[27]
Those chosen companions of yours were your hands; the prefects, the secretaries,
the surgeons, the attendants the soothsayers, the criers, were your hands. The more
each individual was connected with you by any relationship, or affinity, or
intimacy, the more he was considered one of your bands. The whole of that retinue of
yours, which caused more evil to Sicily
than a hundred troops of fugitive slaves would have caused, was beyond all question
your hand. Whatever was taken by any one of these men, that must be considered not
only as having been given to you, but as having been paid into your own hand. For if
you, O judges, admit this defence, “He did not receive it
himself,” you will put an end to all judicial proceedings for extortion.
For no criminal will be brought before you so guilty as not to be able to avail
himself of that plea? Indeed, since Verres uses it, what criminal will ever
henceforward be found so abandoned as not to be thought equal to Quintus Lucius in
innocence by comparison with that man? And even now those who say this do not appear
to me to be defending Verres so much as trying, in the instance of Verres, what
license of defence will be admitted in other cases.
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