Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (23 page)

Verres is not a relation of yours, Quintus,
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nor is he your friend. In the past you have come up with various reasons to explain away your excessive partiality in this or that trial, but none of them applies in this case. When he was governing Sicily he used to say publicly that he was doing what he was doing because he had confidence in you. Now you need to take great care to prevent people concluding that he was justified in that confidence. [177] As far as my own obligations are concerned, I am satisfied that even my worst critics will accept that I have now discharged them. In the few hours that the first hearing lasted, I secured Verres’ conviction at the bar of public opinion. What now remains to be judged is not my honour, since that has been proved, nor Verres’ conduct, since that has been condemned: it is the jurors, and, to tell the truth, it is yourself.

But in what kind of context is that judgement going to take place? This is a point which needs the most careful consideration, because in politics, as in everything else, the mood and tenor of the times is a factor of the utmost importance. The context, then, is one in which the Roman people, as you must be aware, are looking for a different class of men and a different order to sit on juries; indeed, the text of a bill on new courts and juries has been published.
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Now the person who is really responsible for publishing this bill is not the man whose name it bears. It is this defendant, this man I tell you, who is its true author: by his hopes of acquittal, and his belief that you could be bribed, he ensured that the bill came to be drafted and published. [178] When this case began, the bill had not been published. When he became alarmed by your evident strictness and gave every impression that he was not going to put up a defence at all, not a word was said about any bill. But after he seemed to take heart and get his hopes up, the bill was immediately published. Your integrity is a strong argument against the necessity for this bill; but his unfounded hopes and conspicuous arrogance argue greatly in its favour. At the
point we have now reached, if any member of the jury behaves at all improperly, one of two things will happen: either the Roman people will put that juror on trial
*
after having already voted that senators are not fit to be jurors; or the men who will try him will be the new jurors appointed under the new law to judge the old jurors whose administration of the courts caused such outrage.

[179] As for myself, is there anyone who needs me to tell them how far I ought to pursue this case? Will I be able to hold my tongue, Hortensius, will I be able to seem unconcerned—when our country has received so serious a wound, when a province has been ransacked, our allies persecuted, the immortal gods plundered, and Roman citizens tortured and killed—if the man who did all this, when I have prosecuted him, escapes unpunished? Will I be able either on leaving this court to lay down this great responsibility of mine, or continue to shoulder it and say nothing? Surely I must not let the matter rest? Surely I must bring it out into the open? Surely I must appeal to the Roman people’s sense of honour? Surely I must summon to court and to the risks of a trial all those who have descended to such depths of criminality that they have either allowed themselves to be bribed or else have bribed the court themselves?

[180] Now someone may perhaps ask me, ‘So are you really going to take on such an onerous task, and make an enemy of so many people?’ Not—by Hercules!—with any particular enthusiasm, or even willingly. But I do not enjoy the same advantages as those who were born into noble families, on whom are conferred all the honours of the Roman people without them even having to get out of bed.
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The terms and conditions of my political existence bear no similarity to theirs. I am reminded of the wise and observant Marcus Cato.
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He saw that it was his ability, not his birth, that recommended him to the Roman people, and he wanted to be the founder and ancestor of a famous family of his own. But despite this, he still made enemies of the most powerful men of his day, and through his great efforts lived an extremely long and extremely glorious life. [181] And then what about Quintus Pompeius,
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a man of low and obscure origin? He made many bitter enemies, did he not, while nevertheless obtaining the highest honours, as a result of his willingness to work hard and take risks? More recently we have seen Gaius Fimbria, Gaius Marius, and Gaius Coelius
*
making important enemies but nevertheless achieving by their hard work those same honours which
you have attained by living a life of amusement and inattention. This is the direction and path along which men like me have to proceed; we follow their line and example.

