Kitap 2
169
Unless, perchance, in that matter, some little hope still consoles you, because you were popular among the farmers of the revenues: but I have taken care, through my diligence, that that popularity should not serve,—you have contrived, by your own wisdom, to show that it ought to be, an injury to you. Listen, O judges, to the whole affair in a few words. In the collecting the tax on pasture lands in Sicily there is a sub-collector of the name of Lucius Carpinatius, who both for the sake of his own profit, and perhaps because he thought it for the interest of his partners, cultivated the favour of Verres to the neglect of everything else. He, while he was attending the praetor about all the markets, and never leaving him, had got into such familiarity with, and aptitude at the practice of selling Verres's decrees and decisions, and managing his other concerns, that he was considered almost a second Timarchides.
170
He was in one respect still more important; because he also lent money at usury to those who were purchasing anything of the praetor. And this usury, O judges, was such that even the profit from the other transactions was inferior to the gain obtained by it. For the money which he entered as paid to those with whom he was dealing, he entered also under the name of Verres's secretary, or of Timarchides, or even under Verres's own name, as received from them. And besides that, he lent other large sums belonging to Verres, of which he made no entry at all, in his own name.
