But what can you say for him?
Was it not your duty to have built a ship for the Republic?
You have built none such, but have constructed a huge private transport-vessel for Verres.

Have you not been exempted from your tax on corn?
Have you not been exempted in regard to naval and military recruits?
Have you not been the receptacle of all his stolen goods?
They will have to confess, these Mamertines, that many a ship laden with his spoils has left their port, and especially this huge transport-ship which they built for him!" In the De Suppliciis--the treatise about punishments, as the last division of this process is called--Cicero tells the world how Verres exacted vengeance from those who were opposed to him, and with what horrid cruelty he raged against his enemies.

The stories, indeed, are very dreadful.

It is harrowing to think that so evil a man should have been invested with powers so great for so bad a purpose.

But that which strikes a modern reader most is the sanctity attached to the name of a Roman citizen, and the audacity with which the Roman Proconsul disregarded that sanctity.