[137]
In the name of the good faith of gods and men, who is it that I am accusing? in
whose case am I not desirous that my industry and diligence should be proved? What
is it that I sought to effect and obtain by speaking and meditating on this matter?
I have hold, I have hold I say, in the middle of the revenues of the Roman people,
in the very crops of the province of Sicily, of a thief, manifestly embezzling the whole revenue derived
from the corn, an immense sum: I have hold of him; so I say that he cannot deny it.
For what will he say? Security has been entered into for a prosecution against your
agent Apronius, in a matter in which all your fortunes are at stake—on the
charge of having been in the habit of saying that you were his partner in the
tenths. All men are waiting to see how anxious you will be about this, how you will
endeavour to give men a favourable opinion of you and of your innocence. Will you
here appoint as judges your physician, and your soothsayer, and your crier, or even
that man whom you had in your train, in case there was any affair of importance, a
judge like Cassius, Papirius Potamo, a severe man of the old equestrian school?
Scandilius began to demand judges from the body of settlers; then Verres says that
he will not entrust a trial in which his own character is at stake, to any one
except his own people. The brokers think it a scandalous thing for a man to protest
against, as unjust to himself, that form in which they transact their business. The
praetor protests against the whole province as unjust to him.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
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.