In C. Verrem

What do you say, O you admirable guardian and defender of the province? Did you dare to snatch from the very jaws of death and to release slaves whom you had decided were eager to take arms and to make war in Sicily, and whom in accordance with the opinion of your colleagues on the bench you had sentenced, after they had been already delivered up to punishment after the manner of our ancestors and had been bound to the stake, in order to reserve for Roman citizens the cross which you had erected for condemned slaves? Ruined cities, when their affairs are all desperate, are often accustomed to these disastrous scenes, to have those who have been condemned restored to their original position; those who have been bound, released; those who have been banished, restored; decisions which have been given, rescinded. And when such events take place, there is no one who is not aware that that state is hastening to its fall. When such things take place, there is no one who thinks that there is any hope of safety left.

And whenever these things do take place, their effect has been to cause popular or high-born men to be relieved from punishment or exile; still, not by the very men who have passed the sentences; still, not instantly; still, not if they have been convicted of those crimes which affected the lives and property of all the citizens. Still this is an utterly unprecedented step, and of such a character as to appear credible rather from consideration of who the criminal is, than from consideration of the case itself That a man should have released slaves; that that very man who had sentenced them should release them; that he should release them, in a moment, out of the very jaws of death, that he should release slaves convicted of a crime which affected the life and existence of every free man—

O splendid general, not to be compared now to Marcus Aquillius, a most valiant man, but to the Paulli, the Scipios, and the Marii! That a man should have had such foresight at a time of such alarm and danger to the province! As he saw that the minds of all the slaves in Sicily were in an unsettled state on account of the war of the runaway slaves in Italy, what was the great terror he struck into them to prevent any one's daring to stir? He ordered them to be arrested—who would not he alarmed? He ordered their masters to plead their cause—what could be so terrible to slaves? He pronounced “That they appeared to have done....” He seems to have extinguished the rising flame by the pain and death of a few. What follows next? Scourgings, and burnings, and all those extreme agonies which are part of the punishment of condemned criminals, and which strike terror into the rest, torture and the cross? From all these punishments they are released. Who can doubt that he must have overwhelmed the minds of the slaves with the most abject fear, when they saw a praetor so good-natured as to allow the lives of men condemned of wickedness and conspiracy to be redeemed from punishment, the very executioner acting as the go-between to negotiate the terms?

What more? Did you not act in the same manner in the case of Aristodemus of Apollonia, and in that of Leon of Megara? What more? Did that unquiet state of the slaves, and that sudden suspicion of war, inspire you with any additional diligence in guarding the province, or with a new plan for acquiring most scandalous gain? When at your instigation the steward of Eumenides of Halicya, a highborn and honourable man of great wealth, was accused of some crime, you got sixty thousand sesterces from his master, and he lately explained to us, as a witness on his oath, how you managed it. From Caius Matrinius, a Roman knight, you took in his absence, while he was at Rome, a hundred thousand sesterces, because you said that his stewards and shepherds had fallen under suspicion. Lucius Flavius, the agent of Caius Matrinius, who paid you that money, deposed to this fact; Caius Matrinius himself made the same statement, and that most illustrious man, Cnaeus Lentulus the censor, who quite recently has both sent letters to you himself, and has procured others to be sent to you for the purpose of doing honour to Caius Matrinius, will prove the same thing.

What more? Is it possible to pass over the case of Apollonius, the son of Diocles, a Panormitan, whose surname is Geminus? Can anything be mentioned which is more notorious in the whole of Sicily? anything which is more scandalous? anything which is more fully proved? This man Verres, as soon as he came to Panormus, ordered to be summoned before him, and to be cited before his tribunal, in the presence of a great number of the Roman settlers in that city. Men immediately began to talk; to wonder how it was that Apollonius, a wealthy man, had so long remained free from his attacks. “He has devised some plan; he has brought some charge against him; a rich man is not summoned in a hurry by Verres without some object.” All are in the greatest state of anxiety to see what is to happen, when on a sudden Apollonius himself runs up, out of breath, with his young son; for his father, a very old man, had been for some time confined to his bed.

