The Character of Verres and of the Sicilians

One sees from the above how adroitly Cicero as prosecutor anticipated and undermined the strategies that his opponent Hortensius might have used to defend Verres and that Cicero himself would later call on in

[31] II.1.9, 14, 90–94, 104–14; 2.17, 30, 166; 3.6, 93–96; 4.26, 37, 42, 46, 58; 5.69, 72–75, 77, 136–37, 139–73.

[32] II.3.11, 43, 48, 82–83, 120, 122, 127, 137, 201, 226.

[33] II.5.60–79, 82. On pirates, cf. II.1.9.

defending clients like Fonteius, Scaurus, and Flaccus. But of all the strategies he could have anticipated from the defense, the most predictable and potentially the most dangerous was a racial attack against the Greeks in Sicily along the same lines as that which he would himself launch against the Asian Greeks in the Pro Flacco . How did Cicero forestall such an attack? One method was to anticipate the thrust of the defense's attack and to turn it back against his opponents. We have seen that in the speeches on behalf of provincial governors Cicero focused on the lack of fides and religio to be expected from foreign witnesses. In the Verrines Cicero counters this anticipated tactic from his opponents by attacking Verres on just these issues: throughout the First and Second Actions Cicero depicts Verres as a tyrant to whom human and divine laws were without force and whose entire public career represented a series of outrages against the obligations he owed to both.

Cicero's indictment of Verres for his violations of fides operates on a number of levels. In the first speech of the Second Action (devoted to Verres' career before his governorship of Sicily) he speaks of the defendant's betrayal of the trust placed in him by his superiors, describing his embezzlement of money when serving as quaestor in Gaul under the consul Cn. Carbo and of his later abandonment of this post (II.1.34–40). He refers as well to Verres' betrayal of the man whom he then served under as legate and proquaestor, Cn. Dolabella (II.1.41–102). Since the assignment of the quaestors to their provinces was made by lot, and since the lot was believed to be divinely guided, the orator presents the betrayal of the relationship between Verres and his superiors as both moral and religious corruption. Verres is, in addition, stigmatized for his violations of fides towards those under his magisterial power. Cicero implies, in fact, that Verres was at his worst in his treatment of those who were most dependent on his good faith. In the course of the account of Verres' career in the East Cicero frequently chooses to expand upon those crimes that show the accused preying upon provincials, especially women and children. The story of the affair at Lampsacus, in which Verres' lust for a young woman leads to the death of the father and brother who try to protect her, and the account of the legacy of the boy Junius fit into this pattern of exploitation of the vulnerable.^[34] Such incidents also form a prelude to the revelation in parts 2 through 5 of the Second Action of Verres' greatest betrayal of fides: his abuse dur-

[34] Lampsacus affair: II.1.63–85; story of Junius: II.1.129–54.

ing his provincial governorship of the Sicilians, whose well-being had been entrusted to him by the state.

In chapter 3 I noted Cicero's attempt to paint Verres in the colors of the rhetorical tyrant. This strategy overlaps with the orator's attacks on Verres as a man without religious scruples, for the tyrant is a despiser not only of human beings but of the gods as well. Throughout the Verrines Cicero accuses Verres of a veritable war against the gods, repeatedly making use of the term religio in doing so.^[35] One crucial part of this attack turns on the defendant's appropriation of statues and works of art in the eastern Mediterranean and in Sicily. Since most of these were objects of veneration taken from temples or from shrines within private homes, their theft could be characterized as a religious offense. This strategy is introduced in the Divinatio in Caecilium, a speech in which Cicero argued his own claims to represent the Sicilians in the prosecution of Verres over the claims of a certain Caecilius. He begins the oration with the statement that the Sicilians could hardly appeal to their gods for help, as they had already been stolen by Verres. According to Cicero, the defendant had removed "the holiest images from the most sacred shrines" (Div. Caec. 3: simulacra sanctissima . . . ex delubris religiosissimis ). The idea is prominent as well in the First Action, a summary of the crimes of the accused, in which Cicero alludes to Verres' plundering of the holy places of Asia and Pamphylia, as well as of Sicily. In the prooemium of the Second Action, Cicero voices the theme that will resound throughout all five parts of the work: that it is the gods themselves who seek justice in the trial of Verres. He declares:

