[54]
But if a
man has only one of them, then the question usually asked is, not what he is inclined to
do, but what he is able to do. And if you think that the office of prosecutor ought to
be entrusted to him above all other men, to whom Caius Verres has done the greatest
injury, which do you think the judges ought to be most indignant at,—at your
having been injured by him, or at the whole province of Sicily having been harassed and ruined by him? I think you must grant
that this both is the worst thing of the two, and that it ought to be considered the
worst by every one. A flow, therefore, that the province ought to be preferred to you as
the prosecutor. For the province is prosecuting when he is pleading the cause whom the
province has adopted as the defender of her rights, the avenger of her injuries, and the
pleader of the whole cause.
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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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