In C. Verrem

There is a temple of the mighty mother Cybele at Enguinum, for I must new not only mention each instance with the greatest brevity, but I must even pass over a great many, in order to come to the greater and more remarkable thefts and atrocities of this sort which this man has committed. In this temple that same Publius Scipio, a man excelling in every possible good quality, had placed breastplates and helmets of brass of Corinthian workmanship, and some huge ewers of a similar description, and wrought with the same exquisite skill, and had inscribed his own name upon them. Why should I make any more statements or utter any further complaints about that man's conduct? He took away, O judges, every one of those things. He left nothing in that most holy temple except the traces of the religion he had trampled on, and the name of Publius Scipio. The spoils won from the enemy, the memorials of our commanders, the ornaments and decorations of our temples, will hereafter, when these illustrious names are lost, be reckoned in the furniture and appointments of Caius Verres.

Are you, forsooth, the only man who delights in Corinthian vases? Are you the best judge in the world of the mixture of that celebrated bronze, and of the delicate tracery of that work? Did not the great Scipio, that most learned and accomplished mall, under stand it too? But do you, a man without one single virtue, without education, without natural ability, and without any information, understand them and value them? Beware lest he be seen to have surpassed you and those other men who wished to be thought so elegant, not only in temperance, but in judgment and taste; for it was because he thoroughly understood how beautiful they were, that he thought that they were made, not for the luxury of men, but for the ornamenting of temples and cities, in order that they might appear to our posterity to be holy and sacred monuments.

Listen also, O judges, to the man's singular covetousness, audacity and madness, especially in polluting those sacred things, which not only may not be touched with the hands, but which may not be violated even in thought. There is a shrine of Ceresamong the Catenans of the same holy nature as the one at home, and worshipped as the goddess is worshipped among foreign nations, and in almost every country in the world. In the inmost part of that shrine there was an extremely ancient statue of Ceres, as to which men were not only ignorant of what sort it was, but even of its existence. For the entrance into that shrine does not belong to men, the sacred ceremonies are accustomed to be performed by women and virgins. Verres's slaves stole this statue by night out of that most holy and most ancient temple. The next day the priestesses of Ceres, and the female attendants of that temple, women of great age, noble and of proved virtue, report the affair to their magistrates. It appeared to all a most bitter, and scandalous, and miserable business.

Then that man, influenced by the atrocity of the action, in order that all suspicion of that crime might be removed from himself, employs some one connected with him by ties of hospitality to find a man whom he might accuse of having done it, and bids him take care that he be convicted of the accusation, so that he himself might not be subject to the charge. The matter is not delayed. For when he had departed from Catina, an information is laid against a certain slave. He is accused; false witnesses are suborned against him; the whole senate sits in judgment on the affair, according to the laws of the Catenans. The priestesses are summoned; they are examined secretly in the senate-house, and asked what had been done, and how they thought that the statue had been carried off. They answer that the servants of the praetor had been seen in the temple. The matter, which previously had not been very obscure, began to be clear enough by the evidence of the priestesses. The judges deliberate; the innocent slave is acquitted by every vote, in order that you may the more easily be able to condemn this man by all your votes.

For what is it that you ask, O Verres? What do you hope for? What do you expect? What god or man do you think will come to your assistance? Did you send slaves to that place to plunder a temple, where it was not lawful for free citizens to go, not even for the purpose of praying? Did you not hesitate to lay violent hands on those things from which the laws of religion enjoined you to keep even your eyes? Although it was not even because you were charmed by the eye that you were led into this wicked and nefarious conduct; for you coveted what you had never seen. You took a violent fancy, I say, to that which you had not previously beheld. From your ears did you conceive this covetousness, so violent that no fear, no religious scruple, no power of the gods, no regard for the opinion of men could restrain it.

Oh! but you had heard of it, I suppose, from some good man, from some good authority. How could you have done that, when you could never have heard of it from any man at all? You heard of it, therefore, from a woman; since men could not have seen it nor known of it. What sort of woman do you think that she must have been, O judges? What a modest woman must she have been to converse with Verres! What a pious woman, to show him a plan for robbing a temple! But it is no great wonder if those sacred ceremonies which are performed by the most extreme chastity of virgins and matrons were violated by his adultery and profligacy. What, then, are we to think? Is this the only thing that he began to desire from mere hearing, when he had never seen it himself? No, there were many other things besides; of which I will select the plundering of that most noble and ancient temple, concerning which you heard witnesses give their evidence at the former pleading. Now, I beseech you, listen to the same story once more, and attend carefully as you hitherto have done.

