[157]
“People have dinned into their ears, that you were a partner of the
praetor's.” Do you not see how clear the matter both is and was when even
Timarchides is afraid of this? Will you not admit that we are not inventing this
charge against you, but that your freedman has been this long time seeking some
defence against this charge? Your freedman and officer, one most intimate, and
indeed connected with you and your children in everything, writes to Apronius, that
it is universally pointed out to Metellus that Apronius had been your partner in the
tenths. “Make him see the dishonesty of the cultivators: they shall suffer
for it, if the gods will.” What, in the name of the immortal gods, is the
meaning of that? or on what account can we say that such great and bitter hatred is
excited against the cultivators? What injury have the cultivators of the soil done
to Verres, that even his freedman and officer should attack them with so inimical a
disposition in these letters?
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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