16.
Do I seem to you to be in such exceeding want of friends that I must have an assistant
given me, chosen not out of the men whom I have brought down to court with me, but out
of the people at large? And are you suffering under such a dearth of defendants, that
you endeavour to filch this cause from me rather than look for some defendants of your
own class at the pillar of Maenius? 1
[51]
Appoint me, says he, to watch Tullius. What? How many
watchers shall I have need of, if I once allow you to meddle with my bag? as you will
have to be watched not only to prevent your betraying anything, but to prevent your
removing anything. But for the whole matter of that watchman I will answer you thus in
the briefest manner possible; that these honest judges will never permit any assistant
to force himself against my consent into so important a cause, when it has been
undertaken by me, and is entrusted to me.
[52]
In truth,
my integrity rejects an overlooker; my diligence is afraid of a spy. But to return to
you, O Caecilius, you see how many qualities are wanting to you; how many belong to you
which a guilty defendant would wish to belong to his prosecutor, you are well aware.
What can be said to this? For I do not ask what you will say yourself, I see that it is
not you who will answer me, but this book which your prompter has in his hand; who, if
he be inclined to prompt you rightly, will advise you to depart from this place and not
to answer me one word. For what can you say? That which you are constantly repeating,
that Verres has done you an injury? I have no doubt he has, for it would not be
probable, when he was doing injuries to all the Sicilians, that you alone should be so
important in his eyes that he should take care of your interests.
[53]
But the rest of the Sicilians have found an avenger of their
injuries; you, while you are endeavouring to exact vengeance for your injuries by your
own means, (which you will not be able to effect,) are acting in a way to leave the
injuries of all the rest unpunished and unavenged. And you do not see that it ought not
alone to be considered who is a proper person to exact vengeance, but also who is a
person capable of doing so,—that if there be a man in whom both these
qualifications exist, he is the best man.
[54]
But if a
man has only one of them, then the question usually asked is, not what he is inclined to
do, but what he is able to do. And if you think that the office of prosecutor ought to
be entrusted to him above all other men, to whom Caius Verres has done the greatest
injury, which do you think the judges ought to be most indignant at,—at your
having been injured by him, or at the whole province of Sicily having been harassed and ruined by him? I think you must grant
that this both is the worst thing of the two, and that it ought to be considered the
worst by every one. A flow, therefore, that the province ought to be preferred to you as
the prosecutor. For the province is prosecuting when he is pleading the cause whom the
province has adopted as the defender of her rights, the avenger of her injuries, and the
pleader of the whole cause.
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1 Maenius had sold his house to Cato and Valerius Flaccus when they were censors, and they had built the Porcian Piazza on the spot, but he had reserved for himself one pillar for him and his heirs to have a view of the gladiatorial contests from it; and near this column the triumviricapitates held their court, before whose tribunal it was chiefly the lower sort of criminals who were brought, and as a general rule the advocates who practised in these courts were of a lower class than those who confined themselves to more respectable clients, and to civil actions.
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