[27]
But if it be necessary for the cause to be thoroughly investigated, has this one
been investigated but superficially? Are we keeping back anything, O Hortensius, a
trick which we have often seen practiced in pleading? Who ever attends much to the
advocate in this sort of action, in which anything is said to have been carried off
and stolen by any one? Is not all the expectation of the judges fixed on the
documents or on the witnesses? I said in the first pleading that I would make it
plain that Caius Verres had carried off four hundred thousand sesterces contrary to the law. What ought I to have said? Should I have
pleaded more plainly if I had related the whole affair thus?—There was a
certain man of Halesa, named Dio, who, when a great inheritance had come to his son
from a relation while Sacerdos was praetor, had at the time no trouble nor dispute
about it. Verres, as soon as he arrived in the province, immediately wrote letters
from Messana; he summoned Dio before him,
he procured false witnesses from among his own friends to say that that inheritance
had been forfeited to Venus Erycina. He announced that he himself would take
cognisance of that matter.
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