It was last year’s tribune of the plebs, Marcus Lollius Palicanus, whom the delegates from all the cities of Sicily except Syracuse and Messana approached to prosecute Gaius Verres. But Palicanus referred them to Pompey, and Pompey in turn referred them to Marcus Tullius Cicero as the ideal man for that particular job.
Verres had gone to Sicily as its governor after his urban praetorship, and—mostly thanks to Spartacus—remained its governor for three years. He had only just returned to Rome when the Sicilian delegation sought out Cicero during January. Both Pompey and Palicanus were personally concerned; Palicanus had gone to the assistance of some of his clients when Verres persecuted them, and Pompey had amassed a considerable number of clients in Sicily during his occupation of it on Sulla’s behalf.
Quaestor in Lilybaeum under Sextus Peducaeus the year before Verres arrived to govern Sicily in Peducaeus’s place, Cicero had developed an enormous fondness for Sicily too. Not to mention having amassed a nice little retinue of clients. Yet when the Sicilians came to see him, he backed away.
“I never prosecute,” he explained. “I defend.”
“But Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus recommended you! He said you were the only man who could win. Please, we beg of you, break your rule and prosecute Gaius Verres! If we do not win, Sicily could well rise up against Rome.”
“Raped the place, did he?” asked Cicero clinically.
“Yes, he raped it. But having raped it, Marcus Tullius, he then dismembered it. We have nothing left! All our works of art are gone from every temple, paintings and statues both, and any valuables in the hands of private owners—what can we say about a man who actually had the temerity to enslave a free woman famous for her tapestry work and make her run a factory for his profit? He stole the moneys the Treasury of Rome gave him to purchase grain, then commandeered the grain from the growers without paying for it! He has stolen farms, estates, even inheritances. The list is endless!”
This catalogue of perfidies startled Cicero greatly, but still he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I do not prosecute.”
The spokesman drew a breath. “Then we will go home,” he said. “We had thought that a man so knowledgeable about Sicily’s history that he went to great trouble to rediscover the whereabouts of the tomb of Archimedes would see our plight, and help. But you have lost your affection for Sicily, and clearly you do not value Gnaeus Pompeius as he values you.”
To be reminded of Pompey and of a famous coup—he had indeed rediscovered the lost tomb of Archimedes outside the city of Syracuse—was too much. Prosecution in Cicero’s opinion was a waste of his talents, for the (highly illegal) fees were always far less than the inducements offered by some sweating ex-governor or publicanus in danger of losing everything. Nor (such was the mentality of men) was it popular to prosecute! The prosecuting advocate was always seen as a nasty piece of work determined to make a ruin out of some hapless individual’s life, whereas the defending advocate who got the hapless individual off was a popular hero. It made not the slightest difference that most of these hapless individuals were cunning, avaricious and guilty to the extreme; any threat to a man’s right to conduct his life as he saw fit was bound to be considered an infringement of his personal entitlements.
Cicero sighed. “Very well, very well, I will take the case!” he said. “But you must remember that the defending attorneys speak after the prosecuting team, so that the jury has clean forgotten every word the prosecution said by the time it is given the directive to find a verdict. You must also remember that Gaius Verres is very highly connected. His wife is a Caecilia Metella, the man who should have been consul this year is his brother-in-law, he has another brother-in-law who is the present governor of Sicily—you’ll get no help from that quarter, and nor will I!—and every other Caecilius Metellus will be on his side. If I prosecute, then Quintus Hortensius will defend, and other advocates almost as famous will join him as his juniors. I said I will take the case. That does not mean I think I can win.”
The delegation had hardly left his house before Cicero was regretting his decision; who needed to offend every Caecilius Metellus in Rome when his chances of becoming consul rested on the slender base of personal ability in the law courts? He was as much a New Man as his detested fellow man from Arpinum, Gaius Marius, but he didn’t have a soldiering bone in his body and a New Man’s progress was harder if he could not earn fame on the battlefield.
Of course he knew why he had accepted; that absurd loyalty he felt he owed to Pompey. The years might be many and the legal accolades multiple, but how could he ever forget the careless kindness of a seventeen-year-old cadet toward the cadet his father despised? As long as he lived Cicero would be grateful to Pompey for helping him through that ghastly, miserable military experience in the ranks of Pompey Strabo’s cadets; for shielding him from Pompey Strabo’s indifferent cruelties and terrifying rages. No other hand had been raised to assist him, yet young Pompey, the general’s son, had raised his hand. He had been warm that winter thanks to Pompey, he had been given clerical duties thanks to Pompey, he had never needed to lift a sword in battle thanks to Pompey. And he could never, never forget it.
So off to the Carinae he betook himself to see Pompey.
“I just wanted to tell you,” he said in a voice of doom, “that I have decided to prosecute Gaius Verres.”
“Oh, splendid!” said Pompey heartily. “A lot of Verres’s victims are—or sometimes were—my clients. You can win, I know you can. And name your favors.”
