[39]
Why need I demonstrate the licentious wickedness of that Verres, in the
administration of justice? Who of you is not aware of it, from his administration in
this city? Who ever, while he was praetor, could obtain anything by law against the
will of Chelidon? The province did not corrupt that man, as it has corrupted some;
he was the same man that he had been at Rome. When Heraclius said, what all men well knew, that there was an
established form of law among the Sicilians by which causes between them were to be
tried; that there was the Rupilian law, which Publius Rupilius, the consul, had
enacted, with the advice of ten chosen commissioners; that every praetor and consul
in Sicily had always observed this law. He
said that he should not appoint judges according to the provisions of the Rupilian
law. He appointed five judges who were most agreeable to himself.
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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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