Cicero's speech on the occasion--which, as speeches went in those
days, was very short--is a model of sagacity and courage. He had to
plead his own fitness, the unfitness of his adversary, and the wishes
in the matter of the Sicilians. This had to be done with no halting
phrases. It was not simply his object to convince a body of honest men
that, with the view of getting at the truth, he would be the better
advocate of the two. We may imagine that there was not a judge there,
not a Roman present, who was not well aware of that before the orator
began. It was needed that the absurdity of the comparison between them
should be declared so loudly that the judges would not dare to
betray the Sicilians, and to liberate the accused, by choosing the
incompetent man. When Cicero rose to speak, there was probably not one
of them of his own party, not a Consul, a Praetor, an Aedile, or
a Quaestor, not a judge, not a Senator, not a hanger-on about the
courts, but was anxious that Verres with his plunder should escape.
Their hope of living upon the wealth of the provinces hung upon it.
But if he could speak winged words--words that should fly all over
Rome, that might fly also among subject nations--then would the judges
not dare to carry out this portion of the scheme.

"When," he says, "I had served as Quaestor in Sicily, and had left the
province after such a fashion that all the Sicilians had a grateful
memory of my authority there, though they had older friends on whom
they relied much, they felt that I might be a bulwark to them in their
need. These Sicilians, harassed and robbed, have now come to me in
public bodies, and have implored me to undertake their defence. 'The
time has come,' they say, 'not that I should look after the interest
of this or that man, but that I should protect the very life and
well-being of the whole province.' I am inclined by my sense of duty,