“I need no favors from you, Magnus, and you can never be in any doubt that it is I who owe you.”
Pompey looked startled. “You do? On what account?”
“You made my year with your father’s army bearable.”
“Oh, that!” Laughing, Pompey shook Cicero by the arm. “I hardly think that’s worth a lifetime’s gratitude.”
“To me it is,” said Cicero, tears in his eyes. “We shared a lot during the Italian War.”
Perhaps Pompey was remembering less palatable things they had shared, like the search for his father’s naked and insulted body, for he shook his head as if to banish the Italian War from his mind, and gave Cicero a beaker of excellent wine. “Well, my friend, you just let me know what I can do to assist you now.”
“I will,” said Cicero gratefully.
“All those Little Goat men of the Caecilii Metelli will be against this prosecution, of course,” said Pompey thoughtfully. “So will Catulus, Hortensius, others.”
“And you’ve just mentioned the main reason why I have to get this case heard early enough in the year. I daren’t run the risk of having the case bound over until next year—Little Goat and Hortensius will be consuls then, everyone seems to be saying.”
“A pity in a way,” said Pompey. “Next year there may well be knight juries again, and that would go against Verres.”
“Not if the consuls rig the court behind the scenes, Magnus. Besides, there’s no guarantee our praetor Lucius Cotta will find in favor of knight juries. I was talking to him the other day—he thinks his enquiries into the composition of court juries are going to take months—and he’s not convinced knight juries will be any better than senatorial ones. Knights can’t be prosecuted for taking bribes.”
“We can change the law,” said Pompey, who, having no respect for the law, thought that whenever it became inconvenient it should be changed—to suit himself, naturally.
“That could prove difficult.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Because,” said Cicero patiently, “to change that law would mean enacting another law in one of the two tribal Assemblies—both dominated by knights.”
“They’ve indemnified Crassus and me against our action last year,” said Pompey, unable to distinguish the difference between one law and another.
“That is because you’ve been very nice to them, Magnus. And they want you to go on being very nice to them. A law making them culpable for accepting bribes is quite a separate pot of stew.”
“Oh, well, perhaps as you say Lucius Cotta won’t find in favor of knight juries. It was just a thought.”
Cicero rose to go. “Thank you again, Magnus.”
“Keep me informed.”
*
One month later Cicero notified the urban praetor, Lucius Cotta, that he would be prosecuting Gaius Verres in the Extortion Court on behalf of the cities of Sicily, and that he would be asking for the sum of forty-two and a half million sesterces—one thousand seven hundred talents—in damages, as well as for the restoration of all works of art and valuables stolen from Sicily’s temples and citizens.
Though he had come back from Sicily swaggering, confident that his position as the brother-in-law of Metellus Little Goat would be adequate protection against possible prosecution, when Gaius Verres heard that Cicero—Cicero, who never prosecuted!—had lodged an intention to prosecute, he panicked. Word was sent immediately to his brother-in-law Lucius Metellus the governor of Sicily to bury any evidence Verres himself might have overlooked in his rush to remove his plunder from the island. Significantly, neither Syracuse nor Messana had joined with the other cities to press charges; that was due to the fact that Syracuse and Messana had aided and abetted Verres, and shared in the proceeds of his nefarious activities. But how fortunate that the new governor was his wife’s middle brother!
The two brothers left in Rome, Quintus called Little Goat (who was certain to be consul next year) and the youngest of the three sons of Metellus Caprarius, Marcus, hastily conferred with Verres to see what could be done to avert the disaster of a trial, and agreed to bring Quintus Hortensius into the case. Certainly Hortensius would lead the defense if the matter came to court, but at this stage what was needed was a ploy aimed at averting a trial, especially one conducted by Cicero.
In March, Hortensius lodged a complaint with the urban praetor; Cicero, he alleged, was not the proper man to prosecute any case against Gaius Verres. Instead of Cicero, Hortensius nominated Quintus Caecilius Niger, a relative of the Little Goats who had been Verres’s quaestor in Sicily during the middle one of his three years as governor. The only way Cicero’s fitness to prosecute could be determined was to hold a special hearing called a divinatio—guesswork (so named because the judges at this special hearing reached a conclusion without hard evidence being presented—that is, they arrived at a finding by guesswork). Each prospective prosecutor was required to tell the judges why he ought to be the chief prosecutor, and after listening to Caecilius Niger, who spoke poorly, and Cicero, the judges found in favor of Cicero and directed that the case be heard quickly.
Verres, the two Metellus Little Goats and Hortensius had to think again.
“You’ll be praetor next year, Marcus,” said the great advocate to the youngest brother, “so we’ll have to make sure the lots fall on you to become president of the Extortion Court. This year’s president, Glabrio, loathes Gaius Verres. And if for no other reason than that he loathes you, Verres, Glabrio won’t allow the slightest breath of scandal to touch his court—yes, what I’m saying is that if the case is heard this year and Glabrio is court president, we won’t be able to bribe the jury. And don’t forget that this year Lucius Cotta will be watching every important jury like a cat a mouse. Because this case will attract a lot of attention, I think Lucius Cotta is going to base much of his opinion about the fitness of all—senator juries on it. As for Pompeius and Crassus—they don’t love us at all!”
