Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics)

by Cicero

  [149] If any king, if any foreign state, if any savage tribe had acted in this way towards Roman citizens, surely we would be taking official action to punish them, surely we would be declaring war on them? Could we really let such damage and such an insult to the honour of Rome go unpunished and unavenged? How many major wars do you think our ancestors undertook merely because word had reached them that Roman citizens had been hurt, ship-owners arrested, or merchants robbed? But I am not now complaining that these men were arrested; nor do I regard it as intolerable that they were robbed. My charge is that, after their ships, slaves, and goods had been taken from them, merchants were put in chains, and, while in chains, despite being Roman citizens, they were killed. [150] Now if I were discussing the dreadful executions of all those Roman citizens not in front of a large crowd of Roman citizens, nor before the country’s most senior senators, nor in the forum of the Roman people, but in front of an audience of Scythians, the hearts even of barbarians such as those could not fail to be deeply moved. For this empire of ours is so glorious and the very name of ‘Roman’ carries such tremendous prestige among every nation on earth that it seems wrong that anyone at all should be allowed to treat our own people with that sort of cruelty.

  How can I now think you have any means of escape, any place of refuge available to you, when I see you entwined by these strict jurors and completely netted* by this crowd of Roman citizens? [151] But if, by Hercules, you manage to free yourself from my snare and somehow extricate yourself by some strategem—something I do not consider remotely possible—then you will only stumble into an even larger net, and then I from a more commanding position* will inevitably dispatch you and cut you to pieces.

  But suppose I were willing to allow him the plea he will make in his own defence. That plea, which is false, ought to be no less damaging to him than my accusation, which is true. So what is this plea he will make? It is this: that the people he intercepted and punished were fugitives from Spain.* So who gave you permission to punish them? By what right did you do so? Who else acted in the same way as you? What was the legal basis for your action? [152] We see the forum and the public halls full of that type of men,* and are not disturbed by the sight. For when our civil dissension or collective madness or bad luck or national calamity (whatever you choose to call it) comes to an end, we do not regard as intolerable an outcome in which those citizens who have survived are allowed to live on unharmed. But Verres (a man who in his earlier career himself betrayed a consul, changed sides when quaestor, and embezzled public money)* regarded himself as such an authority on matters of public policy that he would have inflicted a painful and cruel death on all such people—men whom the senate, the Roman people, and every magistrate had permitted to appear in the forum, to vote, to reside in Rome, and to take part in political life—if they had had the bad luck to end up in any part of Sicily.*

  [153] After Perperna* had been killed, a large number of soldiers who had fought for Sertorius threw themselves on the mercy of the illustrious and valiant Gnaeus Pompeius. And of these, was there any that Pompeius did not do his very best to keep safe and unharmed? Was there any fellow-citizen who appealed for clemency to whom that undefeated right hand did not extend its protection and offer hope of being spared? Well? When he, a man whom they had fought against in battle, granted them a safe haven, did you, who by constrast had never done your country any important service, see fit to inflict on them torture and death instead? What a promising line of defence you have devised for yourself! By Hercules, I would prefer it if the case you were arguing were proved to the jury and the Roman people to be true, rather than the case I am alleging. I would prefer it, I tell you, if you were believed to be implacably hostile to that type of men* rather than to merchants and ship-owners. For my argument merely proves you to have been over-greedy; your own defence, on the other hand, convicts you of a type of monstrous frenzy, of unprecedented cruelty, and virtually of a new proscription.*

  [154] But it is not open to me, gentlemen, to make use of this defence of Verres’ for my own purposes; it is not open to me.* This is because the whole of Puteoli* is here in court. Merchants, wealthy and honourable men, have come to the court in large numbers to tell you that their business partners or their freedmen or their fellow freedmen were stripped of their property and cast into prison, and that some of them were killed in prison and others taken out and beheaded. See now how fairly I am going to treat you. I am going to bring forward Publius Granius* as a witness. He will state that his freedmen were beheaded by you, and he will demand that you give him back his ship and his cargo. If you can refute his testimony, please do so. I declare that I will then abandon my witness, take your side, and give you my support. Prove that those men were with Sertorius, and that they fled from Dianium before putting in at Sicily. There is nothing that I would rather you proved—because no other crime that could be discovered or adduced would merit greater punishment.

