Kitap 4
151
You are welcome, then, to that panegyric of the Mamertines. As for the city of Syracuse, we see that that feels towards you as it has been treated by you; and among them that infamous Verrean festival, instituted by you, has been abolished. In truth, it was a most unseemly thing for honours such as belong to the gods to be paid to the man who had carried off the images of the gods. In truth, that conduct of the Syracusans would be deservedly reproached, If, when they had struck a most celebrated and solemn day of festival games out of their annals, because on that day Syracusewas said to have been taken by Marcellus, they should, notwithstanding, celebrate a day of festival in the name of Verres; though he had plundered the Syracusans of all which that day of disaster had left them. But observe the shamelessness and arrogance of the man, O judges, who not only instituted this disgraceful and ridiculous Verrean festival out of the money of Heraclius, but who also ordered the Marcellean festival to be abolished, in order that they might every year offer sacrifices to the man by whose means they had lost the sacred festivals which they had ever observed, and had lost their national deities, and that they might take away the festival days in honour of that family by whose means they had recovered all their other festivals.