“You mean,” said Gaius Verres, whose brass—colored beauty was looking a little tarnished these days, “that we have to get my case held over until next year, when Marcus will be president of the Extortion Court.”
“Exactly,” said Hortensius. “Quintus Metellus and I will be the consuls next year—a great help! It won’t be difficult for us to rig the lots to give Marcus the Extortion Court, and it makes no difference whether next year’s juries are senatorial or equestrian—we’ll bribe!”
“But it’s only April,” said Verres gloomily. “I don’t see how we can stall proceedings until the end of the year.”
“Oh, we can,” said Hortensius confidently. “In these cases where evidence has to be gathered at a far distance from Rome—and up and down a country as big as Sicily!—it takes any prosecutor six to eight months to prepare his case. I know Cicero hasn’t begun because he’s still here in Rome, and hasn’t sent any agents out to Sicily yet. Naturally he’ll hope to pull in evidence and witnesses fast, and that’s where Lucius Metellus comes in—as the governor of Sicily, he will put every obstacle possible in the path of Cicero or his agents.”
Hortensius beamed. “I predict that Cicero won’t be ready before October, if then. Of course that’s time enough for a trial. But we won’t let it be! Because we will apply to try another case in Glabrio’s court ahead of yours, Gaius Verres. The victim will have to be someone who has left a trail of hard evidence behind him that we can gather very quickly. Some poor wretch who extorted in a minor way, not an important fish like the governor of a province. We should choose the prefect of an administrative district in—say, Greece. I have a victim in mind—we will have enough evidence to satisfy the urban praetor that we have a case by the end of Quinctilis. Cicero can’t possibly be ready by then. But we will be!”
“Which victim are you thinking of?’’ asked Metellus Little Goat, looking relieved; naturally he and his brothers had shared in Gaius Verres’s profits, but that didn’t mean he was willing to suffer a brother-in-law exiled and disgraced for extortion.
“I’m thinking of that Quintus Curtius who was Varro Lucullus’s legate, and was prefect of Achaea while Varro Lucullus was governor of Macedonia. If Varro Lucullus hadn’t been so busy in Thrace conquering the Bessi and taking boat rides down the Danubius all the way to the sea, he would have ensured that Curtius was prosecuted himself. But by the time he came home and found out about Curtius’s little peculations he deemed it too late and too minor to bother about, so he never instituted proceedings. But the evidence is there for the gathering, and Varro Lucullus would be delighted to help land our little fish. I’ll lodge an application with the urban praetor to have the case against Quintus Curtius heard this year in the Extortion Court,” said Hortensius.
“Which means,” said Verres eagerly, “that Lucius Cotta will direct Glabrio to hear whichever of the two cases is ready first, and as you say, it will be Curtius. Then once you’re in court you’ll drag the proceedings out until the end of the year! Cicero and my trial will have to wait. Brilliant, Quintus Hortensius, absolutely brilliant!”
“Yes, I think it’s pretty cunning,” said Hortensius smugly.
“Cicero will be furious,” said Metellus Little Goat.
“I’d adore to see that!” said Hortensius.
But they didn’t see Cicero worked into a fury after all. The moment he heard that Hortensius had applied to try an ex-prefect of Achaea in the Extortion Court, he understood exactly what Hortensius was aiming at. Dismay smote him, followed by despair.
His beloved cousin Lucius Cicero was visiting from Arpinum, and saw the instant that Cicero entered his study how disturbed he was. “What’s wrong?” asked Lucius Cicero.
“Hortensius! He’s going to have another case ready to be heard in the Extortion Court before I can assemble my evidence to try Gaius Verres.” Cicero sat down, the picture of depression. “We’ll be held over until next year—and I’d be willing to bet my entire fortune that the Metelli Little Goats have already cooked it up with Hortensius to make sure Marcus Little Goat is the praetor in charge of next year’s Extortion Court.”
“And Gaius Verres will be acquitted,” said Lucius Cicero.
“Bound to be! Can’t not be!”
“Then you’ll have to be ready first,” said Lucius Cicero.
“What, before the end of Quinctilis? That’s the date our friend Hortensius has asked the urban praetor to put aside. I can’t be ready by then! Sicily is huge, the present governor is Verres’s brother-in-law and will impede me wherever I go—I can’t, can’t, can’t do it, I tell you!”
“Of course you can,” said Lucius Cicero, standing up and looking brisk. “Dear Marcus Tullius, when you sink your teeth into a case no one is smoother or better organized. You’re so orderly and logical, you have such method! And you know Sicily very well, you have friends there—including many who suffered at the hands of the frightful Gaius Verres. Yes, the governor will try to slow you down, but all those people Verres injured will be trying even harder to speed you up! It is the end of April now. Get your work in Rome finished within two market intervals. While you do that I will arrange for a ship to take us to Sicily, and to Sicily the pair of us will go by the middle of May. Come on, Marcus, you can do it!”
