It was not simply his object to convince a body of honest men that, with the view of getting at the truth, he would be the better advocate of the two.

We may imagine that there was not a judge there, not a Roman present, who was not well aware of that before the orator began.

It was needed that the absurdity of the comparison between them should be declared so loudly that the judges would not dare to betray the Sicilians, and to liberate the accused, by choosing the incompetent man.
When Cicero rose to speak, there was probably not one of them of his own party, not a Consul, a Praetor, an AEdile, or a Quaestor, not a judge, not a Senator, not a hanger-on about the courts, but was anxious that Verres with his plunder should escape.

Their hope of living upon the wealth of the provinces hung upon it.

But if he could speak winged words--words that should fly all over Rome, that might fly also among subject nations--then would the judges not dare to carry out this portion of the scheme.
"When," he says, "I had served as Quaestor in Sicily, and had left the province after such a fashion that all the Sicilians had a grateful memory of my authority there, though they had older friends on whom they relied much, they felt that I might be a bulwark to them in their need.
These Sicilians, harassed and robbed, have now come to me in public bodies, and have implored me to undertake their defence.