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Gavius was greedy, and insolent when his greed was not satisfied. "You have made me a prefect," said Gavius; "where am I to go for my rations?" Cicero tells him that as he has done no work he will get no pay; whereupon Gavius, quite unaccustomed to such treatment, goes off in a huff.
The experienced arm of the old Rullianus was once more called into the field against them , and Gavius Pontius, a son perhaps of the victor of Caudium, even gained for his nation a last victory, which the Romans meanly enough avenged by causing him when subsequently taken to be executed in prison . But there was no further symptom of movement in Italy; for the war, which Falerii began in 461, scarcely deserves such a name.
Other descriptions are longer and more ambitious; the confusion of the Catilinarian conspirators after detection; the character of Catiline; the debauchery of Antony in Varro's villa; the scourging and crucifixion of Gavius; the grim old Censor Appius frowning on Clodia his degenerate descendent; the tissue of monstrous crime which fills page after page of the Cluentius.
But instead of taking this course and concluding a military convention, Gavius Pontius thought that he could at once terminate the whole quarrel by an equitable peace; whether it was that he shared that foolish longing of the confederates for peace, to which Brutulus Papius had fallen a victim in the previous year, or whether it was that he was unable to prevent the party which was tired of the war from spoiling his unexampled victory.
Then that man replies that he has discovered that he, Gavius, has been sent into Sicily as a spy by the ringleaders of the runaway slaves; of which charge there was neither witness nor trace of any kind, or even suspicion in any man's mind. Then he ordered the man to be scourged severely all over his body.
But when the humble, almost suppliant, request was not listened to by the Roman people , the Samnites, under their new general Gavius Pontius, prepared for the utmost and most desperate resistance. They broke up in haste.
But instead of taking this course and concluding a military convention, Gavius Pontius thought that he could at once terminate the whole quarrel by an equitable peace; whether it was that he shared that foolish longing of the confederates for peace, to which Brutulus Papius had fallen a victim in the previous year, or whether it was that he was unable to prevent the party which was tired of the war from spoiling his unexampled victory.
No one can possibly tell the tale so well as Cicero himself; and the passage from his speech for the prosecution is an admirable specimen both of his power of pathetic narrative and scathing denunciation, "How shall I speak of Publius Gavius, a citizen of Consa? With what powers of voice, with what force of language, with what sufficient indignation of soul, can I tell the tale?
The experienced arm of the old Rullianus was once more called into the field against them , and Gavius Pontius, a son perhaps of the victor of Caudium, even gained for his nation a last victory, which the Romans meanly enough avenged by causing him when subsequently taken to be executed in prison . But there was no further symptom of movement in Italy; for the war, which Falerii began in 461, scarcely deserves such a name.
Just as he was about to embark for Italy he was heard to complain of the treatment which he had received, and was arrested and brought before the chief magistrate of the town. Verres happened to come to the town the same day, and heard what had happened. He ordered the man to be stripped and flogged in the market-place. Gavius pleaded that he was a Roman citizen and offered proof of his claim.
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