Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

broke out during the period of my consulship. Should he alone be removed from this powerful band of traitors, it may abate, perhaps, our fears and anxieties for a while; but the danger will still remain, and continue lurking in the veins and vitals of the republic. For as men oppressed with a severe fit of illness, and labouring under the raging heat of a fever, are often at first seemingly relieved by a draught of cold water, but afterwards find the disease return upon them with redoubled fury; in like manner, this distemper which has seized the commonwealth, eased a little by the punishment of this traitor, will from his surviving associates soon assume new force. Wherefore, conscript fathers, let the wicked retire, let them separate themselves from the honest, let them rendezvous in one place. In fine, as I have often said, let a wall be between them and us: let them cease to lay snares for the consul in his own house, to beset the tribunal of the city prætor, to invest the senate-house with armed ruffians, and to prepare fire-balls and torches for burning the city: in short, let every man's sentiments with regard to the public be inscribed on his forehead. This I engage for and promise, conscript fathers, that by the diligence of the consuls, the weight of your authority, the courage and firmness of the Roman knights, and the unanimity of all the honest, Catiline being driven from the city, you shall behold all his treasons, detected, exposed, crushed, and punished. With these omens, Catiline, of all prosperity to the republic, but of destruction to thyself, and all those who have joined themselves with thee in all kinds of parricide, go thy way

[blocks in formation]

then to this impious and abominable war: whilst thou, Jupiter, whose religion was established with the foundation of this city, whom we truly call Stator, the stay and prop of this empire, will drive this man and his accomplices from thy altars and temples, from the houses and walls of the city, from the lives and fortunes of us all; and wilt destroy with eternal punishments, both living and dead, all the haters of good men, the enemies of their country, the plunderers of Italy, now confederated in this detestable league and partnership of villany. Cicero.

ORATION AGAINST VERRES.

THE time is come, fathers, when that which has long been wished for, towards allaying the envy your order has been subject to, and removing the imputations against trials, is (not by human contrivance but superior direction) effectually put in our power. An opinion has long prevailed, not only here at home, but likewise in foreign countries, both dangerous to you, and pernicious to the state, viz. that in prosecutions, men of wealth are always safe, however clearly convicted. There is now to be brought upon his trial before you, to the confusion, I hope, of the propagators of this slanderous imputation, one whose life and actions condemn him in the opinion of all impartial persons, but who, according to his own reckoning, and declared dependence upon his riches, is already acquitted; I mean Caius Verres. If that sentence is passed upon him which his crimes deserve, your

authority, fathers, will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public: but if his great riches should bias you in his favour, I shall still gain one point, viz. to make it apparent to all the world, that what was wanting in this case was not a criminal nor a prosecutor, but justice and adequate punishment.

To pass over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what does his quæstorship, the first public employment he held, what does it exhibit, but one continued scene of villanies? Cneius Carbo plundered of the public money by his own treasurer, a consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a people violated. The employment he held in Asia Minor and Pamphilia what did it produce but the ruin of those coun tries? in which houses, cities, and temples, were robbed by him. What was his conduct in his prætorship here at home? Let the plundered tem ples, and public works neglected, that he might embezzle the money intended for carrying then on, bear witness. But his prætorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and finishes a lasting monument to his infamy. The mischiefs done by him in that country during the three years of his iniquitous administration, are such, that many years, under the wisest and best of prætors, will not be sufficient to restore things to the condition in which he found them. For it is notorious, that during the time of his tyranny, the Sicilians neither enjoyed the protection of their own original laws, of the regulations made for their benefit by the Roman senate upon their com

ing under the protection of the commonwealth, nor of the natural and unalienable rights of men. His nod has decided all causes in Sicily for these three years; and his decisions have broke all law, all precedent, all right. The sums he has, by arbitrary taxes and unheard-of impositions, extorted from the industrious poor, are not to be computed. The most faithful allies of the commonwealth have been treated as enemies. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. The most atrocious criminals, for money, have been exempted from the deserved punishments; and men of the most unexceptionable characters condemned and banished, unheard. The harbours, though sufficiently fortified, and the gates of strong towns, opened to pirates and ravagers; the soldiery and sailors belonging to a province under the protection of the commonwealth, starved to death; whole fleets, to the great detriment of the province, suffered to perish; the ancient monuments of either Sicilian or Roman greatness, the statues of heroes and princes, carried off; and the temples stripped of the images. The infamy of his lewdness has been such as decency forbids to describe; nor will I, by mentioning particulars, put those unfortunate persons to fresh pain who have not been able to save their wives and daughters from his impurity. And these his atrocious crimes have been committed in so public a manner, that there is no one who has heard of his name, but could reckon up his actions. Having, by his iniquitous sentences, filled the prisons with the most industrious and deserving of the people, he then proceeded to order numbers of Roman

citizens to be strangled in the gaols; so that the exclamation, I am a citizen of Rome! which has often in the most distant regions, and among the most barbarous people, been a protection, was of no service to them, but, on the contrary, brought a speedier and more severe punishment upon them.

I ask now, Verres, what you have to advance against this charge? Will you pretend to deny it? Will you pretend that any thing false, that even any thing aggravated, is alleged against you? Had any prince, or any state, committed the same outrage against the privilege of Roman citizens, should we not think we had sufficient ground for declaring immediate war against them? What punishment ought then to be inflicted upon a tyrannical and wicked prætor, who dared, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, to put to the infamous death of crucifixion that unfortunate and innocent citizen Publius Gavius Cosanus, only for his having asserted his privilege of citizenship, and declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against a cruel oppressor, who had unjustly confined him in a prison at Syracuse, from whence he had just made his escape? The unhappy man, arrested as he was going to embark for his native country, is brought before the wicked prætor. With eyes darting fury, and a countenance distorted with cruelty, he orders the helpless victim of his rage to be stripped, and rods to be brought; accusing him, but without the least shadow of evidence, or even of suspicion, of having come to Sicily as a spy. It was in vain that the unhappy man cried

« ZurückWeiter »