[111]
They did not complain of the absolute way in which the tenths
were levied, nor of the plunder of property, nor of the iniquity of tribunals, nor
of that man's unhallowed lusts, nor of his violence, nor of the insults by which
they had been oppressed and overwhelmed. It was the divinity of Ceres, the antiquity of their sacred observances,
the holy veneration due to their temple, which they wished should have atonement
made to them by the punishment of that most atrocious and audacious man. They said
that they could endure everything else, that to everything else they were
indifferent. This indignation of theirs was so great, that you might suppose that
Verres, like another king of hell, had come to Enna and had carried off, not Proserpina, but Ceres herself. And, in truth, that city does not
appear to be a city, but a shrine of Ceres.
The people of Enna think that Ceres dwells among them; so that they appear to me
not to be citizens of that city, but to be all priests, to be all ministers and
officers of Ceres.
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.