Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (20 page)

[131] So if, Verres, you find someone prepared to try to defend you on this charge about the fleet, he must do so without making use of the standard arguments which do not apply in this case. He must not say that I am blaming you for something that was simply a matter of bad luck, that I am misrepresenting a disaster as a criminal act, and that I am making you responsible for the loss of the fleet when there have in fact been many brave men in times past who, as a result of the uncertain hazards of war to which all are subject, have suffered reverses on both land and sea. The crimes I am accusing you of have nothing to do with luck; you have no justification for bringing
up reverses suffered by other people; you have no justification for citing instances of people’s luck being wrecked. What I allege is that the ships were empty; that the sailors and oarsmen had been exempted; that those who remained were living on palm stalks; that a Sicilian was put in command of the fleet of the Roman people, and a Syracusan in command of our long-standing friends and allies; and that you spent all that time and all the days leading up to it getting drunk on the shore with girls. Moreover, I have witnesses to back up every one of these facts.

[132] So you cannot really complain, can you, that I am kicking you when you are down, preventing you taking refuge in the excuse of bad luck, and reproaching and accusing you for being a victim of the chances of war? As a matter of fact, the people who object to being blamed for their bad luck are generally those who have committed themselves to fortune in the first place, who have experienced its hazards and about-turns. In the disaster that you suffered, on the other hand, luck played no part. It is in battle, not at dinner, that men put the fortune of war to the test. In your own disaster, it is not Mars but Venus whose indiscriminate favours may be said to have determined the outcome.
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But if it is unfair that bad luck should be made a charge against you, why did you not allow the excuse of bad luck in the case of those innocent men you executed?

[133] You should also forgo the argument that I am attacking you because you made use of the axe, and that I am using that to stir up prejudice against you: our ancestors, you will point out, also used the axe as a means of execution. My charge does not depend on your method of execution. I am not claiming that no one should ever be beheaded, nor am I arguing that fear should play no part in military discipline, or that commanders should not exercise severity, or that punishment should not be carried out when a crime has been committed. I fully admit that stern, harsh punishments have often been inflicted quite legitimately, and not just on the allies, but on our own citizens and soldiers too. So please do not take this line of argument.

The case I am making is that the blame lay fairly and squarely with you, not with the captains, and that you took money for exempting sailors and oarsmen. The captains who are still alive say that this is the case, as does the federate state of Netum in an official statement, as does Amestratus, as does Herbita, as do Henna, Agyrium, and Tyndaris, again in official statements, and as finally does your own
witness, admiral, rival in love, and host Cleomenes, who states that he went ashore to pick up soldiers from the land garrison at Pachynum, to put them in the ships—something he would certainly not have done if his ships had had their full complement, since a fully manned and equipped ship does not have space for even one extra man, let alone a large number. [134] I further allege that such sailors as were on the ships were weak and almost dead from hunger and a complete lack of provisions. I allege either that none of the captains should be held responsible for this state of affairs; or that if blame is to be attributed to one of them, it should be attributed to the one who had the biggest and best ship, the most sailors, and the overall command; or that if they are all to be held responsible, Cleomenes should not have been made a spectator at their torture and execution. I also allege that at their actual execution, it was wrong to charge a fee for their weeping relatives, a fee for the wounds and blows they suffered, and a fee for their deaths and burial.

[135] If you wish, therefore, to make a reply to these charges, you will have to argue as follows: that the fleet had its full complement and was properly equipped; that none of the sailors was absent; that no oar was left dangling for lack of an oarsman; that there was a full supply of grain on board; that the captains are lying, that all these very important states are lying, and even that the whole of Sicily is lying; that Cleomenes was falsely incriminating you when he said that he had gone ashore to pick up soldiers at Pachynum; that the men were short of courage, not of supplies; that they had abandoned and deserted Cleomenes while he was fighting bravely; and that nobody took money for burials. If you do maintain all this, you will be proved wrong; but if you say anything different, it will be impossible for you to refute my allegations.