  [155] If you like, I will also bring back the Roman equestrian Lucius Flavius* to give evidence, since in the first hearing you did not cross-examine him or indeed any of the witnesses. (Your advocates keep saying what a wise innovation this was on your part. But everyone knows the real reason: you knew that you were guilty and that my witnesses were reliable.) Cross-examine Flavius, if you like. Ask him who Titus Herennius was—the man whom Flavius says was a banker at Lepcis,* and who, despite having more than a hundred Roman citizens of Syracuse who not only vouched for his being who he said he was but also wept and appealed to you on his behalf, was nevertheless beheaded in the presence of the city’s entire population. I would like to see you refute this witness of mine, and demonstrate conclusively that Herennius was in reality a soldier from Sertorius’ army.

  [156] But what can we say about the many people who were led out for execution as if they were captured pirates, but had their heads covered up? Can you explain that unprecedented precaution, and your reason for devising it? Could it be that you were rattled by the outcry from Lucius Flavius and everyone else when Titus Herennius was executed? Or could it be that the considerable influence enjoyed by the highly respected and honourable Marcus Annius* had made you a little more cautious and circumspect? He was the one who recently stated in his evidence that it was no stranger from abroad that you had beheaded, but a Roman citizen who had been born in Syracuse, and who was personally known to all the other Roman citizens there. [157] After all these people’s protests, when the executions had become widely known and widely objected to, Verres did not become more lenient in his punishments, but more cautious: he started leading Roman citizens out to execution with their heads covered up. But he still wanted to kill them in public because, as I said earlier, the Roman citizens in Syracuse were keeping rather too careful a tally of the numbers of pirates accounted for.

  So was this the deal for the Roman plebs while you were governor? Was this the end result of their trading that they were to look forward to? Was this the critical situation in which they lived their lives? Do merchants not have to undergo quite enough natural dangers already without having to worry about these extra risks at the hands of our magistrates in our own provinces? Sicily is our loyal neighbour, filled with steadfast allies and honourable citizens, and she has always been most happy to welcome any Roman citizen within her borders. So was it right that people who had sailed all the way from far-off Syria or Egypt, who had been treated with no little respect by barbarian peoples because they wore the toga, and who had escaped being ambushed by the pirates and wrecked by storms should have been beheaded on their arrival in Sicily—when they reckoned that at last they had come home?

  [158] Now what am I to say, members of the jury, about Publius Gavius from the town of Consa?* What power of voice am I to use, what weighty words, what heart-rending emotion? I feel no lack of emotion on this subject; so my task will rather be to ensure that my voice and my words do justice to the affair, and to my feelings. The charge to which I now turn is so extraordinary that, when it was fi
rst brought to me, I did not think I would be able to make use of it. This was because, although I knew it to be completely true, I did not think anyone else would believe it. Yet I was impelled to take action by the tears of all the Roman citizens who do business in Sicily, and was urged on by the evidence presented to me by the honourable citizens of Vibo Valentia and all the people of Regium, as well as by numerous Roman equestrians who happened to be in Messana at the time. The result was that I used the minimum number of witnesses necessary in the first hearing to ensure that no one could be in any doubt as to what had happened.

  [159] But what am I to do now? I have been speaking for hours on a single topic, Verres’ appalling cruelty. I have nearly exhausted my entire stock of words appropriate to his crimes in saying what I have said so far, and I have done nothing to vary the nature of the charges and so keep you interested. How, then, am I to speak about such an important affair? There is one way and one method only, I think: to put the facts out in the open. The matter is so serious that it does not require any eloquence of mine—or of anyone else, since I have none—to arouse your feelings of indignation.

