Part IV
Politics and Justice in Ancient Rome
I
THE TRIAL OF VERRES
In the early days of the year 70 B.C., a deputation from the cities of Sicily arrived at Rome and sought an interview with a young Senator, who was already famed for his eloquence, by name Marcus Tullius Cicero. What could be the object of the Sicilians’ visit to Rome and to the modest house of the young Senator, whose strict probity and modest means made it impossible for him to receive his visitors in a sumptuous palace? Justice was the object of their visit. For three years, from 75 to 73 B.C., Sicily had been governed by a young pro-prætor, a scion of an illustrious house, who had powerful friends amongst the party in power: Caius Cornelius Verres. Daring, imprudent, covetous, fond of art and its products and of the pleasures of life, emboldened by a rapid and fortunate career, the young pro-prætor had certainly much abused his power in the provinces and had too readily turned to account the corrupt notions of the times in the amassing of a huge fortune by all the means, licit and illicit, which a pro-prætor could use and abuse, though in doing so he had offended the interests and susceptibilities of others, and had made a great number of enemies. That is the only conclusion to be drawn from the fact that, after his departure, the cities, accustomed though they were to insolent and overbearing governors, decided in this instance to present an indictment and had recourse to the young Senator who five years before had been quæstor in Sicily, and who had left behind him in the island a great reputation for culture, generosity and honesty. When he left the island, this young Senator had himself said to the Sicilians in a speech delivered at Lilybæum: “If at any time you have need of me, come and fetch me.”
The Sicilians had remembered this promise. The laws of ancient Rome allowed any citizen to cite in the courts any other citizen whom he suspected of having broken the laws. Would Cicero cite Verres in Sicily’s behalf? The proposal of the Sicilian cities was a proof of remarkable confidence, but it was at the same time a dangerous honour. Verres was a rich man; he was powerful and had any number of helpers and supporters among the party in power. Of even greater assistance to Verres than the friendship of the influential was the feeling of community of interest amongst the dominant faction. This faction was the faction of Sulla, that is to say, the more conservative portion of the nobility, which, after a terrible civil war waged against the Democratic party, had succeeded in seizing the reins of government of the Republic. It was a faction composed of widely differing ingredients. It comprised not a few honourable and upright men, who would naturally wish the provinces to be governed humanely and uprightly. But great though the desire might be that the Empire should be governed well, still greater was the desire to preserve, together with the constitution imposed by Sulla on the Empire, the power bequeathed by him. At this juncture, the opposite party had been conquered but not destroyed, and its survivors were restlessly alert for every opportunity of injuring the dominant faction with all the arms provided by the constitution, amongst which one of the most dangerous was precisely the initiation of scandalous charges against prominent persons. Consequently, legal proceedings and scandals intended to discredit the State had, since Sulla’s time, been looked on with much disfavour by the dominant party, even honourable members of which, faced with the choice between the harm which one of these processes caused to the party and to the authority of the State and the injury to justice resulting from the escape of a powerful culprit unpunished, nearly always preferred the second.
In fact, for years past, the dominant party had strained every nerve to prevent these processes, thus encouraging the less honourable governors to abuse their authority. The result had been the rise in the public conscience of a feeling of uneasiness, discontent, and irritation, which the stories, often exaggerated, of the cruelty and violence of the governors served only to accentuate. And by none at that moment was this uneasiness more acutely felt than by Cicero. Cicero belonged to a family of equestrian rank—middle-class we should call it—from Arpino. He was a homo novus, a self-made man, to use a modern expression, because he was the first of the family to become a member of the Senate. He was not very rich and, though a man of intelligence and vigour, he was somewhat lacking in courage. Consequently, he was not the man to dare open defiance of the wrath, or a frontal attack on the interests, of the dominant caste; rather were these violent and terrible accusations so repugnant to his nature that he had never brought himself hitherto to assume the rôle of prosecutor in any action. He had always preferred the more humane part of defender. He was, however, an honourable man, with small affection—like all the equestrian order—for the faction and government formed by Sulla; and he was fully conscious of the obligation imposed on him by the promise which he had made so solemnly to the Sicilians. Besides, he was young—only thirty-six years old—and was still a man of secondary importance. A case of great public interest, which set all Italy talking, and in which he was the popular protagonist, might be of great service to his lofty and legitimate ambitions. In addition, things had been moving fast recently, to the detriment of the party in power, who were accused on all sides of outrage and corruption. The consuls for that year were Pompey and Crassus, who, though members of the Sullan party, had come forward as candidates with a Democratic programme, promising no less than that they would restore to the tribunes of the plebs those powers of which Sulla had stripped them. There was a feeling in the air which seemed to promise that just for once the infamies of a governor might receive condign punishment from outraged public opinion.
