who is now at Panormus, and who will attest my
innocence!" Deaf to all remonstrance, remorseless, thirsting for
innocent blood, you ordered the savage punishment to be inflicted!
While the sacred words, "I am a Roman citizen," were on his
lips--words which, in the remotest regions, are a passport to
protection--you ordered him to death, to a death upon the cross!

O liberty! O sound once delightful to every Roman ear! O sacred
privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred--now trampled on! Is it
come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate--a governor, who holds his
whole power of the Roman people--in a Roman province, within sight of
Italy, bind, scourge, torture, and put to an infamous death, a Roman
citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, the
tears of pitying spectators, the majesty of the Roman commonwealth,
nor the fear of the justice of this country, restrain the merciless
monster, who, in the confidence of his riches, strikes at the very
root of liberty, and sets mankind at defiance? And shall this man
escape? Fathers, it must not be! It must not be, unless you would
undermine the very foundations of social safety, strangle justice, and
call down anarchy, massacre and ruin on the commonwealth.--_Oration
against Verres._

ADVANTAGES OF AGE.

(_By Cicero._)

Indeed, old age is so far from being necessarily a state of languor
and inactivity, that it generally continues to exert itself in that
sort of occupation which was the favorite object of its pursuit in
more vigorous years. I will add, that instances might be produced of
men who, in this period of life, have successfully applied themselves
even to the acquisition of some art of science to which they were
before entirely strangers. Thus Solon in one of his poems, written
when he was advanced in years, glories that "he learned something
every day he lived." And old as I myself am, it is but lately that I
acquired a knowledge of the Greek language; to which I applied with
the more zeal and diligence, as I had long entertained an earnest
desire of becoming acquainted with the writings and characters of
those excellent men, to whose examples I have occasionally appealed in
the course of our present conversation. Thus, Socrates, too, in his
old age, learned to play upon the lyre, an art which the ancients did
not deem unworthy of their application. If I have not followed the
philosopher's example in this instance (which, indeed, I very mu