[82]
There was a woman too,
called Nice, with a very beautiful face, as it is said, the wife of Cleomenes the
Syracusan. Cleomenes, her husband, was greatly attached to her, but still he had
neither the power nor the courage to oppose the lust of the praetor; and at the same
time he was bound to him by many presents and many good offices. But at that time
Verres, though you well know how great his impudence is, still could not, as her
husband was at Syracuse, be quite easy
in his mind at keeping her with him so many days on the seashore. Accordingly, he
contrives a very singular plan. He gives the command of the fleet, which his
lieutenant had had, to Cleomenes. He orders Cleomenes, a Syracusan, to command a
fleet of the Roman people. He does this, in order that he might not only be absent
from home all the time that he was at sea, but that he might be so willingly, being
placed in a post of great honour and profit; and that he himself in the meantime,
the husband being sent away to a distance, might have her with him,—I will
not say more easily than before, for who ever opposed his lust? but with a rather
more tranquil mind, as he had got rid of him, not as a husband but as a
rival.—Cleomenes, a Syracusan, takes the command of a fleet of our allies
and friends.
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