by Cicero
Cicero spent fifty days in Sicily. He later claimed, rather colourfully, that he had called on the ploughmen at their homes, and the men had spoken to him from their plough-handles (Scaur. 25). Certainly he worked with extraordinary thoroughness and indeed courage. At Syracuse, he became involved in physical violence with a friend of Verres and had to engage in arguments with the governor Lucius Metellus, who would not allow him a copy of the Syracusans’ decree. Metellus obstructed him at every turn, rebuked him for addressing the Syracusans in Greek (their native tongue), and wrote to the consuls in Verres’ support.
But Cicero overcame all these obstacles and returned to Rome within the 110 days around the beginning of May. Since he had returned on time, the other trial did go ahead, and he had to wait three months until the court was free once more (the outcome of the other trial is unknown; it may have been dropped before the verdict). During these three months, May to July, it is natural to assume that he wrote up the six remaining Verrines, while at the same time campaigning for his aedileship.
In mid-July, the selection and rejection of the jurors for Verres’ trial finally took place. The result was largely favourable to Cicero, although Sextus Peducaeus, the governor of Sicily under whom Cicero had served, was rejected by Verres. Marcus Metellus, on the other hand, was rather surprisingly retained by Cicero (he could only reject a certain number, and there must have been other jurors whom he considered more hostile). Soon afterwards the elections for 69 were held. Hortensius and Quintus Metellus were both elected consul, and Marcus Metellus was elected praetor and appointed president of the extortion court, in succession to Glabrio (he would therefore cease to be a juror on taking up office). Cicero, on the other hand, was successful in obtaining his aedileship, despite an attempt by Verres to prevent this by bribery. The defence felt greatly encouraged by their electoral successes, and Hortensius and Quintus Metellus lost no time in attempting to use their new authority as consuls-elect to intimidate the Sicilian witnesses.
At Rome, courts (except for the violence court) did not sit on public holidays, and on 16 August a long sequence of games was due to begin. With the exception of odd days, the whole of the period 16 August to 18 September and then 27 October to 17 November would consist of public holidays. So the defence now felt that they had an excellent chance of prolonging the trial into 69, when they would be in a good position to determine the outcome. Cicero, they calculated, would take until 15 August to present his case. Hortensius therefore would not have to reply until after 18 September, by which time the jury would have forgotten much of what Cicero had said. Hortensius would spin out his reply for as long as possible, and then the evidence would be taken. After that there would be the compulsory adjournment and later the whole of the second hearing; and that, combined with the second set of public holidays in October and November, would in all likelihood result in the trial running out of time at the end of the year. When it resumed in January, Hortensius and Quintus Metellus would be the consuls, Marcus Metellus would be the president of the court, and some of the jurors would have gone to other duties and been replaced by more sympathetic ones (Marcus Metellus as president would be able to see to this). It would then be a relatively simple matter, the defence concluded, to secure Verres’ acquittal.
At 4 p.m. on 5 August the trial began. Cicero calculated that, in order to avert the possibility of its continuing into 69, he must ensure that the whole of the first hearing was completed before the start of the first set of holidays on 16 August. He therefore decided to forgo the full-scale speech to which he was entitled, and gave instead just a short introduction to the case, In Verrem I. In contrast to a normal prosecution speech, this did not detail the charges at all; instead, it revealed the defence’s plans for delay, exposed their bribery and intimidation, and discussed the political implications of the trial. In particular, Cicero warned the jurors that if they did not act honestly and convict so obvious a criminal as Verres, then the courts would very likely be taken out of their hands and returned to the equites. The defence must have been greatly surprised by the brevity and content of the speech, and by the omission of detailed charges. At the end, Cicero explained that he would proceed directly (after Hortensius’ reply, that is—though he does not say so) to his witnesses and documents, introducing and presenting each one in turn, and offering Hortensius the opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses in the usual way.
This speech did not save time merely by being brief: it also did so by giving Hortensius, whose aim had been to try to spin the trial out, very little to reply to. Hortensius did not yet know the charges, and naturally would not want to spend time speculating as to what they might be and then attempting to explain them away. Cicero had also wrong-footed him in that he had not been expecting to have to say anything until after 18 September; he must have been caught completely unawares. No doubt the speech he gave was brief, and largely devoted to complaint against the unfairness of Cicero’s tactics. (Scholars have disputed whether Hortensius in fact spoke at all, since the evidence is ambiguous; but it is surely inconceivable that he failed to say something in his client’s defence.)
