M. Tullius Cicero, Against Verres
C. D. Yonge, Ed.

How many degrees of offence in one single act of fraud do you think will be enough, if I insist on them severally, to bring the matter to a point where he can go no further? You reject the Sicilian corn; why? because you are sending some yourself. Have you any Sicily of your own, which can supply you corn of another sort? When the senate decrees that corn he bought in Sicily, or when the people order this, this, as I imagine, is what they mean, that Sicilian corn is to be brought from Sicily. When you reject all the corn of Sicily, do you send corn to Rome from Egypt or from Syria? You reject the corn of Halesa, of Cephalaedis, of Thermae, of Amestras, of Tyndaris, of Herbita, and of many other cities. What has happened then to cause the lands of these people to bear corn of such a sort while you were praetor, as they never bore before, so that it can neither be approved of by you, nor by the Roman people; especially when the managers of the different companies had taken corn, being the tenths, from the same land, and of the same year, to Rome? What has happened that the corn which made part of the tenths was approved, and that that which was bought, though out of the same barn, was not approved of? Is there any doubt that all that rejection of corn was contrived with the object of raising money?