[26]
In the first place, see how easy and pleasant to himself Verres
by his own ingenuity and wisdom made the labour of marches, which is a labour of the
greatest importance in all military affairs, and most especially necessary in
Sicily. First, in the winter season he
devises for himself this admirable remedy against the severity of the cold and the
violence of storms and floods; he selected the city of Syracuse, the situation of which and the nature
of its soil and atmosphere are said to be such that there never yet was a day of
such violent and turbulent storms, that men could not see the sun at some time or
other in the day. Here that gallant general was quartered in the winter months, so
securely that it was not easy to see him, I will not say out of the house, but even
out of bed. So the shortness of the day was consumed in banquets, the length of the
night in adulteries and debaucheries.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.