We are well aware of the degree to which certain nobles look on the talent and application of the new men with jealousy and detestation. If we take our eye off the ball for just one second, they are there to catch us out. If we lay ourselves open to any suspicion or charge, they will attack us without hesitation. We know that we have to be always on the alert, always hard at work. [182] We have enemies: let us face them. Work to do: let us crack on with it. We have more reason to be afraid of silent, hidden enemies than open and declared ones. Hardly any of the nobles looks kindly on the hard work we put in. It is impossible for us to secure their favour by any services that we might perform.
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They are at variance with us in spirit and in sympathy, as if they were a race apart. So what harm can it do us if they are our enemies, when they regard you with hostility and jealousy even before you have done anything to offend them?

[183] I therefore hope, members of the jury, that once I have done what the Roman people expect of me, and have also discharged the obligation which my friends the Sicilians invited me to undertake, I will be able to make this prosecution my last. Nevertheless I have decided, if the confidence I have in you should turn out to be misplaced, to prosecute not just those chiefly responsible for bribing this court, but also those who share in the guilt by having accepted those bribes. Therefore if there are any who intend to use their influence, their daring, or their cunning to corrupt this court in the present trial, they should prepare to do battle with me, and let the Roman people judge between us. And if they have found me to be sufficiently vigorous, sufficiently tenacious, and sufficiently watchful in prosecuting the man whom the Sicilians have given me as an enemy, they should reflect just how much more committed and fierce I shall be against all those whose enemy the security of the Roman people will have required me to become.

[184] Now hear me, Jupiter best and greatest, whose royal offering,
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worthy of your beautiful temple, worthy of the Capitol and the citadel of all nations, worthy of its royal donors, made for you by kings, dedicated and promised to you—an offering which Verres, in an outrageously criminal act, wrenched from their royal hands; you whose holy and beautiful image
*
he removed from Syracuse;

hear me, Queen Juno, whose two holy and ancient shrines located on two islands of our allies, Melita and Samos,
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in an act of similar criminality, he stripped of all their offerings and adornments;

hear me, Minerva, whom he robbed at two of your most famous and sacred temples—at Athens, where he took a large quantity of gold, and at Syracuse, where he took away everything except the roof and walls;
*

[185] hear me, Latona and Apollo and Diana, whose shrine at Delos
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—or rather, as people who respect the gods believe, their ancient seat and immortal home—he pillaged in a violent night-time burglary;

hear me again, Apollo, whom he removed from Chios;

hear me yet again, Diana, whom he robbed at Perga,
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and whose holy image at Segesta, twice consecrated there, first by the devotion of the Segestans, and later by the victorious Publius Africanus,
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he had taken down and carried away;

hear me, Mercury, whom Verres set up in the gymnasium of some man’s private house, but whom Publius Africanus had specifically wished to be kept in the exercise-ground of the city of our allies, Tyndaris,
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as the tutelary guardian of the young men of that place;

[186] hear me, Hercules, whom at Agrigentum in the dead of night, with a gang of slaves he had recruited and armed for the purpose, he attempted to remove from his base and carry away;
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hear me, holy mother of Ida,
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whose sacred and revered temple at Engyium he left so completely despoiled that nothing is left there any longer, except for the name of Africanus
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and the evidence of the sacrilege that was perpetrated—the victory memorials and temple adornments having been removed;

hear me, Castor and Pollux, located where the Roman people throng, who watch over and witness all that goes on in the forum—the great deliberations, the laws, and the courts—from whose temple he obtained profit and plunder
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in the most scandalous fashion;

