Against Verres. Marcus Tullius Cicero

Against Verres - Marcus Tullius Cicero


Скачать книгу
the city and from the provinces, that when these days of the games intervened, no one thought that he had procured an adjournment, but they thought that he was condemned.

      8

       Table of Contents

      21So that, as far as I am concerned, O judges, I gained the day; for I did not desire the spoils of Caius Verres, but the good opinion of the Roman people. It was my business to act as accuser only if I had a good cause. What cause was ever juster than the being appointed and selected by as illustrious a province as its defender? To consult the welfare of the republic;—what could be more honourable for the republic, than while the tribunals were in such general discredit, to bring before them a man by whose condemnation the whole order of the senate might be restored to credit and favour with the Roman people?—to prove and convince men that it was a guilty man who was brought to trial? Who is there of the Roman people who did not carry away this conviction from the previous pleading, that if all the wickednesses, thefts, and enormities of all who have ever been condemned before were brought together into one place, they could scarcely be likened or compared to but a small part of this man's crimes? 22Judges, consider and deliberate what becomes your fame, your reputation, and the common safety? Your eminence prevents your being able to make any mistake without the greatest injury and danger to the republic. For the Roman people cannot hope that there are any other men in the senate who can judge uprightly, if you cannot. It is inevitable that, when it has learnt to despair of the whole order, it should look for another class of men and another system of judicial proceedings. If this seems to you at all a trifling matter, because you think the being judges a grave and inconvenient burden, you ought to be aware, in the first place, that it makes a difference whether you throw off that burden yourselves, of your own accord, or whether the power of sitting as judges is taken away from you because you have been unable to convince the Roman people of your good faith and scrupulous honesty. In the second place, consider this also, with what great danger we shall come before those judges whom the Roman people, by reason of its hatred to you, has willed shall judge concerning you. 23But I will tell you, O judges, what I am sure of. Know, then, that there are some men who are possessed with such a hatred or your order, that they now make a practice of openly saying that they are willing for that man, whom they know to be a most infamous one, to be acquitted for this one reason,—that then the honour or the judgment-seat may be taken from the senate with ignominy and disgrace. It is not my fear for your good faith, O judges, which has urged me to lay these considerations before you at some length, but the new hopes which those men are entertaining; for when those hopes had brought Verres suddenly back from the gates of the city to this court, some men suspected that his intention had not been changed so suddenly without a cause.

      9

       Table of Contents

      24Now, in order that Hortensius may not be able to employ any new sort of complaint, and to say that a defendant is oppressed if the accuser says nothing about him; that nothing is so dangerous to the fortunes of an innocent man as for his adversaries to keep silence; and in order that he may not praise my abilities in a way which I do not like, when he says that, if I had said much, I should have relieved him against whom I was speaking, and that I have undone him because I said nothing,--I will comply with his wishes, I shall employ one long unbroken speech: not because it is necessary, but that I may try whether he will be most vexed at my having been silent then or at my speaking now. 25Here you, perhaps, will take care that I do not remit one hour of the time allowed me by law. If I do not employ the whole time which is allowed me by law, you will complain; you will invoke the faith of gods and men, calling them to witness how Caius Verres is circumvented because the prosecutor will not speak as long as he is allowed to speak by the law. What the law gives me for my own sake, may I not be allowed to forbear using? For the time for stating the accusation is given me for my own sake, that I may be able to unfold my charges and the whole cause in my speech. If I do not use it all, I do you no injury, but I give up something of my own right and advantage. You injure me, says he, for the cause ought to be thoroughly investigated. Certainly, for otherwise a defendant cannot be condemned, however guilty he may be. Were you, then, indignant that anything should be done by me to make it less easy for him to be condemned? For if the cause be understood, many men may be acquitted; if it be not understood, no one can be condemned. 26I injure him, it seems, for I take away the right of adjournment. The most vexatious thing that the law has in it, the allowing a cause to be twice pleaded, has either been instituted for my sake rather than for yours, or, at all events, not more for your sake than for mine. For if to speak twice be an advantage, certainly it is an advantage which is common to both If there is a necessity that he who has spoken last should be refuted, then it is for the sake of the prosecutor that the he has been established that there should be a second discussion. But, as I imagine, Glaucia first proposed the law that the defendant might have an adjournment; before that time the decision might either be given at once, or the judges might take time to consider. Which law, then, do you think the mildest? I think that ancient one, by which a man might either be acquitted quickly, or condemned after deliberation. I restore you that law of Acilius, according to which many men who have only been accused once, whose cause has only been pleaded once, in whose case witnesses have only been heard once, have been condemned on charges by no means so clearly proved, nor so flagitious as those on which you are convicted. Think that you are pleading your cause, not according to that severe law, but according to that most merciful one. I will accuse you; you shall reply. Having produced my witnesses, I will lay the whole matter before the bench in such a way, that even if the law gave them a power of adjournment, yet they shall think it discreditable to themselves not to decide at the first hearing.

      10

       Table of Contents

      27But if it be necessary for the cause to be thoroughly investigated, has this one been investigated but superficially? Are we keeping back anything, O Hortensius, a trick which we have often seen practiced in pleading? Who ever attends much to the advocate in this sort of action, in which anything is said to have been carried off and stolen by any one? Is not all the expectation of the judges fixed on the documents or on the witnesses? I said in the first pleading that I would make it plain that Caius Verres had carried off four hundred thousand sesterces contrary to the law. What ought I to have said? Should I have pleaded more plainly if I had related the whole affair thus?—There was a certain man of Halesa, named Dio, who, when a great inheritance had come to his son from a relation while Sacerdos was praetor, had at the time no trouble nor dispute about it. Verres, as soon as he arrived in the province, immediately wrote letters from Messana; he summoned Dio before him, he procured false witnesses from among his own friends to say that that inheritance had been forfeited to Venus Erycina. He announced that he himself would take cognisance of that matter. 28I can detail to you the whole affair in regular order, and at last tell you what the result was, namely, that Dio paid a million of sesterces, in order to prevail in a cause of most undeniable justice, besides that Verres had his herds of mares driven away, and all his plate and embroidered vestments carried off. But neither while I was so relating these things, nor while you were denying them, would our speeches be of any great importance. At what time then would the judge prick up his ears and begin to strain his attention? When Dio himself came forward, and the others who had at that time been engaged in Sicily on Dio's business, when, at the very time when Dio was pleading his cause, he was proved to have borrowed money, to have galled in all that was owing to him, to have sold farms; when the accounts of respectable men were produced, when they who had supplied Dio with money said that they had heard at the time that the money was taken on purpose to be given to Verres; when the friends, and connections, and patrons of Dio, most honourable men, said that they had heard the same thing. 29Then, when this was going on, you would, I suppose, attend as you did attend. Then the cause would seem to be going on. Everything was managed by me in the former pleading so that among all the charges there


Скачать книгу