Do you think that you are able to distinguish in separate charges, and in a
 well-arranged speech, all that Caius Verres has done in his quaestorship, and in his
 lieutenancy, and in his praetorship, at Rome ,
 or in Italy , or in Achaia , or in Asia Minor , or in
 Pamphylia , as the actions themselves are
 divided by place and time? Do you think that you are able (and this is especially
 necessary against a defendant of this sort) to cause the things which he has done
 licentiously, or wickedly, or tyrannically, to appear just as bitter and scandalous to
 those who hear of them, as they did appear to those who felt them? Those things which I am speaking of are very important, believe me. Do not you despise
 this either; everything must be related, and demonstrated, and explained; the cause must
 be not merely stated, but it must also be gravely and copiously dilated on. You must
 cause, if you wish really to do and to effect anything, men not only to hear you, but
 also to hear you willingly and eagerly. And if nature kind been bountiful to you in such
 qualities, and if from your childhood you had studied the best arts and systems, and
 worked hard at them;—if you had learnt Greek literature at Athens , not at Lilybaeum , and Latin literature at Rome , and not in Sicily ; still
 it would be a great undertaking to approach so important a cause, and one about which
 there is such great expectation, and having approached it, to follow it up with the
 requisite diligence; to have all the particulars always fresh in your memory; to discuss
 it properly in your speech, and to support it adequately with your voice and your
 faculties. Perhaps you may say, What then? Are you then endowed with all these qualifications?—I
 wish indeed that I were; but at all events I have laboured with great industry from my
 very childhood to attain them. And if I, on account of the importance and difficulty of
 such a study have not been able to attain them, who have done nothing else all my life,
 how far do you think that you must be distant from these qualities, which you have not
 only never thought of before, but which even now, when you are entering on a stage that
 requires them all, you can form no proper idea of, either as for their nature or as to
 their importance?