The young advocate realised that the decisive moment of his life had come. He agreed to prosecute Verres. But what crime or crimes should he lay to his charge? At this point emerges the first strange feature in the history of this strange case. The budget of charges, recriminations, and denunciations against Verres, which the Sicilians lodged with Cicero, comprised enough and to spare of crimes of every sort, some of which were actually of a capital nature. For instance, Verres was accused of having ordered Roman citizens to execution—which was a capital offence. But what did Cicero do? He carefully singled out the least serious charge and persuaded the Sicilians to lay an indictment de pecuniis repetundis—to demand, that is to say, that Verres should be condemned to pay one hundred million prezzi (twenty-five million francs) as a penalty for having levied unauthorised taxes. How are we to explain this forbearance? Cicero in his speeches against Verres denounces him as a monster and a wild beast. He launches the most terrible invectives against his villainies. There is no need, however, to interpret too literally his glowing periods. Not even Cicero could forget, while he was accusing Verres, that he himself and the man he was accusing belonged to the same class, and were members of the same aristocracy, which controlled the vast Roman Empire. However keen might be the indignation aroused by the misdeeds of Verres, not even the strictest section of the aristocracy would have approved too relentless a line of attack, or one which involved the accused in too serious danger. Personal hatred was a less powerful factor than the sentiment of caste and the interest each man felt in securing a mitigation of the severity of the laws in favour of his fellows, in anticipation of a similar privilege for himself when occasion might arise. Therefore Cicero acted wisely in his clients’ interests when he chose that charge which promised the least danger to the defendant; for he knew that otherwise the latter would have an easier task in escaping conviction.
The weakness of the attack, however, as always happens, emboldened the accused. Verres did not hesitate one moment to make a political matter of his case. He had recourse to all the most influential members of his party. He begged Q. Hortensius, who was the greatest orator and the cleverest advocate of the day, to defend him. In every possible way, he tried to enlist in his support party interests and caste consciousness. He represented the indictment as a machination of the Democratic party, of the opposition, to bring obloquy on the party which had been restored to power by Sulla. He, Verres, was the victim, in whose person it was hoped to strike a blow at the whole of the Conservative aristocracy, and at Sulla’s life work! This view of the matter was at this juncture not unconvincing, so that Verres, when he began the struggle, found himself supported by powerful friends.
His first move had for its object the elimination of Cicero as prosecutor. The Roman law, though it allowed anyone to constitute himself accuser of a citizen who had violated the laws, did not permit an unlimited number of people to get up and accuse a single individual. For, in that case, the law would have worked oppressively, cruelly, and unconscionably. The accusation had to be lodged by a single person; and if several persons asked to be allowed to accuse an individual, it was the duty of the authority to choose one of them as the accuser. Verres accordingly tried to find a rival for Cicero. A certain Quintus Cecilius Negro, a Roman citizen, but of Sicilian origin and a Hebrew by religion, who had been Verres’s quæstor in Sicily, appeared before the Prætor, declaring that he wished to prosecute Verres, and demanding the privilege over Cicero on the pretext that he had been insulted by Verres in Sicily. As a matter of fact, there had been a violent quarrel between them about a certain Agonis, a freedwoman of the temple of Venus at Eryx, who practised the profession reserved in the ancient world for the slaves of the temples of Venus.
So a preliminary trial was necessary to decide which should be the accuser, Cecilius or Cicero, and this trial took place in the early months of the year 70. Cicero made a powerful speech in which he clearly insinuated that Cecilius was playing a part with the connivance of Verres; that the former, if he were chosen to be the accuser, would conduct the prosecution in the way best calculated to secure Verres’s acquittal. He added in more precise terms that the case was of the greatest political importance, inasmuch as it was bound to prove definitely to the provinces whether there was or was not justice to be had in Rome; whether the subjects of Rome might expect to find their rights impartially defended in the courts of the Republic, or whether—as the enemies of Rome and the adversaries of the dominant party were repeating on all sides—the aristocracy were nothing but a corrupt and rapacious association without bowels of mercy for the victims whom they tortured.