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That which was above all things to be desired, O judges, and which above all things was calculated
to have the greatest influence toward allaying the unpopularity of your order, and putting
an end to the discredit into which your judicial decisions have fallen, appears to have been
thrown in your way, and given to you not by any human contrivance, but almost by the interposition
of the gods, at a most important crisis of the republic. For an opinion has now become
established, pernicious to us, and pernicious to the republic, which has been the common
talk of every one, not only at Rome, but among foreign nations also,—that in the courts
of law as they exist at present, no wealthy man, however guilty he may be, can possibly
be convicted.
Now at this time of peril to your order and to your tribunal, when men are ready to attempt
by harangues, and by the proposal of new laws, to increase the existing unpopularity of the
senate, Caius Verres is brought to trial as a criminal—a man condemned in the opinion
of every one by his life and actions, but acquitted by the enormousness of his wealth
according to his own hope and boast. I, O judges, have undertaken this cause as prosecutor
with the greatest good wishes and expectation on the part of the Roman people, not in order
to increase the unpopularity of the senate, but to relieve it from the discredit which
I share with it. For I have brought before you a man, by acting justly in whose case
you have an opportunity of retrieving the lost credit of your judicial proceedings,
of regaining your credit with the Roman people, and of giving satisfaction to foreign nations;
a man, the embezzler of the public funds, the petty tyrant of Asia and Pamphylia, the
robber who deprived the city of its rights, the disgrace and ruin of the province of Sicily.
And if you come to a decision about this man with severity and a due regard to your oaths,
that authority which ought to remain in you will cling to you still; but if that man's
vast riches shall break down the sanctity and honesty of the courts of justice, at least
I shall achieve this, that it shall be plain that it was rather honest judgment that was
wanting to the republic, than a criminal to the judges or an accuser to the criminal.
I, indeed, that I may confess to you the truth about myself, O judges, tho many snares were
laid for me by Caius Verres, both by land and sea, which I partly avoided by my own
vigilance, and partly warded off by the zeal and kindness of my friends, yet I never seemed
to be incurring so much danger, and I never was in such a state of great apprehension,
as I am now in this very court of law. Nor does the expectation which people have formed
of my conduct of this prosecution, nor this concourse of so vast a multitude as is here
assembled, influence me (tho indeed I am greatly agitated by these circumstances) so much as
his nefarious plots which he is endeavoring to lay at one and the same time against me,
against you, against Marcus Glabrio, the pretor, and against the allies, against foreign nations,
against the senate, and even against the very name of senator; whose favorite saying it
is that they have got to fear who have stolen only as much as is enough for themselves,
but that he has stolen so much that it may easily be plenty for many; that nothing is
so holy that it can not be corrupted, or so strongly fortified that it can not be stormed
by money. But if he were as secret in acting as he is audacious in attempting, perhaps
in some particular he might some time or other have escaped our notice.