“Would you really come with me, Lucius?” asked Cicero, face lightening. “You’re almost as well organized as I am, you’d be the most tremendous help to me.” His natural enthusiasm was returning; suddenly the task didn’t seem quite so formidable. “I’ll have to see my clients. I don’t have enough money to hire fast ships and gallop all over Sicily in two—wheeled gigs harnessed to racing mules.” He slapped one hand on his desk. “By Jupiter, Lucius, I’d love to do it! If only to see the look on Hortensius’s face!”
“Then do it we will!” cried Lucius, grinning. “Fifty days from Rome to Rome, that’s all the time we’ll be able to spare. Ten days to travel, forty days to gather evidence.”
And while Lucius Cicero went off to the Porticus Aemilia in the Port of Rome to talk to shipping agents, Cicero went round to the house on the Quirinal where his clients were staying.
He knew the senior of them well-Hiero of Lilybaeum, who had been ethnarch of that important western Sicilian port city when Cicero had been quaestor there.
“My cousin Lucius and I are going to have to gather all our Sicilian evidence within fifty days,” Cicero explained, “if I am to beat Hortensius’s case into court. We can do it—but only if you’re willing to bear the expense.” He flushed. “I am not a rich man, Hiero, I can’t afford speedy transport. There may be some people I have to pay for information or items I need, and there will certainly be witnesses I’ll have to bring to Rome.”
Hiero had always liked and admired Cicero, whose time in Lilybaeum had been a joy for every Sicilian Greek doing business with Rome’s quaestor, for Cicero was quick, brilliant, innovative when it came to account books and fiscal problems, and a splendid administrator. He had also been liked and admired because he was such a rarity: an honest man.
“We are happy to advance you whatever you need, Marcus Tullius,” said Hiero, “but I think now is a good time to discuss the matter of your fee. We have little to give except cash moneys, and I understand Roman advocates are averse to accepting cash moneys—too easy for the censors to trace. Art works and the like are the customary donatives, I know. But we have nothing left worthy of you.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that!” said Cicero cheerfully. “I know exactly what I want as a fee. I intend to run for plebeian aedile for next year. My games will be adequate, but I cannot compete with the really rich men who are usually aediles. Whereas I can win a great deal of popularity if I distribute cheap grain. Pay me in grain, Hiero—it is the one thing made of gold that springs out of the ground each and every year as a fresh crop. I will buy it from you out of my aedilieian fines, but they won’t run to more than two sesterces the modius. If you guarantee to sell me grain for that price to the amount I require, I will ask no other fee of you. Provided, that is, I win your case.”
“Done!” said Hiero instantly, and turned his attention to making out a draft on his bank for ten talents in Cicero’s name.
*
Marcus and Lucius Cicero were away exactly fifty days, during which time they worked indefatigably gathering their evidence and witnesses. And though the governor, various pirates, the magistrates of Syracuse and Messana (and a few Roman tax—farmers) tried to slow their progress down, there were far more people—some of great influence—interested in speeding them up. While the quaestorian records in Syracuse were either missing or inadequate, the quaestorian records in Lilybaeum yielded mines of evidence. Witnesses came forward, so did accountants and merchants, not to mention grain farmers. Fortune favored Cicero too; when it came time to go home and only four days of the fifty were left, the weather held so perfectly that he, Lucius and all the witnesses and records were able to make the voyage to Ostia in a sleek, light, open boat. They arrived in Rome on the last day of June, with a month left in which to get the case organized.
In the course of that month Cicero stood as a candidate for plebeian aedile as well as working on the lawsuit. How he fitted everything in was afterward a mystery to him; but the truth was that Cicero never functioned better than when his desk was so loaded with work that he could hardly see over the top of it. Decisions flickered like shafts of lightning, everything fell into place, the silver tongue and the golden voice produced wit and wisdom spontaneously, the fine-looking head, so massive and bulbous, struck everyone who saw it as noble, and the striking person who sometimes cowered inside Cicero’s darkest corner was on full display. During the course of that month he even devised a completely new technique for conducting a trial, a technique which would do what so far Roman legal procedures had never managed to do—get an overwhelming mass of hard and damning evidence in front of a jury so quickly and effectively that it left the defense with no defense.
His reappearance from Sicily after what seemed an absence of scant days had Hortensius gasping, especially as gathering a case against the hapless Quintus Curtius had not proven as easy as Hortensius had surmised—even with the willing assistance of Varro Lucullus, Atticus and the city of Athens. However, a moment’s cool reflection served to convince Hortensius that Cicero was bluffing. He couldn’t possibly be ready to go before September at the earliest!
Nor had Cicero found everything in Rome to his satisfaction upon his return. Metellus Little Goat and his youngest brother had put in some excellent work on Cicero’s Sicilian clients, who were now certain that Cicero had lost interest in the case—he had accepted an enormous bribe from Gaius Verres, whispered the Metelli Little Goats through carefully chosen agents. It took Cicero several interviews with Hiero and his colleagues to learn why they were all atwitter. Once he did find out, to allay their fears was not difficult.
