[45]
For it is
an arrogant thing, an intolerable thing, O judges, for a praetor to say to an
honourable, and rich, and well-appointed man in his province, “Sell me
those chased goblets.” For it is saying, “You do not deserve to
have things which are so beautifully made; they are better suited to a man of my
stamp.” Are you, O Verres, more worthy than Calidius? whom (not to compare
your way of life with his, for they are not to be compared, but) I will compare you
with in respect of this very dignity owing to which you make yourself out his
superior. You gave eighty thousand sesterces to
canvassing agents to procure your election as praetor; you gave three hundred
thousand to an accuser not to press hardly upon you: do you, on that account, look
down upon and despise the equestrian order? Is it on that account that it seemed to
you a scandalous thing that Calidius should have anything that you admired rather
than that you should?
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.