There was, indeed, evidence enough against the late governor.  The reckless gratification of his avarice and his passions had seldom satisfied him, without the addition of some bitter insult to the sufferers.  But there was even a more atrocious feature in the case, of which Cicero did not fail to make good use in his appeal to a Roman jury.  Many of the unhappy victims had the Roman franchise.  The torture of an unfortunate Sicilian might be turned into a jest by a clever advocate for the defence, and regarded by a philosophic jury with less than the cold compassion with which we regard the sufferings of the lower animals; but “to scourge a man that was a Roman and uncondemned”, even in the far-off province of Judea, was a thought which, a century later, made the officers of the great Empire, at its pitch of power, tremble before a wandering teacher who bore the despised name of Christian.  No one can possibly tell the tale so well as Cicero himself; and the passage from his speech for the prosecution is an admirable specimen both of his power of pathetic narrative and scathing denunciation, “How shall I speak of Publius Gavius, a citizen of Consa?  With what powers of voice, with what force of language, with what sufficient indignation of soul, can I tell the tale?  Indignation, at least, will not fail me:  the more must I strive that in this my pleading the other requisites may be made to meet the gravity of the subject, the intensity of my feeling.  For the accusation is such that, when it was first laid before me, I did not think to make use of it; though I knew it to be perfectly true, I did not think it would be credible.—­How shall I now proceed?—­when I have already been speaking for so many hours on one subject—­his atrocious cruelty; when I have exhausted upon other points well-nigh all the powers of language such as alone is suited to that man’s crimes;—­when I have taken no precaution to secure your attention by any variety in my charges against him,—­in what fashion can I now speak on a charge of this importance?  I think there is one way—­one course, and only one, left for me to take.  I will place the facts before you; and they have in themselves such weight, that no eloquence—­I will not say of mine, for I have none—­but of any man’s, is needed to excite your feelings.

“This Gavius of Consa, of whom I speak, had been among the crowds of Roman citizens who had been thrown into prison under that man.  Somehow he had made his escape out of the Quarries,[1] and had got to Messana; and when he saw Italy and the towers of Rhegium now so close to him, and out of the horror and shadow of death felt himself breathe with a new life as he scented once more the fresh air of liberty and the laws, he began to talk at Messana, and to complain that he, a Roman citizen, had been put in irons—­that he was going straight to Rome—­that he would be ready there for Verres on his arrival.