[35] Verr. II.1.6: multa enim et in deos et in homines impie nefarieque commisit; 4.72: ita sese in ea provincia per triennium gessit ut ab isto non solum hominibus verum etiam dis immortalibus bellum indictum putaretur; 5.188: ceteros item deos deasque omnis . . . quorum templis et religionibus iste . . . bellum sacrilegum semper impiumque habuit indictum. Cf. Font. 30. In his indictment of the defendant's offenses against various divinities, Cicero had to deal with the fact that Verres had fostered a close connection between himself and the powerful shrine of Venus Erycina in northwestern Sicily. Cicero solves this problem by focusing on the Sicilian cult of Ceres at Henna and by depicting Verres' devotion to Venus and Cupid as a mask for his greed and an expression of his libidinousness. See della Corte, "Conflitto di culti"; von Albrecht, "Cicero und die Götter Siziliens"; Martorana, "La Venus di Verre." Martorana, unlike della Corte and von Albrecht, sees Verres' support of the cult of Venus Erycina as a patriotic attempt to maintain and strengthen the link between the island and Roman imperium .

The gods of our fathers are taking him away for punishment because he was a man who could tear sons from the embrace of their parents in order to execute them and even demand that the parents pay him a price in order to bury their children. The holy rites and ceremonies of all the violated shrines and temples, the images of the gods, which were not only taken away from their temples but even allowed to lie hidden and neglected in the shadows, do not allow his mind any rest from madness and insanity. . . . We not only seek that this man be condemned so that property might be restored to those from whom it was stolen; the violated sanctity of the immortal gods must also be expiated.

(II.1.7–8)

Cicero then presents within the Second Action a seemingly unending catalogue of outrages against religious sensibilities.

At the same time that he was attempting to create for his audience a vivid picture of Verres as a man devoid of any sense of duty to men or to the gods, Cicero hoped to characterize the Sicilians as a race especially distinguished by such sensibilities, praising in particular their trustworthiness as allies and their pious respect for what they conceived of as their religious obligations. The introduction to the entire excursus on the crimes committed by Verres in Sicily begins with a passage devoted to the island's special bonds to Rome. Sicily is praised as the first province to be acquired by the Republic, the "jewel of the empire" (II.2.2: ornamentum imperi ). Once the island had been reduced, says Cicero, it never wavered in its loyalty (fides ) and goodwill (benevolentia ) towards the Roman people. For this reason Africanus had adorned its cities after the fall of Carthage, and Marcellus had allowed even hostile Syracuse to remain standing. This "storehouse of the Republic" had long fed and equipped the Romans and their armies, even during the dark days of the Social War. Cicero refers also to the fact that Sicily had proved a source of extensive profits both to those who exploited its riches from afar and to the many Roman citizens who had settled there. It is a great advantage to many citizens, he states, that they may repair to this province, which is "close at hand, loyal, and rich in resources" (II.2.6: propinquam fidelem fructuosamque provinciam ). The source of Sicily's outstanding loyalty to Rome is then revealed to be the character of its inhabitants. Cicero claims that the Sicilians are nothing like other Greeks, whose vices include laziness and excess (II.2.7: desidia . . . luxuries ); rather, they possess the virtues of endurance, bravery, and frugality (II.2.7: patientia virtus frugalitasque ), traits that remind the orator not of the Romans of the present but of those of the past. He goes on to