When Hortensius had said what he could, the evidence was taken. It was utterly damning. After two days, Verres stayed at home, pretending to be ill. Hortensius for the most part declined to cross-examine: cross-examination would merely have given the witnesses an opportunity to repeat and emphasize their allegations. At one point during the process he became confused and said to Cicero, ‘I don’t understand these riddles.’ Immediately Cicero answered with an allusion to the gift that Hortensius had received from Verres: ‘Well, you ought to—after all, you’ve got a sphinx in your house!’ On 13 August the end of the first hearing was reached, as Cicero had planned, and the case was adjourned until after 18 September. There was now no possibility of the trial being prolonged into January.
Verres did not give up immediately. During the games which followed, he went round to the house of his advocate Sisenna, and was observed inspecting Sisenna’s silver (Ver. 2.4.33–4; Cicero adds that Sisenna’s slaves would no doubt have kept a close eye on him, having heard of the evidence against him). But in September when the second hearing was due to begin, he failed to appear. He had abandoned his defence and departed for exile at Massilia (Marseilles), taking with him most of his Sicilian plunder, together with the paintings and statues stolen during his time in Asia. He was therefore convicted in absence. At the later session that was held to assess the damages, Cicero agreed to a low assessment, three million sesterces. It was probably all that remained from the forty million that Verres had stolen. Nevertheless, the Sicilians were pleased (Plut. Cic. 8.1), and remained Cicero’s clients for the rest of his life (Att. 14.12.1).
Meanwhile, towards the end of the year a new law, the lex Aurelia, was carried, abolishing senatorial juries. The equites were not given exclusive control of the courts, however. Instead, juries would henceforward consist of one-third senators, one-third equites, and one-third tribuni aerarii (‘treasury tribunes’). In effect, this made the juries two-thirds equestrian, since the difference between the equites and the tribuni aerarii was probably purely technical (in his speeches Cicero treats the tribuni aerarii as equites). The compromise imposed by the lex Aurelia proved to be a successful one, and ended the bitter controversy over whether juries ought to be composed of senators or of equites. Although the bill had not yet been published when Verres’ trial took place (Ver. 2.5.178), most scholars think it must have been at an advanced stage of drafting, in which case it would be unlikely that the trial had any effect on its provisions. Had Verres been acquitted, however, it is not impossible that the scandal would have resulted in the equites being given exclusive control of the courts after all. Cicero’s remarks about the trial’s political significance should not, therefore, be dismissed as unjustified and absurd. But the trial might well have been of greater significance if it had taken place in May, as was originally envisaged.
After the trial Cicero pu
blished his seven Verrines, the two that he had delivered and the five that he would have gone on to deliver at the second hearing. These last five provide the discussion of the charges that Hortensius and Verres were prevented from hearing by Cicero’s decision to forgo a full-scale speech in the first hearing. In Verrem II.1 covers Verres’ career before becoming governor; II.2 his corruption of justice in Sicily; II.3 his abuse of the Sicilian tax system; II.4 his theft of works of art; and II.5 his ruination of the Sicilian navy and his illegal executions of Roman citizens (a matter not strictly relevant to the charge of extortion, but nevertheless constituting an effective and damning finale). For Cicero the result of the trial, capped by his triumphant publication of the complete Verrine corpus, was that he completely eclipsed Hortensius and was henceforward regarded as Rome’s foremost advocate. The trial also marked him out as a politician destined for higher things. Having defeated Verres, he presumably rose to praetorian status in the senate. Then when he actually became praetor in 66, he was made president of the extortion court. His published Verrines were regarded as a model prosecution and would have been carefully studied by every prosecutor, and by every speaker in an extortion trial. Having achieved this great success, however, he was careful to avoid prosecuting thereafter: we know of only one other prosecution which he undertook, that of a personal enemy, Titus Munatius Plancus Bursa, for violence, in 51 (Plancus was also driven into exile).
Verres spent the rest of his life at Massilia. In 43, he was proscribed by Mark Antony, allegedly because he had refused to part with his bronze statues, which Antony coveted. His one consolation was that Cicero had recently died in the same proscription, and that he had been murdered as a consequence of his devastating oratory.
