neither personally known to those whom they visit, nor can always find
any to vouch for their nationality. But in this single fact of their
citizenship they feel they shall be safe, not only with our own governors,
who are held in check by the terror of the laws and of public opinion--not
only among those who share that citizenship of Rome, and who are
united with them by community of language, of laws, and of many things
besides--but go where they may, this, they think, will be their safe
guard. Take away this confidence, destroy this safeguard for our Roman
citizens--once establish the principle that there is no protection in the
words, 'I am a citizen of Rome'--that praetor or other magistrate may with
impunity sentence to what punishment he will a man who says he is a Roman
citizen, merely because somebody does not know it for a fact; and at
once, by admitting such a defence, you are shutting up against our
Roman citizens all our provinces, all foreign states, despotic or
independent--all the whole world, in short, which has ever lain open to
our national enterprise beyond all".

He turns again to Verres.

"But why talk of Gavius? as though it were Gavius on whom you were
wreaking a private vengeance, instead of rather waging war against the
very name and rights of Roman citizenship. You showed yourself an enemy,
I say, not to the individual man, but to the common cause of liberty. For
what meant it that, when the authorities of Messana, according to their
usual custom, would have erected the cross behind their city on the
Pompeian road, you ordered it to be set up on the side that looked toward
the Strait? Nay, and added this--which you cannot deny, which you said
openly in the hearing of all--that you chose that spot for this reason,
that as he had called himself a Roman citizen, he might be able, from his
cross of punishment, to see in the distance his country and his home! And