Читать книгу Against Verres - Marcus Tullius Cicero - Страница 77

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¹⁴³It is worth while to consider the words of the contract itself. You will say that the same man drew it up who drew up that edict about inheritance. "The contract for work to be done, which the minor Junius's..." Speak, I pray you, a little more plainly. "Caius Verres, the praetor of the city, has added..." The contracts of the censors are being amended. For what do they say? I see in many old documents, "Cnaeus Domitius, Lucius Metellus, Lucius Cassius, Cnaeus Servilius have added..." Caius Verres wants something of the same sort. Read. What has he added? "Admit not as a partner in this work any one who has taken a contract from Lucius Marcius and Marcus Perperna the censors; give him no snare in it; and let him not contract for it." Why so? Is it that the work may not be faulty? But the inspection afterwards belonged to you. Lest he should not have capital enough? But sufficient security had been taken for the people's interest in bonds and sureties, and more security still might have been had. ¹⁴⁴If in this case the business itself, if the scandalous nature of your injustice had no weight with you;—if the misfortune of this minor, the tears of his relations, the peril of Decimus Brutus, whose lands were pledged as security for him, and the authority of Marcus Marcellus his guardian had no influence with you, did you not even consider this, that your crime would be such that you would neither be able to deny it, (for you had entered it in your account-books,) nor, if you confessed it, to make any excuse for it? The contract is knocked down at five hundred and fifty thousand sesterces, while the guardians kept crying out that they could do it even to the satisfaction of the most unjust of men, for eighty thousand. In truth, what was the job? ¹⁴⁵That which you saw. All those pillars which you see whitewashed, had a crane put against them, were taken down at a very little expense, and put up again of the same stone as before. And you let this work out for five hundred and sixty thousand sesterces. And among those pillars I say that there are some which have never been moved at all by your contractor. I say that there are some which only had the outer coat scraped off, and a fresh coat put on. But, if I had thought that it cost so much to whitewash pillars, I should certainly never have stood for the aedileship. Still, in order that something might appear to be really being done, and that it might not seem to be a mere robbery of a minor—"If in the course of the work you injure anything, you must repair it."