Quinctilis brought the three sets of elections, with the curule Centuriate Assembly ones held first. As far as Cicero’s case was concerned, the results were dismal; Hortensius and Metellus Little Goat were next year’s consuls and Marcus Little Goat was successfully returned as one of the praetors. Then came the elections in the Assembly of the People; the fact that Caesar was elected a quaestor at the top of the poll hardly impinged upon Cicero’s consciousness. After which the twenty-seventh day of Quinctilis rolled round, and Cicero found himself elected plebeian aedile together with a Marcus Caesonius (no relation to the Julii with the cognomen of Caesar); they thought they would deal well together, and Cicero was profoundly glad that his colleague was a very wealthy man.
Thanks to the present consuls, Pompey and Crassus, so many things were going on in Rome that summer that elections were of no moment; instead of deliberately puffing them up into the position of prime importance, the electoral officers and the Senate wanted everything to do with elections over and done with. Therefore on the day following the Plebeian Assembly elections—the last of the three—the lots were cast to see what everyone was going to do next year. No surprise whatsoever then that the lots magically bestowed the Extortion Court on Marcus Little Goat! Everything was now set up to exonerate Gaius Verres early in the New Year.
On the last day of Quinctilis, Cicero struck. As no comitia meetings had been scheduled, the urban praetor’s tribunal was open and Lucius Aurelius Cotta in personal attendance. Forth marched Cicero with his clients in tow, announced that he had completely prepared his case against Gaius Verres, and demanded that Lucius Cotta and the president of the Extortion Court, Manius Acilius Glabrio, should schedule a day to begin the trial as soon as they saw fit. Preferably very quickly.
The entire Senate had watched the duel between Cicero and Hortensius with bated breath. The Caecilius Metellus faction was in a minority, and neither Lucius Cotta nor Glabrio belonged to it; in fact, most of the Conscript Fathers were dying to see Cicero beat the system set up by Hortensius and the Metelli Little Goats to get Verres off. Lucius Cotta and Glabrio were therefore delighted to oblige Cicero with the earliest possible hearing.
The first two days of Sextilis were feriae—which did not preclude the hearing of criminal trials—but the third day was more difficult—on it was held the procession of the Crucified Dogs. When the Gauls had invaded Rome and attempted to establish a bridgehead on the Capitol four hundred years earlier, the watchdogs hadn’t barked; what woke the consul Marcus Manlius and enabled him to foil the attempt was the cackling of the sacred geese. Ever since that night, on the anniversary day a solemn cavalcade wound its way around the Circus Maximus. Nine dogs were crucified on nine crosses made of elder wood, and one goose was garlanded and carried on a purple litter to commemorate the treachery of the dogs and the heroism of the geese. Not a good day for a criminal trial, dogs being chthonic animals.
So the case against Gaius Verres was scheduled to begin on the fifth day of Sextilis, in the midst of a Rome stunned by summer and stuffed with visitors agog to see all the special treats Pompey and Crassus had laid on. Stiff competition, but no one made the mistake of thinking that the trial of Gaius Verres would attract no onlookers, even if it continued through Crassus’s public feast and Pompey’s victory games.
Under Sulla’s laws governing his new standing courts the general trial procedure originated by Gaius Servilius Glaucia was preserved, though considerably refined—refined to the detriment of speed. It occurred in two sections, the actio prima and the actio secunda, with a break in between the two actiones of several days, though the court president was at liberty to make the break much longer if he so desired.
The actio prima consisted of a long speech from the chief prosecutor followed by an equally long speech from the chief of the defense, then more long speeches alternating between the prosecution and the defense until all the junior advocates were used up. After that came the prosecution’s witnesses, each one being cross—examined by the defense and perhaps re-examined by the prosecution. If one side or the other filibustered, the hearing of witnesses could become very protracted. Then came the witnesses for the defense, with the prosecution cross—examining each one, and perhaps the defense re-examining. After that came a long debate between the chief prosecutor and the chief defender; these long debates could also occur between each witness if either side desired. The actio prima finally ended with the last speech delivered by the chief defense counsel.
The actio secunda was more or less a repetition of the actio prima, though witnesses were not always called. Here there occurred the greatest and most impassioned orations, for after the concluding speeches of prosecution and defense the jury was required to give its verdict. No time for discussion of this verdict was allowed to the jury, which meant that the verdict was handed down while the jurors still had the words of the chief defense counsel ringing in their ears. This was the principal reason why Cicero loved to defend, hated to prosecute.
But Cicero knew how to win the case against Gaius Verres: all he needed was a court president willing to accommodate him.
“Praetor Manius Acilius Glabrio, president of this court, I wish to conduct my case along different lines than are the custom. What I propose is not illegal. It is novel, that is all. My reasons lie in the extraordinary number of witnesses I will call, and in the equally extraordinary number of different offenses with which I am going to charge the defendant Gaius Verres,” said Cicero. “Is the president of the court willing to listen to an outline of what I propose?’’
