[86]
And all these things (for I do not think that I ought to omit any particular of his
impudence) were done openly in the middle of the assembly, while Verres was sitting
on his chair of office, in a lofty situation. It was the depth of winter; the
weather, as you heard Sopater himself state, was bitterly cold; heavy rain was
falling; when that fellow orders the lictors to throw Sopater headlong down from the
portico on which he himself was sitting, and to strip him naked. The command was
scarcely, out of his mouth, before you might have seen him stripped and surrounded
by the lictors. All thought that the unhappy and innocent man was going to be
scourged. They were mistaken. Do you think that Verres would scourge without any
reason an ally and friend of the Roman people? He is not so wicked. All vices are
not to be found in that man; he was never cruel. He treated the man with great
gentleness and clemency. In the middle of the forum there are some statues of the
Marcelli, as there are in most of the other towns of Sicily; out of these he selected the statue of Caius Marcellus, whose
services to that city and to the whole province were most recent and most important.
On that statue he orders Sopater, a man of noble birth in his city, and at that very
time invested with the chief magistracy, to be placed astride and bound to it.
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