There is an island called Melita, O judges, separated from Sicilyby a sufficiently wide and perilous navigation, in which there is a town of the same name, to which Verres never went, though it was for three years a manufactory to him for weaving women's garments. Not far from that town, on a promontory, is an ancient temple of Juno, which was always considered so holy, that it was not only always kept inviolate and sacred in those Punic wars, which in those regions were carried on almost wholly by the naval forces, but even by the bands of pirates which ravage those seas. Moreover, it has been handed down to us by tradition, that once, when the fleet of King Masinissa was forced to put into these ports, the king's lieutenant took away some ivory teeth of an incredible size out of the temple, and carried them into Africa, and gave them to Masinissa; that at first the king was delighted with the present, but afterwards, when he heard where they had come from, he immediately sent trustworthy men in a quinquereme to take those teeth back; and that there was engraved on them in Punic characters, “that Masinissa the king had accepted them ignorantly; but that, when he knew the truth, he had taken care that they should be replaced and restored.” There was besides an immense quantity of ivory, and many ornaments, among which were some ivory victories of ancient workmanship, and wrought with exquisite skill.

Not to dwell too long on this, he took care to have all these things taken down and carried off at one swoop by means of the slaves of the Venus whom he had sent thither for that purpose. O ye immortal gods! what sort of man is it that I am accusing? Who is it that I am prosecuting according to our laws, and by this regular process? Concerning whom is it that you are going to give your judicial decision? The deputies from Melitasent by the public authority of their state, say that the shrine of Juno was plundered; that that man left nothing in that most holy temple; that that place, to which the fleets of enemies often came, where pirates are accustomed to winter almost every year, and which no pirate ever violated, no enemy ever attacked before, was so plundered by that single man, that nothing whatever was left in it. What, then, now are we to say of him as a defendant, of me as an accuser, of this tribunal? Is he proved guilty of grave crimes, or is he brought into this court on mere suspicion? Gods are proved to have been carried off, temples to have been plundered, cities to have been stripped of everything. And of those actions he has left himself no power of denying one, no plea for defending one. In every particular he is convicted by me; he is detected by the witnesses; he is overwhelmed by his own admissions; he is caught in the evident commission of guilt; and even now he remains here, and in silence recognises his own crimes as I enumerate them.

I seem to myself to have been too long occupied with one class of crime. I am aware, O judges, that I have to encounter the weariness of your ears and eyes at such a repetition of similar cases; I will, therefore, pass over many instances. But I entreat you, O judges, in the name of the immortal gods, in the name of these very gods of whose honour and worship we have been so long speaking, refresh your minds so as to attend to what I am about to mention, while I bring forward and detail to you that crime of his by which the whole province was roused, and in speaking of which you will pardon me if I appear to go back rather far, and trace the earliest recollections of the religious observances in question. The importance of the affair will not allow me to pass over the atrocity of his guilt with brevity.

It is an old opinion, O judges, which can be proved from the most ancient records and monuments of the Greeks, that the whole island of Sicilywas consecrated to Ceresand Libera. Not only did all other nations think so but the Sicilians themselves were so convinced of it, that it appeared a deeply rooted and innate belief in their minds. For they believe that these goddesses were born in these districts, and that corn was first discovered in this land, and that Libera was carried off, the same goddess whom they call Proserpina, from a grove in the territory of Enna, a place which, because it is situated in the centre of the island, is called the navel of Sicily. And when Cereswished to seek her and trace her out, she is said to have lit her torches at those flames which burst out at the summit of Aetna, and carrying these torches before her, to have wandered over the whole earth.

But Enna, where those things which I am speaking of are said to have been done, is in a high and lofty situation, on the top of which is a large level plain, and springs of water which are never dry. And the whole of the plain is cut off and separated, so as to be difficult of approach. Around it are many lakes and groves, and beautiful flowers at every season of the year; so that the place itself appears to testify to that abduction of the virgin which we have heard of from our boyhood. [*](We have the same advantage as, or rather greater advantages than Cicero in this respect, for we have heard the story from our boyhood told far more beautifully than any Sicilian ever imagined it. See Ovid Fasti, iv. 419.)Near it is a cave turned towards the north, of unfathomable depth, where they say that Father Pluto suddenly rose out of the earth in his chariot, and carried the virgin off from that spot, and that on a sudden, at no great distance from Syracuse, he went down beneath the earth, and that immediately a lake sprang up in that place; and there to this day the Syracusans celebrate anniversary festivals with a most numerous assemblage of both sexes On account of the antiquity of this belief, because in those places the traces and almost the cradles of those gods are found, the worship of Ceresof Ennaprevails to a wonderful extent, both in private and in public over all Sicily. In truth, many prodigies often attest her influence and divine powers. Her present help is often brought to many in critical circumstances, so that this island appears not only to be loved, but also to be watched over and protected by her.