Hortensius rushed forward. “What’s this, what’s this?” he demanded. “I ask again, what is this? The case against Gaius Verres must be conducted on the usual lines! I insist!”
“I will listen to what Marcus Tullius Cicero proposes,” said Glabrio, and added gently, “without interruptions.”
“I wish to dispense with the long speeches,” said Cicero, “and concentrate upon one offense at a time. The crimes of Gaius Verres are so many and so varied that it is vital the members of the jury keep each crime straight in their heads. By dealing with one crime at a time, I wish to assist the court in keeping everything straight, that is all. So what I propose to do is briefly to outline one particular crime, then present each of my witnesses plus my evidence to do with that crime. As you see, I intend to work alone—I have absolutely no assistant advocates. The actio prima in the case of Gaius Verres should not contain any long speeches by either the prosecution or the defense. It is a waste of the court’s time, especially in light of the fact that there is at least one more case for this court to hear before this year is ended—that of Quintus Curtius. So I say, let the actio secunda contain all the magnificent speeches! It is only after all the magnificent speeches of the actio secunda have been given that the jury hands down its verdict, so I do not see how my colleague Quintus Hortensius can object to my asking for an actio prima procedure which will enable the jury to listen to our impassioned oratory during the actio secunda as if it had never heard any of what we said before! Because it won’t have heard any of it! Oh, the freshness! The anticipation! The pleasure!”
Hortensius was now looking a little uncertain; there was sound sense in what Cicero was saying. After all, Cicero hadn’t asked for anything which might detract from the defense’s entitlement to the last word, and Hortensius found himself very much liking the idea of being able to deliver his absolute best as a shock of juridical surprise at the end of the actio secunda. Yes, Cicero was right! Get the boring stuff over as quickly as possible in the actio prima, and save the Alexandrian lighthouse stuff for the grand finale.
Thus when Glabrio looked at him enquiringly, Hortensius was able to say smoothly, “Pray ask Marcus Tullius to enlarge further.”
“Enlarge further, Marcus Tullius,” said Glabrio.
“There is little more to say, Manius Acilius. Only that the defending advocates be allowed not one drip more of time to speak than I spend speaking—during the actio prima only, of course! I am willing to concede the defense as much time as they wish during the actio secunda. Since I see a formidable array of defending advocates, whereas I alone staff the prosecution, that will give the defense as much of an advantage as I think they ought to have. I ask only this: that the actio prima be conducted as I have outlined it.”
“The idea has considerable merit, Marcus Tullius,” said Glabrio. “Quintus Hortensius, how do you say?”
“Let it be as Marcus Tullius has outlined,” said Hortensius.
Only Gaius Verres looked worried. “Oh, I wish I knew what he was up to!” he whispered to Metellus Little Goat. “Hortensius ought not to have agreed!”
“By the time the actio secunda comes around, Gaius Verres, I can assure you that the jury will have forgotten everything the witnesses said,” his brother-in-law whispered back.
“Then why is Cicero insisting on these changes?”
“Because he knows he’s going to lose, and he wants to make some sort of splash. How else than by innovation? Caesar used the same tack when he prosecuted the elder Dolabella—insisted on innovations. He got a great deal of praise, but he lost the case. Just as Cicero will. Don’t worry! Hortensius will win!”
*
The only remarks of a general nature Cicero made before he plunged into an outline of the first category of Gaius Verres’s crimes were to do with the jury.
“Remember that the Senate has commissioned our urban praetor, Lucius Aurelius Cotta, to enquire into the composition of juries—and has agreed to recommend his findings to the Assembly of the People to be ratified into law. Between the days of Gaius Gracchus and our Dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the Senate completely lost control of a hitherto uncontested right—to staff the juries of Rome’s criminal courts. That privilege Gaius Gracchus handed to the knights—and we all know the result of that ! Sulla handed the new standing courts back to the Senate. But as the sixty-four men our censors have expelled have shown, we senators have not honored the trust Sulla reposed in us. Gaius Verres is not the only person on trial here today. The Senate of Rome is also on trial! And if this senatorial jury fails to conduct itself in an honorable and honest way, then who can blame Lucius Cotta if he recommends that jury duty be taken off us Conscript Fathers? Members of this jury, I beseech you not to forget for one moment that you carry an enormous responsibility on your shoulders—and the fate!—and the reputation!—of the Senate of Rome.”
And after that, having neatly confined the defense to the same time span as he used himself, Cicero plunged into hearing his witnesses and presenting his inanimate evidence. One by one they testified: grain thefts to the amount of three hundred thousand modii in just one year from just one small district, let alone the amounts looted from other districts; thefts of property which reduced the farmers of just one district from two hundred and fifty to eighty in three years, let alone the thefts of property from many other districts; embezzlement of the Treasury’s moneys intended for the purchase of grain; usury at twenty-four and more percent; the destruction or alteration of tithe records; the looting of statues and paintings from temples; the dinner guest who in front of his host prised the jewels out of ornamented cups; the dinner guest who on his way out scooped up all the gold and silver plate and popped it in bags the easier to carry it away; the building of a ship free of charge in which to carry back some of his loot to Rome; the condoning of pirate bases and cuts of pirate profits; the overturning of wills; and on, and on, and on.
