– 1. Kelly's Keys to the Classics: Cicero in Verrem Actio II (2) Chapter IV (4) Fifth Verrine Oration De Signis by Cicero, literally translated by J.A. In Verrem. It breaks the work up into individual chapters, then presents each chapter first in Latin, then in English. In § 69, he reports that Roman citizens in Lampsacus on business successfully intervened when the local mob was trying to burn down the house in which Verres stayed. If one only reads an excerpt from this speech, it is easy to forget that Verres was not – nor had ever been – on trial for any of his actions as legate. In all of his published orations, Cicero maintains the illusion that the text is the record of a performance. The staff included fairly high-ranking Romans with ambitions of entering the cursus honorum, that is, a political career involving magistracies and military commands. What will you say? No clear consensus has emerged, not least since his practice will most likely have differed from case to case, ranging from almost instant release with only minor adjustments to significant revision and publication several years after the original delivery.17 The speeches that Cicero prepared for the second hearing belong to those that he anyway never gave, so here the question is moot. Though Cicero in the actual proceedings variously claimed that Verres had extorted 100 million, or 40 million, sesterces (Caec. This exemplar is especially notable for its fine contemporary binding, composed of a twelfth-century leaf from Saint Augustine’s Tractates written in a neat Caroline miniscule. Cicero also knows how to underscore the reliability of his two prime witnesses: P. Tettius and C. Varro, who both served on the staff of Nero (§ 71). 1. In the main, however, Cicero built his career, and even more so his legacy, on supreme ability in the realms of language, literature, and thought. One such reform coincided with Cicero’s prosecution of Verres, who was the last person judged in a quaestio de repetundis under the system put in place by Sulla: ‛The year 70 was momentous. Cicero also spends some time on Verres' worthless entourage, notably Rubrius. Cicero's version of what happened at Lampsacus is the centrepiece of the first oration he prepared for the second hearing (i.e. Jens Bartels’s entry in Brill’s New Pauly: • ~ 115–43 B.C. Examples of minor characters include envoys (legati) from Asia and Achaia (§ 59), Ianitor, Verres' host in Lampsacus (§§ 63-4), the Roman citizens who were in Lampsacus for business reasons (§ 69), the Roman creditors of the Greeks (§ 73), one of whom acts as accuser of Philodamus (§ 74), and the praefecti and tribuni militares of Dolabella (§ 73). Given the lack of independent evidence, one of the greatest challenges in dealing with Cicero's orations against Verres is doing Verres justice. 3 AS GCE in Classics: Latin H039 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE Date Event Source 106BC The birth of Cicero at Arpinum Cic. Adresse : 40 Devonshire Road CB1 2BL Cambridge United Kingdom. The Trial of Verres and Cicero’s Set of Speeches against Verres, 4. A keynote of the speech (2.1: Neminem vestrum ignorare arbitror, iudices) is that Cicero's audience is in the know: Verres' shenanigans, trickery, and attempts at deception cannot fool them.29 But since his guilt is so glaring and well-established, a verdict of innocent would reveal the judges inevitably as corrupt and unfit for their role. 2. In §§ 78-85, he explores and rebuts potential lines of defence Verres might have adopted to cast doubt on Cicero's interpretation and give an alternative explanation of what happened. Ver. 2.3 Late 90s Rhetorical education at Rome under Cic. ), Cicero the Advocate, Oxford, 117-46 (117). Cicero here reconsiders events that happened about a decade earlier, in an effort to portray Verres as evil through and through. Cicero portrays Verres and Dolabella in such a way as to remove them from civilized society: they come across as beasts ruled either by their passions or even worse instincts such as delight in cruelty; the Lampsacenes, in contrast, represent a peace-loving community that cherishes private and public values dear to the Romans as well, such as devotion to family members, unselfish courage, and commitment to civic life. • 84 B.C. On the basis of some minor military victories, he unsuccessfully petitioned his senatorial peers for the right to celebrate a triumph. 