In the second place, an accuser must be trustworthy and veracious. Even if I were to think that you were desirous of being so, I easily see that you are not able to be so. Nor do I speak of these things, which, if I were to mention, you would not be able to invalidate, namely that you, before you departed from Sicily, had become reconciled to Verres; that Potamo, your secretary and intimate friend, was retained by Verres in the province when you left it; that Marcus Caecilius, your brother, a most exemplary and accomplished young man, is not only not present here and does not stand by you while prosecuting your alleged injuries, but that he is with Verres, and is living on terms of the closest friendship and intimacy with him. These, and other things belonging to you, are many signs of a false accuser; but these I do not now avail myself of. I say this, that you, if you were to wish it ever so much, still cannot be a faithful accuser.

For I see that there are many charges in which you are so implicated with Verres, that in accusing him, you would not dare to touch upon them. All Sicily complains that Caius Verres, when he had ordered corn to be brought into his granary for him, and when a bushel of wheat was two sesterces, demanded of the farmers twelve sesterces a bushel for wheat. The praetor had the power to make an annual demand on the farmers for corn for be state, and the quaestor was to pay a fair market price for it; but in some cases the praetor allowed or compelled the farmer to pay a composition in money, instead of delivering corn, and Verres when the market price of wheat was only two sesterces a bushel compelled the farmers to pay twelve sesterces a bushel by way of composition It was a great crime, an immense sum, an impudent theft, an intolerable injustice. I must inevitably convict him of this charge; what will you do, O Caecilius?

Will you pass over this serious accusation, or will you bring it forward? If you bring it forward, will you charge that as a crime against another, which you did yourself at the same time in the same province? Will you dare so to accuse another, that you cannot avoid at the same time condemning yourself? If you omit the charge, what sort of a prosecution will yours be, which from fear of danger to yourself, is afraid not only to create a suspicion of a most certain and enormous crime, but even to make the least mention of it? Corn was bought, on the authority of a decree of the senate, of the Sicilians while Verres was praetor;