[136] So will you have the effrontery, at this stage in the proceedings, to say, ‘This juror is a friend of mine, that one is a friend of my father’s’? Surely, when charged with crimes like these, the more closely someone is connected with you, the more ashamed you ought to be in his presence? ‘He is a friend of my father’s.’ If your father himself were a juror—perish the thought!—what could he do? He would have to say this to you: ‘You, while governor of a province of the Roman people and in charge of a war at sea, exempted Messana for three years from providing the ship it was obliged to provide under its treaty. For you the people of Messana built, at their own
public expense, an enormous cargo ship for your private use. You used the fleet as a pretext for extorting money from the Sicilian states. You took bribes to exempt oarsmen. You spirited away the pirate captain from public view, when a pirate ship was captured by your quaestor and legate. You beheaded people who said they were Roman citizens and were widely known to be so. You had the temerity to remove pirates to your own house and produce a pirate captain from your house at this trial. [137] You, at a time of fear and danger to the most loyal allies and the most honourable Roman citizens of an exceptionally fine province, spent day after day lounging on the shore having parties. You throughout that time were never to be found at home or seen in the forum. You brought the wives of our friends and allies to those parties of yours. You encouraged your young son—my grandson—to mix among those women, so that at the most unstable and critical stage of his life his own father might provide him with models of immorality to imitate. You, a Roman governor, were seen in your province wearing a tunic and a purple Greek cloak. You, for reasons of passion and lust, took the naval command away from the legate of the Roman people and gave it to a Syracusan. Your sailors, in Sicily of all places, went without crops and grain. Your frivolity and greed caused the fleet of the Roman people to be captured by the pirates and burnt; [138] although in the whole history of Syracuse no enemy had ever penetrated the harbour, in your governorship the pirates for the first time did exactly that. Nor did you make the slightest attempt to conceal these many disgraceful actions, either by covering them up yourself or by encouraging others to stop talking about them and forget them. On the contrary, you snatched the ships’ captains from the embrace of their parents—people whose guest you had been—and, without any good reason, tortured them to death. Those parents in their grief and tears appealed to you in my name, but you showed no trace of compassion: to you the blood of innocent men was not merely a source of pleasure, but a source of profit!’ If your own father said that to you, would you be able to ask his pardon, would you be able to beg him to forgive you?

[139] I have now done enough to satisfy the people of Sicily, enough to discharge the obligations arising out of my friendship with them, enough to fulfil the promises and undertakings I made to them. The remaining part of my case, members of the jury, is not
something I have only just taken on, but something that has always existed deep inside me: it has not been brought to my attention, but instead has long been implanted in and engraved upon my heart and soul. My case is no longer to do with the well-being of our allies, but with the life and blood of Roman citizens—that is, of every one of us. Do not expect to hear arguments from me, gentlemen, that imply that there is an element of doubt about the matter: what I am going to tell you is so infamous that I could call on the whole of Sicily to witness its truth.

A type of insanity, closely linked to recklessness and criminality, overwhelmed the defendant’s unbridled spirit and his brutal nature with such extreme madness that he never hesitated to inflict on Roman citizens, in full view of the Roman citizens of the province, punishments otherwise reserved exclusively for convicted slaves. [140] Need I remind you how many people he beat with rods? I will put it in a nutshell, gentlemen: while the defendant was governor, no distinction whatever was made between citizens and non-citizens; and in due course lictors routinely laid hands on Roman citizens without even waiting for the governor’s say-so.

Surely you cannot deny, Verres, that amidst an extremely large gathering of Roman citizens in the forum at Lilybaeum, Gaius Servilius, a Roman citizen from Panhormus and a businessman of long standing, was beaten with rods and whips in front of the platform where you were sitting until he fell to the ground at your feet? Go on and deny this, if you can. Everyone at Lilybaeum saw it, and everyone in Sicily heard of its happening. I declare that a Roman citizen fell to the ground before your very eyes from the blows inflicted by your lictors. [141] And for what reason? Immortal gods! Even in asking such a question I am undermining the common interests and rights of all Roman citizens, as if there could be any legitimate reason for such a thing being done to a Roman citizen. Even so, I ask what the reason was in Servilius’ case. Please forgive me, gentlemen, this once; in other cases I will not spend much time looking for the reasons.