hear me, all you gods who, conveyed on carts, watch over the solemn assemblies of the games, whose route he had constructed and maintained not as a mark of respect, but for his own profit;
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[187] hear me, Ceres and Libera, whose rites, according to universal religious belief, rank far above others in grandeur and mystery;
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by whom life and food, customs and laws, and gentleness and humanity are said to have originally been given to people and
communities, and spread among them; and whose observances, adopted and taken over from the Greeks, the Roman people celebrate with such public and private devotion that you would think that those rites had spread to Greece from Rome rather than to Rome from Greece: these were then so violated and polluted by this one man that the image of Ceres in her shrine at Catina, which it is sinful for all but women to touch or even look at, was wrenched from its position and carried away on this man’s orders—not omitting to mention that other image of Ceres which he removed from its rightful home at Henna,
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an image so realistic that when people saw it they thought that they were gazing either at the goddess herself, or at an image of her not made by human hand, but descended from the sky; [188] hear me again and again, I implore and call on you, most holy goddesses who inhabit the lakes and groves of Henna and who are protectors of the whole island of Sicily that has been entrusted to me to defend, and whose discovery of corn, made available to the entire world, has filled all peoples and nations with awe of your divinity;

and I implore and beseech all the other gods and goddesses against whose temples and worship the defendant, inspired by some reckless, criminal madness, has constantly waged impious and sacrilegious war!

If, in dealing with this case and this defendant, my conduct has been determined solely by the safety of our allies, the status of the Roman people, and my own sense of obligation, if all my care, vigilance, and planning has been directed at nothing but the claims of duty and honour, then I pray that the intention I had in accepting the case and the sense of obligation I felt in seeing it through may be your guiding motives, too, in judging it. [189] If, moreover, Gaius Verres’ actions consist entirely of unprecedented and unique examples of crime, violence, treason, lust, avarice, and brutality, then I pray that your verdict may produce an outcome that reflects his life and actions. Finally, I pray that Rome, and my own sense of obligation, may be satisfied with this single prosecution that I have undertaken, and that from now on I may be allowed to defend good men instead of being compelled to prosecute bad ones.

De imperio Cn. Pompei
(‘On the command of Gnaeus Pompeius’), alternatively known as
Pro lege Manilia
(‘For the Manilian law’), is Cicero’s first deliberative speech (i.e. a speech involving the recommendation of a course of action in a deliberative assembly), and the earliest surviving example of a deliberative speech from ancient Rome. It was delivered from the rostra in the forum to an assembly of the people in 66
BC
, the year in which Cicero held the praetorship. The course of action which it recommends was a highly popular one—that the Roman people vote for a bill of the tribune Gaius Manilius to give Pompey (as Gnaeus Pompeius is known in English) command of the long-running war against Mithridates, the king of Pontus. This law would doubtless have been passed whether or not Cicero advocated it, but by publicly associating himself with it, and with Pompey, Cicero helped to ensure that he would have the political support necessary to secure his own election to the highest regular office of state, the consulship, in 64. The speech was therefore more important for its effect on Cicero’s career than for its effect on Roman history. Nevertheless, it is for us a historical source of prime importance for the workings of politics at Rome and for Roman policy and government in the eastern Mediterranean—as well as being a particularly fine example of Cicero’s oratory before the people.

To explain the circumstances of the speech, it is best to begin, as Cicero does (§ 4), with the person whose actions brought the whole situation about, Mithridates VI Eupator, king of Pontus, and Rome’s most formidable enemy in the first century
BC
. Mithridates inherited the throne of Pontus (the eastern third of the southern coast of the Black Sea) from his father Mithridates V Euergetes in 120
BC
, when he was about 11 years of age. Mithridates V had been a loyal friend of the Romans and had helped them against Carthage, and as a result had been allowed to acquire a number of the neighbouring kingdoms to the south without challenge. He inherited Paphlagonia and took Galatia; the Romans added Phrygia; and in Cappadocia, he installed his son-in-law as king. When he was assassinated in 120, his widow Laodice acted as regent for her two sons, Eupator and Chrestus. By
c
. 113, however, Eupator had removed his mother and brother and established himself as Mithridates VI (Laodice, who may have tried to kill him, was imprisoned, and Chrestus was executed). Soon after his father’s death, the Romans had removed Phrygia and the additional kingdoms from Mithridates’ control; this seems to have been the origin of his long-standing hatred of the Romans.