Book 2
132
In such a matter, Verres did not choose to do any thing obscurely, nor to play tricks in the drawing of lots, nor to take days out of the calendar. He did not choose to do anything in an underhand manner, or by means of artifice; but in order to take away the fondness and desire for honours and ambition out of every city, feelings which usually tend to the ruin of a state, he declared that he should appoint the censors in every city.
133
When the praetor announced so vast a scene of bargaining and trafficking as that, people came to Syracuse to see him, from all quarters. The whole of the praetor's house was on fire with the eagerness and cupidity of men; and no wonder, when all the comitia of so many cities were packed together into one house, and when all the ambition of an entire province was confined in one chamber. Bribes being openly asked for, and biddings being openly made, Timarchides appointed two censors for every city. He, by his own labour, and by his own visits to every one, by all the trouble which he took in this employment, achieved this, that all the money came to Verres without his having any anxiety on his part. How much money this Timarchides made, you cannot as yet know; for a certainty; but in what a variety of manners, and how shamefully, he plundered people, you heard at the former pleading, by the evidence of many witnesses.
