down from your situation, and to carry off;—And you, O most holy mother Cybele, whom he left among the Enguini, in your most august and venerated temple, plundered to such an extent, that the name only of Africanus, and some traces of your worship thus violated, remain, but the monuments of victory and all the ornaments of the temple are no longer visible,—You, also, O you judges and witnesses of all forensic matters, and of the most important tribunals, and of the laws, and of the courts of justice,—you, placed in the most frequented place belonging to the Roman people, O Castor and Pollux, from whose temple that man, in a most wicked manner, procured gain to himself, and enormous booty;—And, O all ye gods, who, borne on sacred cars, visit the solemn assemblies of our games, whose road that fellow contrived should be adapted, not to the dignity of your religious ceremonies, but to his own profit;

—And you, O Ceres and Libera, whose sacred worship, as the opinions and religious belief of all men agree, is contained in the most important and most abstruse mysteries; you, by whom the principles of life and food, the examples of laws, customs, humanity, and refinement are said to have been given and distributed to nations and to cities; you, whose sacred rites the Roman people has received from the Greeks and adopted, and now preserves with such religious awe, both publicly and privately, that they seem not to have been introduced from other nations, but rather to nave been transmitted from hence to other nations, but which nave been polluted and violated by that man alone, in such a manner, that he had one image of Ceres (which it was impious for a man not only to touch, but even to look upon) pulled down from its place in the temple at Catina, and taken away; and another image of whom he carried away from its proper seat and home at Enna; which was a work of such beauty, that men, when they saw it, thought either that they saw Ceres herself, or an image of Ceres not wrought by human hand, but one that had fallen from heaven;—

You, again and again I implore and appeal to, most holy goddesses, who dwell around those lakes and groves of Enna, and who preside over all Sicily, which is entrusted to me to be defended; you whose invention and gift of corn, which you have distributed over the whole earth, inspires all nations and all races of men with reverence for your divine power;—And all the other gods, and all the goddesses, do I implore and entreat, against whose temples and religious worship that man, inspired by some wicked frenzy and audacity, has always waged a sacrilegious and impious war, that, if in dealing with this criminal and this cause my counsels have always tended to the safety of the allies, the dignity of the Roman people, and the maintenance of my own character for good faith; if all my cares, and vigilance, and thoughts have been directed to nothing but the discharge of my duty, and the establishment of truth, I implore them, O judges, so to influence you, that the thoughts which were mine when I undertook this cause, the good faith which has been mine in pleading it, may be yours also in deciding it.

Lastly, that, if all the actions of Caius Verres are unexampled and unheard of instances of wickedness, of audacity, of perfidy, of lust, of avarice, and of cruelty, an end worthy of such a life and such actions may, by your sentence, overtake him; and that the republic, and my own duty to it, may be content with my undertaking this one prosecution, and that I may be allowed for the future to defend the good, instead of being compelled to prosecute the infamous.