Читать книгу Against Verres - Marcus Tullius Cicero - Страница 38

Table of Contents

⁴²What can you do with such a man? or what hope can you allow so perfidious, so ill-omened an animal to entertain? One who despised and trampled on the lot which bound him to Cnaeus Carbo, the choice which connected him with Cnaeus Dolabella, and not only deserted them both, but also betrayed and attacked them. Do not, I beg of you, O judges, judge of his crimes by the brevity of my speech rather than by the magnitude of the actions themselves. For I am forced to make haste in order to have time to set before you all the things which I have resolved to relate to you. Wherefore, now that his quaestorship has been put before you, saw that the dishonesty and wickedness of his first conduct in his first office has been thoroughly seen, listen, I pray you, to the remainder. ⁴³And in this I will pass over that period of proscription and rapine which took place under Sulla; nor will I allow him to derive any argument for his own defence from that time of common calamity to all men. I will accuse him of nothing but his own peculiar and well-proved crimes. Therefore, omitting all mention of the time of Sulla from the accusation, consider that splendid lieutenancy of his. After Cilicia was appointed to Cnaeus Dolabella as his province, O ye immortal gods! with what covetousness, with what incessant applications, did he force from him that lieutenancy for himself, which was indeed the beginning of the greatest calamity to Dolabella. For as he proceeded on his journey to the province, wherever he went his conduct was such, that it was not some lieutenant of the Roman people, but rather some calamity that seemed to be going through the country.