Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics)
Page 17
And if Gavius mentioned the name of Lucius Raecius, a Roman equestrian who was in Sicily at the time, was it really so difficult to send a letter to Panhormus? You would have had the man safe in the custody of your friends at Messana, chained and locked away, until such time as Raecius arrived from Panhormus. If he identified the man, you could have imposed as a punishment something less than execution; and if he failed to identify him, then you could, if you liked, have established a precedent that a man who was not known to you and could not produce a reliable person to confirm his identity would be liable to crucifixion, even though he might be a Roman citizen.
[169] But why should I keep on about Gavius? That would imply that your hostility was directed specifically at him, whereas in reality you were the enemy of the whole class of Roman citizens, their title, and their rights. You were implacably opposed, I tell you, not to that particular individual, but to the freedom of everyone. If this is not the case, then why did you order the people of Messana, after they had erected the cross in their usual spot on the Pompeian Way behind the city, to move it to a site overlooking the strait? And why did you then add—something you cannot possibly deny, since you said it openly and many people heard you—that you had particularly chosen that site because you wanted the man, since he claimed to be a Roman citizen, to be able to see Italy from his cross, and make out his own home in the distance? That is the only cross, gentlemen, to have been erected in that place since Messana was founded.* Verres deliberately chose a spot within sight of Italy so that Gavius, while dying in dreadful agony, might appreciate how narrow the strait was that separated freedom from slavery, and that Italy might see her own son nailed to a cross and paying the most terrible and extreme punishment that can be inflicted on slaves.
[170] It is an outrage to shackle a Roman citizen, an abomination to flog him, and all but parricide to kill him—so what can I say about crucifying him? Words do not exist to describe so wicked an act. But Verres was not content to leave it even at that. ‘Let him look out over his country,’ he said. ‘Let him die within sight of the laws and freedom.’ It was not just Gavius, not just one ordinary man whom you subjected to torture and crucifixion, but the freedom common to all Roman citizens. But now consider the man’s audacity! Surely he must have been disappointed that he could not erect that cross for Roman citizens right here in the forum, in the place of assembly, and on the rostra itself, seeing that the place in his province that he selected was the one that was geographically nearest to Rome, and most similar to it in the amount of traffic it receives. He wanted that monument to his wickedness and criminality to stand within sight of Italy, at the entrance to Sicily, and above the strait where travellers by sea pass in each direction.
[171] Suppose I were to make these protests and lamentations not before Roman citizens, nor before people who are our country’s friends, nor before people who have heard of the Roman people but never seen them; suppose I were speaking not to human beings at all but to animals; or, to go a step further, suppose I were in some empty desert and were addressing the rocks and boulders—then even such mute and inanimate objects could not fail to be moved by such awful, undeserved cruelty. But since the people I am in fact addressing are senators of the Roman people and the originators of our laws, courts, and civic rights, I ought to be confident that Verres will be judged to be the only Roman citizen who deserves to be crucified, and that no one else will be judged as meriting a fate of this kind.
[172] Just a few minutes ago we were all shedding tears over the dreadful, undeserved deaths of the ships’ captains, and were upset—and rightly so—at the plight of our innocent allies. How, then, should we react when it is a case of our own flesh and blood? For the blood of all Roman citizens should be thought of as shared: not only truth, but considerations of our common safety demand this. All Roman citizens, those who are here in court and those elsewhere, now look to your strictness, appeal to your honour, and beg for your help. They are convinced that all their rights, privileges, and safeguards, in short their very freedom hangs on the verdict you are about to deliver.
[173] From me, they already have what they wanted. But if the verdict goes the wrong way, they will get more from me, perhaps, than they are asking for. For suppose that Verres by some act of force manages to escape your strictness—something I am not worried about, gentlemen, nor consider remotely possible. But suppose I am mistaken, and he does escape: the Sicilians will complain that they have lost their case and will be unhappy about it, as indeed will I; but the Roman people, since they have given me the power of bringing cases before them,* will quickly, by1 February at the latest, recover their rights by voting against Verres in an action brought by myself. If you want to know how this affects my reputation and career prospects, gentlemen, it will do me no harm at all if Verres escapes from me in this court and then stands trial before the Roman people. Indeed, that type of prosecution carries prestige. For me, it would be an appropriate form of procedure, and a convenient one; as far as the people are concerned, it would be satisfying and agreeable. Now you may think that I have wanted to advance myself at the expense of this one man: that is not the case at all. But if he is acquitted, it is true that I will be in a position to advance myself at the expense of many, since it is impossible that he should be acquitted without many people breaking the law themselves.* But—by Hercules!—for your sake and that of the country, gentlemen, I would not want to see so serious a crime committed by this select jury. I would not want jurors that I myself have chosen and approved* walking around our city so tainted by their acquittal of Verres that they would look as though they were smeared not so much with wax as with mud.*
[174] For this reason, Hortensius, I would like to offer you, too, a piece of advice—if, that is, it is appropriate for a prosecutor to offer advice to a defence advocate. Look very carefully at what it is that you are doing and reflect upon it—where it is leading you, what sort of man you are defending, and by what means you are defending him. I do not want to limit in any way your scope for competing honestly with me in intelligence and oratorical ability. But if you think that you can manage this trial in private from outside the court, if you imagine that you can organize things by trickery, plotting, power, influence, or Verres’ money, then I strongly advise you to abandon the idea. And as for the actions of that nature which Verres has already attempted and set in motion, which I have now tracked down and investigated, I advise you to put a stop to them and see that they go no further. Any misconduct on your part in this trial will place you in serious danger—more serious than you imagine.
