Conversely, he makes a damning reference to Roman money-lenders active in the region and their unscrupulous greed (§ 74). Ver. ; 72: andite, qnaeso, indices et... miseremini... et ostendite...! Wenn ich bei euren Übersetzungen gucke, und bei Verrem 1,1 schaue, dann ist da ein ganz andrer Text. In G. Verrem actio secunda: Liber Primus - De praetura urbana: L'orador, abans d'abordar l'estada de Verres a Sicília, desitja recordar les actuacions públiques anteriors de l'acusat, des de la seva qüestura i legació a Àsia fins a la seva pretura a Roma, per demostrar que el menyspreu a les lleis, la cobdícia i la immoralitat van ser una constant de la seva carrera política. When the Sicilians turned to Rome for help against the plundering and extortion perpetrated by Verres, Cicero was a natural point of contact: he had been quaestor in Sicily only a few years earlier, knew the province well, had close ties with various leading locals, and saw himself as their patron.13 He agreed to act as the Sicilians’ legal representative, in what shaped up as a case for one of Rome’s ‘standing courts’, the so-called quaestio de repetundis.14 Because Roman officials enjoyed immunity from prosecution d… Cicero also knows how to underscore the reliability of his two prime witnesses: P. Tettius and C. Varro, who both served on the staff of Nero (§ 71). ; 86: accipite nnnc! iv §58) : non modo apud populum Romanum sed etiam ext. Get this from a library! Site Activity; Resources. 54, 128-42 (133). 16 For those speeches that he decided not to disseminate in written form, see Crawford, J. W. (1984), M. Tullius Cicero: The Lost and Unpublished Orations, Göttingen. And in § 76, Cicero describes the public execution of Philodamus and his son in the city of Laodicea as a tragic spectacle, matching the bestial cruelty (crudelitas) of the Roman officials Verres and Dolabella against the humanitas (humanity) and the family-values of the condemned. II.2 etc.). Pamphȳlia, -ae, [Παμφῡλία], f., Pamphȳlia, a narrow country on the south coast of Asia Minor, bounded on the east by Cilicia, on the north by Pisidia, and on the west by Lycia. quaestio (from quaero + tio) refers, in its most basic sense, to ‛the act of searching’ and then came to mean ‛judicial investigation, inquiry’ and, more specifically, ‛a commission appointed to try certain cases of serious public crimes’ (Oxford Latin Dictionary s. v. 4). Skip navigation Sign in. plenissimum: Cicero is very fond of ‘extreme’ expressions, such as superlatives (as here; see also optimorum and intimis) or adjectives that articulate extremes or a sense of totality, such as nullus and omnis (which in this paragraph alone occurs three times): see next note. Some years after his consulship in 63 BC, Cicero suffered the same fate as Verres: voluntary exile. But Cicero also gives us insidious character appraisals of Gnaeus Dolabella, the governor of Cilicia and Verres’ superior in command, and Gaius Nero, the governor of Asia, that is, the province in which Lampsacus was located. 19Cicero takes great care to provide vivid portrayals of the characters he deals with in his speeches.24 The Verrines are no exceptions. ), Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire, London, 10-24. ! A good account of educational practices in the late Roman republic can be found in Corbeill, A. (2008), ’Cicero and the Citadel of the Allies’, in Cicero as Evidence: A Historian’s Companion, Oxford, 81-100. 26As fans of the 1980s British sitcom Yes Minister by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn will know, the personnel of modern democratic nation-states involved in government consists in part of publicly elected politicians, who are voted into (and out of) office from time to time, and the bureaucratic functionaries of the civil service, whose positions are permanent, i.e. At various places in the Verrines, he boasts about the speed with which he marshalled evidence. Oppidum est : in in, on, at; in accordance with/regard to/the case of; within in, auf, nach, an, gegen dans, sur, à, conformément à l'/ ce qui concerne les / le cas d'; dans in, su, su, in conformità con / per quanto riguarda / il caso di; all'interno en, sobre, en; de conformidad con / respecto a / el caso de, dentro de Or is it the authority of the speaker, deriving, perhaps, from (superior) age, position, or