[Footnote 1:  This was one of the state prisons at Syracuse, so called, said to have been constructed by the tyrant Dionysius.  They were the quarries from which the stone was dug for building the city, and had been converted to their present purpose.  Cicero, who no doubt had seen the one in question, describes it as sunk to an immense depth in the solid rock.  There was no roof; and the unhappy prisoners were exposed there “to the sun by day and to the rain and frosts by night”.  In these places the survivors of the unfortunate Athenian expedition against Syracuse were confined, and died in great numbers.]

“The wretched man little knew that he might as well have talked in this fashion in the governor’s palace before his very face, as at Messana.  For, as I told you before, this city he had selected for himself as the accomplice in his crimes, the receiver of his stolen goods, the confidant of all his wickedness.  So Gavius is brought at once before the city magistrates; and, as it so chanced, on that very day Verres himself came to Messana.  The case is reported to him; that there is a certain Roman citizen who complained of having been put into the Quarries at Syracuse; that as he was just going on board ship, and was uttering threats—­really too atrocious—­against Verres, they had detained him, and kept him in custody, that the governor himself might decide about him as should seem to him good.  Verres thanks the gentlemen, and extols their goodwill and zeal for his interests.  He himself, burning with rage and malice, comes down to the court.  His eyes flashed fire; cruelty was written on every line of his face.  All present watched anxiously to see to what lengths he meant to go, or what steps he would take; when suddenly he ordered the prisoner to be dragged forth, and to be stripped and bound in the open forum, and the rods to be got ready at once.  The unhappy man cried out that he was a Roman citizen—­that he had the municipal franchise of Consa—­that he had served in a campaign with Lucius Pretius, a distinguished Roman knight, now engaged in business at Panormus, from whom Verres might ascertain the truth of his statement.  Then that man replies that he has discovered that he, Gavius, has been sent into Sicily as a spy by the ringleaders of the runaway slaves; of which charge there was neither witness nor trace of any kind, or even suspicion in any man’s mind.  Then he ordered the man to be scourged severely all over his body.  Yes—­a Roman citizen was cut to pieces with rods in the open forum at Messana, gentlemen; and as the punishment went on, no word, no groan of the wretched man, in all his anguish, was heard amid the sound of the lashes, but this cry,—­’I am a Roman citizen!’ By such protest of citizenship he thought he could at least save himself from anything like blows—­could escape the indignity of personal torture.  But not only did he fail in thus deprecating the insult of the lash, but when he redoubled his entreaties and his appeal to the name of Rome, a cross—­yes, I say, a cross—­was ordered for that most unfortunate and ill-fated man, who had never yet beheld such an abuse of a governor’s power.