Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (9 page)

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.
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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,
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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,
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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.
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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!
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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 rejection of jurors
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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
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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,
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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
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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.

Since that is how things stand, this depraved lunatic has chosen another means of fighting me. He is not, in truth, setting out to use somebody’s eloquence against me, nor is he relying on anyone’s influence, authority, or power. He pretends that these are the things he is relying on, but I can see what he is up to. Indeed, he makes no great secret of it. He confronts me with the empty names of nobility, in other words of arrogant aristocrats, who do not so much damage my case by their nobility as help it by their notoriety. He makes out that he is relying on their protection, while all the time he has been engineering something different. [16] I will go on to tell you briefly, gentlemen, what hopes he has in his heart and what he is planning; but first please let me explain to you how he has dealt with the situation from the outset.

As soon as he returned from his province, a contract was undertaken, at great cost, for buying up this court. The contract remained on its original terms and conditions up to the point when the rejection of jurors was held. Once this had taken place—since the good
fortune of the Roman people had shattered Verres’ hopes when the lots were cast,
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and my own carefulness had triumphed over the opposition’s shamelessness when the rejection of jurors was held—the entire agreement was repudiated. [17] For me, then, everything was going splendidly. Everyone had a copy of the list of your names as members of this court; it seemed impossible that any mark, colour, or smudge could be put on the voting-tablets.
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Verres, having formerly been confident and optimistic, suddenly appeared so downcast and crushed that he gave the impression, not just to the Roman people but even to himself, of a condemned man. But suddenly in the past few days, since the consular elections,
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lo and behold, the same old intrigues of his are being revived, but with even more money than before, and the same attacks are being organized, through the same people—attacks on your reputation and on everyone’s fortunes.

This information was first revealed to me, members of the jury, by a tiny piece of suggestive evidence. But once the door of suspicion had been opened, a direct route led me to all the secret plans of Verres and his supporters. [18] An enormous crowd was escorting Quintus Hortensius home from the Campus Martius as consul-elect, and Gaius Curio
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happened to get caught up in it. Now my reference to this gentleman should not be taken as derogatory, but as a mark of respect. Indeed, if he did not wish the remark which I am about to quote to be repeated, he would not have made it so openly and publicly, and in the presence of such a large crowd of people. Even so, I will repeat it with some hesitation and diffidence, so that it will be clear that I am paying due consideration both to the friendship between us and to his high rank. [19] Curio, then, was at the Arch of Fabius,
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and among the crowd he caught sight of Verres. He called out to him, and loudly shouted his congratulations. To Hortensius who had just been elected consul, and to his friends and relations who were with him, he said not a word. Instead, it was Verres he went to talk to, Verres he embraced, Verres he told not to worry. ‘I formally declare
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to you,’ he said, ‘that at today’s elections you have been acquitted!’

A large number of people of the greatest respectability witnessed this remark, and so I was immediately informed of it; or rather, whenever I met anyone it was the first thing they said to me. To some it appeared scandalous, to others absurd—absurd to those who
thought that the trial depended on the reliability of the witnesses, the handling of the charges, and the power of the jurors, rather than the outcome of a consular election; and scandalous to those who looked deeper and realized that these congratulations pointed to the corruption of the court. [20] For this is what they concluded, this is what those respectable individuals said to each other and to me: that it was now clear and obvious that the courts did not exist. How can a defendant one day consider himself convicted, and then the next day, when his advocate is elected consul, be acquitted? How can this be? What about the fact that the whole of Sicily, all its inhabitants, all its business community, all its public and private records are here in Rome—does this count for nothing? Nothing, if the consul-elect so decides. Really? Will the jury take no account of the charges, or the witnesses, or the opinion of the Roman people? No: everything will be subject to the power and influence of one man.