In C. Verrem

What is the case? A wager is offered about a matter affecting your position as a free citizen, and your fortunes. Do you sit still and say nothing? do not you follow up the matter? do not you persevere? do not you ask to whom Apronius said it? who heard him? whence it arose? how it was stated to have happened If any one had whispered in your ear, and told you that Apronius was in the habit of saying that you were his partner, you ought to have been roused, to have summoned Apronius, and not to have been satisfied yourself with him, till you had satisfied the opinion of others with respect to yourself. But when in the crowded forum, in a great concourse of people, this charge was urged, in word and presence indeed, against Apronius, but in reality against you, could you ever have received such a blow in silence, unless you had decided that, say what you would in so evident a case, you would only make the matter worse?

Many men have dismissed quaestors, lieutenants, prefects, and tribunes, and ordered them to leave the province, because they thought that their own reputation was being injured through their misconduct, or because they considered that they were behaving ill in some particular. Would you never have addressed Apronius, a man scarcely a free man, profligate, abandoned, infamous, who could not preserve, I will not say an honest mind, but not even a pure soul, with even one harsh word, and that too when smarting under disgrace and insult yourself? And moreover, the respect due to a partnership would not have been so sacred in your eyes as to make you indifferent to the danger you were in, if you had not seen the matter was so well known and so notorious to every one.

Publius Scandilius, a Roman knight, whom you are all acquainted with, did afterwards adopt the same legal proceedings against this same Apronius respecting that partnership, which Rubrius had wished to adopt. He urged them on; he pressed it, he gave him no respite; security was given to the amount of five thousand sesterces; Scandilius began to demand recuperators or a judge. Does not this wicked praetor seem to be hemmed in now within sufficiently narrow bounds in his own province, yes, and even on his own throne and tribunal; so that he must either while present and sitting on the bench allow a trial to proceed affecting his own liberty, or else confess that he must be convicted by every tribunal in the world? The trial is on this formula, “that Apronius says that you are his partner in the matter of the tenths.” The province is yours; you are present, judgment is demanded from you yourself. What do you do? What do you decree? You say that you will assign judges. You do well; though where will there be found judges of such courage as to dare, in his province, when the praetor himself is present, to decide in a manner not only contrary to his with, but adverse even to his fortunes?

However, be it so; the case is evident; there was no one who did not say that he had heard this distinctly; all the most respectable men were most undoubted witnesses of it; there was no one in all Sicily who did not know that the tenths belonged to the praetor, no one who had not heard Apronius frequently say so; moreover, there was a fine body of settlers at Syracuse, many Roman knights, men of the highest consideration, out of which number the judges must be selected, who could not possibly decide in any other manner. Scandilius does not cease to demand judges; then that innocent man, who was so eager to efface that suspicion, and to remove it from himself, says that he will assign judges from his own retinue.

In the name of the good faith of gods and men, who is it that I am accusing? in whose case am I not desirous that my industry and diligence should be proved? What is it that I sought to effect and obtain by speaking and meditating on this matter? I have hold, I have hold I say, in the middle of the revenues of the Roman people, in the very crops of the province of Sicily, of a thief, manifestly embezzling the whole revenue derived from the corn, an immense sum: I have hold of him; so I say that he cannot deny it. For what will he say? Security has been entered into for a prosecution against your agent Apronius, in a matter in which all your fortunes are at stake—on the charge of having been in the habit of saying that you were his partner in the tenths. All men are waiting to see how anxious you will be about this, how you will endeavour to give men a favourable opinion of you and of your innocence. Will you here appoint as judges your physician, and your soothsayer, and your crier, or even that man whom you had in your train, in case there was any affair of importance, a judge like Cassius, Papirius Potamo, a severe man of the old equestrian school? Scandilius began to demand judges from the body of settlers; then Verres says that he will not entrust a trial in which his own character is at stake, to any one except his own people. The brokers think it a scandalous thing for a man to protest against, as unjust to himself, that form in which they transact their business. The praetor protests against the whole province as unjust to him.

Oh, unexampled impudence! Does he demand to be acquitted at Rome, who has decided in his own province that it is impossible that he should be acquitted? who thinks that money will have a greater influence over senators most carefully chosen, than fear will over three judges? But Scandilius says that he will not say a word before a judge like Artemidorus, and still he presses the matter on, and loads you with favourable conditions, if you choose to avail yourself of them. If you decide that, in the whole province of Sicily, no capable judge or recuperator can be found, he requires of you to refer the matter to Rome; and on this you exclaim that the man is a dishonest man, for demanding a trial in which your character is at stake to take place in a place where he knows that you are unpopular.

