12.
[37]
I will just, O Caecilius, say this much familiarly to you about yourself, forgetting
for a moment this rivalry and contest of ours. Consider again and again what your own
sentiments are, and recollect yourself; and consider who you are, and what you are able
to effect. Do you think that, when you have taken upon yourself the cause of the allies,
and the fortunes of the province, and the rights of the Roman people, and the dignity of
the judgment-seat and of the law, in a discussion of the most important and serious
matters, you are able to support so many affairs and those so weighty and so various
with your voice, your memory, your counsel, and your ability?
[38]
Do you think that you are able to distinguish in separate charges,
and in a well-arranged speech, all that Caius Verres has done in his quaestorship, and
in his lieutenancy, and in his praetorship, at Rome, or in Italy, or in
Achaia, or in Asia Minor, or in Pamphylia, as
the actions themselves are divided by place and time? Do you think that you are able
(and this is especially necessary against a defendant of this sort) to cause the things
which he has done licentiously, or wickedly, or tyrannically, to appear just as bitter
and scandalous to those who hear of them, as they did appear to those who felt them?
[39]
Those things which I am speaking of are very
important, believe me. Do not you despise this either; everything must be related, and
demonstrated, and explained; the cause must be not merely stated, but it must also be
gravely and copiously dilated on. You must cause, if you wish really to do and to effect
anything, men not only to hear you, but also to hear you willingly and eagerly. And if
nature kind been bountiful to you in such qualities, and if from your childhood you had
studied the best arts and systems, and worked hard at them;—if you had learnt
Greek literature at Athens, not at
Lilybaeum, and Latin literature at Rome, and not in Sicily; still it would be a great undertaking to approach so important a
cause, and one about which there is such great expectation, and having approached it, to
follow it up with the requisite diligence; to have all the particulars always fresh in
your memory; to discuss it properly in your speech, and to support it adequately with
your voice and your faculties.
[40]
Perhaps you may say,
What then? Are you then endowed with all these qualifications?—I wish indeed
that I were; but at all events I have laboured with great industry from my very
childhood to attain them. And if I, on account of the importance and difficulty of such
a study have not been able to attain them, who have done nothing else all my life, how
far do you think that you must be distant from these qualities, which you have not only
never thought of before, but which even now, when you are entering on a stage that
requires them all, you can form no proper idea of, either as for their nature or as to
their importance?
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