  [160] The man I am talking about, Gavius of Consa, was one of the Roman citizens whom Verres had cast into prison, and he had somehow managed to escape undetected from the quarries and make his way to Messana. At Messana, he was within sight of Italy, and could see the walls of Regium, a city of Roman citizens. He had escaped from his dark confinement and the fear of imminent death, and now, restored by the light of freedom and the fresh air of justice, he felt that he had returned to the land of the living. So he began to talk to people, and to complain that he, a Roman citizen, had been put in prison. He said that he was going straight to Rome, so as to be ready for Verres on his return there. The poor man did not realize that it made not the slightest bit of difference whether he said all this at Messana or in the governor’s residence in front of Verres himself. For as I have already explained to you, Verres had specially chosen Messana to be his partner in crime, a holding area for his thefts, and an accomplice in all his wicked deeds. Gavius, therefore, was immediately brought before the chief magistrate of Messana, and as it happened Verres himself was visiting the city that very day. The case was put before him, that there was a Roman citizen who was complaining that he had been in the quarries at Syracuse; he had just been boarding ship, they said, uttering terrible threats against Verres, but they had hauled him back and kept him under guard, so that Verres could decide himself what he wanted to do with him.

  [161] Verres thanked the men, and commended their diligence and loyalty towards himself. Then he strode into the forum, fired up with wickedness and rage. His eyes were ablaze, and cruelty shone out all over his face. Everyone was waiting to see what he would do, and how far he would go. Then, without warning, he ordered Gavius to be dragged out, stripped, and bound in the centre of the forum, and for the rods to be unleashed. Poor Gavius shouted out that he was a Roman citizen, and a citizen of Consa, and that he had served in the Roman army with the worthy Roman equestrian Lucius Raecius,* a businessman at Panhormus who could confirm to Verres everything that he was saying. But Verres replied that he had found out he was actually a spy sent to Sicily by the leaders of the runaway slaves—although there was no informer who alleged this, nor any scrap of evidence to suggest this, nor the slightest suspicion in anyone’s mind that this was the case. Then Verres gave the order for Gavius to be brutally flogged by several lictors at once.

  [162] So a Roman citizen was beaten with rods, gentlemen, in the centre of the forum at Messana. And throughout his ordeal, amidst the excruciating crack of the rods on his body, no cry of pain, no sound was heard from the wretched Gavius, except these words: ‘I am a Roman citizen.’ He hoped, by asserting his citizenship in this way, to ward off the blows from his body and end his agony. However, he was not merely unsuccessful in averting the violence of his beating: as he repeated his appeals with increasing desperation and persisted in invoking his Roman citizenship, the cross—the cross, I tell you!—was made ready for that unlucky, miserable man, a man who had never even seen such an abomination in his life before.

  [163] How sweet a thing is freedom! How superlative are our rights as citizens! How admirable the Porcian law and the Sempronian laws!* How keenly did the Roman plebs miss the tribunician power, now finally restored to them!* Have all these privileges now fallen so far into abeyance that a Roman citizen, in a province of the Roman people, and in a federate town, should be bound in the forum and beaten with rods by a magistrate who possessed his rods and axes only because the Roman people themselves had given them to him? And when fire, red-hot irons, and the other instruments of torture were then applied, if the man’s heart-rending appeals for mercy were not enough to make you desist, how could the tears and loud cries of the Roman citizens who were witnessing the scene fail to have an effect on you? And how could you have the temerity to crucify someone who told you that he was a Roman citizen?

  I did not want to speak about this so passionately in the first hearing, gentlemen; I did not want to. The audience here were already quite stirred up enough against Verres, as you saw, by their feelings of indignation, hatred, and fear of the danger he represents. That was why I was careful not to go too far in what I said, and to make sure that my witness Gaius Numitorius,* an equestrian and gentleman of the first rank, did not do so either; and I was very happy that Glabrio acted as wisely as he did in abruptly adjourning the court before Numitorius had finished testifying. What Glabrio was afraid of was that the Roman people, worried that Verres might escape punishment by due legal process in your court, would take his punishment into their own hands and use violence against him. [164] But since it is now sufficiently clear to the Roman people just how weak your position actually is, and that you are going to be punished by this court whatever happens, I will argue my case as follows.

