, who, with her husband, Dorotheus, lived with her father They
were enemies of Sthenius, and we are given to understand that Verres
ingratiated himself with them partly for the sake of Callidama, who
seems very quickly to have been given up to him,[119] and partly that he
might instigate them to bring actions against Sthenius. This is done
with great success; so that Sthenius is forced to run away, and betake
himself, winter as it was, across the seas to Rome. It has already been
told that when he was at Rome an action was brought against him by
Verres for having run away when he was under judgment, in which Cicero
defended him, and in which he was acquitted. In the teeth of his
acquittal, Verres persecuted the man by every form of law which came to
his hands as Praetor, but always in opposition to the law. There is an
audacity about the man's proceedings, in his open contempt of the laws
which it was his special duty to carry out, making us feel how confident
he was that he could carry everything before him in Rome by means of his
money. By robbery and concealing his robberies, by selling his judgments
in such a way that he should maintain some reticence by ordinary
precaution, he might have made much money, as other governors had done.
But he resolved that it would pay him better to rob everywhere openly,
and then, when the day of reckoning came, to buy the judges wholesale.
As to shame at such doings, there was no such feelings left among
Romans.

Before he comes to the story of Sthenius, Cicero makes a grandly
ironical appeal to the bench before him: "Yes, O judges, keep this man;
keep him in the State! Spare him, preserve him so that he, too, may sit
with us as a judge here so that he, too, may, with impartiality, advise
us, as a Senator, what may be best for us as to peace and war! Not that
we need trouble ourselves as to his senatorial duties. His authority
would be nothing. When would he dare, or when would he care, to come
among us? Unless it might be in the idle month of February, when would a
man so idle, so debauched, show himself in the Senate-house? Let him
come and show himself. Let him advise us to attack the Cretans; to
pronounce the Greeks of Byzantium free; to declare Ptolemy King.[120]
Let him speak and vote as Hortensius may direct. This will have but
little effect upon our lives or our property. But beyond this there is
something we must look to; something that would be distrusted; something
that e