Читать книгу Against Verres - Marcus Tullius Cicero - Страница 78

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¹⁴⁶What was there that he could injure, when he was only putting back every stone in its place? "He who takes the contract must give security to bear the man harmless who has taken the work from the former contractor." He is joking when he orders Rabonius to give himself security. "Ready money is to be paid." Out of what funds? From his funds who cried out that he would do for eighty thousand sesterces what you let out at five hundred and sixty thousand. Out of what funds? out of the funds of a minor, whose tender age and desolate condition, even if he had no guardians, the praetor himself ought to protect. But as his guardians did protect him, you took away not only his paternal fortune, but the property of the guardians also. ¹⁴⁷"Execute the work in the best materials of every sort." Was any stone to be cut and brought to the place? Nothing was to be brought but the crane. For no stone, no materials at all were brought; there was just as much to be done in that contract as took a little labour of artisans at low wages, and there was the hire of the crane. Do you think it was less work to make one entirely new pillar without any old stone, which could be worked up again, or to put back those four in their places? No one doubts that it is a much a better job to make one new one. I will prove that in private houses, where there has been a great deal of expensive carriage, pillars no smaller than these are contracted for to be placed in an open court for forty thousand sesterces apiece. ¹⁴⁸But it is folly to argue about such manifest shamelessness of that man at any greater length, especially when in the whole contract he has openly disregarded the language and opinion of every one, inasmuch as he has added at the bottom of it, "Let him have the old materials for himself." As if any old materials were taken from that work, and as if the whole work were not done with old materials. But still, if the minor was not allowed to take the contract, it was not necessary for it to come to Verres himself: some other of the citizens might have undertaken the work. Every one else was excluded no less openly than the minor. He appointed a day by which the work must be completed—the first of December. He gives out the contract about the thirteenth of September: every one is excluded by the shortness of the time. What happens then? How does Rabonius contrive to have his work done by that day?