In C. Verrem

But why do I ask of you what defence you are going to employ, instead of rather asking the city itself what you have done. Read the public testimony of the Liparans, and after that read how the money was given to Valentius. [The public testimony is read.] [The statement how the money was paid, extracted out of the public accounts, is read.] Was even this little state, so far removed out of your reach and out of your sight, separated from Sicily, placed on a barren and uncultivated island, turned as a sort of crown to all your other iniquities, into a source of plunder and profit to you in this matter of corn? You had given the whole island to one of your companions as a trifling present, and still were these profits from corn exacted from it as from the inland states? And therefore the men who for so many years, before you came as praetor, were in the habit of ransoming their lands from the pirates, now had a price set on themselves, and were compelled to ransom themselves from you.

What more need I say? Was not more extorted, under the name of a compliment, from the people of Tissa, a very small and poor city, but inhabited by very hard-working agriculturists and most frugal men, than the whole crop of corn which they had extracted from their land? Among them you sent as farmer Diognotus, a slave of Venus, a new class of collector altogether. Why, with such a precedent as this, are not the public slaves at Rome also entrusted with the revenues? In the second year of your praetorship the Tissans are compelled against their will to give twenty-one thousand sesterces as a compliment. In the third year they were compelled to give thirty thousand medimni of wheat to Diognotus, a slave of Venus, as a compliment! This Diognotus, who is making such vast profits out of the public revenues, has no deputy, no peculium at all. Doubt now, if you can, whether this Venereal officer of Verres received such an immense quantity of corn for himself, or exacted it for his master.

And learn this also from the public testimony of the Tissans. [The public testimony of the Tissans is read.] Is it only obscurely, O judges, that the praetor himself is the farmer, when his officers exact corn from the cities, levy money on them, take something more as a compliment for themselves than they are to pay over to the Roman people under the name of tenths? This was your idea of equity in your command—this was your idea of the dignity of the praetor, to make the slaves of Venus the lords of the Sicilian people. This was the line drawn, these were the distinctions of rank, while you were the praetor, that the cultivators of the soil were to be considered in the class of slaves, the slaves in the light of farmers of the revenue.

What more shall I say? Were not the wretched people of Amestratus, after such vast tenths had been imposed upon them, that they had nothing left for themselves, still compelled to pay money besides? The tenths are knocked down to Marcus Caesius in the presence of deputies from Amestratus and Heraclius, one of their deputies, is compelled at once to pay twenty-two thousand sesterces. What is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of this booty? of this violence? of this plundering of the allies? If Heraclius had been commissioned by his senate to purchase the tenths, he would have purchased them; if he was not, how could he pay money of his own accord? He reports to his fellow citizens that he has paid Caesius this money. Learn his report from his letters.

Read extracts from the public letters. [The public letters are read.] By what decree of the senate was this permission given to the deputy? By none. Why did he do so? He was compelled. Who says this? The whole city. Read the public testimony. [The public testimony is read.] By the same evidence you see that there was extorted from the same city in the second year a sum of money in a similar manner, and given to Sextus Vennonius. But you compel the Amestratines, needy men, after you have sold their tenths for eight hundred medimni to Banobalis, a slave of Venus, (just notice the names of the farmers,) to add more still as a compliment, than they had been sold for, though they had been sold at a high price. They gave Banobalis eight hundred medimni of wheat, and fifteen hundred sesterces. Surely that man would never have been so senseless, as to allow more corn to be given out of the domain of the Roman people to a slave of Venus than to the Roman people itself, unless all that plunder had, under the name of the slave, come in reality to himself.

The people of Petra, though their tenths had been sold at a high price, were, very much against their will, compelled to give thirty-seven thousand sesterces to Publius Naevius Turpio, a most infamous man, who was convicted of assault while Sacerdos was praetor. Did you sell the tenths so carelessly, that, when a medimnus cost fifteen sesterces, and when the tenths were sold for three thousand medimni, that is, for forty-five thousand sesterces, still three thousand sesterces could be given to the farmer as a compliment? “Oh, but I sold the tenths of that district at a high price” he boasts, forsooth, not that a compliment was given to Turpio, but that money was taken from the Petrans.

What shall I say next? The Halicyans, the settlers among whom pay tenths, themselves have their lauds free from taxes. Were not they also compelled to give to the same Turpio fifteen thousand sesterces, when their tenths had been sold for a hundred medimni? If, as you are especially anxious to do, you could prove that these compliments all went to the farmers, and that none of them reached you, still these sums, taken and extorted as they were by your violence and injustice, ought to ensure your conviction; but, as you cannot persuade any one that you were so foolish as to wish Apronius and Turpio, two slaves, to become rich at your own risk and that of your children, do you think that any one will doubt that through the instrumentality of those emissaries all this money was really procured for you?

Again, Symmachus, a slave of Venus, is sent as farmer to Segesta, a city exempt from such taxes; he brings letters from Verres, to order the cultivators to appear in a court of some other city than their own, contrary to every resolution of the senate, to all their rights and privileges, and to the Rupilian law. Hear the letters which he sent to the Segestans. [The letters of Caius Verres are read.] Now learn by one bargain made with an honourable and respected man, how this slave of Venus insulted the cultivators of the soil; for there are other instances of this sort.

There is a man of the name of Diocles, a citizen of Panormus, surnamed Phimes, an illustrious man, and of high reputation as an agriculturist, he rented a farm in the Segestan district, (for there are no traders in that place,) for six thousand sesterces; after having been assaulted by this slave of Venus, he settled with him to give him sixteen thousand, six hundred, and sixty-four sesterces. You may learn this from Verres's own accounts. [The items entered under the name of Diocles of Panormus are read.] Anneius Brocchus also, a senator, a man of a reputation, and of a virtue with which you are all acquainted, was compelled to give money also besides corn to this same Symmachus. Was such a man, a senator of the Roman people, a subject of profit to a slave of Venus, while you were praetor?

Even if you were not aware that this body excelled all others in dignity, were you not at least aware of this, that it furnished the judges? Previously, when the equestrian order furnished the judges, infamous and rapacious magistrates in the provinces were subservient to the farmers; they honoured all who were in their employ; every Roman knight whom they saw in the province they pursued with attentions and courtesies; and that conduct was not so advantageous to the guilty, as it was a hindrance to many if they had acted in any respect contrary to the advantage or inclination of that body. This sort of principle was somehow or other diligently reserved among them as if by common consent, that whoever had thought any Roman knight deserving of any affront, was to be considered by their whole order as deserving of every possible misfortune.

Did you so despise the order of senators, did you so reduce everything to the standard of your own insults and caprices, had you so deliberated and fixed it in your own mind as an invariable rule, to reject as judges every one who dwelt in Sicily, or who had been in Sicily while you were praetor, that it never occurred to you that still you must come before judges of the same order? in whose minds, even if there were no indignation from any personal injury done to themselves, still there would be this thought, that they were affronted in the affront offered to another, and that the dignity of their order was contemptuously treated and trampled on, which, O judges, appears to me not to be endured with patience, for insult has in it a sting which modest and virtuous men can with difficulty put up with.

You have plundered the Sicilians, for indeed the provincials are accustomed to obtain no revenge amid their wrongs. You have harassed the brokers, for they seldom come to Rome, and never of their own accord. You gave up a Roman knight to the ill-treatment of Apronius. To be sure; for what harm can they do you now, when they cannot be judges? What will you say when you treat senators also with the greatest violence? what else can you say but this, “Give me up that senator also, in order that the most honourable name of senator may appear to exist not only to excite the envy of the ignorant, but also to attract the insults of the worthless.”