Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/1256

Rh 1244 VEllRES. win, and was firm. Upon this, Hortensius changed his tactics. The impeachment could not be stopped entirely ; but it might be parried. Q. Caecilius Niger had been quaestor to the defendant, had quarrelled with him, and had the means of exposing officially his abuse of the public money. To this prosecutor, said Hortensius, we do not object ; he is seeking redress ; but Cicero, notoriety. But the Sicilians rejected Caecilius altogether, not merely as no match for Hortensius, but as foisted into the cause by the defendant or his advocate. By a technical process of the Roman law, called Divi- natio, the judices, without hearing evidence, de- termined from the arguments of counsel alone, who should be appointed prosecutor. They decided in Cicero's favour. Of all the Verrine orations, the Divinatio in Q. Caecilium is the most argument- ative, and the most in accordance with modern practice. The orator demonstrates that the Si- cilians rejected Caecilius, and demanded himself: that a volunteer accuser is as objectionable as a volunteer witness : that Caecilius cannot come into court with clean hands, since, as quaestor, he must officially have been cognizant of the peculations of his principal : and that his quarrel with Verres — the ground of his alleged fitness for prosecutor — was all a pretence. [Niger, Q. Caecilius.] The pretensions of Caecilius were thus set aside. Yet hope did not yet forsake Verres and his friends. Evidence for the prosecution was to be collected in Sicily itself. Cicero was allowed 1 1 days for the purpose. Verres once again attempted to set up a sham prosecutor, who undertook to im- peach him for his former extortions in Achaia, and to gather the evidence in 108 days. Had this been really done, the effect would have been, that the false impeachment would have taken pre- cedence, and the Sicilian cause either been referred to a packed bench, or indefinitely adjourned. But the new prosecutor — one Piso or Damianus — never went even so far as Brundisium in quest of evidence, and the design was abandoned. (Verrin. i. 2 ; Schol. Gronov. p. 388, Orelli ; ii. 1, 11 ; Pseud. Ascon. p. 165, ib.) Instead of the 110 daj^s allowed, Cicero, assisted by his cousin Lucius, completed his researches in 50, and returned with a mass of evidence and a crowd of witnesses gathered from all parts of the island, from the rich and the poor, the agriculturist and the artisan, in • differently. At Syracuse and Messana alone did Cicero meet with reluctance or opposition. At the former city he completely overcame Verres's par- tisans, carried away with him a huge budget of vouchers and documents, and procured the erasure from the public register of an honorary decree, which had been extorted by Verres from the Sy- racusans. At Messana he was less successful. That city had, comparatively, been favoured by the ex-praetor. Here also Cicero encountered his old enemy Caecilius Niger, and the praetor L. Me- tellus, an alleged kinsman of Verres. The praetor forbade the Messanese to aid or harbour the orator or his suite : reproached him for tampering with Greeks, and addressing them in their own tongue ; and threatened to seize the documents he brought with him. Cicero, however, eluded the praetor and all attempts of Verres to obstruct his return, and reached the capital nearly two months before either fi-iends or opponents expected him. Hortensius now grasped at his last chance of an acquittal, and it was not an unlikely one. Could VERRES. the impeachment be put off to the next year, Verres was safe. Hortensius himself would then be consul, with Q. Metellus for his colleague, M. Metellus would be city-praetor, and L. Me- tellus was already praetor in Sicily. For every firm and honest judex whom the upright M. Acilius Glabrio [No. 5], then city praetor, had named, a partial or venal substitute would be found. Glabrio himself would give place as quaesitor oi president of the court to M. Metellus, a partisan, if not a kinsman of the defendant ; public curiosity would cool ; the witnesses be frightened or con- ciliated ; and time be allowed for forging and orga- nising a chain of counter-depositions. It was al- ready the month of July. The games to be ex- hibited by Cn. Pompey were fixed for the middle of August, and would occupy a fortnight ; the Roman games would immediately succeed them, and thus forty days intervene between Cicero's charge and the reply of Hortensius, who again, by dexterous adjournments, would delay the pro- ceedings until the games of Victory, and the com- mencement of the new year. Cicero therefore abandoned all thought of eloquence or display, and merely introducing his case in the first of the Verrine orations, rested all his hopes of success on the weight of testimony alone. The " king of the Forum," — so Hortensius was called — was dis- armed. His histrionic arts of dress, intonation, pathos, and invective, found no place in dry cross- examinations. He was quite unprepared with counter-evidence, and after the first day, when he put a few petulant questions, and offered some trivial objections to the course pursued, he aban- doned the cause of Verres. Before the nine days occupied in hearing evidence were over, the de- fendant was on his road to Marseilles. The im- peachment of Verres presented a scene for the historian and the artist. The judices met in the temple of Castor — already signalised by one of the defendant's most fraudulent acts ( Verrin. ii. 1, 49, ff.). They were surrounded by the senate, whose retention of tlie judicia depended on their verdict. They were watched by the equites, whose recovery of the judicia rested on the same issue. But neither the senate nor the equites were pro- bably the most anxious spectators of the proceed- ings. The range of the defendant's extortions had been so wide, that the witnesses alone formed no inconsiderable portion of the audience. From the foot of Mount Taurus, from the shores of the Black Sea, from many cities of the Grecian mainland, from many islands of the Aegean, from every city and market-town of Sicily, deputations thronged to Rome. In the porticoes and on the steps of the temple, in ihe area of the Forum, in the co- lonnades that surrounded it, on the house-tops and on the overlooking declivities, were stationed dense and eager crowds of impoverished heirs and their guardians, bankrupt publicani and corn- merchants, fathers bewailing their children car- ried off to the praetor's harem, children mourning for their parents dead in the praetor's dungeons, Greek nobles whose descent was traced to Cecrops or Eurysthenes or to the great Ionian and Minyan houses, and Phoenicians whose ancestors had been priests of the Tyrian Melcarth, or claimed kindred with the Zidonian lah. "All these and more came flocking," and the casual multitude was swelled by thousands of spectators from Italy partly attracted by the approaching games, and