Against Verres. Marcus Tullius Cicero

involved as they were in the public injury? Ought you not to have brought the cause before the senate? to have complained of such atrocious injuries? to have taken care that those men who had excited the populace should be summoned by the letters of the consuls? ⁸⁵Lately, when Marcus Aurelius Scaurus made the demand, because he said that he as quaestor had been prevented by force at Ephesus from taking his servant out of the temple of Diana, who had taken refuge in that asylum, Pericles, an Ephesian, a most noble man, was summoned to Rome, because he was accused of having been the author of that wrong. If you had stated to the senate that you, a lieutenant, had been so treated at Lampsacus, that your companions were wounded, your lictor slain, you yourself surrounded and nearly burnt, and that the ringleaders and principal actors and chiefs in that transaction were Themistagoras and Thessalus, who, you write, were so, who would not have been moved? Who would not have thought that he was taking care of himself in chastising the injury which had been done to you? Who would not have thought that not only your cause but that the common safety was at stake in that matter? In truth the name of lieutenant^[10] ought to be such as to pass in safety not only among the laws of allies, but even amid the arms of enemies.

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      ⁸⁶This crime committed at Lampsacus is very great; a crime of lust and of the most infamous desires. Listen now to a tale of avarice, but little less iniquitous of its sort. He demanded of the Milesians a ship to attend him to Myndus as a guard. They immediately gave him a light vessel, a beautiful one of its class, splendidly adorned and armed. With this guard he went to Myndus. For, as to the wool being public property which he carried off from the Milesians,—as for his extravagance on his arrival,—as for his insults and injuries offered to the Milesian magistrates, although they might be stated not only truly, but also with vehemence and with indignation, still I shall pass them all over, and reserve them for another time to be proved by evidence. At present listen to this which cannot possibly be suppressed, and at the same time cannot be mentioned with proper dignity. ⁸⁷He orders the soldiers and the crew to return from Myndus to Miletus on foot; he himself sold that beautiful light vessel, picked out of the ten ships of the Milesians, to Lucius Magius and Lucius Rabius, who were living at Myndus. These are the men whom the senate lately voted should be considered in the number of enemies. In this vessel they sailed to all the enemies of the Roman people, from Dianium, which is in Spain, to Senope, which is in Pontus. O ye immortal gods! the incredible avarice, the unheard-of audacity of such a proceeding! Did you dare to sell a ship of the Roman fleet, which the city of Miletus had assigned to you to attend upon you? If the magnitude of the crime, if the opinion of men, had no influence on you, did this, too, never occur to you,—that so illustrious and so noble a city would he a witness against you of this most wicked theft, or rather of this most abominable robbery? ⁸⁸Or because at that time Cnaeus Dolabella attempted, at your request, to punish the man who had been in command of that vessel, and who had reported to the Milesians what had been done, and had ordered his report, which according to their laws had been inserted in the public registers, to be erased, did you, on that account, fancy that you had escaped from that accusation?

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That opinion of yours has much deceived you, and on many occasions. For you have always fancied, and especially in Sicily, that you had taken sufficient precautions for your defence, when you had either forbidden anything to be mentioned in the public records, or had compelled that which had been so mentioned to be erased. How vain that step is, although in the former pleading you learnt it in the instance of many cities of Sicily, yet you may learn it again in the case of this city. The citizens are, indeed, obedient to the command, as long as they are present who give the command. As soon as they are gone, they not only set down that which they have been forbidden to set down, but they also write down the reason why it was not entered in the public records at the time. ⁸⁹Those documents remain at Miletus, and will remain as long as that city lasts. For the Milesian people had built ten ships by command of Lucius Marcus out of the taxes imposed by the Roman people, as the other cities of Asia had done, each in proportion to its amount of taxation Wherefore they entered on their public records, that one of the ten had been lost, not by the sudden attack of pirates, but by the robbery of a lieutenant,—not by the violence of a storm, but by this horrible tempest which fell upon the allies. ⁹⁰There are at Rome Milesian ambassadors, most noble men and the chief men of the city, who, although they are waiting with apprehension for the month of February^[11] and the time of the consuls elect, yet they not only do not dare to deny such an atrocious action when they are asked about it, but they cannot forbear speaking of it unasked if they are present. They will tell you, I say, being induced by regard to religion, and by their fear of their laws at home, what has become of that vessel. They will declare to you that Caius Verres has behaved himself like a most infamous pirate in regard to that fleet which was built against pirates.

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When Caius Malleolus, the quaestor of Dolabella, had been slain, he thought that two inheritances had come to him; one, that of his quaestorian office, for he was immediately desired by Dolabella to be his proquaestor; the other, of a guardianship, for as he was appointed guardian of the young Malleolus, he immediately invaded his property. [91] For Malleolus had started for his province so splendidly equipped that he left actually nothing behind him at home. Besides, he had put out a great deal of money among the provincials, and had taken bills from them. He had taken with him a great quantity of admirably embossed silver plate. For he, too, was a companion of that fellow Verres in that disease and in that covetousness; and so he left behind him at his death a great quantity of silver plate, a great household of slaves, many workmen, many beautiful youths. That fellow seized all the plate that took his fancy; carried off all the slaves he chose; carried off the wines and all the other things which are procured most easily in Asia, which he had left behind: the rest he sold, and took the money himself. [92] Though it was plain that he had received two million, five hundred thousand sesterces, when he returned to Rome, he rendered no account to his ward, none to his ward's mother, none to his fellow-guardians; though he had the servants of his ward, who were workmen, at home, and beautiful and accomplished slaves about him, he said that they were his own,--that he had bought them. When the mother and grandmother of the boy repeatedly asked him if he would neither restore the mosey nor render an account, at least to say how much money of Malleolus's he had received, being wearied with their importunities, at last he said, a million of sesterces. Then on the last line of his accounts, he put in a name at the bottom by a most shameless erasure; he put down that he had paid to Chrysogonus, a slave, six hundred thousand sesterces which he had received for his ward Malleolus. How out of a million they became six hundred thousand; how the six hundred thousand tallied so exactly with other accounts,--that of the money belonging to Cnaeus Carbo there was also a remainder of six hundred thousand sesterces; and how it was that they were put down as paid to Chrysogonus; why that name occurred on the bottom line of the page, and after an erasure, you will judge. [93] Yet, though he had entered in his accounts six hundred thousand sesterces as having been received, he has never paid over fifty thousand. Of the slaves, since he has been prosecuted in this manner, some have been restored, some are detained even now. All the gains which they had made, and all their substitutes^[12] are detained.

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      This is that fellow's splendid guardianship. See to whom you are entrusting your children! Behold how great is the recollection of a dead companion! Behold how great is the fear of the opinion of the living! When all Asia had given herself up to you to be harassed and plundered, when all Pamphylia was placed at