In C. Verrem

And indeed I am so far moved by the other robberies and atrocities of that fellow, as to think them worthy of great reproof; but that might be sufficient for them. But in this instance I am roused to such indignation, that nothing appears to me possible to be more scandalous or more intolerable. Shall Verres adorn his house, full of adultery, full of debauchery, full of infamy, with the monuments of Africanus? Shall Verres face the memorial of that most temperate and religious man, the image of the ever virgin Diana, in that house in which the iniquities of harlots and pimps are incessantly being practised?

But is this the only monument of Africanus which you have violated? What! did you take away from the people of Tyndarisan image of Mercury most beautifully made, and placed there by the beneficence of the same Scipio? And how? O ye immortal gods! How audaciously, how infamously, how shamelessly did you do so! You have lately, judges, heard the deputies from Tyndaris, most honourable men, and the chief men of that city, say that the Mercury, which in their sacred anniversaries was worshipped among them with the extremest religious reverence, which Publius Africanus, after he had taken Carthage, had given to the Tyndaritans, not only as a monument of his victory, but as a memorial and evidence of their loyalty to and alliance with the Roman people, had been taken away by the violence, and wickedness, and arbitrary power of this man; who, when he first came to their city, in a moment, as if it were not only a becoming, but an indispensable thing to be done?—as if the senate had ordered it and the Roman people had sanctioned it,—in a moment, I say, ordered them to take the statue down and to transport it to Messana.

And as this appeared a scandalous thing to those who were present and who heard it, it was not persevered in by him during the first period of his visit; but when he departed, he ordered Sopater, their chief magistrate, whose statement you have heard, to take it down. When he refused, he threatened him violently; and then he left the city. The magistrate refers the matter to the senate; there is a violent outcry on all sides. To make my story short, some time afterwards he comes to that city again. Immediately he asks about the statue. He is answered that the senate will not allow it to be removed; that capital punishment is threatened to any one who should touch it without the orders of the senate: the impiety of removing is also urged. Then says he, “What do you mean by talking to me of impiety? or about punishment? or about the senate? I will not leave you alive; you shall be scourged to death if the statue is not given up.” Sopater with tears reports the matter to the senate a second time, and relates to them the covetousness and the threats of Verres. The senate gives Sopater no answer, but breaks up in agitation and perplexity. Sopater, being summoned by the praetor's messenger, informs him of the state of the case, and says that it is absolutely impossible.

And all these things (for I do not think that I ought to omit any particular of his impudence) were done openly in the middle of the assembly, while Verres was sitting on his chair of office, in a lofty situation. It was the depth of winter; the weather, as you heard Sopater himself state, was bitterly cold; heavy rain was falling; when that fellow orders the lictors to throw Sopater headlong down from the portico on which he himself was sitting, and to strip him naked. The command was scarcely, out of his mouth, before you might have seen him stripped and surrounded by the lictors. All thought that the unhappy and innocent man was going to be scourged. They were mistaken. Do you think that Verres would scourge without any reason an ally and friend of the Roman people? He is not so wicked. All vices are not to be found in that man; he was never cruel. He treated the man with great gentleness and clemency. In the middle of the forum there are some statues of the Marcelli, as there are in most of the other towns of Sicily; out of these he selected the statue of Caius Marcellus, whose services to that city and to the whole province were most recent and most important. On that statue he orders Sopater, a man of noble birth in his city, and at that very time invested with the chief magistracy, to be placed astride and bound to it.

What torture he suffered when he was bound naked in the open air, in the rain and in the cold, must be manifest to every body. Nor did he put an end to this insult and barbarity, till the people and the whole multitude, moved by the atrocity of his conduct and by pity for his victim, compelled the senate by their outcries to promise him that statue of Mercury. They cried out that the immortal gods themselves would avenge the act, and that in the meantime it was not fit that an innocent man should be murdered. Then the senate comes to him in a body, and promises him the statue. And so Sopater is taken down scarcely alive from the statue of Marcellus, to which he had almost become frozen. I cannot adequately accuse that man if I were to wish to do so; it requires not only genius, but an extraordinary amount of skill.

This appears to be a single crime, this of the Tyndaritan Mercury, and it is brought forward by me as a single one; but there are many crimes contained in it—only I do not know how to separate and distinguish them. It is a case of money extorted, for he took away from the allies a statue worth a large sum of money. It is a case of embezzlement, because he did not hesitate to appropriate a public statue belonging to the Roman people, taken from the spoils of the enemy, placed where it was in the name of our general. It is a case of treason, because he dared to overturn and to carry away monuments of our empire, of our glory, and of our exploits. It is a case of impiety, because he violated the most solemn principles of religion. It is a case of inhumanity, because he invented a new and extraordinary description of punishment for an innocent man, an ally and friend of our nation.