In C. Verrem

This was the most shameless business of all. Three hundred denarii were openly exacted (for this, forsooth, was permitted by the laws) from each censor, to be paid down for the praetors statue. There were appointed a hundred and thirty censors. They gave one sum of money for the censorship contrary to the law; these thirty-nine thousand denarii they openly paid down for the statue, in compliance with the laws. First of all, what was all that money for? Secondly, why did the censors pay it to you for your statue? I suppose there is a regular order of censors, a college of them. They are a distinct class of men! Why, it is either cities in their capacity of communities, that confer these honours, or men according to their classes, as cultivators, as merchants, as shipowners. But why to censors rather than to aediles? Is it for any service that they have done? Therefore, will you confess that these things were begged of you,—for you will not dare to say they were purchased of you;—that you granted those magistracies to men out of favour, and not with a new to the interests of the republic? And when you confess this, will any one doubt that you incurred that unpopularity held hatred among the different tribes of that province, not out of ambition, nor for the sake of doing a kindness to any one, but with the object of procuring money?

Therefore those censors did the same thing that those do in our republic, who have got offices by bribery; they took care to use their power so as to fill up again that gap in their property. The census was so taken, when you were praetor, that the affairs of no state whatever could be administered according to such a census. For they made a low return of the incomes of all the richest men, and exaggerated that of each poor man. And so in levying the taxes so heavy a burden was laid upon the common people, that even if the men themselves said nothing, the facts alone would discredit that census, as may easily be understood from the circumstances themselves. For Lucius Metellus who, after I came into Sicily for the sake of prosecuting my injuries, became on a sudden after the arrival of Letilius not only the friend of Verres, but even his relative; because he saw that that census could not possibly stand, ordered that former one to be attended to which had been when that most gallant and upright man, Sextus Peducaeus, was praetor. For at that time there were censors made according to the laws, elected by their cities, in whose case, if they did anything wrong, punishments were appointed by the law.

But when you were praetor, how could the censor either fear the law, by which he was not bound, since he had not been created by the law; or fear your reproof for having sold what he had bought of you? Let Metellus now detain my witnesses—let him compel others to praise him, as he has attempted in many instances; only let him do what he is doing. For whoever was treated by any one with such insult, with so much ignominy? Every fifth year a census is taken of all Sicily. A census was taken when Peducaeus was praetor. When the five years had elapsed in your praetorship, a census was taken again. The next year Lucius Metellus forbids any mention to be made of your census; he says that censors must be created afresh; and in the meantime he orders the census of Peducaeus to be attended to. If an enemy of yours had done this to you, although the province would have borne it with great equanimity, still it would have seemed the severe decision of an enemy. A new friend, a voluntary relation did it. For he could not do otherwise, if he wished to retain the province in its allegiance, if he wished to live himself in safety in the province.

Are you waiting to see what these men also will decide? If he had deprived you of your office, he would have treated you with less insult, than when he abrogated and annulled the things which you had done in your office. Nor did he behave in this way in that matter alone, but he had done the same in many other matters of the greatest importance, before I arrived in Sicily. For he ordered your friends, the palaestra people, to restore his property to Heraclius the Syracusan, and the people of Bidis to restore his property to Epicrates, and Appius Claudius his to his ward at Drepanum; and, if Letilius had not arrived in Sicily with letters a little too soon, in less than thirty days Metellus would have annulled your whole three years' praetorship.

And, since I have spoken of that money which the censors paid to you for your statue, it seems to me that I ought not to pass over that method of raising money, which you exacted from the cities on presence of erecting statues. For I see that the sum total of that money is very large, amounting to a hundred and twenty thousand sesterces. This much is proved by the evidence and letters of the cities. And he admits that, and indeed he cannot say otherwise. What sort of conduct then are we to think that which he denies, when these actions which he confesses are so infamous? For what do you wish to be believed? That all that money was spent in statues?—Suppose it was. Still this is by no means to be endured, that the allies should be robbed of so much money, in order that statues of a most infamous robber may be placed in every alley, where it appears scarcely possible to pass in safety.

But where in the world, or on what statues, was that enormous sum of money spent? It will be spent, you will say. Let us, forsooth, wait for the recurrence of that regular five years. If in this interval he has not spent it then at last we will impeach him for embezzlement in the article of statues. He is brought before the court as a criminal on many most important charges. We see that a hundred and twenty thousand sesterces have been taken on this one account. If you are condemned, you will not, I presume, trouble yourself about having that money spent on statues within five years. If you are acquitted, who will be so insane as to attack you in five years' time on the subject of the statues, after you have escaped from so many and such grave charges? If, therefore, this money has not been spent as yet, and if it is evident that it will not be spent, we may understand that a plan has been found out by which he may take and appropriate to himself a hundred and twenty thousand sesterces at one swoop, and by which others too, if this is sanctioned by you, may take as large sums as ever they please on similar grounds; so that we shall appear not to deter men from taking money, but, as we approve of some methods of taking money, we shall seem rather to be giving decent names to the basest actions.