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9.

Judge by me, since this is the first opportunity of learning it that you have ever had, how many qualities must meet in that man who is the accuser of another: and if you recognise any one of these in yourself, I will, of my own accord, yield up to you that which you are desirous of. First of all, he must have a singular integrity and innocence. For there is nothing which is less tolerable than for him to demand an account of his life from another who cannot give an account of his own. Here I will not say any more of yourself. [28] This one thing, I think, all may observe, that up to this time you had no opportunity of becoming known to any people except to the Sicilians; and that the Sicilians say this, that even though they are exasperated against the same man, whose enemy you say that you are, still, if you are the advocate, they will not appear on the trial. Why they refuse to, you will not hear from me. Allow these judges to suspect what it is inevitable that they must. The Sicilians, indeed, being a race of men over-acute, and too much inclined to suspiciousness, suspect that you do not wish to bring documents from Sicily against Verres; but, as both his praetorship and your quaestorship are recorded in the same documents, they suspect that you wish to remove 1 them out of Sicily. [29] In the second place, an accuser must be trustworthy and veracious. Even if I were to think that you were desirous of being so, I easily see that you are not able to be so. Nor do I speak of these things, which, if I were to mention, you would not be able to invalidate, namely that you, before you departed from Sicily, had become reconciled to Verres; that Potamo, your secretary and intimate friend, was retained by Verres in the province when you left it; that Marcus Caecilius, your brother, a most exemplary and accomplished young man, is not only not present here and does not stand by you while prosecuting your alleged injuries, but that he is with Verres, and is living on terms of the closest friendship and intimacy with him. These, and other things belonging to you, are many signs of a false accuser; but these I do not now avail myself of. I say this, that you, if you were to wish it ever so much, still cannot be a faithful accuser. [30] For I see that there are many charges in which you are so implicated with Verres, that in accusing him, you would not dare to touch upon them.


1 The Latin is deportare and asportare, the former meaning to remove from one place to another, the latter to carry away; “but it seems by implication here, to carry them away with the intention of suppressing them.”—Long.

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