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Updated: April 30, 2025
I think there is one way one course, and only one, left for me to take. I will place the facts before you; and they have in themselves such weight, that no eloquence I will not say of mine, for I have none but of any man's, is needed to excite your feelings. "This Gavius of Consa, of whom I speak, had been among the crowds of Roman citizens who had been thrown into prison under that man.
'Let him look', said he, 'towards his country; let him die in full sight of freedom and the laws'. It was not Gavius; it was not a single victim, unknown to fame, a mere individual Roman citizen; it was the common cause of liberty, the common rights of citizenship, which you there outraged and put to a shameful death".
I did not intend, gentlemen, in my former pleading, to press this case so strongly I did not indeed; for you saw yourselves how the public feeling was already embittered against the defendant by indignation, and hate, and dread of a common peril". He then proceeds to prove by witnesses the facts of the case and the falsehood of the charge against Gavius of having been a spy.
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.
As I was seeing nothing of him, I supposed him to be out of town: but was told by this fellow Gavius of Firmum, that he was at Rome, and had never been away. It made a disagreeable impression on me. "Such a trifle as that?" you will say. Well, he had told me a good deal of which there could be no doubt as to these brothers of Firmum.
He turns again to Verres. "But why talk of Gavius? as though it were Gavius on whom you were wreaking a private vengeance, instead of rather waging war against the very name and rights of Roman citizenship. You showed yourself an enemy, I say, not to the individual man, but to the common cause of liberty.
A certain Gavius had given offense, how we know not, and had been confined in the disused stone quarries which served for the public prison of Syracuse. From these he contrived to escape, and made his way to Messana. Unluckily for himself, he did not know that Messana was the one place in Sicily where it would not be safe to speak against the governor.
For, as I told you before, this city he had selected for himself as the accomplice in his crimes, the receiver of his stolen goods, the confidant of all his wickedness. So Gavius is brought at once before the city magistrates; and, as it so chanced, on that very day Verres himself came to Messana.
Of this nature is his justification of Rabirius in taking up arms against Saturninus; his account of the imprisonment of the Roman citizens by Verres, and of the crucifixion of Gavius; his comparison of Antony with Tarquin; and the contrast he draws of Verres with Fabius, Scipio, and Marius.
Verres, unfortunately, is in Messana, and soon hears from some of his friends, the Mamertines, what Gavius was saying. He at once orders Gavius to be flogged in public. "Cives Romanus sum!" exclaims Gavius, no doubt truly. It suits Verres to pretend to disbelieve this, and to declare that the man is a runagate slave. The poor wretch still cries "Cives Romanus!" and trusts alone to that appeal.
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