[111]
What will you think if I prove to you
that, by this one purchase, there were made a hundred thousand modii of profit? what if it was two hundred thousand? what if three?
what if four hundred thousand was the sum? Will you still doubt for whom that
immense booty was acquired? Will any one say that I am unfair if from the mere
magnitude of the gain made I form a conjecture as to the direction of the stolen
goods and plunder? What if I prove to you, O judges, that those men who are making
four hundred thousand modii of profit would have
suffered a loss if your iniquity, O Verres, if judges of your retinue had not
stepped in? Can any one doubt, in a case of so much gain and so much iniquity, that
you made such immense profit by dishonest means? that for such immense gains you
were willing to be dishonest?
This text is part of:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
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