Selected Works. Marcus Tullius Cicero

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Against Verres: First Pleading

      After the last oration it was decided that Cicero was to conduct the prosecution against Verres; accordingly, a hundred and ten days were allowed to him to prepare the evidence, with which object he went himself to Sicily to examine witnesses, and to collect facts in support of his charges, taking with him his cousin Lucius Cicero as an assistant, and in this journey, contrary to all precedent, he bore his own expenses, resolving to put the island to no charge on his account. At Syracuse the praetor, Metellus, endeavoured to obstruct him in his inquiries, but the magistrates received him with great respect, and, declaring to him that all that they had previously done in favour of Verres (for they had erected a gilt statue of him, and had sent a testimonial of his good conduct and kind government of them to Rome) had been extorted from them by intrigue and terror, they delivered into his hands authentic accounts of many injuries their city had received from Verres, and they revoked by a formal decree the public praises which they had given him. Messana, however, continued firm in its engagements to Verres, and denied Cicero all the honours to which he was entitled. When he finished his investigations, apprehending that he might be waylaid by the contrivance of Verres, he returned by sea to Rome, where he found intrigues carrying on to protract the affair as much as possible, in order to delay the decision of it till the year following, when Hortensius and Metellus were to be the consuls, and the brother of Metellus was to be praetor, by whose united authority the prosecution might be stifled: and it was now so late in the year that there was not time to bring the trial to an end, if the ordinary course of proceeding was to be adhered to. But Cicero, determined to bring on the decision while Glabrio continued to be praetor, abandoned his idea of making a long speech, and of taking up time in dilating СКАЧАТЬ