to be perfectly true, I did not think it would be credible.--How shall I now proceed?--when I have already been speaking for so many hours on one subject--his atrocious cruelty; when I have exhausted upon other points well-nigh all the powers of language such as alone is suited to that man's crimes;--when I have taken no precaution to secure your attention by any variety in my charges against him,--in what fashion can I now speak on a charge of this importance? I think there is one way--one course, and only one, left for me to take. I will place the facts before you; and they have in themselves such weight, that no eloquence--I will not say of mine, for I have none--but of any man's, is needed to excite your feelings. "This Gavius of Consa, of whom I speak, had been among the crowds of Roman citizens who had been thrown into prison under that man. Somehow he had made his escape out of the Quarries,[1] and had got to Messana; and when he saw Italy and the towers of Rhegium now so close to him, and out of the horror and shadow of death felt himself breathe with a new life as he scented once more the fresh air of liberty and the laws, he began to talk at Messana, and to complain that he, a Roman citizen, had been put in irons--that he was going straight to Rome--that he would be ready there for Verres on his arrival. [Footnote 1: This was one of the state prisons at Syracuse, so called, said to have been constructed by the tyrant Dionysius. They were the quarries from which the stone was dug for building the city, and had been converted to their present purpose. Cicero, who no doubt had seen the one in question, describes it as sunk to an immense depth in the solid rock. There was no roof; and the unhappy prisoners were exposed there "to the sun by day and to the rain and frosts by night". In these places the survivors of the unfortunate Athenian expedition against Syracuse were confined, and died in great numbers.]