Читать книгу Against Verres - Marcus Tullius Cicero - Страница 45

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I have all the accounts both of that fellow and of his father, of money received, which I have most carefully read and arranged; those of your father, as long as he lived, you own, as far as you say that you have made them up. For in that man, O judges, you will find this new thing. We hear that some men have never kept accounts; which is a mistaken opinion of men with respect to Antonius; for he kept them most carefully. But there may be men of that sort, but they are by no means to be approved of. We hear that some men have not kept them from the beginning, but after some time have made them up; there is a way of accounting for this too. But this is unprecedented and absurd which this man gave us for an answer, when we demanded his account of him: "That he kept them up to the consulship of Marcus Terentius and Caius Cassius; but that, after that, he gave up keeping them." ⁶¹In another place we will consider what sort of a reply this is; at present I am not concerned with it; for of the times about which I am at present occupied I have the accounts, both yours and those of your father. You cannot deny that you carried off very many most beautiful statues, very many admirable paintings. I wish you would deny it. Show in your accounts or in those of your father that any one of them was purchased, and you have gained your cause. There is not even any possibility of your having bought those two most beautiful statues which are now standing in your court, and which stood for many years by the folding doors of the Samian Juno; these two, I say, which are now the only statues left in your house, which are waiting for the broker, left alone and deserted by the other statues.