[47]
But this is remarkable. The Syracusans who presided over what was
called the collection of this property of Heraclius, but what was in reality the
division of it, gave in to the senate their accounts of the whole business; they
said that many pairs of goblets many silver water-ewers, much valuable embroidered
cloth, and many valuable slaves, had been presented to Verres; they stated how much
money had been given to each person by his order. The Syracusans groaned, but still
they bore it. Suddenly this item is read,—that two hundred and fifty
thousand sesterces were given to one person by command
of the praetor. A great outcry arises from every one, not only from every virtuous
man, nor from those to whom it had always seemed scandalous that the goods of a
private individual should be taken from him, by the greatest injustice, under the
name of being claimed by the people, but even the very chief instigators of the
wrong; and in some degree the partner in the rapine and plunder, began to cry out
that the man ought to have his inheritance for himself. So great an uproar arise in
the senate-house, that the people ran to see what had happened.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.