Cicero had records, documents, wax tablets with the changed figures still visible—and witnesses galore, witnesses who could not be intimidated or discredited during cross—examination. Nor had Cicero produced witnesses to grain thefts within just one district, but within many districts, and the catalogue of works by Praxiteles, Phidias, Polyclitus, Myron, Strongylion and every other famous sculptor which Verres had looted was supported by bills of “sale” that saw the owner of a Praxiteles Cupid obliged virtually to give it away to Verres. The evidence was massive and absolutely damning. It came like a flood, one category of theft or misuse of authority or exploitation after another for nine full days; the actio prima concluded on the fourteenth day of Sextilis.
Hortensius was shaking when he left the court, but when Verres tried to speak to him he shook his head angrily. “At your place!” he snapped. “And bring your brothers-in-law!”
The house of Gaius Verres lay in the best part of the Palatine; though it was actually one of the biggest properties on that hill, the amount of art crammed into it made it look as small and overcrowded as the yard of a sculptural mason in the Velabrum. Where no statues could stand or paintings hang there were cupboards in which resided vast collections of gold and silver plate, or jewelry, or folded lengths of gloriously worked embroidery and tapestry. Citrus—wood tables of rarest grain supported on pedestals of ivory and gold jostled against gilded chairs or collided with fabulous couches. Outside in the peristyle garden were jammed the bigger statues, mostly bronzes, though gold and silver glittered there too. A clutter representing fifteen years of plundering and many fortunes.
The four men gathered in Verres’s study, no less a jumble, and perched wherever the precious objects allowed them.
“You’ll have to go into voluntary exile,” said Hortensius.
Verres gaped. “You’re joking! There’s the actio secunda still to come! Your speeches will get me off!”
“You fool!” roared Hortensius. “Don’t you understand? I was tricked, bamboozled, hoodwinked, gulled—any word you like to describe the fact that Cicero has ruined any chance I ever had to win this wretched case! A year could go by between actio prima and actio secunda, Gaius Verres, I and my assistants could deliver the world’s best oratory for a month, Gaius Verres—and still the jury would not have forgotten that utter landslide of evidence! I tell you straight, Gaius Verres, that if I had known a tithe of your crimes before I started, I would never have agreed to defend you! You make Mummius or Paullus look like a tyro! And what have you done with so much money? Where is it, for Juno’s sake? How could any man have spent it when that man pays a pittance for a Praxiteles Cupid and mostly doesn’t pay at all? I’ve defended a lot of unmitigated villains in my time, but you win all the prizes! Go into voluntary exile, Gaius Verres!”
Verres and the Metelli Little Goats had listened to this tirade with jaws dropped.
Hortensius rose to his feet. “Take what you can with you into exile, but if you want my advice, leave the art works you looted from Sicily behind. You’ll never be able to carry more than you stole from Hera of Samos anyway. Concentrate on paintings and small stuff. And ship your money out of Rome at dawn tomorrow—don’t leave it a moment longer.” He walked to the door, threading his way through the precious artifacts. “I will take my ivory sphinx by Phidias, however. Where is it?”
“Your what?” gasped Verres. “I don’t owe you anything—you didn’t get me off!”
“You owe me one ivory sphinx by Phidias,” said Hortensius, “and you ought to be thanking your good luck I didn’t make it more. If nothing else is worth it to you, the advice I’ve just given you most definitely is. My ivory sphinx, Verres. Now!’’
It was small enough for Hortensius to tuck under his left arm, hidden by folds of toga; an exquisite piece of work that was perfect down to the last detail in a feathered wing and the minute tufts of fur protruding between the clawed toes.
“He’s cool,” said Marcus Little Goat after Hortensius went.
“Ingrate!” snarled Verres.
But the consul—elect Metellus Little Goat frowned. “He’s right, Gaius. You’ll have to leave Rome by tomorrow night at the latest. Cicero will have the court seal this place as soon as he hears you’re moving things out—why on earth did you have to keep it all here?”
“It isn’t all here, Quintus. These are just the pieces I can’t bear not to see every day. The bulk of it is stored on my place at Cortona.”
“Do you mean there’s more! Ye gods, Gaius, I’ve known you for years, but you never cease to surprise me! No wonder our poor sister complains you ignore her! So this is only the stuff you can’t bear not to see every day? And I’ve always thought you kept this place looking like a curio shop in the Porticus Margaritaria because you didn’t even trust your slaves!’’
