[161]
He thanks the men and praises their good-will and diligence in
his behalf. He himself, inflamed with wickedness and frenzy, comes into the forum.
His eyes glared; cruelty was visible in his whole countenance. All men waited to see
what does he was going to take,—what he was going to do; when all of a
sudden he orders the man to be seized, and to be stripped and bound in the middle of
the forum, and the rods to be got ready. The miserable man cried out that he was a
Roman citizen, a citizen, also, of the municipal town of Cosa,—that he had served with Lucius
Pretius a most illustrious Roman knight, who was living as a trader at Panormus, and from whom Verres might know that
he was speaking the truth. Then Verres says that he has ascertained that he had been
sent into Sicily by the leaders of the
runaway slaves, in order to act as a spy; a matter as to which there was no witness,
no trace, nor even the slightest suspicion in the mind of any one.
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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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