[17]
Why are you sitting there, O Verres? What are you waiting for? Why do you say that
you are hemmed in and overwhelmed by the cities of Centuripa, of Catina, of Halesa, of Tyndaris, of Enna, of Agyrium, and by all
the other cities of Sicily? Your second
country, as you used to call it, Messana
herself attacks you; your own Messana I
say; the assistant in your crimes, the witness of your lusts, the receiver of your
booty and your thefts. For the most honourable man of that city is present, a deputy
sent from his home on account of this very trial, the chief actor in the panegyric
on you; who praises you by the public order of his city, for so he has been charged
and commanded to do. Although you recollect, O judges, what he answered when he was
asked about the ship; that it had been built by public labour, at the public
expense, and that a Mamertine senator had been appointed by the public authority to
superintend its building. Heius in his private capacity flees to you for aid, O
judges; he avails himself of this law, the common fortress of our allies, by which
this tribunal is established. Although there is a law for recovering money which has
been unjustly extorted, he says that he does not seem to recover any money; which
though it has been taken from him, he does not so much care about: but he says he
does demand back from you the sacred images belonging to his ancestors, he does
demand back from you his hereditary household god?
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