Verres sneered. “Your sister complains, does she? And what right does she have to complain, when Caesar’s been keeping her cunnus well lubricated for months? Does she think I’m a fool? Or so blind I can’t see beyond a Myron bronze?” He got up. “I ought to have told Hortensius where most of my money went—your face would have been mighty red, wouldn’t it? The three Little Goats are expensive in—laws, but you most of all, Quintus! The art I’ve managed to hang on to, but who gobbled up the proceeds from sales of grain, eh? Well, now’s the end of it! I’ll take my sphinx—stealing advocate’s advice and go into voluntary exile, where with any luck what I manage to take with me will stay mine! No more money for the Little Goats, including Metella Capraria! Let Caesar keep her in the style to which she’s accustomed—and I wish you luck prising money out of that man! Don’t expect to see your sister’s dowry returned. I’m divorcing her today on grounds of her adultery with Caesar.”
The result of this speech was the outraged exit of both his brothers-in-law; for a moment after they had gone Verres stood behind his desk, one finger absently caressing the smooth painted planes of a marble cheek belonging to a Polyclitus Hera. Then, shrugging, he shouted for his slaves. Oh, how could he bear to part with one single item contained in this house? Only the salvation of his skin and the knowledge that keeping some was better than losing all enabled him to walk with his steward from one precious object to the next. Go, stay, go, go, stay …
“When you’ve hired the wagons—and if you blab about it to anyone, I’ll crucify you!—have them brought round to the back lane at midnight tomorrow. And everything had better be properly crated, hear me?”
*
As Hortensius had predicted, Cicero had Glabrio seal the abandoned house of Gaius Verres on the morning after his secret departure, and sent to his bank to stop the transfer of funds. Too late, of course; money was the most portable of all treasures, requiring nothing more than a piece of paper to be presented at the other end of a man’s journey.
“Glabrio is empaneling a committee to fix damages, but I’m afraid they won’t be huge,” said Cicero to Hiero of Lilybaeum. “He’s cleaned his money out of Rome. However, it looks as if most of what he stole from Sicily’s temples has been left behind—not so with all the jewels and plate he stole from individual owners, alas, though even that he couldn’t entirely spirit away, there was so much of it. The slaves he left behind—a poor lot, but their hatred of him has proven useful—say that what is in his house here in Rome is minute compared to what he has hidden away on his estate near Cortona. I imagine that’s where the brothers Metelli have gone, but I borrowed a tactic from my friend Caesar, who travels faster than anyone else I know. The court’s expedition will reach Cortona first, I predict. So we may find more belonging to Sicily there.”
“Where has Gaius Verres gone?” asked Hiero, curious.
“It seems he’s heading for Massilia. A popular place for the art lovers among our exiles,” said Cicero.
“Well, we are delighted to have our national heritage back,” said Hiero, beaming. “Thank you, Marcus Tullius, thank you!”
“I believe it will be I who ends in thanking you—that is,” said Cicero delicately, “if you are pleased enough with my conduct of the case to honor our agreement about the grain next year? The Plebeian Games will not be held until November, so your price need not come from this year’s harvest.”
“We are happy to pay you, Marcus Tullius, and I promise you that your distribution of grain to the people of Rome will be magnificent.”
“And so,” said Cicero later to his friend Titus Pomponius Atticus, “this rare venture into the realm of prosecution has turned out to be a bonus I badly needed. I’ll buy my grain at two sesterces the modius, and sell it for three sesterces. The extra sestertius will more than pay for transportation.”
“Sell it for four sesterces the modius,” said Atticus, “and pop a bit of money into your own purse. It needs fattening.”
But Cicero was shocked. “I couldn’t do that, Atticus! The censors could say I had enriched myself by illegally taking fees for my services as an advocate.”
Atticus sighed. “Cicero, Cicero! You will never be rich, and it will be entirely your own fault. Though I suppose it’s true that you can take the man out of Arpinum, but you can never take Arpinum out of the man. You think like a country squire!”
“I think like an honest man,” said Cicero, “and I’m very proud of that fact.”
“Thereby implying that I am not an honest man?”
“No, no!” cried Cicero irritably. “You’re a businessman of exalted rank and Roman station—what rules apply to you are not the rules apply to me. I’m not a Caecilius, but you are!”
Atticus changed the subject. “Are you going to write the case against Verres up for publication?” he asked.
“I had thought of doing so, yes.”
“Including the great speeches of an actio secunda that never happened? Did you compose anything ahead of time?”
“Oh yes, I always have rough notes of my speeches months before their delivery dates. Though I shall modify the actio secunda speeches to incorporate a lot of the things I discussed during the actio prima. Titivated up, naturally.”
“Naturally,” said Atticus gravely.—
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m thinking of establishing a hobby for myself, Cicero. Business is boring, and the men I deal with even more boring than the business I do. So I’m opening a little shop with a big workshop out back—on the Argiletum. Sosius will have some competition, because I intend to become a publisher. And if you don’t object, I would like the exclusive right to publish all your future work. In return to you of a payment of one tenth of what I make on every copy of your works I sell.”
Cicero giggled. “How delicious! Done, Atticus, done!”