the world. For I have brought upon his trial, one whose conduct has been such, that, in passing a just sentence upon him, you will have an opportunity of re-establishing the credit of such trials; of recovering whatever may be lost of the favour of the Roman people; and of satisfying foreign states and kingdoms in alliance with us or tributary to us. I demand justice of you, fathers, upon the robber of the public treasury, the oppressor of Asia Minor and Pamphylia, the invader of the rights and privileges of Romans, the scourge and curse of Sicily. 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, namely, 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 punish

ment.

For as those acts of violence, by which he has got his exorbitant riches, were done openly, so have his attempts to pervert judgment, and escape due punishment, been public, and in open defiance of decency. He has accordingly said, that the only time he ever was afraid, was when he found the prosecution commenced against him by me, lest he should not have time enough to dispose of a sufficient number of presents in proper hands. Nor has he attempted to secure himself by the legal way of defence upon his trial. And, indeed, where is the learning, the eloquence, or the art, which would be sufficient to qualify any one for the defence of him whose whole life has been a continued series of the most atrocious crimes? 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 Pamphylia, what did it produce, but the ruin of those countries; in which houses, cities, and temples, were robbed by him? There he acted over again the scene of his quæs

torship, bringing by his bad practices Cneius Dolabella, whose substitute he was, into disgrace with the people, and then deserting him; not only deserting, but even accusing and betraying him. What was his conduct in his prætorship here at home? Let the plundered temples, and public works neglected, that he might embezzle the money intended for carrying them on, bear witness. How did he discharge the office of a judge? Let those who suffered by his injustice answer. 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 unhappy 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 coming under the protection of the commonwealth, nor of the natural and unalienable rights of men. No inhabitant of that ruined country has been able to keep possession of any thing, but what has either escaped the rapaciousness, or been neglected by the satiety, of that universal plunderer. His nod has decided all causes in Sicily for these three years. And his decisions have broken 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 their images. 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.

Now, Verres, I ask 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 prison at Syracuse, 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. was in vain that the unhappy man cried out, "I am a Roman citizen; I have served under Lucius Pretius, who is now at Panormus, and will attest my innocence." The, blood-thirsty prætor, deaf to all he could urge in his own defence, ordered the infamous punishment to be inflicted, Thus, fathers, was an innocent Roman citizen publicly mangled with scourging; whilst the only words he uttered amidst his cruel sufferings were, "I am a Roman citizen." With these he hoped to defend himself from violence and infamy. But of so little service was this privilege to him, that while he was thus asserting his citizenship, the order was given for his execution-for his execution upon the cross!

It

O liberty!-O sound once delightful to every Roman ear!-O sacred privilege of Roman citizenship!-Once sa

cred, now trampled upon! But what then? Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate, a governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people, in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture with fire and red hot plates of iron, and at last put to the infamous death of the cross, a Roman citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, nor the tears of pitying spectators, nor the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the licentious and wanton cruelty of a monster, who, in confidence of his riches, strikes at the root of liberty, and sets mankind at defiance?

I conclude with expressing my hopes that your wisdom and justice, fathers, will not, by suffering the atrocious and unexampled insolence of Caius Verres to escape the due punishment, leave room to apprehend the danger of a total subversion of authority, and introduction of general anarchy and confusion.

SPEECH OF SCIPIO TO THE ROMAN ARMY.-Hooke.

Were you, soldiers, the same army which I had with me in Gaul, I might well forbear saying any thing to you at this time. For what occasion could there be to use exhortation to a cavalry that had so signally vanquished the squadrons of the enemy upon the Rhone? or to legions, by whom that same enemy, flying before them to avoid a battle, did, in effect, confess themselves conquered? But as these troops, having been enrolled for Spain, are there with my brother Cneius, making war under my auspices (as was the will of the senate and people of Rome), I, that you might have a consul for your captain against Hannibal and the Carthaginians, have freely offered myself for this war. You, then, have a new general, and I a new army. On this account, a few words from me to you will be neither improper nor unseasonable.

That you may not be unapprised of what sort of enemies you are going to encounter, or of what is to be feared from them, they are the very same whom, in a former war, you vanquished both by land and sea; the same from whom you

took Sicily and Sardinia; and who have been these twenty years your tributaries. You will not, I presume, march against these men with only that courage with which you are wont to face other enemies; but with a certain anger and indignation, such as you would feel, if you saw your slaves, on a sudden, rise up in arms against you. Conquered and enslaved, it is not boldness, but necessity, that urges them to battle; unless you can believe that those who avoided fighting when their army was entire, have acquired better hope by the loss of two-thirds of their horse and foot in the passage of the Alps.

But you have heard, perhaps, that, though they are few in number, they are men of stout hearts and robust bodies; heroes of such strength and vigour as nothing is able to resist. Mere effigies! nay, shadows of men! wretches emaciated with hunger and benumbed with cold! bruised and battered to pieces among the rocks and craggy cliffs; their weapons broken, and their horses weak and foundered! Such are the cavalry, and such the infantry, with which you are going to contend: not enemies, but the fragments of enemies. There is nothing which I more apprehend, than that it will be thought Hannibal was vanquished by the Alps, before we had any conflict with him. But, perhaps, it was fitting it should be so; and that, with a people and a leader who had violated leagues and covenants, the gods themselves, without man's help, should begin the war, and bring it to a near conclusion; and that we, who, next to the gods, have been injured and offended, should happily finish what they have begun.

I need not be in any fear that you should suspect me of saying these things, merely to encourage you, while inwardly I have different sentiments. What hindered me from going into Spain? That was my province; where I should have had the less dreaded Asdrubal, not Hannibal, to deal with. But hearing, as I passed along the coast of Gaul, of this enemy's march, I landed my troops, sent the horse forward, and pitched my camp upon the Rhone. A part of my cavalry encountered and defeated that of the enemy. My infantry not being able to overtake theirs, which fled before us, I returned to my fleet; and, with all the expedition I