praise the great industriousness, thrift, and diligence of the Sicilians (II.2.7: summus labor . . . summa parsimonia summa diligentia ). They also are unassuming individuals who bear injustice and oppression without murmur (II.2.8–10). Only the outrages perpetrated by Verres have forced them to seek legal redress, and if this desperate plea for justice fails, they will simply abandon their homes. The diction and thought of such passages are clear enough: as with the Apollonians of the Pro Flacco, the virtues of the Sicilians are the stereotypical virtues of farmers, a class that Cicero says constitutes the heart both of the Republic as a whole and of the island of Sicily in particular (II.2.149). Although it is true that within the corpus of the Verrines Cicero characterizes the inhabitants of Sicily in various ways, depending on shifts in emphasis and changes in rhetorical goals, this attribution of stereotypical rustic virtues to the Sicilians recurs throughout. In one passage we even discover the scene, familiar from the Pro Roscio, of the innocent and confused countryman in the city. When Cicero is challenging the intent of a clause in a tax law allowing farmers to sue in disputes with tithe collectors he accuses Verres of "dragging men from the field to the forum, from cultivating the earth to the benches of the law courts, from the familiarity of rustic affairs to the unknown milieu of litigations and legal judgments" (II.3.26: Ex agro homines traducis in forum, ab aratro ad subsellia, ab usu rerum rusticarum ad insolitam litem atque iudicium ).

Cicero's strategy in the Second Action, then, was to forestall the defense's anticipated attack on the witnesses as untrustworthy foreigners by characterizing the Sicilians as typical farmers rather than typical Greeks. This strategy was surely an obvious one, since Sicily was blessed with an abundance of rich farmland and was renowned in antiquity for its rich agricultural produce. As Cicero remarks, "The entire utility and advantage of the province of Sicily insofar as it relates to the interests of the Roman people consists chiefly in the matter of grain" (II.3.11). The strategy was also one that could be easily exploited in the third part of the Second Action, an extensive part of the speech dealing with the crimes committed by Verres against Sicilian farmers (divided by the orator into sections dealing with the tithe on grain, the purchase of grain, and grain commutation).

When Cicero came to the fourth part of the Second Action he faced a more difficult task, since he was compelled to speak at length about the various statues and works of art stolen or extorted by Verres from Sicil-

ian city-states and individuals. As previously noted, the accusations of Verres' appropriation of cult statues from the very temples of the gods added great force to Cicero's depiction of the defendant as an impious tyrant. The difficulty such material raised, however, was that the complainants here could not be portrayed as simple farmers but were clearly men of means and sophistication. The Sicilian witnesses who accused Verres of removing precious works of art belonging to them or their cities might therefore have served to reinforce the negative stereotype of all Greeks as a race characterized by luxuria and vanitas . Cicero solves this problem by depicting the desire of the Sicilians for the return of their property as an expression not of luxuria but of a special sort of religio . As has been demonstrated, the passages dealing with particular objects removed by Verres emphasize their value as religious or patriotic symbols rather than as precious works of art. The strategy is best articulated in a passage in which Cicero speaks in general of the attachment of the Greeks to statues, paintings, and works of this sort, objects that he and his audience deemed of little worth (II.4.124, 132–34). He states:

All [the Greeks] are affected by religious scruples (religione ) and believe that the [statues of] their ancestral gods, handed down from their ancestors, should be carefully kept and worshipped by them. And further, these ornaments, these works and artistic objects, statues, and pictures, afford the Greeks an unusual degree of pleasure. Therefore, when we hear their complaints we can understand why these events seem so bitter to them while we, perhaps, view them as insignificant trifles.

(II.4.132)

The tone throughout the passage is unmistakably condescending. Yet it should be seen that Cicero has effectively stolen the defense attorney's thunder. He has agreed to the proposition that the Sicilians, like all Greeks, placed an inordinate value on ornamental objects, statues, paintings, and the like. But he converts this attachment to such "trifles" into the non-Roman expression of one of the most Roman of virtues, religio .