prestige? More general studies include Corbeill, A. 8If Verres advanced his career by means of his strategic treachery, Cicero, the son of a knight (eques) and hence a so-called ‛new man’ (homo novus), that is, someone without senatorial ancestors in the family, invested in a superb education as a means of getting ahead.7 He was under no illusion: battlefield success was the privileged pathway to glory at Rome and Cicero did his best to accumulate military accolades when the occasion presented itself – as it did during his stint as pro-consul in Cilicia in 51, the same province in which Verres served as legate thirty years previously. . In outline, we have the following corpus: Divinatio in Caecilium [delivered January 70 BC]in Verrem 1 [delivered August 70 BC, during the actio prima]in Verrem 2 [planned for the actio secunda, but never delivered]in Verrem 2.1: Verres’ youth and public career prior to his governorship of Sicilyin Verrem 2.2: Sicily – abuse of judicial powerin Verrem 2.3: Sicily – extortion of taxesin Verrem 2.4: Sicily – robbery of artworksin Verrem 2.5: Sicily – Verres as magistrate with imperium, responsible for public safety and endowed with the power to punish, 14Cicero only decided to publish a selection of his speeches.16 The fact that he circulated all the speeches to do with the trial of Verres indicates his high opinion of the set and his belief in their value as documents of self-promotion. Contrast the ‘leisurely’ and exactly parallel constructions vetus oppidum et nobile and (with added *hyberbaton) hoc signum … et illud with the absence of connectives here: Cicero uses none between reliquisse and evecta exportataque esse, ex fanis and ex locis publicis, or palam, spectantibus omnibus, and plaustris. edit. In 167 BC, the Greek historian Polybius considered Rome’s conquest of Greece (and the known world more generally) an accomplished fact. Examples of minor characters include envoys (legati) from Asia and Achaia (§ 59), Ianitor, Verres’ host in Lampsacus (§§ 63-4), the Roman citizens who were in Lampsacus for business reasons (§ 69), the Roman creditors of the Greeks (§ 73), one of whom acts as accuser of Philodamus (§ 74), and the praefecti and tribuni militares of Dolabella (§ 73). No clear consensus has emerged, not least since his practice will most likely have differed from case to case, ranging from almost instant release with only minor adjustments to significant revision and publication several years after the original delivery.17 The speeches that Cicero prepared for the second hearing belong to those that he anyway never gave, so here the question is moot. intus – intimus: a *paronomasia; Cicero plays with the fact that the two words are etymologically related. According to Cicero, Verres’ counter-arguments do not amount to much and crumble under scrutiny. As already mentioned, Verres and his supporters tried to prolong the trial until the following year. He is entered under his nomen gentile ’Tullius, Marcus Cicero’ See Morwood (1999) 149 for a brief introduction to Roman names. plaustris wagon, cart, wain; constellation of Great Bear/Big Dipper; euecta carry away, convey out; carry up; exalt; jut out, project; exportō, -āre, -āvī, -ātum, [ex + portō], 1, a., carry away, send away, export. In all of his published orations, Cicero maintains the illusion that the text is the record of a performance. nat., mediis omissis, Dp et codd. 2 non modo apud nos sed apud exteras nationes Harl. Nōn dīcam illinc hoc signum ablātum esse et illud. nullum te Aspendi signum, Verres, reliquisse, omnia ex fanis, ex locis publicis, palam, spectantibus omnibus, plaustris evecta exportataque esse: Cicero builds up carefully towards this quick-fire sentence, with its notably *asyndetic style. It is therefore unwise to take anything he says about the character of any of his seemingly sociopathic villains at face value – including Verres. All provinces were required to submit tribute to Rome, which was collected by the so-called publicani (‛tax-farmers’).30 The nature of the Roman presence varied greatly across the provinces. The Trial of Verres and Cicero’s Set of Speeches against Verres, 4. Note also the crescendo from one accusative object (omnia) to two prepositional phrases in the ablative, the second with an attribute (ex fanis, ex locis publicis), to three phrases indicating modalities of removal: palam (an adverb), spectantibus omnibus (an ablative absolute), plaustris (an instrumental ablative). Section 4 explores some pertinent issues in late republican history. 