[156]
Yes,
while Verres was praetor, not while Sacerdos was, or Peducaeus, or this very Lucius
Metellus. “You know that Metellus is a wise man.” But this is
really intolerable, that the abilities of that most excellent man, Lucius Metellus,
should be laughed at, and despised and scorned by that runaway slave Timarchides.
“If you have Vulteius with you, everything will be mere child's play to
you.” Here Timarchides is greatly mistaken, in thinking either that
Vulteius can be corrupted by money, or that Metellus is going to discharge the
duties of his praetorship according to the will of any one man; but he is mistaken
by forming his conjectures from his own experience. Because he saw that, through his
own intervention and that of others, many men had been able to do whatever they
pleased with Verres, without meeting with any difficulty, he thought that there were
the same means of access to every one. You did very easily whatever you wanted with
Verres, and found it as easy as child's play to do so, because you knew many of the
kinds of play in which he indulged.
“Metellus and Vulteius have been impressed with the idea that you have
ruined the cultivators of the soil.” Who attributed the action to
Apronius, when he had ruined any cultivator? or to Timarchides when he had taken
money for assigning a trial, or making a decree, or giving any order, or remitting
any thing? or to Sextus the lictor, when he, as executioner, had put an innocent man
to death? No one. Every body at the time attributed these things to Verres; whom
they desire now to see condemned.
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