[175] Of course, you may think that now you have held all your offices and been elected to the consulship, you no longer have to worry about what people will think of you. But believe me, it is just as difficult to hold onto those honours and favours which are conferred by the Roman people as it is to attain them in the first place. This country has put up with your and your friends’ tyrannical domination of the courts* and of politics as long as it could manage, as long as it had to; it has put up with it. But on the day that the Roman people got their tribunes of the plebs back,* all of this power, though you may not yet realize it, was taken away and stripped from you. Now the eyes of the world are turned on each one of us, to observe how honourably I prosecute, how honestly the jurors return their verdicts, and how you go about your defence. [176] And with each of us, if we deviate ever so slightly from the straight and narrow, the result will not be that silent disapproval which we have hitherto been content to ignore, but the strong, unequivocal censure of the Roman people.
Verres is not a relation of yours, Quintus,* nor is he your friend. In the past you have come up with various reasons to explain away your excessive partiality in this or that trial, but none of them applies in this case. When he was governing Sicily he used to say publicly that he was doing what he was doing because he had confidence in you. Now you need to take great care to prevent people concluding that he was justified in that confidence. [
177] As far as my own obligations are concerned, I am satisfied that even my worst critics will accept that I have now discharged them. In the few hours that the first hearing lasted, I secured Verres’ conviction at the bar of public opinion. What now remains to be judged is not my honour, since that has been proved, nor Verres’ conduct, since that has been condemned: it is the jurors, and, to tell the truth, it is yourself.
But in what kind of context is that judgement going to take place? This is a point which needs the most careful consideration, because in politics, as in everything else, the mood and tenor of the times is a factor of the utmost importance. The context, then, is one in which the Roman people, as you must be aware, are looking for a different class of men and a different order to sit on juries; indeed, the text of a bill on new courts and juries has been published.* Now the person who is really responsible for publishing this bill is not the man whose name it bears. It is this defendant, this man I tell you, who is its true author: by his hopes of acquittal, and his belief that you could be bribed, he ensured that the bill came to be drafted and published. [178] When this case began, the bill had not been published. When he became alarmed by your evident strictness and gave every impression that he was not going to put up a defence at all, not a word was said about any bill. But after he seemed to take heart and get his hopes up, the bill was immediately published. Your integrity is a strong argument against the necessity for this bill; but his unfounded hopes and conspicuous arrogance argue greatly in its favour. At the point we have now reached, if any member of the jury behaves at all improperly, one of two things will happen: either the Roman people will put that juror on trial* after having already voted that senators are not fit to be jurors; or the men who will try him will be the new jurors appointed under the new law to judge the old jurors whose administration of the courts caused such outrage.
[179] As for myself, is there anyone who needs me to tell them how far I ought to pursue this case? Will I be able to hold my tongue, Hortensius, will I be able to seem unconcerned—when our country has received so serious a wound, when a province has been ransacked, our allies persecuted, the immortal gods plundered, and Roman citizens tortured and killed—if the man who did all this, when I have prosecuted him, escapes unpunished? Will I be able either on leaving this court to lay down this great responsibility of mine, or continue to shoulder it and say nothing? Surely I must not let the matter rest? Surely I must bring it out into the open? Surely I must appeal to the Roman people’s sense of honour? Surely I must summon to court and to the risks of a trial all those who have descended to such depths of criminality that they have either allowed themselves to be bribed or else have bribed the court themselves?
[180] Now someone may perhaps ask me, ‘So are you really going to take on such an onerous task, and make an enemy of so many people?’ Not—by Hercules!—with any particular enthusiasm, or even willingly. But I do not enjoy the same advantages as those who were born into noble families, on whom are conferred all the honours of the Roman people without them even having to get out of bed.* The terms and conditions of my political existence bear no similarity to theirs. I am reminded of the wise and observant Marcus Cato.* He saw that it was his ability, not his birth, that recommended him to the Roman people, and he wanted to be the founder and ancestor of a famous family of his own. But despite this, he still made enemies of the most powerful men of his day, and through his great efforts lived an extremely long and extremely glorious life. [181] And then what about Quintus Pompeius,* a man of low and obscure origin? He made many bitter enemies, did he not, while nevertheless obtaining the highest honours, as a result of his willingness to work hard and take risks? More recently we have seen Gaius Fimbria, Gaius Marius, and Gaius Coelius* making important enemies but nevertheless achieving by their hard work those same honours which you have attained by living a life of amusement and inattention. This is the direction and path along which men like me have to proceed; we follow their line and example.
