Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (14 page)

[35] Immortal gods, how people differ from one another in their minds and ways of thinking! In my own case, when I took on those public offices which the Roman people have so far entrusted me with, I considered myself bound by obligations of the most solemn kind—and may I forfeit your backing, and that of the Roman people, for my intentions and aspirations during the rest of my life if this is not the case! When I was elected to the quaestorship,
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I considered that that office had not merely been granted me, but had been entrusted to me and invested in me. While I was carrying out my duties as quaestor in the province of Sicily I supposed that everyone’s eyes were looking at me alone. I felt that I and my quaestorship were being presented before the whole world as if on a theatre stage. And I consistently denied myself everything that is regarded as pleasurable—not merely the immoderate desires of the present day, but even such comforts as are natural and necessary.

[36] I am now aedile-elect, and fully conscious of the responsibility which the Roman people have placed on me. I must put on, with the greatest reverence and care, the holy games for Ceres, Liber, and Libera; I must win the favour of our mother Flora for the Roman people and plebs by providing well-attended games; I must put on, with the greatest dignity and solemnity, the ancient games for Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, games which were the earliest ones to be described as ‘Roman’;
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and I must look after the sacred temples and protect the whole of the city. In return for the effort and anxiety which these duties entail, I have been given certain benefits: precedence in being called for my opinion in the senate, the purplebordered toga, the curule chair, and the right to hand down a portrait mask of myself to posterity.
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[37] But although I hope that all the gods will be well disposed towards me, and although the office granted to me by the Roman people is in itself something which gives me great pleasure, nevertheless all these benefits, gentlemen, give me more anxiety and worry than enjoyment. For I am anxious that this aedileship itself should not appear to have been given to me simply because it had to be given to one or other of the candidates
who stood for it, but should seem instead to have been rightly assigned and bestowed in the proper quarter by the considered judgement of the people.

[38] But you, when your election as praetor
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was announced, however that was achieved (I will pass over that and say nothing about what actually went on)—when, as I say, your election was announced, were you not stirred by the voice of the crier? When time after time he proclaimed that the centuries of seniors and juniors had endowed you with that office,
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did it not make you reflect that a certain part of the state had been entrusted to you, and that for that one year you would have to keep away from the house of a prostitute? And when you were then allotted the job of city praetor,
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did you never think how much work, how much responsibility this would involve? Did you never consider—if you could ever rouse yourself sufficiently to consider anything—that this job, which it would be difficult enough for a man of exceptional wisdom and integrity to do, had been given to someone of supreme stupidity and wickedness? No, you did not. And so far from banishing Chelido from your house during your praetorship, you in fact spent the whole of that year in hers.

[39] Next came your provincial governorship. As governor, it never occurred to you that those rods and axes,
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the absolute power of your office, and all those symbols of rank and prestige had not been given to you simply to allow you to break down every barrier of duty and restraint, to view everybody’s property as plunder for yourself, and to make it impossible for anyone’s possessions to be safe, anyone’s home secure, anyone’s life protected, or anyone’s chastity guarded against your greed and wickedness. As governor, you behaved in such a way that now, when you are caught out, you are forced to take refuge in a war against fugitives.
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But by now you will have realized that, far from being a defence, this is an important source of charges against you—unless of course you intend to talk about the remnants of the slave war in Italy and the setback at Tempsa,
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something which would have been a golden opportunity for you if you had possessed any courage or energy, instead of which you proved yourself to be just as you had always been.

[40] The people of Vibo Valentia came to see you, and their spokesman, the eloquent and high-ranking Marcus Marius, begged you to take the situation in hand. Since you had the title of praetor and a praetor’s powers, he wanted you to act as their chief and leader
in suppressing the small gang of rebels. However, not only did you shrink from the task, but all the time that you were there on the coast, that woman Tertia, whom you were carrying back to Rome with you, could be seen by everyone. And not only that: when you were giving your official reply, on a matter of such importance, to the citizens of such a well-known, respectable town as Vibo Valentia, you wore a workman’s smock and a Greek cloak.
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What do you think of his behaviour when he was leaving for his province,
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what do you think of his behaviour in the province itself, when you see him, returning from that province not to hold a triumph but to face trial, and not even bothering to avoid disgrace for the sake of something
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which can scarcely have given him any particular pleasure? [41] How divinely inspired were those murmurs of disapproval at the crowded meeting of the senate in the temple of Bellona!
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You will remember, gentlemen, how it was drawing towards evening, and the bad news had just been brought in about Tempsa. We did not have anyone with military authority who could be sent there, and then someone said that Verres was not far from there: remember how strongly everyone murmured their disapproval, and how openly the leading senators opposed the suggestion! So does the man who has now been proved guilty by so many charges and so much evidence place any hope at all in the secret votes of all those jurors who, even before they had heard this evidence, openly voiced their condemnation?

[42] So there it is. He has gained no credit from the war against the runaway slaves, or from the threat of that war, because in Sicily there was no such war, or any danger of a war, nor did he take any steps to prevent one happening. ‘But he did keep the fleet properly equipped for a war against the pirates, and he devoted exceptional care to this matter, so the province was indeed brilliantly defended by the defendant during his governorship.’ I will tell you about the war against the pirates, members of the jury, and about the Sicilian fleet. But I wish first to state that under this single heading are numbered all his worst crimes of greed, treason, insanity, lust, and brutality. Please be so kind as to pay me close attention, as you have done up to this point, while I briefly set out these matters for you.

[43] I wish to state, first, that the naval defence of Sicily was run not with the intention of defending the province, but as a means of using the fleet to make money. Earlier governors used to require the
various states to provide ships and a stated number of soldiers and sailors—yet from the extremely important and wealthy state of Messana you required none of these things. How much money the people of Messana secretly gave you in return we shall find out later, if that seems a sensible plan, from their own witnesses and accounts.