Verres names one of his slaves, who he said was the manager of his flocks; says that he has formed a conspiracy, and excited slaves in other households. He had actually no such slave in his family at all. He orders him to be produced instantly. Apollonius asserts that he has no slave whatever of that name. Verres orders the man to be hurried from the tribunal, and to be cast into prison. He began to cry out, while he was being hurried off, that the, unhappy man that he was, had done nothing; had committed no offence; that his money was all out at loan, that ready money he had none. While he kept making these declarations in a very numerous assembly of people, so that every one could understand that he was treated with this bitter injustice and violence because he had not given Verres money,—while, I say, he kept making these statements about his money at the top of his voice, he was thrown into prison.

See now the consistency of the praetor, and of that praetor who, now being on his trial, is not defended as a tolerable praetor, but is extolled as an admirable general. While a war of slaves was dreaded, he released condemned slaves from the same punishment which he inflicted on their masters who were not condemned. He threw into prison, under pretence of a servile war, without a trial, Apollonius, a most wealthy man, who if the runaway slaves had kindled a war in Sicily would have lost a most magnificent fortune: the slaves whom he himself, with the agreement of his assessors, decided had conspired together for the purpose of war, those, without the consent of his assessors, of his own accord, he released from all punishment.

What more shall I say? If anything was done by Apollonius to justify his being punished, shall we conduct this affair in such a manner as to impute it as a crime to the defendant, as to seek to excite ill-feeling against him, if he has judged a man rather too harshly? I will not act in so bitter a spirit. I will not adopt the usual method of accusers, so as to disparage anything which may have been done mercifully, as having been so done out of indifference; or, if anything has been punished with severity, so as to pervert that into a charge of cruelty—I will not act on that system. I will follow your decisions; I will defend your authority as long as you choose; when you yourself begin to rescind your own decrees, then cease to be angry with me, for I will contend, as I have a right to do, that he who has been condemned by his own decision ought to be condemned by the decisions of judges on their oaths.

I will not defend the cause of Apollonius, my own friend and connection, lest I should seem to be rescinding, our decision; I will say nothing of the economy, of the virtue, of the industry of the man; I will even pass over that which I have mentioned before, that his fortune was invested in such a manner, in slaves, in cattle, in country houses, in money out at loan, that there was no man to whom it would be more injurious for there to be any disturbance or war in Sicily; I will not even say this, that if Apollonius were ever so much in fault, still an honourable man of a most honourable city ought not to have been so severely punished without a trial.

I will not seek to excite any odium against you, not even out of the circumstances that, while such a man was lying in prison, in darkness, in dirt and filth, all permission to visit him was refuted by your tyrannical prohibition to his aged father, and to his youthful son. I will even pass over this, that every time that you came to Panormus during that eighteen months, (for all that time was Apollonius kept in prison,) the senate of Panormus came to you as suppliants, with the public magistrates and priests, praying and entreating you to release some time or other that miserable and innocent man from that cruel treatment. I will omit all these statements; though, were I to choose to follow them up, I could easily show by your cruelty towards others, that every channel of mercy from the judges to yourself has been long since blocked up.

All those topics I will abandon, I will spare you them. For I know beforehand what Hortensius will say in your defence. He will confess that with Verres neither the old age of Apollonius's father, nor the youth of his son, nor the tears of both, had more influence than the advantage and safety of the republic. He will say that the affairs of the republic cannot be administered without terror and severity; he will ask why the fasces are borne before the praetors, why the axes are given to them, why prisons have been built, why so many punishments have been established against the wicked by the usage of our ancestors. And when he has said all this with becoming gravity and sternness, I will ask him why Verres all of a sudden ordered this same Apollonius to be released from prison, without any fresh circumstances having been brought to light, without any defence having been made, or any trial having taken place? And I will affirm that there is so much suspicion attached to this charge, that, without any arguments of mine, I will allow the judges to form their own opinion as to what a system of plundering this was, how infamous, how scandalous, and what an immense and boundless field it opens for inordinate gain.