100: Establishment of the province of Cilicia88-84: First War between Rome and Mithradates VI, King of Pontus83-81: Second War between Rome and Mithradates VI, King of Pontus73-63: Third War between Rome and Mithradates VI, King of Pontus29, 25The Romans organized conquered territories into so-called provinciae (provinces). (2008), ’Cicero and the Citadel of the Allies’, in Cicero as Evidence: A Historian’s Companion, Oxford, 81-100. North Carolina, 83, cited by Frazel, T. D. (2004), ’The Composition and Circulation of Cicero’s In Verrem’, Classical Quarterly n.s. All provinces were required to submit tribute to Rome, which was collected by the so-called publicani (‛tax-farmers’).30 The nature of the Roman presence varied greatly across the provinces. Both monographs are excellent pieces of scholarship as well as highly entertaining reads. First, we get a detailed account of the shameless looting of artistic treasures Verres committed as legate in the Greek East in the late 80s BC. The full power of the tribunes was restored. Verres' legateship in the Greek East fell into a period marked by much unrest across the entire region. 18 See Frazel, T. (2004), ’The Composition and Circulation of Cicero’s In Verrem’, Classical Quarterly n.s. When the Sicilians turned to Rome for help against the plundering and extortion perpetrated by Verres, Cicero was a natural point of contact: he had been quaestor in Sicily only a few years earlier, knew the province well, had close ties with various leading locals, and saw himself as their patron.13 He agreed to act as the Sicilians’ legal representative, in what shaped up as a case for one of Rome’s ‘standing courts’, the so-called quaestio de repetundis.14 Because Roman officials enjoyed immunity from prosecution d… 28 For a range of views on how and why Rome conquered the Greek East (from deliberate policy to mainly reactive to Greek concerns and invitations) see Harris, W. (1979), War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, Oxford; Gruen, E. S. (1984), The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, Berkeley; and Morstein Kallet-Marx, R. (1995), Hegemony to Empire. In fact, what brought Verres to Lampsacus was an embassy to two kingdoms bordering on the Roman province of Asia, a journey Verres undertook, so Cicero insinuates spitefully but not necessarily correctly, entirely for personal profit. Cicero's report of Verres' looting of artworks and his narrative of the Lampsacus affair are both fraught with pathos, meant to generate indignation, if not downright outrage, at Verres' conduct. That assessment, though, may have been somewhat premature as further military adventures and significant territorial gains continued to happen afterwards. In the course of the section considered here, Cicero mentions a wide range of Roman personnel involved in provincial administration. Some Remarks on the Language of amicitia’, in A. Coşkun (ed. For the problem of plausibility in abuse, see Craig, C. (2004), ’Audience Expectations, Invective, and Proof’, in J. Powell and J. Paterson (eds. 14 The speech of Hortensius that Quintilian read (Institutio Oratoria 10.1.23) might have been ’a mere literary composition’ or the one he ’delivered at the litis aestimatio, after Verres’ condemnation in absence’: Brunt, P. A. De Leg. (1993), Imperium Romanum. But in what war? Two of the best are Berry, D. H. (2006), Cicero. In §§ 78-85, he explores and rebuts potential lines of defence Verres might have adopted to cast doubt on Cicero’s interpretation and give an alternative explanation of what happened. The so-called Verrine Orations thus comprise the Divinatio in Caecilium ("Preliminary hearing against Caecilius"), which won him the right to act as prosecutor of Verres; the decisive speech he gave during the first hearing (in Verrem 1); and the material Cicero prepared for the second hearing, repackaged into five undelivered orations (in Verrem 2.1-5).4 The dissemination of this corpus of speeches constituted an unprecedented enterprise, "the largest single publication of [his] entire career, if not the biggest such undertaking in the first century B.C. (2008), Cicero as Evidence: A Historian’s Companion, Oxford, p. 81 and 83. 29 For a spectacular biography of a spectacular subject, see Mayor, A. A map of all locations mentioned in the text and notes of the Aetia.Â, Links to resources for finding sight reading passages of moderate difficulty, most with glosses.Â. As a countermove and to accelerate proceedings, Cicero broke with conventions in his opening speech: instead of a lengthy disquisition setting out all of the charges (oratio perpetua), followed by a prolonged hearing of supporting witnesses, he quickly and summarily sketched out each of the charges and produced a limited number of supporting witnesses. Cicero In C. Verrem Actio Prima. (Devices that sustain this illusion include direct addresses to the audience, in particular the defendant, members of the jury, or opposing advocates, orders to the clerk to read out documents, and the use of deictic pronouns such as iste that suggest the presence of the person thus referred to.) THE ORATION FOR SEXTUS ROSCIUS OF AMERIA. The gens Tullia was a family at ancient Rome, with both patrician and