Imperium - Харрис Роберт - Страница 41

In such a way did he speak, working all his persuasive powers on his cousin as if Lucius were a one-man jury which he needed to convince, reading his face, trying to find within it clues to the right words and arguments which would unlock his support.

“But Pompey,” said Lucius bitterly. “After what he did to you before!”

“All I needed, Lucius, was one thing-one tiny, tiny favor-and that was the assurance that I could proceed as I wished and call my witnesses straightaway. No bribery was involved; no corruption. I just knew I had to be sure to secure Glabrio’s consent beforehand. But I could hardly, as the prosecutor, approach the praetor of the court myself. So I racked my brains: who could?”

Quintus said, “There was only one man in Rome, Lucius.”

“Exactly. Only one man to whom Glabrio was honor-bound to listen. The man who had given him his son back, when his divorced wife died-Pompey.”

“But it was not a tiny favor,” said Lucius. “It was a massive interference. And now there is a massive price to be paid for it-and not by you, but by the people of Sicily.”

“The people of Sicily?” repeated Cicero, beginning to lose his temper. “The people of Sicily have never had a truer friend than me. There would never have been a prosecution without me. There would never have been an offer of one and a half million without me. By heaven, Gaius Verres would have been consul in two years’ time but for me! You cannot reproach me for abandoning the people of Sicily!”

“Then refuse his rent,” said Lucius, seizing hold of his hand. “Tomorrow, in court, press for the maximum damages, and to hell with Pompey. You have the whole of Rome on your side. That jury will not dare to go against you. Who cares about Pompey? In five months’ time, as he says himself, he will not even be consul. Promise me.”

Cicero clasped Lucius’s hand fervently in both of his and gazed deep into his eyes-the old double-grip sincere routine, which I had seen so often in this very room. “I promise you,” he said. “I promise you I shall think about it.”

PERHAPS HE DID THINK ABOUT IT. Who am I to judge? But I doubt it can have occupied his thoughts for more than an instant. Cicero was no revolutionary. He never desired to set himself at the head of a mob, tearing down the state: and that would have been his only hope of survival, if he had turned Pompey against him as well as the aristocracy. “The trouble with Lucius,” he said, putting his feet up on the desk after his cousin had gone, “is that he thinks politics is a fight for justice. Politics is a profession.”

“Do you think Verres bribed Pompey to intervene, to lower the damages?” asked Quintus, voicing exactly the possibility that had occurred to me.

“It could be. More likely he simply wants to avoid being caught in the middle of a civil war between the people and the Senate. Speaking for myself, I would be happy to seize everything Verres possesses, and leave the wretch to live on Gaulish grass. But that is not going to happen, so we had better see how far we can make this one and a half million stretch.”

The three of us spent the rest of the evening compiling a list of the most worthy claimants, and after Cicero had deducted his own costs, of close to one hundred thousand, we reckoned he could just about manage to fulfill his obligations, at least to the likes of Sthenius, and to those witnesses who had traveled all the way to Rome. But what could one say to the priests? How could one put a price on looted temple statues made of gems and precious metals, long since broken up and melted down by Verres’s goldsmiths? And what payment could ever recompense the families and friends of Gavius and Herennius and the other innocents he had murdered? The work gave Cicero his first real taste of what it is like to have power-which is usually, when it comes down to it, a matter of choosing between equally unpalatable options-and fairly bitter he found it.

We went down to court in the usual manner the following morning, and there were the usual big crowds in their usual places-everything the same, in fact, except for the absence of Verres, and the presence of twenty or thirty men of the magistrates’ patrol, stationed around the perimeter of the tribunal. Glabrio made a short speech, opening the session and warning that he would not tolerate any disturbances similar to those which had occurred the previous day. Then he called on Hortensius to make a statement.

“Due to ill health,” he began, and there was the most wonderful shout of laughter from all sides. It was some time before he was able to proceed. “Due to ill health,” he repeated, “brought on by the strain of these proceedings, and wishing to spare the state any further disruption, my client, Gaius Verres, no longer proposes to offer a defense to the charges brought by the special prosecutor.”

He sat down. There was applause from the Sicilians at this concession, but little response from the spectators. They were waiting to take their lead from Cicero. He stood, thanked Hortensius for his statement-“somewhat shorter than the speeches he is in the habit of making in these surroundings”-and demanded the maximum penalty under the Cornelian Law: a full loss of civil rights, in perpetuity, “so that never again can the shadow of Gaius Verres menace his victims or threaten the just administration of the Roman republic.” This elicited the first real cheer of the morning.

“I wish,” continued Cicero, “that I could undo his crimes and restore to both men and gods all that he has robbed from them. I wish I could give back to Juno the offerings and adornments of her shrines at Melita and Samos. I wish Minerva could see again the decorations of her temple at Syracuse. I wish Diana’s statue could be restored to the town of Segesta, and Mercury’s to the people of Tyndaris. I wish I could undo the double injury to Ceres, whose images were carried away from both Henna and Catina. But the villain has fled, leaving behind only the stripped walls and bare floors of his houses here in Rome and in the country. These are the only assets that can be seized and sold. His counsel assesses the value of these at one and a half million sesterces, and this is what I must ask for and accept as recompense for his crimes.”

There was a groan, and someone shouted, “Not enough!”

“It is not enough. I agree. And perhaps some of those in this court who defended Verres when his star was rising, and who promised him their support if they found themselves among his jurors, might inspect their consciences-might inspect, indeed, the contents of their villas!”

This brought Hortensius to his feet to complain that the prosecutor was talking in riddles.

“Well,” responded Cicero in a flash, “as Verres equipped him with an ivory sphinx, the consul-elect should find no difficulty solving riddles.”

It cannot have been a premeditated joke, as Cicero had no idea what Hortensius was going to say. Or perhaps, on second thought, having written that, I am being naive, and it was actually part of that store of spontaneous witticisms which Cicero regularly laid up by candlelight to use should the opportunity arise. Whatever the truth, it was proof of how important humor can be on a public occasion, for nobody now remembers a thing about that last day in court except Cicero’s crack about the sphinx. I am not even sure, in retrospect, that it is particularly funny. But it brought the house down and transformed what could have been an embarrassing speech into yet another triumph. “Sit down quickly”: that was always Molon’s advice when things were going well, and Cicero took it. I handed him a towel and he mopped his face and dried his hands as the applause continued. And with that, his exertions in the prosecution of Gaius Verres were at an end.

THAT AFTERNOON, the Senate met for its final debate before it went into a fifteen-day recess for Pompey’s games. By the time Cicero had finished smoothing matters over with the Sicilians, he was late for the start of the session, and we had to run together from the Temple of Castor right across the Forum to the Senate House. Crassus, as the presiding consul for the month, had already called the house to order and was reading the latest dispatch from Lucullus on the progress of the campaign in the East. Rather than interrupt him by making a conspicuous entry, Cicero stood at the bar of the chamber, and we listened to Lucullus’s report. The aristocratic general had, by his own account, scored a series of crushing victories, entering the kingdom of Tigranes, defeating the king himself in battle, slaughtering tens of thousands of the enemy, advancing deeper into hostile territory to capture the city of Nisibis, and taking the king’s brother as hostage.