[24]
This man, as I began to say, Verres selected for his principal agent in distressing and plundering the fortunes of the cultivators of the land. To this man's audacity, and wickedness, and cruelty, our most faithful allies and most virtuous citizens were given up, O judges, by this praetor, and were placed at his mercy by new regulations and new edicts, the entire law of Hiero, as I said before, having been rejected and repudiated.