plebeian branches. Provenance. According to Cicero, Verres’ counter-arguments do not amount to much and crumble under scrutiny. In his handling of the affair at Lampsacus, Cicero opts for a two-pronged approach to prove Verres' guilt: to begin with, he simply presupposes that the sequence of events has as its unifying factor Verres' inability to keep his lecherous instincts under control. At various places in the Verrines, he boasts about the speed with which he marshalled evidence. To provide readers of Greek and Latin with high interest texts equipped with media, vocabulary, and grammatical, historical, and stylistic notes. The first speech intended for the second hearing (Ver. (1980), ’Patronage and Politics in the Verrines’, Chiron 10, 273-89. As already mentioned, Verres and his supporters tried to prolong the trial until the following year. Cicero, in Verrem (English) [genre: prose] [Cic. His stunning success helped to eclipse Hortensius’ reputation as Rome’s leading orator and establish Cicero as the ‛king of the courts’, a moniker previously owned by his rival. Public speaking is designed to persuade an audience of a specific point of view. This may sound perverse, but Cicero was an absolute genius when it came to the "tactical" (mis-)representation of evidence. These included the nomination of Verres’ former quaestor Quintus Caecilius Niger as a rival prosecutor, which meant that Cicero had to argue for the right to bring Verres to justice in a preliminary hearing (he obviously won). 19 Cicero uses *praeteritio to pass over Verres’ (singularly depraved) youth, limiting his coverage of Verres’ crimes to the four periods in which he acted as a magistrate of the Roman people: his quaestorship, his legateship in Asia Minor, his urban praetorship, and his governorship of Sicily (§ 34). Thus Cicero does his best to depict Verres as a heinous and hardened criminal, with a particular penchant for debauchery from his early youth. Cicero triumphed with the (surviving) speech Divinatio in Caecilium, in which he showed that his adversary was just not up to the task. In the years before their showdown in 70 BC, each of the two men spent time in the Greek East and in Sicily. Many more detailed accounts of the circumstances of the trial exist than the bare-bone coverage provided here. Staff of provincial governors also included such functionaries as lictors, messengers (viatores), heralds (praecones), and scribes (scribae). See also Kennedy, G. (1994), A New History of Classical Rhetoric, Princeton; and, for the afterlife of ancient rhetoric, Kennedy, G. (1980), Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times, Chapel Hill. The Verrines are full of magnificent passages that illustrate Cicero at his best: as a superb raconteur who generates a gripping story out of precious few facts; as a heavy-hitting cross-examiner who lays into his adversaries with a remorseless flurry of rhetorical questions; as a master in the projection or portrayal of character (so-called ethos or ethopoiea) and the manipulation of emotions (so-called pathos); and, not least, as a creative individual gifted with an impish imagination who knows how to entertain. Towards the end of the republican period, legates who travelled in the company of pro-magistrates were also given lictors, especially when they represented their superior in military command or jurisdiction. Throughout the Verrines (though not in the passage under consideration here) Cicero plays on a sense of constitutional crisis.38 It was part of a larger strategy ‛to make Verres’ guilt matter’, not least for purposes of self-promotion.39. The so-called Verrine Orations thus comprise the Divinatio in Caecilium (‛Preliminary hearing against Caecilius’), which won him the right to act as prosecutor of Verres; the decisive speech he gave during the first hearing (in Verrem 1); and the material Cicero prepared for the second hearing, repackaged into five undelivered orations (in Verrem 2.1-5).1 The dissemination of this corpus of speeches constituted an unprecedented enterprise, ‛the largest single publication of [his] entire career, if not the biggest such undertaking in the first century B.C.’2 Cicero’s rationale for publishing the speeches against Verres in written form was most likely complex and will have involved his desire to consolidate his standing as an orator and the wish to broadcast the enormous amount of work he had put into the trial. "16 In the Orator, a rhetorical treatise he wrote in 46 BC, Cicero seems to imply that Hortensius never gave a formal speech in reply and only cross-examined some witnesses during the first hearing (Orat. Some years after his consulship in 63 BC, Cicero suffered the same fate as Verres: voluntary exile. It is therefore unwise to take anything he says about the character of any of his seemingly