[145]
But what, O Verres, was that passion of yours for practicing cruelty? what was your
reason for undertaking so many wicked actions? It was nothing, O judges, except a
new and unprecedented system of plundering. For like those men whose histories we
have learnt from the poets, who are said to have occupied some bays on the
sea-coast, or some promontories, or some precipitous rocks, in order to be able to
murder those who had been driven to such places in their vessels, this man also
looked down as an enemy over every sea, from every part of Sicily. Every ship that came from Asia, from Syria, from Tyre, from
Alexandria, was immediately seized
by informers and guards that he could rely upon; their crews were all thrown into
the stone-quarries; their freights and merchandise carried up into the praetor's
house. After a long interval there was seen to range through Sicily, not another Dionysius, not another Phalaris,
(for their island has at one time or another produced many inhuman tyrants,) but a
new sort of monster, endowed with all the ancient savage barbarity which is said to
have formerly existed in those same districts;
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