[...] The more strongly when you want, or judges, the only really suited to quell the antipathy towards your class and disrepute to the judicial institution, you are offered at a critical time for the state, not human counsel, but almost by divine will. For a long time now, hath been diffused, not only among ourselves but among other people, opinion, fatal to the republic and risky for you, with the current judicial system, a rich man can, as guilty , evade justice. Now precisely in such a sensitive time for your class and the judiciary, while there is people willing to groped, with public hearings and legislative proposals, to arouse hatred against the Senate, is accused before you as Gaius Verres, a man already condemned by public opinion for his life of misdeeds, but, according to his hopes and claims, was, thanks to its huge financial resources, already completed. I have embraced this cause, or judges, with the full consent and lively expectation of the Roman people, not to increase the hostility towards your order, but to put a stop to the general disrepute. I brought before you a man who offers you the chance to give back the estimated loss to justice, to be reconciled with the Roman people, to give satisfaction to foreign nations, a man who is was the robber of the public treasury, the oppressor of Asia Minor and Pamphylia, the robber that he administered justice as urban praetor, plague and ruin of the Sicilian province. If you judge him strictly and conscientiously, will remain firm for the prestige that it is your duty to preserve, but if its enormous wealth we won the respect of law and truth, will reach at least the purpose of proving that the courts did not miss a accused, nor to that an accuser, but rather to the republic is not his court. [...]
Cicero, the Verrine
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