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A beautiful woman is worth her weight always in gold; but if she loves in addition, she has simply no price. Such a one thou wilt not buy with the riches of Verres. I say now to myself as follows: I will fill my life with happiness, as a goblet with the foremost wine which the earth has produced, and I will drink till my hand becomes powerless and my lips grow pale.
Verres, who, on the other hand, was exceptionally rapacious, made three hundred and fifty thousand pounds in three years, besides collecting works of art of incalculable value. But the honors and profits to which most of his contemporaries looked forward with eagerness did not attract Cicero.
The meeting separated in great tumult without giving him any answer. Summoned again to the governor's presence, he repeated that nothing could be done. But Verres had still resources in store. He ordered the lictors to strip the man, the chief magistrate, be it remembered, of an important town, and to set him, naked as he was, astride on one of the equestrian statues that adorned the market-place.
And Cicero exactly expresses the feeling on the subject in his famous words. "It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in irons; it is positive wickedness to inflict stripes upon him; it is close upon parricide to put him to death; as to crucifying him there is no word for it." And on this crowning act of audacity Verres had the recklessness to venture.
Quintus Hortensius Ortalus, the orator, was a friend and rival of Cicero, who often speaks of him. He began his career as a pleader in the courts at the age of nineteen, and continued his practice for forty-four years. He and Hortensius defended C. Verres against Cicero. He wrote the history of the Marsic war and of the war of Sulla in Italy, which he continued to the death of Sulla.
Cicero finishes his catalogue by telling us of the manifold robberies committed by Verres in Syracuse, especially from the temples of the gods; and he begins his account of the Syracusan iniquities by drawing a parallel between two Romans whose names were well known in that city: Marcellus, who had besieged it as an enemy and taken it, and Verres, who had been sent to govern it in peace.
There are extant seven so-called orations about Verres, of which the two first apply to the manner in which the case should be brought before the courts. These two were really spoken, and were so effective that Verres or probably Hortensius, on his behalf was frightened into silence.
Cicero, 106 B.C., was probably not equal to his great Grecian rival in vehemence, in force, in fiery argument which swept everything away before him, nor generally in original genius; but he was his superior in learning, in culture, and in breadth. Cicero distinguished himself very early as an advocate, but his first great public effort was made in the prosecution of Verres for corruption.
This consisted of a certain fixed quantity which had to be supplied to the Prætor for the use of his governmental establishment to be supplied either in grain or in money. What such a one as Verres would do with his, the reader may conceive. All this was of vital importance to Rome. Sicily and Africa were the granaries from which Rome was supplied with its bread.
I must so live that I must clearly seem to be, and always have been, the very opposite of this man, not only in my words and deeds, but as to that arrogance and impudence which you see in him." Then he shows how opposite he is to Verres at any rate, in impudence!
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