[44]
In Achaia, (I will omit all minor things,
to some of which perhaps some one else may some time or other have done something
like; I will mention nothing except what is unprecedented, nothing except what would
appear incredible, if it were alleged against any other criminal,) he demanded money
from a Sicyonian magistrate. Do not let this be considered a crime in Verres; others
have done the tame. When he could not give it, he punished him; a scandalous, but
still not an unheard-of act. Listen to the sort of punishment; you will ask, of what
race of men you are to think him a specimen. He ordered a fire to be made of green
and damp wood in a narrow place. There he left a free man, a noble in his own
country, an ally and friend of the Roman people, tortured with smoke, half dead.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.