[55]
Oh, but Caius Verres has done you such an injury as might afflict the minds of all the
rest of the Sicilians also, though the grievance was felt only by another. Nothing of
the sort. For I think it is material also to this argument to consider what sort of
injury is alleged and brought forward as the cause of your enmity. Allow me to relate
it. For he indeed, unless he is wholly destitute of sense, will never say what it is.
There is a woman of the name of Agonis, a Lilybaean, a freedwoman of Venus Erycina; a
woman who before this man was quaestor was notoriously well off and rich. From her some
prefect of Antonius's 1 carried off
some musical slaves whom he said he wished to use in his fleet. Then she, as is the
custom in Sicily for all the slaves of
Venus, and all those who have procured their
emancipation from her, in order to hinder the designs of the prefect, by the scruples
which the name of Venus would raise, said that
she and all her property belonged to Venus.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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