IN VERREM I
[1] The very thing that was most to be desired, members of the jury, the one thing that will have most effect in reducing the hatred felt towards your order* and restoring the tarnished reputation of the courts, this it is which, in the current political crisis, has been granted and presented to you; and this opportunity has come about not, it would appear, by human planning, but virtually by the gift of the gods. For a belief, disastrous for the state and dangerous for you, has become widespread, and has been increasingly talked about not only among ourselves but among foreign peoples as well—the belief that, in these courts as they are currently constituted, it is impossible for a man with money, no matter how guilty he may be, to be convicted. [2] Now, at this moment of reckoning for your order and your courts, when people are ready to use public meetings and legislation to stoke up this hatred of the senate, a defendant has been put on trial—Gaius Verres,* a man already convicted, according to universal public opinion, by his character and actions, but already acquitted, according to his own hopes and assertions, by his immense wealth.
I have taken on this prosecution, gentlemen, with the complete support and confidence of the Roman people, not because I want to increase the hatred felt towards your order, but in order to mend the tarnished reputation which we both share.* The man I have brought before you is a man through whom you will be able to retrieve the good reputation of the courts, restore your popularity with the Roman people, and gratify foreign nations—being as he is an embezzler of the treasury, a plunderer of Asia and Pamphylia, a cheater of city jurisdiction,* and the disgrace and ruination of the province of Sicily. [3] If you pronounce a fair and scrupulous verdict against this man, you will hold on to the influence which ought by rights to be yours. But if on the other hand his colossal wealth succeeds in destroying the scrupulousness and fairness of the courts, then I shall achieve at least one thing—a recognition that the country had the wrong jurors, and not that the jurors had the wrong defendant, or the defendant the wrong prosecutor.
Let me make a personal admission, gentlemen. Gaius Verres set many traps for me by land and sea, some of which I was able to avoid by keeping a careful lookout, and others that I managed to resist through the loyalty and determination of my friends. Even so, I never considered myself in such great danger, or was so totally afraid, as I am now here in this court. [4] It is not so much the expectations aroused by my prosecution or the enormous crowds of people attending this trial that disturb me—although they do in fact make me feel deeply anxious—as the criminal plots that the defendant is attempting to launch simultaneously against me, yourselves, our praetor Manius Glabrio,* the Roman people, our allies, foreign nations, and finally the senatorial order and the very name of ‘senator’. He keeps repeating that people have good reason to be afraid if they have stolen only enough to satisfy their own needs, whereas he himself has plundered enough to keep many people happy; and he adds that there is nothing so sacred that money cannot corrupt it, and nothing so well defended that money cannot overthrow it.
[5] But if he had been as discreet in carrying out his crimes as he was reckless in attempting them in the first place, he might perhaps at some time, in some respect or other, have escaped my notice. But as luck would have it, his unbelievable recklessness has so far been accompanied by singular stupidity. For just as he has been quite public in his theft of money, so in his aim of corrupting the court he has made his plans and ambitions clear to everyone. He tells people that he was really afraid only once in his life, when I formally indicted him. And this was not simply because he had returned from his province to a blaze of hatred and discredit (his return may have been recent, but his unpopularity was well established and of long standing); no, the problem was that it was, as it happened, a bad time to attempt to corrupt the court. [6] This explains why, when I had applied for a very short period of time for going to Sicily to collect evidence, he found someone to ask for a period of two days less for going to Achaea.* The idea was not that this man should by his application and industry achieve what I accomplished by my own hard work and long hours; in fact that Achaean investigator did not even get as far as Brundisium!* I, on the other hand, covered the whole of Sicily in fifty days and so managed to discover, and collect evidence for, all the wrongs done to individuals and communities. Anyone could see, therefore, that the defendant had sought out this investigator not for the purpose of bringing a prosecution of his own, but to use up the time that would otherwise be devoted to the one that I was bringing.