53-69 9 Notes 14 Vocabulary 22 ''Looting, despoiling temples, attempted rape and judicial murder: these are just some of the themes of this classic piece of writing by one … Helped by the fact that ancient Rome had no slander or libel laws, he verbally tarred and feathered his adversaries with imaginative gusto.4 While Cicero took care that his recourse to personal abuse always aided the aims of his argument, he must have made up many of what we would consider slanderous or libellous details that he hurled at his opponents, blurring the boundary between fact and fiction, hard data and rhetorical invention. Atque etiam illum Aspendium citharistam, dē quō saepe audīstis id quod est Graecīs hominibus in prōverbiō, quem omnia ‘intus canere’ dīcēbant, sustulit et in intimīs suīs aedibus posuit, ut etiam illum ipsum suō artificiō superāsse videātur. 24 On ethopoiea: Gildenhard (2011) 20-22 with much further bibliography. The senatorial monopoly of criminal jurisdiction was terminated.’37 Cicero obliquely links the case at hand to this imminent judicial reform, thereby putting his individual stamp on a watershed-year in Roman history. Flower (ed. Likewise, there was the prospect of a more favourable jury (that is, one more liable to corruption) since several of the chosen jury members were due to leave Rome in 69 BC to take up offices, ruling them out of jury duty.12 At one point, when it looked as if the ploy were to succeed, a third brother, L. Caecilius Metellus, who had taken over the governorship of Sicily from Verres as pro-praetor, tried to intimidate the Sicilians against giving testimony against Verres, boasting somewhat prematurely that Verres’ acquittal was certain and that it was in the Sicilians’ own interest not to cause difficulties. As a countermove and to accelerate proceedings, Cicero broke with conventions in his opening speech: instead of a lengthy disquisition setting out all of the charges (oratio perpetua), followed by a prolonged hearing of supporting witnesses, he quickly and summarily sketched out each of the charges and produced a limited number of supporting witnesses. 2.1.53 You know that Aspendus is an ancient and noble town in Pamphylia, full of very fine statues. Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic, Oxford. Even in the case against Verres, where he acted as prosecutor, he stressed that he entered into the fray as an advocate of the Sicilians. The Latin Text of Cicero, in Verrem 2.1, can also be found online at: The Latin Library This is a plain text version, without an indication of the edition used. unaffected by the mood-swings of the electorate, and who can therefore ensure a certain degree of institutional continuity from one legislative period to the next. Jahrhundert v. Chr. 7 Wiseman, T. P. (1971), New Men in the Roman Senate, Oxford; Gildenhard, I. Cicero triumphed with the (surviving) speech Divinatio in Caecilium, in which he showed that his adversary was just not up to the task.nominis delatio and nominis receptio (c. 20 January 70 or soon thereafter): after his victory over Caecilius, Cicero submitted a formal charge (nominis delatio), which was accepted by the praetor (nominis receptio).inquisitio: to prepare his case, Cicero asked for, and was granted, 110 days, during which he travelled to Sicily to secure witnesses and documentation. 31 For Rome’s imperial presence and diplomatic interaction with civic communities within the provinces and beyond see e.g. Book 2 1 Book 2 2 Book 2 3 Book 2 4 Book ... 1. 158, in quibus est (itemque in ed. 2.1.53-86 can serve as an excellent point of departure for branching out into Roman history and culture, especially the imperial culture of the late republic and themes to do with the imperial expansion of Rome across the Mediterranean world, in particular the Greek East. The driving forces and motivations behind Rome’s imperial expansion have been the subject of much controversial debate.28 But whatever the intent, by the time of the Verrines, the rise of Rome from a town on the Tiber to the centre of an empire that spanned the entire Mediterranean world was by and large complete.