In C. Verrem

These very fathers, whom you see here, lay on the threshold, and the wretched mothers spent their nights at the door of the prison, denied the parting embrace of their children, though they prayed for nothing but to be allowed to receive their son's dying breath. The porter of the prison, the executioner of the praetor, was there; the death and terror of both allies and citizens; the lictor Sextius, to whom every groan and every agony of every one was a certain gain—“To visit him, you must give so much; to be allowed to take him food into the prison, so much.” No one refused. “What now, what will you give me to put your son to death at one blow of my axe? to save him from longer torture? to spare him repeated blows? to take care that he shall give up the ghost without any sense of pain or torture?” Even for this object money was given to the lictor.

Oh great and intolerable agony! oh terrible and bitter ill-fortune! Parents were compelled to purchase, not the life of their children, but a swiftness of execution for them. And the young men themselves also negotiated with Sextius about the same execution, and about that one blow; and at last, children entreated their parents to give money to the lictor for the sake of shortening their sufferings. Many and terrible sufferings have been invented for parents and relations; many—still death is the last of all. It shall not be. Is there any further advance that cruelty can make? One stall be found—for, when their children have been executed and slain, their bodies shall be exposed to wild beasts. If this is a miserable thing for a parent to endure, let him pay money for leave to bury him.

You heard Onasus the Segestan, a man of noble birth, say that he had paid money to Timarchides for leave to bury the naval captain, Heraclius. And this (that you may not be able to say, “Yes, the fathers come, angry at the loss of their sons,”) is stated by a man of the highest consideration, a man of the noblest birth; and he does not state it with respect to any son of his own. And as to this, who was there at Syracuse at that time, who did not hear, and who does not know that these bargains for permission to bury were made with Timarchides by the living relations of those who had been put to death? Did they not speak openly with Timarchides? Were not all the relations of all the men present? Were not the funerals of living men openly bargained for? And then, when all those matters were settled and arranged, the men are brought out of prison and tied to the stake.

Who at that time was so cruel and hard-hearted, who was so inhuman, except you alone, as not to be moved by their youth, their high birth, and their misfortunes? Who was there who did not weep? who did not feel their calamity, as if he thought that it weep; not the fortune of others alone, but the common safety of all that was at stake? They are executed. You rejoice and triumph at the universal misery; you are delighted that the witnesses of your avarice are put out of the way: you were mistaken, O Verres, you were greatly mistaken, when you thought that you could wash out the stains of your thefts and iniquities in the blood of our innocent allies. You were borne on headlong in your frenzy, when you thought that you could heal the wounds of your avarice by applying remedies of inhumanity. In truth, although those who were the witnesses of your wickedness are dead, yet their relations are wanting neither to you nor to them; yet, out of this very body of naval captains some are alive, and are present here; whom, as it seems to me, fortune saved out of that punishment of innocent men.

For this trial Philarchus the Haluntian is present, who, because be did not flee with Cleomenes, was overwhelmed by the pirates, and taken prisoner; whose misfortune was his safety, who, if he had not been taken prisoner by the pirates, would have fallen into to power of this partner of pirates. He will give his evidence, concerning the discharge of the sailors, the want of provisions, and the flight of Cleomenes. Phalargus the Centuripan is present, born in a most honourable city, and in a most honourable rank. He tells you the same thing; he differs from the other in no particular.

In the name of the immortal gods, O judges, with what feelings are you sitting them? or with what feelings are you hearing these things? Am I out of my mind, and now I grieving more than I ought amid such disasters and distresses of our allies? or does this most bitter torture and agony of innocent man affect you also with an equal sense of pain? For when I say that a Herbitan, that a Heraclean was put to death, I see before my eyes all the indignity of that misfortune. That the citizens of those states, that the population of those lands, by whom and by whose care and labour an immense quantity of corn is procured every year for the Roman people, who were brought up and educated by their parents in the hope of our paternal rule, and of justice, should have been reserved for the nefarious inhumanity of Caius Verres, and for his fatal axe!