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Chapter ThreeSigna and Signifiers: A World Created
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Narrative Form and Rhetorical Intent

The extraordinary length of the Second Action of the Verrines made it impossible for Cicero to structure the speech in the ordinary way, that is, by dividing the whole into proem, narration, argument, and peroration.[52] He therefore divided the speech as a whole into five parts that


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focused on the periods in Verres' public career and the places where he had held power (II.1: magisterial offices exercised in Gaul, Asia, and Greece prior to his praetorship, his tenure as urban praetor in Rome) and on the general categories of crime perpetrated by the defendant as governor of Sicily (II.2: abuses of judicial power; II.3: crimes committed in the purchase and taxation of grain; II.4: plundering of precious objects throughout Sicily; II.5: dereliction of duty as military commander, cruel and tyrannical behavior exhibited towards Sicilians and Roman citizens in the province). Even the five individual parts of the Second Action each contained such an extensive body of material that no listener (or reader) could have been expected to assimilate it if it had been presented according to the rhetorical rules governing dispositio, for the bewildering amount of data that Cicero would have been obliged to cover in the narration of each would surely have been forgotten or confused by the time he returned to it in the argument and peroration. Thus in the fourth part of the Second Action Cicero organizes his account of Verres' theft of precious objects through reference to a sequence of places within Sicily, as well as to the types of objects stolen, giving shape and form to this catalogue by turning many of the crimes discussed into miniature dramas with a beginning, middle, and end.[53]

In three of the four narratives studied above, Cicero begins by setting the story within a particular topographical or geographical framework, which itself plays a role in manipulating the feelings of the audience about the account that follows. In the case of Segesta, Cicero refers to its legendary founding by Aeneas, stating that the connection between the Segestans and the Romans was not only one of "continual friendship and alliance" but also one of blood relationship (II.4.72: perpetua societate atque amicitia, verum etiam cognatione ). The topographical and geographical introduction to the narrative set in Henna emphasizes the religious centrality and sanctity of the place, a sanctity that, according to Cicero, had long been recognized by Romans as well as Sicilians. In dealing with the theft of the statues belonging to Heius of Messana, Cicero is prevented from beginning the narrative by celebrating the religious or political connections of the town with Rome, since the Messanans had seen fit to decree a eulogy of Verres. Cicero's introduction


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serves, however, to inform the audience that Heius's house had long been the chief dwelling within the city and had served as a showplace not only for Messanans and other Sicilians but for Roman visitors as well.

Having oriented his audience to the setting of the action, Cicero goes on in each of the episodes to recount a story in which an object or group of objects is taken by Verres from its rightful owner. In each narrative the object or objects stolen become the "visual" center of the story, for the statues of Heius, the lamp stand of Antiochus, the statue of Diana of Segesta, and that of Ceres of Henna are all described in some detail. By impressing the image of the artwork on the minds of his audience and retailing the events that lead to its loss, Cicero recreates a context for the stolen object or group. While he sometimes speaks of the extreme devotion of the Sicilians to their possessions in condescending, even—to put it more precisely—"patronizing" terms, the vividness and narrative power of the stories must have seduced the audience into seeing the objects through the eyes of those from whom they had been taken.

But this is not all Cicero wished to accomplish within the narratives, for it is through his statements about the feelings and actions of the Sicilians vis-à-vis their stolen possessions that their characters are revealed. For Heius, the statues in his sacrarium are made to seem an expression of his piety towards the ancestors from whom he had inherited them, a sentiment with which a Roman audience could strongly empathize. The young prince of Syria reveals his exceptional piety towards the chief god of the Roman state and his loyalty to that state through his intention to dedicate to Capitoline Jupiter the precious lamp stand described in the narrative, and Cicero's description of his reaction to the loss of the object focuses on these same admirable traits. The community of Segesta is shown by Cicero to view the statue of Diana not simply as the focus of their communal devotion to the goddess. The honor in which they hold the statue and their pain at its loss, Cicero claims, also bespeak the citizens' admiration and respect for Scipio Aemilianus, who had returned the statue to them from Carthage and to whom the pedestal on which the statue stood had been inscribed (II.4.82). Both the statue and its pedestal (subsequently removed by Verres) are signs of the relationship that formerly existed between Segesta and Rome, a relationship characterized by generosity on the part of the conquerors and loyalty on the part of the conquered. For the people of Henna and for all Sicilians the statue of Ceres is a sign that


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the island is a unique place, whose pious inhabitants have been blessed by the goddess with the gift of abundant grain. This piety towards Ceres is presented as part of what the Romans owed their divinities, for Cicero claims that the Ceres of the Sicilians had always been an object of Roman worship. Religio [non ] aliena (II.4.114) are the words the orator uses in affirming the universal sanctity of Hennan Ceres. In fact, the phrase aptly describes Cicero's strategy throughout, since in each of the accounts he has led his audience to connect the setting, the symbolism of the object or group stolen, and the feelings of the complainants about the object or objects with unambiguously Roman religious and patriotic sentiments.

Although I have termed these narratives "miniature dramas," they do not, in fact, conclude in the way either a drama or a literary narrative usually ends, for there is nothing in the episodes that corresponds to a denouement. Rather, after the introductory and narrative sections of each, Cicero combines a kind of argument and peroration. Such a strategy is predictable, given the fact that the orator, unlike the dramatist, must avoid the sense of closure and recovered equilibrium provided by the dramatic denouement. He strives, instead, to convince his audience at the end of each narrative of the justice of his position, to rouse them to emotional engagement with this position, and to make them eager to hear another example of the accused's misdeeds.

In three of the four episodes discussed in this chapter Cicero has created for his audience a visual image of an artwork or a group of works by placing it within a topographical or geographical framework and then carefully describing it. The image created through this combination of topographia (description of place) and enargeia or evidentia (vivid description) is then tied by the orator to various associations and ideas, for in each case Cicero has attempted to create a binding link in the minds of the audience between the visually imagined object and the meaning he has assigned to it. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, this technique might well have been related to the system of mnemonic training current in Cicero's time, as well as to Cicero's own understanding of the rhetorical possibilities of evidentia . In a lengthy and complex work like the fourth Verrine, Cicero's strategy of connecting a variety of symbolic meanings with objects that he has carefully described for his audience, placed within a topographical setting, and subordinated to an overall geographical progression might have reflected the process he himself went through in creating for himself a visually imagined structure for the speech. This same structure was then adapted to impress the


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material and its meaning on the minds of his audience. The objection might be raised that in examples from the ancient mnemonic system the train of thought linking idea and object had no inherent meaning, while the associations used by Cicero in the fourth Verrine are never a fortuitous graft of idea on image but are sensitively and imaginatively linked in order to create specific rhetorical effects. The answer to this objection is the presumption that Cicero (or his teachers) must have realized that in order to be of use in persuading an audience the techniques of artificial memory had to be altered so as always to involve the association of a locus with an idea that advanced the speaker's case. In the language of the rhetorical textbooks, In Verrem II.4 suggests that certain aspects of memoria (the mnemonic system) and elocutio (vivid description) could be adapted to serve the needs of inventio and dispositio .


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Chapter ThreeSigna and Signifiers: A World Created
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