Imperium

It was on the following afternoon that Cicero’s cousin Lucius at last returned to Rome, his mission in Sicily accomplished. Cicero was overjoyed to find him waiting at the house when we got back from court, and he embraced him tearfully. Without Lucius’s support in dispatching witnesses and boxes of evidence back to the mainland, Cicero’s case would not have been half as strong. But the seven-month effort had clearly exhausted Lucius, who had not been a strong man to begin with. He was now alarmingly thin and had developed a painful, racking cough. Even so, his commitment to bringing Verres to justice was unwavering-so much so that he had missed the opening of the trial in order to take a detour on his journey back to Rome. He had stayed in Puteoli and tracked down two more witnesses: the Roman knight, Gaius Numitorius, who had witnessed the crucifixion of Gavius in Messana; and a friend of his, a merchant named Marcus A

“And where are these gentlemen?” asked Cicero eagerly.

“Here,” replied Lucius. “In the tablinum. But I must warn you, they do not want to testify.”

Cicero hurried through to find two formidable men of middle age-“the perfect witnesses from my point of view,” as Cicero afterwards described them, “prosperous, respectable, sober, and above all-not Sicilian.” As Lucius had predicted, they were reluctant to get involved. They were businessmen, with no desire to make powerful enemies, and did not relish the prospect of taking starring roles in Cicero’s great anti-aristocratic production in the Roman Forum. But he wore them down, for they were not fools, either, and could see that in the ledger of profit and loss, they stood to gain most by aligning themselves with the side that was wi

“I knew if I had them in your company for a few moments,” whispered Lucius, “they would do whatever you wanted.”

I had expected Cicero to put them on the witness stand the very next day, but he was too smart for that. “A show must always end with a climax,” he said. He was ratcheting up the level of outrage with each new piece of evidence, having moved on through judicial corruption, extortion, and straightforward robbery to cruel and unusual punishment. On the eighth day of the trial, he dealt with the testimony of two Sicilian naval captains, Phalacrus of Centuripae and Onasus of Segesta, who described how they and their men had escaped floggings and executions by bribing Verres’s freedman Timarchides (present in court, I am glad to say, to experience his humiliation personally). Worse: the families of those who had not been able to raise sufficient funds to secure the release of their relatives had been told they would still have to pay a bribe to the official executioner, Sextius, or he would deliberately make a mess of the beheadings. “Think of that unbearable burden of pain,” declaimed Cicero, “of the anguish that racked those unhappy parents, thus compelled to purchase for their children by bribery not life but a speedy death!” I could see the senators on the jury shaking their heads at this and muttering to one another, and each time Glabrio invited Hortensius to cross-examine the witnesses, and Hortensius simply responded yet again, “No questions,” they groaned. Their position was becoming intolerable, and that night the first rumors reached us that Verres had already packed up the contents of his house and was preparing to flee into exile.

Such was the state of affairs on the ninth day, when we brought A

“So what did you do?”

“Naturally, I went at once.”

“And what was the scene?”

“There were perhaps a hundred people crying out that Here

“How did you all know that Here

“Many of us knew him personally. Although he had business in Spain, he had been born to a Roman family in Syracuse and had grown up in the city.”

“And what was Verres’s response to your pleas?”

“He ordered Here

There was a groan of horror around the court.

“And who dealt the fatal blow?”

“The public executioner, Sextius.”

“And did he make a clean job of it?”

“I am afraid he did not, no.”

“Clearly,” said Cicero, turning to the jury, “he had not paid Verres and his gang of thieves a large enough bribe.”

For most of the trial, Verres had sat slumped in his chair, but on this morning, fired by drink, he jumped up and began shouting that he had never taken any such bribe. Hortensius had to pull him down. Cicero ignored him and went on calmly questioning his witness.

“This is an extraordinary situation, is it not? A hundred of you vouch for the identity of this Roman citizen, yet Verres does not even wait an hour to establish the truth of who he is. How do you account for it?”

“I can account for it easily, senator. Here

“Forgive me, I do not understand,” said Cicero, playing the i

“He needed to show a sufficient number of executions.”

“Why?”

“Because he was being paid bribes to let the real pirates go free.”

Verres was on his feet again shouting that it was a lie, and this time Cicero took a few paces toward him. “A lie, you monster? A lie? Then why in your own prison records does it state that Here

“Cicero, the great lawyer, who thinks himself so clever!” said Verres bitterly, his words slurred by drink. “Who thinks he knows everything! Well, here is something you do not know. I have Heracleo in my private custody, here in my house in Rome, and he can tell you all himself that it is a lie!”

Amazing now, to reflect that a man could blurt out something so foolish, but the facts are there-they are in the record-and amid the pandemonium in court, Cicero could be heard demanding of Glabrio that the famous pirate be fetched from Verres’s house by the lictors and placed in proper official custody, “for the public safety.” Then, while that was being done, he called as his second witness of the day Gaius Numitorius. Privately I thought that Cicero was rushing it too much: that he could have milked the admission about Heracleo for more. But the great advocate had sensed that the moment of the kill had arrived, and for months, ever since we had first landed in Sicily, he had known exactly the blade he wished to use. Numitorius swore an oath to tell the truth and took the stand, and Cicero quickly led him through his testimony to establish the essential facts about Publius Gavius: that he was a merchant traveling on a ship from Spain; that his ship had been impounded and the passengers all taken to the Stone Quarries, from which Gavius had somehow managed to escape; that he had made his way to Messana to take a ship to the mainland, had been apprehended as he went aboard, and had been handed over to Verres when he visited the town. The silence of the listening multitudes was intense.

“Describe to the court what happened next.”

“Verres convened a tribunal in the forum of Messana,” said Numitorius, “and then he had Gavius dragged before him. He a

“Did Gavius speak at all?”

“Only at the begi

“What did Verres say to that?”

“He said that these were lies and commanded that the execution begin.”

“Can you describe how Gavius met his dreadful death?”

“He met it very bravely, senator.”

“Like a Roman?”

“Like a Roman.”

“Did he cry out at all?”

“Only while he was being whipped and he could see the irons being heated.”

“And what did he say?”

“Every time a blow landed, he said, ‘I am a Roman citizen.’”

“Would you repeat what he said, more loudly please, so that all can hear.”

“He said, ‘I am a Roman citizen.’”

“So just that?” said Cicero. “Let me be sure I understand you. A blow lands”-he put his wrists together, raised them above his head, and jerked forward, as if his back had just been lashed-“and he says through gritted teeth, ‘I am a Roman citizen.’ A blow lands”-and again he jerked forward-“‘I am a Roman citizen.’ A blow lands. ‘I am a Roman citizen .’”