I can only give a few of the many little histories which have been preserved for us in this Actio Secunda; but perhaps these few may suffice to show how a great Roman officer could demean himself in his government. Of the doings of Verres before he went to Sicily I will select two. It became his duty on one occasion--a job which he seems to have sought for purpose of rapine--to go to Lampsacus, a town in Asia, as lieutenant, or legate, for Dolabella, who then had command in Asia. Lampsacus was on the Hellespont, an allied town of specially good repute. Here he is put up as a guest, with all the honors of a Roman officer, at the house of a citizen named Janitor. But he heard that another citizen, one Philodamus, had a beautiful daughter--an article with which we must suppose that Janitor was not equally well supplied. Verres, determined to get at the lady, orders that his creature Rubrius shall be quartered at the house of Philodamus. Philodamus, who from his rank was entitled to be burdened only with the presence of leading Romans, grumbles at this; but, having grumbled, consents, and having consented, does the best to make his house comfortable. He gives a great supper, at which the Romans eat and drink, and purposely create a tumult. Verres, we understand, was not there. The intention is that the girl shall be carried away and brought to him. In the middle of their cups the father is desired to produce his daughter; but this he refuses to do. Rubrius then orders the doors to be closed, and proceeds to ransack the house. Philodamus, who will not stand this, fetches his son, and calls his fellow-citizens around him. Rubrius succeeds in pouring boiling water over his host, but in the row the Romans get the worst of it. At last one of Verres's lictors--absolutely a Roman lictor--is killed, and the woman is not carried off. The man at least bore the outward signs of a lictor, but, according to Cicero, was in the pay of Verres as his pimp. So far Verres fails; and the reader, rejoicing at the courage of the father who could protect his own house even against Romans, begins to feel some surprise that this case should have been selected. So far the lieutenant had not done the mischief he had intended, but he soon avenges his failure. He induces Dolabella, his chief, to have Philodamus and his son carried off to Laodicea, and there tried before Nero, the then Proconsul, for killing the sham lictor. They are tried at Laodicea before Nero, Verres himself sitting as one of the judges, and are condemned. Then in the market place of the town, in the presence of each other, the father and son are beheaded--a thing, as Cicero says, very sad for all Asia to behold. All this had been done some years ago; and, nevertheless, Verres had been chosen Prætor, and sent to Sicily to govern the Sicilians.