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

Why need I now detail the whole course of your avarice which is connected with innumerable crimes? I will just mention a few which are most notorious in a lump. Did you not after they had been paid to you from the treasury leave behind you at Rome, to be put out to usury the eighteen millions of sesterces which you had obtained under pretence of its being money for your fit out as governor of a province, but which was in reality the price for which you had sold my life?¹ Did you not when the people of Apollonia had given you two hundred talents at Rome, in order, by your means, to avoid payment of their just debts,—did you not, I say, actually give up Fufidius, a Roman knight, a most accomplished man, to his debtors? Did you not when you had given up your winter quarters to your lieutenant and prefect, utterly destroy those miserable cities? which were not only drained of all their wealth, but were compelled to undergo all the unholy cruelties and excesses of your lusts. What was your method of valuing corn? or the compliment which you claimed? if, indeed, that which is extorted by violence and by fear can be called a compliment. And this conduct of yours was felt nearly equally by all, but most bitterly by the Boeotians, and Byzantines, and by the people of the Chersonesus and Thessalonica. You were the only master, you were the only valuer, you were the only seller of all the corn in the whole province for the space of three years.