We are well aware of the degree to which certain nobles look on the talent and application of the new men with jealousy and detestation. If we take our eye off the ball for just one second, they are there to catch us out. If we lay ourselves open to any suspicion or charge, they will attack us without hesitation. We know that we have to be always on the alert, always hard at work. [182] We have enemies: let us face them. Work to do: let us crack on with it. We have more reason to be afraid of silent, hidden enemies than open and declared ones. Hardly any of the nobles looks kindly on the hard work we put in. It is impossible for us to secure their favour by any services that we might perform.* They are at variance with us in spirit and in sympathy, as if they were a race apart. So what harm can it do us if they are our enemies, when they regard you with hostility and jealousy even before you have done anything to offend them?
[183] I therefore hope, members of the jury, that once I have done what the Roman people expect of me, and have also discharged the obligation which my friends the Sicilians invited me to undertake, I will be able to make this prosecution my last. Nevertheless I have decided, if the confidence I have in you should turn out to be misplaced, to prosecute not just those chiefly responsible for bribing this court, but also those who share in the guilt by having accepted those bribes. Therefore if there are any who intend to use their influence, their daring, or their cunning to corrupt this court in the present trial, they should prepare to do battle with me, and let the Roman people judge between us. And if they have found me to be sufficiently vigorous, sufficiently tenacious, and sufficiently watchful in prosecuting the man whom the Sicilians have given me as an enemy, they should reflect just how much more committed and fierce I shall be against all those whose enemy the security of the Roman people will have required me to become.
[184] Now hear me, Jupiter best and greatest, whose royal offering,* worthy of your beautiful temple, worthy of the Capitol and the citadel of all nations, worthy of its royal donors, made for you by kings, dedicated and promised to you—an offering which Verres, in an outrageously criminal act, wrenched from their royal hands; you whose holy and beautiful image* he removed from Syracuse;
hear me, Queen Juno, whose two holy and ancient shrines located on two islands of our allies, Melita and Samos,* in an act of similar criminality, he stripped of all their offerings and adornments;
hear me, Minerva, whom he robbed at two of your most famous and sacred temples—at Athens, where he took a large quantity of gold, and at Syracuse, where he took away everything except the roof and walls;*
[185] hear me, Latona and Apollo and Diana, whose shrine at Delos*—or rather, as people who respect the gods believe, their ancient seat and immortal home—he pillaged in a violent night-time burglary;
hear me again, Apollo, whom he removed from Chios;
hear me yet again, Diana, whom he robbed at Perga,* and whose holy image at Segesta, twice consecrated there, first by the devotion of the Segestans, and later by the victorious Publius Africanus,* he had taken down and carried away;
hear me, Mercury, whom Verres set up in the gymnasium of some man’s private house, but whom Publius Africanus had specifically wished to be kept in the exercise-ground of the city of our allies, Tyndaris,* as the tutelary guardian of the young men of that place;
[186] hear me, Hercules, whom at Agrigentum in the dead of night, with a gang of slaves he had recruited and armed for the purpose, he attempted to remove from his base and carry away;*
hear me, holy mother of Ida,* whose sacred and revered temple at Engyium he left so completely despoiled that nothing is left there any longer, except for the name of Africanus* and the evidence of the sacrilege that was perpetrated—the victory memorials and temple adornments having been removed;
hear me, Castor and Pollux, located where the Roman people throng, who watch over and witness all that goes on in the forum—the great deliberations, the laws, and the courts—from whose temple he obtained profit and plunder* in the most scandalous fashion;
[187] hear me, Ceres and Libera, whose rites, according to universal religious belief, rank far above others in grandeur and mystery;* by whom life and food, customs and laws, and gentleness and humanity are said to have originally been given to people and communities, and spread among them; and whose observances, adopted and taken over from the Greeks, the Roman people celebrate with such public and private devotion that you would think that those rites had spread to Greece from Rome rather than to Rome from Greece: these were then so violated and polluted by this one man that the image of Ceres in her shrine at Catina, which it is sinful for all but women to touch or even look at, was wrenched from its position and carried away on this man’s orders—not omitting to mention that other image of Ceres which he removed from its rightful home at Henna,* an image so realistic that when people saw it they thought that they were gazing either at the goddess herself, or at an image of her not made by human hand, but descended from the sky; [188] hear me again and again, I implore and call on you, most holy goddesses who inhabit the lakes and groves of Henna and who are protectors of the whole island of Sicily that has been entrusted to me to defend, and whose discovery of corn, made available to the entire world, has filled all peoples and nations with awe of your divinity;