Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (22 page)

[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 admission 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.

And if Gavius mentioned the name of Lucius Raecius, a Roman equestrian who was in Sicily at the time, was it really so difficult to
send a letter to Panhormus? You would have had the man safe in the custody of your friends at Messana, chained and locked away, until such time as Raecius arrived from Panhormus. If he identified the man, you could have imposed as a punishment something less than execution; and if he failed to identify him, then you could, if you liked, have established a precedent that a man who was not known to you and could not produce a reliable person to confirm his identity would be liable to crucifixion, even though he might be a Roman citizen.

[169] But why should I keep on about Gavius? That would imply that your hostility was directed specifically at him, whereas in reality you were the enemy of the whole class of Roman citizens, their title, and their rights. You were implacably opposed, I tell you, not to that particular individual, but to the freedom of everyone. If this is not the case, then why did you order the people of Messana, after they had erected the cross in their usual spot on the Pompeian Way behind the city, to move it to a site overlooking the strait? And why did you then add—something you cannot possibly deny, since you said it openly and many people heard you—that you had particularly chosen that site because you wanted the man, since he claimed to be a Roman citizen, to be able to see Italy from his cross, and make out his own home in the distance? That is the only cross, gentlemen, to have been erected in that place since Messana was founded.
*
Verres deliberately chose a spot within sight of Italy so that Gavius, while dying in dreadful agony, might appreciate how narrow the strait was that separated freedom from slavery, and that Italy might see her own son nailed to a cross and paying the most terrible and extreme punishment that can be inflicted on slaves.

[170] It is an outrage to shackle a Roman citizen, an abomination to flog him, and all but parricide to kill him—so what can I say about crucifying him? Words do not exist to describe so wicked an act. But Verres was not content to leave it even at that. ‘Let him look out over his country,’ he said. ‘Let him die within sight of the laws and freedom.’ It was not just Gavius, not just one ordinary man whom you subjected to torture and crucifixion, but the freedom common to all Roman citizens. But now consider the man’s audacity! Surely he must have been disappointed that he could not erect that cross for Roman citizens right here in the forum, in the place of assembly, and on the rostra itself, seeing that the place in his province that he
selected was the one that was geographically nearest to Rome, and most similar to it in the amount of traffic it receives. He wanted that monument to his wickedness and criminality to stand within sight of Italy, at the entrance to Sicily, and above the strait where travellers by sea pass in each direction.

[171] Suppose I were to make these protests and lamentations not before Roman citizens, nor before people who are our country’s friends, nor before people who have heard of the Roman people but never seen them; suppose I were speaking not to human beings at all but to animals; or, to go a step further, suppose I were in some empty desert and were addressing the rocks and boulders—then even such mute and inanimate objects could not fail to be moved by such awful, undeserved cruelty. But since the people I am in fact addressing are senators of the Roman people and the originators of our laws, courts, and civic rights, I ought to be confident that Verres will be judged to be the only Roman citizen who deserves to be crucified, and that no one else will be judged as meriting a fate of this kind.

[172] Just a few minutes ago we were all shedding tears over the dreadful, undeserved deaths of the ships’ captains, and were upset—and rightly so—at the plight of our innocent allies. How, then, should we react when it is a case of our own flesh and blood? For the blood of all Roman citizens should be thought of as shared: not only truth, but considerations of our common safety demand this. All Roman citizens, those who are here in court and those elsewhere, now look to your strictness, appeal to your honour, and beg for your help. They are convinced that all their rights, privileges, and safeguards, in short their very freedom hangs on the verdict you are about to deliver.

[173] From me, they already have what they wanted. But if the verdict goes the wrong way, they will get more from me, perhaps, than they are asking for. For suppose that Verres by some act of force manages to escape your strictness—something I am not worried about, gentlemen, nor consider remotely possible. But suppose I am mistaken, and he does escape: the Sicilians will complain that they have lost their case and will be unhappy about it, as indeed will I; but the Roman people, since they have given me the power of bringing cases before them,
*
will quickly, by1 February at the latest, recover their rights by voting against Verres in an action brought by myself. If you want to know how this affects my reputation and career
prospects, gentlemen, it will do me no harm at all if Verres escapes from me in this court and then stands trial before the Roman people. Indeed, that type of prosecution carries prestige. For me, it would be an appropriate form of procedure, and a convenient one; as far as the people are concerned, it would be satisfying and agreeable. Now you may think that I have wanted to advance myself at the expense of this one man: that is not the case at all. But if he is acquitted, it is true that I will be in a position to advance myself at the expense of many, since it is impossible that he should be acquitted without many people breaking the law themselves.
*
But—by Hercules!—for your sake and that of the country, gentlemen, I would not want to see so serious a crime committed by this select jury. I would not want jurors that I myself have chosen and approved
*
walking around our city so tainted by their acquittal of Verres that they would look as though they were smeared not so much with wax as with mud.
*

[174] For this reason, Hortensius, I would like to offer you, too, a piece of advice—if, that is, it is appropriate for a prosecutor to offer advice to a defence advocate. Look very carefully at what it is that you are doing and reflect upon it—where it is leading you, what sort of man you are defending, and by what means you are defending him. I do not want to limit in any way your scope for competing honestly with me in intelligence and oratorical ability. But if you think that you can manage this trial in private from outside the court, if you imagine that you can organize things by trickery, plotting, power, influence, or Verres’ money, then I strongly advise you to abandon the idea. And as for the actions of that nature which Verres has already attempted and set in motion, which I have now tracked down and investigated, I advise you to put a stop to them and see that they go no further. Any misconduct on your part in this trial will place you in serious danger—more serious than you imagine.

[175] Of course, you may think that now you have held all your offices and been elected to the consulship, you no longer have to worry about what people will think of you. But believe me, it is just as difficult to hold onto those honours and favours which are conferred by the Roman people as it is to attain them in the first place. This country has put up with your and your friends’ tyrannical domination of the courts
*
and of politics as long as it could manage, as long as it had to; it has put up with it. But on the day that the Roman people got their tribunes of the plebs back,
*
all of this power,
though you may not yet realize it, was taken away and stripped from you. Now the eyes of the world are turned on each one of us, to observe how honourably I prosecute, how honestly the jurors return their verdicts, and how you go about your defence. [176] And with each of us, if we deviate ever so slightly from the straight and narrow, the result will not be that silent disapproval which we have hitherto been content to ignore, but the strong, unequivocal censure of the Roman people.