Verres
Gaius. A Roman quaestor in B.C. 82 to Cn. Papirius
Carbo, and who therefore at that period belonged to the Marian party. He, however, deserted
Carbo and went over to Sulla , who sent him to Beneventum, where he received a share of the
confiscated estates. Verres next appears as the legate of Cn. Cornelius Dolabella, praetor of
Cilicia from 80 to 79, one of the most rapacious of the provincial governors. On the death of
the regular quaestor, C. Malleolus, Verres became the pro-quaestor of Dolabella. In Verres,
Dolabella found an active and unscrupulous agent, and, in return, connived at his excesses.
But the pro-quaestor proved as faithless to Dolabella as he had been to Carbo , and turned
evidence against him on his prosecution by M. Scaurus in 78. Verres was Praetor Urbanus in 74,
and afterwards propraetor in Sicily, where he remained nearly three years (73-71). The
extortions and exactions of Verres in the island have become notorious through the celebrated
orations of Cicero. No class of the inhabitants of Sicily was exempted from his avarice, his
cruelty, or his insults. The wealthy had money or works of art to yield up; the middle classes
might be made to pay heavier imposts; and the exports of the vineyards, the arable land, and
the loom he saddled with heavier burdens. By capricious changes or violent abrogation of their
compacts, Verres reduced to beggary both the producers and the farmers of the revenue. His
three years' rule desolated the island more effectually than the two recent Servile Wars and
than the old struggle between Carthage and Rome for the possession of the island. So
diligently did he employ his opportunities that he boasted of having amassed enough for a life
of opulence, even if he were compelled to disgorge two-thirds of his plunder in stifling
inquiry or purchasing an acquittal.
As soon as he left Sicily the inhabitants resolved to bring him to trial. They committed the
prosecution to Cicero, who had been Lilybaean quaestor in Sicily in 75, and had promised his
good offices to the Sicilians whenever they might demand them. Cicero entered heartily into
the cause of the Sicilians, and spared no pains to secure a conviction of the great criminal.
Verres was defended by
Hortensius (q.v.) and was
supported by the whole power of the aristocracy. At first his partisans attempted to stop the
prosecution by bribes, flatteries, and menaces; but finding this to be impossible, they
endeavoured to substitute a sham prosecutor in the place of Cicero. Hortensius therefore
offered as prosecutor Q. Caecilius Niger, who had been quaestor to the defendant, had
quarrelled with him, and had consequently, it was alleged, the means of exposing officially
his abuse of the public money. But the Sicilians rejected Caecilius altogether, not merely as
no match for Hortensius, but as foisted into the cause by the defendant or his advocate. By a
technical process of the Roman law called
divinatio, the
iudices, without hearing evidence, determined from the arguments of counsel alone who
should be appointed prosecutor. They decided in Cicero's favour. The oration which Cicero
delivered on this occasion was the
Divinatio in Q. Caecilium. The pretensions
of Caecilius were thus set aside. Yet hope did not forsake Verres and his friends. Evidence
for the prosecution was to be collected in Sicily itself. Cicero was allowed 110 days for the
purpose. Verres once again attempted to set up a sham prosecutor, who undertook to
impeach him for his former extortions in Achaia, and to gather the evidence in 108 days. But
the new prosecutor never went even so far as Brundisium in quest of evidence, and the design
was abandoned. Instead of the 110 days allowed, Cicero, assisted by his cousin Lucius,
completed his researches in fifty, and returned with a mass of evidence and a crowd of
witnesses gathered from all parts of the island. Hortensius now grasped at his last chance of
an acquittal, and it was not an unlikely one. Could the impeachment be put off to the next
year, Verres was safe. Hortensius himself would then be consul, with Q. Metellus for his
colleague, and M. Metellus would be Praetor Urbanus. For every firm and honest
iudex whom the upright M'. Acilius Glabrio, then Praetor Urbanus, had named, a partial
or venal substitute would be found. Glabrio himself would give place as
quaesitor or president of the court to M. Metellus, a partisan, if not a kinsman, of
the defendant. It was already the month of July. The games to be exhibited by Cn. Pompey were
fixed for the middle of August, and would occupy a fortnight; the Roman games would
immediately succeed them, and thus forty days intervene between Cicero's charge and the reply
of Hortensius, who again, by dexterous adjournments, would delay the proceedings until the
Games of Victory and the commencement of the new year. Cicero therefore abandoned all thought
of eloquence or display, and, merely introducing his case in the first of the Verrine
orations, rested all his hopes of success on the weight of testimony alone. Hortensius was
quite unprepared with counter-evidence, and after the first day he abandoned the cause of
Verres. Before the nine days occupied in hearing evidence were over, Verres quitted the city
in despair, and was condemned in his absence. He retired to Marseilles, retaining so many of
his treasures of art as to cause eventually his proscription by M. Antony in 43. Of the seven
Verrine orations of Cicero, two only, the
Divinatio and the
Actio
Prima, were spoken, while the remaining five were compiled from the depositions after
the verdict. Cicero's own division of the impeachment is the following:
| （a) Preliminary. |
1. In Q. Caecilium or Divinatio. |
| 2. Prooemium—Actio Prima—Statement
of the Case. |
These alone were spoken.
| （b) Orations founded on the
depositions. |
3. Verres's official life to B.C. 73. |
| 4. Iurisdictio Siciliensis. |
| 5. Oratio Frumentaria. |
| 6. “ De Signis. |
| 7. “ De Suppliciis. |
These were circulated as documents or pamphlets after the flight of Verres. The result of
the whole affair was to make Cicero the leader of the Roman bar in place of Hortensius.
See accounts of this very famous case given in the lives of Cicero by Brückner
(1852); Forsyth
(1869); and Trollope
(1880); and cf.
the articles
Cicero;
Hortensius.