sociopathic villains at face value â€” including Verres. But Cicero put an end to Verres' crimes and his career: after the trial, Verres remained in exile until his death in 43 BC. divinatio (c. 20 January 70): no doubt at the instigation of Verres or his advocate Hortensius Verres' quaestor Q. Caecilius Niger also applied for the leave to prosecute; such rival requests entailed the need for a so-called divinatio, which consisted of a hearing before a jury presided over by the praetor at which the rival parties staked their claims. In 69, Hortensius, one of his advocates, and Q. Caecilius Metellus Creticus, one of his main friends and supporters, would have been consuls, and M. Caecilius Metellus (a brother of the aforementioned Metellus) would have presided over the extortion court as praetor. 13 Alexander, M. (1976), ’Hortensius’ Speech in Defense of Verres’, Phoenix 30, 46-53 (52). For each province, a lex provinciae defined the rights and obligations that the otherwise by and large self-governing civic communities (civitates) within a province had towards Rome. Flower (ed. In Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica, Lucius Cornelius Sisenna, and Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, the consul designate for 69 and a formidable public speaker, Verres managed to recruit a group of defence advocates brimming with nobility and talent. 2.5.7 >>Cic. 17 Excellent recent discussions include Berry, D. H. (2004), ’The Publication of Cicero’s Pro Roscio Amerino’, Mnemosyne 57, 80-87, Gurd, S. (2007), ’Cicero and Editorial Revision’, Classical Antiquity 26, 49-80, and Lintott, A. But in the larger scheme of things, Ver. Likewise, there was the prospect of a more favourable jury (that is, one more liable to corruption) since several of the chosen jury members were due to leave Rome in 69 BC to take up offices, ruling them out of jury duty.15 At one point, when it looked as if the ploy were to succeed, a third brother, L. Caecilius Metellus, who had taken over the governorship of Sicily from Verres as pro-praetor, tried to intimidate the Sicilians against giving testimony against Verres, boasting somewhat prematurely that Verres' acquittal was certain and that it was in the Sicilians' own interest not to cause difficulties. The Governor and his Entourage in the Self-Image of the Roman Republic’, in R. Laurence and J. Berry (eds. 10 Brunt, P. A. Section 2 takes a look at the circumstances of the trial and situates the chosen passage within the corpus as a whole. Cicero, Against Verres, 2.1.53–86 Book Description: Looting, despoiling temples, attempted rape and judicial murder: these are just some of the themes of this classic piece of … 27After their year as magistrates, consuls and praetors were customarily appointed as governors of provinces, assuming the title of pro-consul (‛acting consul’) or pro-praetor (‛acting praetor’) during their time in office (usually one year, but often prolonged). In a society that placed a premium on esteem for magistrates, this would have meant a powerful boost to Verres' cause. (2009), The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy, Princeton. Ancient rhetorical theory identified three main modes of persuasion: a speaker could prove his points or render his arguments plausible by means of logos (that is, reasoning, analysis and argument), ethos (that is, the characters of the individuals involved in the trial, especially that of the defendant and the speaker), or pathos (that is, strong emotions roused by the speaker in his audience).25 The chosen passage showcases Cicero's resourceful handling of all three modes. Each section is supposed to give easy access to pertinent contextual information, with a sprinkling of references to works of secondary literature for those who wish to pursue a specific aspect further. The son of a first-generation senator, he did well for himself in the turbulent years of the civil war between Marius and Sulla and afterwards as a minor magistrate in the (wild) East during the period that saw Rome’s protracted struggle with King Mithradates of Pontus, not least by showing a fine sense of judgement when best to doublecross his superiors. 1 In 70 BC, when Gnaeus Pompeius and Marcus Licinius Crassus shared the consulship for the first time, Rome’s rising star in oratory, Marcus Tullius Cicero, successfully prosecuted Gaius Verres on the charge of misconduct, especially extortion, during his term as governor of Sicily (73-71 BC). ‛By chance’ (casu), a great number of embassies from the towns Verres had ravaged happened to be in Rome at the time, and Cicero describes heart-wrenching scenes of Greek ambassadors setting eyes on long lost treasures, often statues of gods and goddesses of profound religious value and significance, breaking down on the spot, in public, in worship and tears.