In C. Verrem

What answer will you make to me now? Unless, perhaps, you say what, although it cannot possibly be admitted as an excuse, yet must be urged in a trial for extortion, that that ship was built with your own money. Dare, at least, to say this which is necessary. Do not be afraid, O Hortensius, of my asking how it became lawful for a senator to build a ship? Those are old and dead laws, as you are accustomed to call them, which forbid it. There was such a republic here, once, O judges; there was such strictness in the tribunals, that an accuser would have thought such a transaction worthy to be classed among the most serious crimes. For what did you want of a ship? when, if you were going anywhere on account of the state, ships were provided for you at the public expense, both to convey you, and to guard you? But it is not possible for you to go anywhere on your own private account, nor to send for articles across the sea from those countries in which it is not lawful for you to have any possessions, or any dealings.

Then, why have you prepared anything contrary to the laws? This charge would have had weight in the ancient severity and dignity of the republic. Now, I not only do not accuse you on account of this offence, but I do not even reprove you with an ordinary reprimand. Lastly, did you never think that this would be discreditable to you? did you never think it would be ground for an accusation, or cause for unpopularity, to have a transport openly built for you, in a most frequented place in that province in which you had the supreme command? What did you suppose that they said who saw it? What did you suppose that they thought who heard of it? Did they think that you were going to take that vessel to Italy, empty? that you were going to let it out as a sailing boat, when you got to Rome? No one would even believe that you had in Italy any farm on the coast, and that you were preparing a merchant vessel for the purpose of moving your crops. Did you wish every man's conversation to be such as for men to say openly that you were preparing that ship to carry all your plunder from Sicily, and to go to and fro for the booty which you had left behind?

But, however, I give up and grant the whole of this, if you say that the vessel was built with your money. But, O most demented of men, are you not aware that this ground was cut from under your feet by those very friends of yours, the Mamertines themselves, in the previous pleading? For Heius, the chief man of the city,—the chief man of that deputation which was sent to utter a panegyric on you, said that the ship had been built for you by the public labour of the Mamertines, and that a Mamertine Senator had been appointed by public authority to superintend the building of it. The only thing that remains is the materials. And this you yourself compelled the Rhegians to furnish at the public expense, as they say themselves (not that you can deny it), because the Mamertines have no proper materials. If both the materials of which the vessel is built, and if those who built it, were provided by your authority, not at your expense, what, then, is the secret thing which you say was paid for with your money? Oh! but the Mamertines have no enemies respecting it in their public accounts.

In the first place, I can understand that it may be possible that they did not disburse any money out of the treasury. In fact, even the Capitol, as it was built in the time of our ancestors, was able to be built and completed by public authority, but without any public payment, workmen being pressed into the service, and a fair quota of work being exacted from each person respectively. In the next place, I see this also, (which I will prove when I produce my witnesses, from the accounts of the Mamertines themselves,) that a great deal of money was spent by that man which was entered as paid for imaginary contracts for works that never existed. For it is not at all strange that the Mamertines should in their accounts have shown a regard for that man's safety, from whom they had received the greatest benefits, and whom they had known to be much more friendly to them than he was to the Roman people. But if it is any argument that the Mamertines did not give you money, because they have not got it down in their accounts, let it be an argument also that the ship cost you nothing, because you have no entry to produce of having bought it, or having made a contract with any one to build it for you.

Oh! but you did not command the Mamertines to furnish a ship, because they are one of the confederate cities. Thank God, we have a man trained by the hands of the Fetiales; [*](The Fetiales were a college of Roman priests, who acted as the guardians of the public faith; it was their province to determine the circumstances under which satisfaction was to be demanded from, or hostilities declared against any foreign state. They were the especial arbiters of peace, of war, and of treaties. Their number was probably twenty. They were selected from the most noble families, and their office was held for life. The name is of uncertain derivation—See Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 416, in voce.) a man above all others pious and careful in all that belongs to public religion. Let all the men who have been praetors before you be given up to the Mamertines, because they have commanded them to furnish ships contrary to the provisions of the treaty. But still you, O you pious and scrupulous man, how was it that you commanded the people of Tauromenium, which is also a confederate city, to furnish a ship? Will you make any one believe that, while the case of both the states was exactly the same, the law that you administered, and the condition in which you left each, was so different, without money being the cause of the difference?

