Читать книгу Against Verres - Marcus Tullius Cicero - Страница 59

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This is that fellow's splendid guardianship. See to whom you are entrusting your children! Behold how great is the recollection of a dead companion! Behold how great is the fear of the opinion of the living! When all Asia had given herself up to you to be harassed and plundered, when all Pamphylia was placed at your mercy to be pillaged, were you not content with this rich booty? Could you not keep your hands off your guardianship, off your ward, off the son of your comrade? It is not now the Sicilians; they are now a set of ploughmen, as you are constantly saying, who are hemming you in. It is not the men who have been excited against you and rendered hostile to you by your own decrees and edicts. Malleolus is brought forward by me and his mother and his grandmother, who, unfortunate, and weeping, say that their boy has been stripped by you of his father's property. ⁹⁴What are you waiting for? till poor Malleolus rises from the shades below, and demands of you an account of your discharge of the duties of a guardian, of a comrade, of an intimate friend? Fancy that he is present himself, O most avaricious and most licentious man, restore the property of your comrade to his son; if not all you have robbed him of, at least that which you have confessed that you received. Why do you compel the son of your comrade to utter his first words in the forum with the voice of indignation and complaint? Why do you compel the wife of your comrade, the mother-in-law of your comrade, in short, the whole family of your dead comrade, to hear evidence against you? Why do you compel most modest and admirable women to come against their wont and against their will into so great an assembly of men? Recite the evidence of them all. [The evidence of the mother and grandmother is read.]