  This Gavius, whom you say suddenly became a spy—I will prove that you cast him into the quarries at Syracuse. But I will not prove it only from the public records of Syracuse: if I did, you would claim that I had simply found someone with the name of Gavius in the records and then pretended that that was the same Gavius as the one who was executed. No, I will produce witnesses that you can choose from yourself: they will all say that the Gavius who was executed at Messana had been imprisoned by you in the quarries at Syracuse. I will also produce Gavius’ friends and fellow-townsmen from Consa. They will now prove to you and to your jurors—to you too late, but to the jurors not too late—that the Publius Gavius you crucified was indeed a Roman citizen and a citizen of Consa, not a spy for the slaves.

  [165] Once I have demonstrated all this—as I promise I shall do, fully, and to the satisfaction of even your closest supporters—I will then come to grips with the point that you yourself conceded to me; and I will declare myself content with that. When the other day you were seriously alarmed by the aggressive shouting of the Roman people and jumped to your feet, what was it, tell me, that you said? That the reason the man kept on shouting that he was a Roman citizen was that he was trying to get his punishment put off—but that he was in fact a spy. This proves that my witnesses are telling the truth. For is this not precisely what Gaius Numitorius is maintaining, and Marcus and Publius Cottius, high-ranking gentlemen from the district of Tauromenium, and Quintus Lucceius, a leading banker from Regium, and all the rest of them? For the witnesses that I have produced so far are not people who claimed that they knew who Gavius was, but people who claimed that they witnessed the crucifixion of a man who shouted that he was a Roman citizen. And this is exactly what you say yourself, Verres, when you admit that the man was shouting that he was a Roman citizen—but that not even the mention of citizenship was enough to make you hesitate for a moment, or induce you to grant a short delay to a brutal, horrifying punishment.

  [166] This is the point I am holding on to. It is here, gentlemen, that I am making my stand. I am content just with this. I pass over and leave out all other points. His own adm
ission will catch him out and dispatch him: there is no escaping it. You had no idea who he was, but thought he might be a spy. I do not ask what your reasons were for thinking that, but I accuse you from your very own words: he said he was a Roman citizen. If you, Verres, had been arrested in Persia or in remotest India, and were being led away to execution, what else would you be shouting except that you were a Roman citizen? Despite being a stranger among strangers, among barbarians, and among the most remote and far-off peoples, you would still have profited from your status as a Roman citizen, since that status is famous and respected the world over. Surely, then, that man—whoever he was—whom you were hurrying off to crucifixion, a man who was a complete stranger to you, ought to have been entitled, when he stated that he was a Roman citizen, to obtain from you, the governor, if not release, then at least a stay of execution, by his mention of citizenship and his appeal to it?

  [167] Humble men of obscure birth sail the seas and travel to places they have never seen before. They are unknown there, and often do not have people with them who can vouch that they are who they say they are. Nevertheless, they have complete confidence in their status as Roman citizens, and they count on being safe not only in the presence of our magistrates, who are restrained by fear of the law and of public opinion, nor only in the presence of other Roman citizens, with whom they have language, rights, and a thousand other things in common: no, wherever they go, they believe that this status they enjoy will protect them. [168] Remove this belief, remove this protection for Roman citizens, decree that the words ‘I am a Roman citizen’ should confer no benefit, decree that governors and anyone else may inflict whatever punishments they like on those who state that they are Roman citizens and get away with it, simply because they do not know who they are: if you accept that defence, you will have debarred Roman citizens from every province, from every kingdom, from every free state, and in fact from every place in the world to which our people above all others have always hitherto had access.