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Who at that time was so cruel and hard-hearted, who was so inhuman, except you
alone, as not to be moved by their youth, their high birth, and their misfortunes?
Who was there who did not weep? who did not feel their calamity, as if he thought
that it weep; not the fortune of others alone, but the common safety of all that was
at stake? They are executed. You rejoice and triumph at the universal misery; you
are delighted that the witnesses of your avarice are put out of the way: you were
mistaken, O Verres, you were greatly mistaken, when you thought that you could wash
out the stains of your thefts and iniquities in the blood of our innocent allies.
You were borne on headlong in your frenzy, when you thought that you could heal the
wounds of your avarice by applying remedies of inhumanity. In truth, although those
who were the witnesses of your wickedness are dead, yet their relations are wanting
neither to you nor to them; yet, out of this very body of naval captains some are
alive, and are present here; whom, as it seems to me, fortune saved out of that
punishment of innocent men.
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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