[7] But now this reckless, insane individual is thinking along these lines. He fully realizes that I have come to court ready and prepared to impress his thefts and crimes not only on your ears, but on everyone’s eyes as well. He sees the many senators that have come to testify to his criminality, he sees the many Roman equestrians, and many citizens and allies to whom he has done terrible wrongs, and he sees how many important delegations have assembled here, sent with certified public documents by states that are our friends. [8] But despite all this, he nevertheless holds such a poor opinion of respectable people, and thinks that the senatorial juries are so venal and corrupt that he keeps openly repeating that he has had good reason to be greedy, since in his experience money is such a strong protection. And he boasts of how he successfully managed the most difficult thing of all, the purchase of the ideal date for his trial; and this would make it easier for him to purchase everything else afterwards and ensure that, since it was not possible for him to escape the force of the charges altogether, he could at least avoid the worst of the storm. [9] But if he had had the slightest confidence not just in his case, but in any honourable means of defence or in anyone’s eloquence or influence, he would surely not have had to scrape together and go chasing after such expedients as these. And he would not have scorned and despised the senatorial order to the extent that he arbitrarily selected from it someone he could prosecute, someone who would have to make his defence before him, leaving him free then to make his own preparations.
[10] What his hopes and intentions are in all of this, I can see very clearly. But how he imagines he can get what he wants with this praetor and this court, I fail to understand. But one thing I do understand, and the Roman people came to the same conclusion when the r
ejection of jurors* was being held—that his hopes were so desperate that money was his only means of escape, and that if that protection were taken from him, he believed that nothing else could save him.
Indeed, what talent could be large enough, what eloquence or fluency great enough* to make any kind of a defence of this man’s career, guilty as he is of so many vices and crimes, and long since condemned according to the wishes and judgement of the whole world? [11] I may as well pass over the shame and disgrace of his early life. But as for his quaestorship, the first stage in an official career, what did it consist of except public money stolen from Gnaeus Carbo by his own quaestor,* a consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted, a province abandoned, and the sacred personal tie imposed on him by the lot violated? His period of service as a legate spelled disaster for the whole of Asia and Pamphylia, provinces in which he stole from many private houses, a great many cities, and all the shrines. Moreover, he resumed and repeated against Gnaeus Dolabella that previous crime of his that he had committed during his quaestorship: as a result of misdeeds that were entirely his own, he brought disgrace on a man whose legate and proquaestor he had been, and in his superior’s hour of danger he did not merely desert him but actually attacked and betrayed him. [12] His city praetorship consisted of a general ransacking of sacred temples and public buildings and, in his judicial rulings, of the assignment and bestowal of goods and property in a manner which violated every precedent.
But the greatest and most numerous monuments and testaments to all his vices are those which he has now set up in Sicily—the province which he oppressed and ruined so effectively over a three-year period that it is now impossible for it to be restored to its previous state. Indeed, it is doubtful whether a succession of good governors over many years could bring about even a partial recovery. [13] While he was governor, the Sicilians were not allowed the use of their own laws, or the decrees of our senate, or the common laws of mankind. All the property that anyone owns in Sicily today is that which has either escaped the notice of this monster of avarice, or has been left over after his greed was satisfied. Over those three years, no lawsuit was decided except by his say-so, and no man’s inheritance from his father and grandfather was so secure that it could not be confiscated at Verres’ order. By a new and corrupt ruling, arable farmers were forced to hand over vast sums of money from their capital; our staunchest allies were classed as enemies; Roman citizens were tortured and executed like slaves; criminals were acquitted through bribery; innocent and respectable men were prosecuted in their absence and convicted and exiled without a defence; the most strongly fortified harbours and the biggest and best-protected cities were left vulnerable to pirates and brigands; Sicilian soldiers and sailors—our friends and allies—were starved to death; and the finest and best-equipped fleets were, to the great disgrace of the Roman people, lost and destroyed. [14] Ancient monuments, some the gift of wealthy kings who intended them to adorn their cities, others set up by our own victorious generals* who either donated or restored them to the cities of Sicily—all these this same praetor plundered and stripped bare. And he did not do this only to the public statues and works of art: he also stole from all the temples, places sanctified by holy veneration, and he did not leave the Sicilians with a single god that seemed to him to have been made with above average artistic skill or with ancient craftsmanship. As for his sexual crimes and immorality, considerations of decency prevent me from relating his outrageous behaviour; and at the same time I am reluctant thereby to add to the grief of those whose wives and children could not be protected from his violent assaults. [15] ‘But he did all this discreetly, so that it would not become public knowledge.’ On the contrary, I do not think there is anyone who has heard the name of Verres who could not also enumerate the terrible crimes he has committed. I am therefore much more frightened of being thought to have missed out many of his crimes than to have made any up. Indeed, I do not think that this great crowd which has come to listen today is wanting to find out from me what Verres is accused of so much as to go over with me what it already knows.