Anyway, the reason was that Servilius expressed rather too free an opinion of the defendant’s dishonesty and wickedness. As soon as this was reported to Verres, he ordered Servilius to give surety for his appearance at Lilybaeum to answer a charge brought by a slave of Venus.
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Servilius did as he was told, and in due course presented
himself at Lilybaeum. But no one turned up to bring any action against him, civil or criminal. At this point Verres started putting pressure on him to accept a challenge from one of his lictors to demonstrate that he, Servilius, ‘was not making a profit by theft’. The sum was to be set at two thousand sesterces, and Verres said that he would supply arbitrators from among his own staff. Servilius refused to accept the challenge and complained that a capital court with biased jurors was being set up to try him, when no prosecutor had actually come forward to accuse him of anything. [142] While he was making this protest, Verres’ six lictors surrounded him—big, strong men with an extensive record of attacking people and beating them up—and started hitting him violently with their rods. Then the head lictor Sextius, whom I have had occasion to mention several times already, began brutally striking the poor Servilius in the eyes with the butt-end of his rod. His eyes and face streaming with blood, Servilius fell to the ground, and as he lay there the lictors carried on hitting him in the ribs, until he eventually agreed to accept the challenge. Having been reduced to that state, he was then carried off as if dead, and shortly afterwards he did in fact die. Verres, being a devotee of Venus and himself a personage of grace and charm, took a silver Cupid from the dead man’s property and deposited it in the temple of Venus. This, then, was how he misused the property of others, to fulfil the nocturnal vows which his lusts had prompted him to undertake.

[143] But why should I speak of all the other punishments inflicted on Roman citizens individually, rather than treat them collectively and comprehensively? Take the famous prison at Syracuse, constructed by the cruel tyrant Dionysius:
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under Verres’ governorship this became the permanent home of Roman citizens. Whenever Verres was irritated by the sight or thought of any one of them, that person was immediately cast into the quarries. I can see, gentlemen, that you all find this outrageous, and I noticed that you showed the same reaction when the witnesses were testifying to these facts in the first hearing. You believe, naturally, that it is not only here in Rome that people should retain their right to freedom, where there are tribunes of the plebs, where there are the other magistrates, where there is a forum filled with lawcourts, where the senate’s authority is felt, and where the Roman people are present in large numbers to express their opinion. No, you believe that it makes no difference in
which country and among what people the rights of Roman citizens are violated: wherever this happens, it affects the freedom and standing of all citizens equally.

[144] Did you, Verres, have the temerity to incarcerate such a large number of Roman citizens in a place used for the imprisonment of foreign criminals and malefactors, and of pirates and enemies of Rome? Did you never give a thought to the court which would try you, to the public meetings which would denounce you, and to this great mass of people which now looks at you with absolute hostility and hatred? Did the dignity of the Roman people back in Rome, did the sight of this vast multitude here today never enter your mind or present itself before your eyes? Did you imagine you would never have to return to face these people, never have to re-enter the forum of the Roman people, never have to submit to the laws and the courts?

[145] But what lay at the root of that lust for cruelty, what was the motive for his committing so many crimes? Members of the jury, it was nothing but an unprecedented, unique programme of looting. Like those people we have read about in the poets,
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who are said to have occupied bays on the coast or stationed themselves on promontories or precipitous cliffs in order to kill any sailors who were forced to put in there in their ships, so Verres lay in wait in every part of Sicily and threatened every sea. Whenever a ship arrived from Asia or Syria, from Tyre or Alexandria, it was immediately impounded by his guards and spies, men hand-picked for the purpose. The merchants were all cast into the quarries, and the goods and cargo were carted off to the governor’s residence. After a long lapse of time Sicily had again become the haunt not of a second Dionysius or Phalaris
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—for the island has in fact produced many cruel tyrants—but of an entirely new kind of monster, although one of the same bestiality as those who are said to have occupied the area in olden times. [146] In fact I do not think that either Charybdis or Scylla
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was so dangerous to sailors in that strait as he was: he was the more dangerous because he had surrounded himself with dogs that were considerably more numerous and fierce than theirs. He was indeed a second Cyclops
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—but much more horrific, because he controlled the whole of Sicily, whereas the Cyclops is only said to have dominated Mount Etna and the surrounding region.