You say you will not send the case to Rome. You say that you will not appoint judges out of the body of settlers; you put forward your own retinue. Scandilius says that he shall abandon the whole affair for the present, and return at his own time. What do you say to that? what do you do? you compel Scandilius to do what? to prosecute the matter regularly? In a shameless manner you put an end to the long-expected trial of your character; you do not do that—what do you do, then?

Do you permit Apronius to select what judges he chooses out of your retinue? It is a scandalous thing that you should give one of the parties a power of selecting judges from that worthless crew, rather than give both a power of rejecting judges from a respectable class. You do neither of those things—what then? Is there anything more abominable that can be done? Yes; for he compels Scandilius to give and pay over that five thousand sesterces to Apronius. What neater thing could be done by a praetor desirous of a fair reputation,—one who was anxious to repel from himself all suspicion, and to deliver himself from infamy? He had been a common topic of conversation, of reproach, of abuse. A worthless and debauched man had been in the habit of saying that the praetor was his partner. The master had come before the courts, had come to trial; he, upright and innocent man that he was, had an opportunity, by punishing Apronius, of relieving himself from the most serious disgrace. What punishment does he devise? what penalty for Apronius? He compels Scandilius to pay to Apronius five thousand sesterces, as reward and wages for his unprecedented rascality, his audacity, and his proclamation of this wicked partnership.

What difference did it make, O most audacious man, whether you made this decree, or whether you yourself made that profession and declaration concerning yourself which Apronius was in the habit of making? The man whom, if there had been shame, yes, if there had even been any fear in you, you ought not to have let go without punishment, you could not allow to come off without a reward. You might see the truth in every case, O judges, from this single affair of Scandilius. First of all, that this charge about the partnership in the tenths was not cooked up at Rome, was not invented by the accuser; it was not (as we are accustomed sometimes to say in making a defence for a man) a domestic or back-stairs accusation; it was not originated in a time of your danger, but it was an old charge, bruited about long ago, when you were praetor, not made up at Rome by your enemies, but brought to Rome from the province.

At the same time his great favour to Apronius may be clearly seen; also the, I will not say confession, but the boast of Apronius, about him. Besides all this, you can rake as clearly proved this first, that, in his own province, he would not entrust a trim in which his reputation was at stake, to any one out of his own retinue. Is there any judge who has not been convinced, from the very beginning of my accusation respecting the collection of tenths, that he had made an attack on the property and fortunes of the cultivators of the soil? Who is there who did not at once decide, from what I then proved, that he had sold the tenths under a law quite novel, and, therefore, no law at all, contrary to the usage and established regulations of all his predecessors?

But even if I had not such judges as I have, such impartial, such careful, such conscientious judges, is there any one whatever who has not long ago formed his opinion and his judgment from the magnitude of the injuries done, the dishonesty of the decrees, the iniquity of the tribunals? Even although a man may be somewhat careless in judging,—somewhat indifferent to the laws, to his duty to the republic, to our allies and friends, what then? Can even such a man doubt of the dishonesty of that man, when he is aware that such vast gains were made,—such iniquitous compromises extorted by violence and terror?—when he knows that cities were compelled by violence and imperious commands, by the fear of scourges and death, to give such great rewards, not only to Apronius and to men like him, but even to the slaves of Venus?

But if any one is but little influenced by the injuries done to our allies,—if there be any one who is not moved by the flight, the calamities, the banishment, and the suicides of the cultivators of the soil; still I cannot doubt that the man who knows, both from the documents of the cities and the letter of Lucius Metellus, that Sicily has been laid waste and the farms deserted, must decide that it is quite impossible that any other than the severest judgment should be passed on that man. Will there be any one who can conceal from himself, or be indifferent to these facts? I have brought before you trials commenced respecting the partnership in the tenths, but prevented by that man from being brought to a decision. What is there that any one can possibly desire plainer than this? I have no doubt that I have satisfied you, O judges. But I will go further; not, indeed, in order that this may be proved more completely to your satisfaction than I feel sure that it already is, but that he may at last give over his impudence,—may cease at Last to believe that he can purchase these things which he himself was always ready to sell his good faith, his oath, truth, duty, and religion;—that his friends may cease to keep continually saying things which may be injury, a stain, and odium, and infamy to all of us.