What, if I prove, O judges, that these two treaties with the two states were of such a nature, that in the case of the people of Tauromenium it was expressly provided for and guarded against in the treaty, “that they were not bound to furnish a vessel;” but that in the case of the Mamertines it was set down and written in the treaty itself, “that they were bound to furnish a vessel;” but that Verres, in opposition to both treaties, compelled the Tauromenians to furnish one, and excused the Mamertines? Can it, then, be doubtful to any one that, while Verres was praetor, that merchant-vessel was a greater assistance to the Mamertines than the treaty was to the Tauromenians? Let the treaties be read. [The treaties of the Mamertines and the Tauromenians with the Roman people are read.] By that act therefore, of kindness, as you call it—of corruption and dishonesty, as the case itself proves,—you detracted from the majesty of the republic, you diminished the reinforcements of the Roman people—you diminished their resources, acquired by the valour and wisdom of their ancestors; you destroyed their imperial rights, and the terms on which the allies became such, and all recollection of the treaty. They who by the express words of the treaty were bound to send at their own expense and risk a ship properly armed and equipped with everything necessary, even as far as the ocean if we ordered them to do so, those men bought from you for money a release from the terms of the treaty, and a release from the lights of sovereignty which we had over them, so as to be excused from even sailing in that narrow sea before their own houses and homes, from defending their own walls and harbours.

How much labour, and trouble, and money, do you suppose the Mamertines at the time of making this treaty would willingly have devoted to the object of preventing this bireme from being mentioned in it, if they could by any possibility have obtained such a favour from our ancestors? For when this heavy burden was imposed on the city, there was contained somehow or other in that treaty of alliance some badge, as it were, of slavery. That which then, when their services were recent, before the matter was finally determined, when the Roman people were in no difficulties, they could not obtain by treaty from our ancestors; that now, when they have done us no new service, after so many years,—now that it has been enforced every year by our right of sovereignty, and has been invariably observed—now, I say, when we are in great want of vessels, they have obtained from Caius Verres by bribery. Oh! but this is all that they have gained, exemption from furnishing a ship! Have the Mamertines for the last three years furnished one sailor, one soldier, to serve either in fleet or in garrison, all the time you have been praetor?

Lastly, when according to the resolution of the senate, and also according to the Terentian and Cassian law, corn was to be bought in equal proportions from all the cities of Sicily, from that light burden also, which they shared too with all the other cities, you relieved the Mamertines.—You will say that the Mamertines do not owe corn. How do not owe corn? Do you mean to say they were not bound to sell us corn? For this corn was not a contribution to be exacted, but a supply to be purchased. By your permission, then, by your interpretation of the treaty, the Mamertines were not bound to assist the Roman people, even by supplying their markets, and furnishing them with provisions.

And what city, then, was bound to supply these things? As for those who cultivate the public domains, it is settled what they are bound to furnish by the Censorian Law. Why did you exact from them anything besides that in another class of contribution? What? Do those who are liable to the payment of tenths owe anything more than a single tenth, according to the Law of Hiero? Why have you fixed in their case also how much corn they were to be bound to sell to us, that being another description of contribution? Those who are exempt undoubtedly owe nothing. But you not only exacted this from them, but even by way of making them give more than they possibly could, you added to their burden those sixty thousand modii from which you excused the Mamertines. And this is not what I say, that this was not rightly exacted from the others; what I say is, that it was a scandalous thing to excuse the Mamertines, whose case was exactly the same, and from whom all previous praetors had exacted the same contribution that they did from the rest, and had paid them for it according to the resolution of the senate, and the law. And in order to drive in this indulgence with a big nail, as one may say, he takes cognisance of the cause of the Mamertines while sitting on the bench with his assessors, and pronounces judgment, that he, according to the decision of the bench, does not demand any corn from the Mamertines.

Listen to the decree of the mercenary praetor from his own note-book; and take notice how great his gravity is in framing a degree, how great his dignity is in pronouncing it. Read the next memorandum of his decrees. [The decree, extracted from Verres's note-book, is read.] He says, “that he does this willingly,” and therefore he makes the entry in his book. What then? suppose you had not used this word “willingly,” should we, forsooth, have supposed that you made this profit unwillingly? “And by the advice of the bench;” you have heard a fair list of the assessors read to you, O judges Did it seem to you, when you heard their names, that a list of assessors to a praetor was being read, or a roll of the troop and company of a most infamous bandit?

Here are interpreters of treaties, settlers of the terms of alliances, authorities as to religious obligations! Corn was never bought in Sicily by public order, without the Mamertines being ordered to furnish their just proportion, till that fellow appointed this select and admirable bench of his, in order to get money from them, and to act up to his invariable character. Therefore, that decree had just the weight that the authority of that man ought to have, who sold a decree to those men from whom it had been his duty to buy corn. For Lucius Metellus, the moment he arrived as his successor, required corn of the Mamertines, according to the regulations and appointment of Caius Sacerdos and Sextus Peducaeus.