house. Philodamus, who will not stand this, fetches his son,
and calls his fellow-citizens around him. Rubrius succeeds in pouring
boiling water over his host, but in the row the Romans get the worst of
it. At last one of Verres's lictors--absolutely a Roman lictor--is
killed, and the woman is not carried off. The man at least bore the
outward signs of a lictor, but, according to Cicero, was in the pay of
Verres as his pimp.

So far Verres fails; and the reader, rejoicing at the courage of the
father who could protect his own house even against Romans, begins to
feel some surprise that this case should have been selected. So far the
lieutenant had not done the mischief he had intended, but he soon
avenges his failure. He induces Dolabella, his chief, to have Philodamus
and his son carried off to Laodicea, and there tried before Nero, the
then Proconsul, for killing the sham lictor. They are tried at Laodicea
before Nero, Verres himself sitting as one of the judges, and are
condemned. Then in the market place of the town, in the presence of each
other, the father and son are beheaded--a thing, as Cicero says, very
sad for all Asia to behold. All this had been done some years ago; and,
nevertheless, Verres had been chosen Praetor, and sent to Sicily to
govern the Sicilians.

When Verres was Praetor at Rome--the year before he was sent to
Sicily--it became his duty, or rather privilege, as he found it, to see
that a certain temple of Castor in the city was given up in proper
condition by the executors of a defunct citizen who had taken a contract
for keeping it in repair. This man, whose name had been Junius, left a
son, who was a Junius also under age, with a large fortune in charge of
various trustees, tutors, as they were called, whose duty it was to
protect the heir's interests. Verres, knowing of old that no property
was so easily preyed on as that of a minor, sees at once that something
may be done with the temple of Castor. The heir took oath, and to the
extent of his property he was bound to keep the edifice in good repair.
But Verres, when he made an inspection, finds everything to be in more
than usually good order. There is not a scratch on the roof of which he
can make use. Nothing has been allowed to go astray. Then "one of his
dogs"--for he had boasted to his friend Ligur that he always went about
with dogs to search out his game for him--suggested that some of the
columns were out of the perpendicular. Ver