[44] I can further reveal that an enormous vessel, as big as a trireme, a very beautiful, well-equipped merchant ship was quite openly built at public expense to your order, that the whole of Sicily knew about it, and that it was presented and handed over to you free of charge by the chief magistrate and senate of Messana. While Verres was on his way home, this ship, loaded with his loot from Sicily—and indeed itself part of that loot—put in at Velia
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with its substantial cargo, including those items which he did not want to send on in advance to Rome with his other thefts because they were of particularly high value and especially treasured by himself. I saw this ship myself at Velia not long ago, and many others have seen it too, a beautiful, well-equipped vessel, gentlemen—one which appeared to everyone who set eyes on it to be already looking forward to its master’s exile, and getting ready for his escape.

[45] What answer do you have for me on this point? Except possibly the one which, although it does not excuse you at all, a man on trial for extortion would have to give—that the ship was built at your own expense. Go on, say this: you have no alternative. Do not worry, Hortensius, that I am going to ask what right a senator had to build a ship. The laws which forbid this
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are old—‘dead letters’, as you are fond of saying. It is a long time since our country was like that; it is a long time since our courts were so strict that prosecutors considered that charge one of the more serious ones. In the first place, then, what did you want a ship for? If you are going somewhere on public service, ships are provided at public expense for you to travel in in safety. And unless you are on public service, you are not permitted to travel anywhere at all,
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nor to transport goods over the sea from places where you are not allowed to own them. [46] Secondly, why did you acquire something when it was against the law? This charge would have counted strongly against you in the days when strict moral standards prevailed in our country. But now not only do I decline to make this a charge against you, I do not even make a general criticism of you, as well I might, on lines such as these. Did you consider that there would be nothing shameful, nothing
blameworthy, nothing offensive in having a cargo ship built for yourself openly in a centre of population in a province of which you were the governor? What did you suppose those who saw it would say, those who heard about it think? That you were going to sail that ship to Italy empty? That you were going to set up a shipping concern when you arrived back in Rome? Nor could anyone suppose that you had an estate on the coast of Italy, and were acquiring a ship of such great capacity merely to take your produce to market. No, you were perfectly happy to have everyone talking about you, saying openly that you were acquiring that vessel in order to ship your loot out of Sicily, and then to keep coming back again to collect the thefts you had left behind.

[47] All these points, however, I am willing to withdraw and forgo, if you can prove that the ship was built at your own expense. But, lunatic that you are, do you fail to understand that this line of defence was ruled out in the first hearing by those who spoke in praise of you, the people of Messana themselves? For Heius, the leader of the deputation sent here to speak in your favour, said that the ship had been made for you by state-employed workmen at Messana, and that a member of the senate of Messana had been officially put in charge of the work. There remains the timber. This, because Messana has no timber, you officially ordered from Regium, as the people of that city themselves testify (you cannot deny it). If both the material for building the ship and the people who built it were procured on your authority as governor and not by payment, where are we to find whatever it was that you claim was paid for with your own money?

[48] ‘But there is nothing in the account books of Messana.’ First, it may have been the case that the ship was built at public expense without money actually having to be taken out of the city treasury. Even the temple on the Capitol
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could have been built and completed as a public work by compulsorily enlisted masons and conscripted workmen without payment—and this was how it was done originally, in our ancestors’ time. Secondly, I notice—and I will call on the appropriate witnesses and prove it from their own accounts—that substantial sums of money paid over to Verres were entered as applying to building contracts that were fictitious and non-existent. It is of course no cause for surprise that the people of Messana should have left out of their accounts anything that might lead to the conviction
of a man who had done them a considerable favour and who had shown himself to be more of a friend to them than he was to the Roman people. But if we accept that the absence of a record of a payment to you in the accounts of Messana proves that no payment was made, then we must also accept that your inability to produce any record of any purchase made or contract placed proves that you were given the ship free of charge.

[49] But, you answer, the reason you did not require Messana to provide a ship was that it was a federate state. The gods be praised! Here we have a man brought up at the hands of the fetials,
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a man excelling all others in his reverent conscientiousness towards the state’s treaty obligations! Let all those who were governor before you be handed over to the people of Messana for punishment because they required them to provide a ship in violation of the terms of the treaty! But tell me, reverend and holy sir, why did you require Tauromenium to provide a ship, given that that too is a federate state? Or will you succeed in demonstrating that the rights and positions of two states on the same footing were interpreted in such different and unequal ways without a bribe being paid? [50] But in fact, gentlemen, I will show that the two treaties of the two states were as follows: the treaty with Tauromenium expressly stipulated that the city was exempt from the obligation to provide a ship, whereas the one with Messana laid down and prescribed that a ship must be provided. So given that Verres violated each of the two treaties in both requiring Tauromenium to provide a ship and exempting Messana from providing one, can anyone doubt that, when Verres was governor, that merchant ship did the people of Messana more good than their treaty did the people of Tauromenium? Please now read out both treaties to the court.

(
The treaties are read to the court
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So by this exemption of yours, which you yourself call an act of generosity, but which the facts show to be bribery and corruption, you have impaired the high standing of the Roman people, impaired the defences of the state,
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impaired the forces which were provided by the valour and wisdom of our ancestors, and have destroyed the rights of our empire, the obligations of our allies, and the memory of our treaty. By the terms of that treaty the people of Messana were obliged to send a ship, if we ordered them to, even as far as the Atlantic, fully armed and equipped, and at their own expense and
risk. Yet for a bribe you sold them exemption from the terms of the treaty and from their obligations towards us, so that they should not even have to patrol the strait
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in front of their houses and homes, or defend their own walls and harbours.