Two chairs had been put out for the contesting prosecutors. Caecilius was already seated, with a bundle of notes in his lap, and did not look up when Cicero arrived, but nervously preoccupied himself with study. The court was called to order and Glabrio told Cicero that he, as the original applicant, must go first-a significant disadvantage. Cicero shrugged and rose, waited for absolute quiet, and started slowly as usual, saying that he assumed people might be surprised to see him in this role, as he had never before sought to enter any arena as a prosecutor. He had not wanted to do it now, he said. Indeed, privately he had urged the Sicilians to give the job to Caecilius. (I almost gasped at that.) But, in truth, he said, he was not doing it simply for the Sicilians. “What I am doing I do for the sake of my country.” And very deliberately he walked across the court to where Verres was sitting and slowly raised his arm to point at him. “Here is a human monster of unparalleled greed, impudence, and wickedness. If I bring this man to judgment, who can find fault with me for doing this? Tell me, in the name of all that is just and holy, what better service I can do my country at the present time!” Verres was not in the least put out, but grinned defiantly at Cicero and shook his head. Cicero stared at him with contempt for a while longer, then turned to face the jury. “The charge against Gaius Verres is that during a period of three years he has laid waste the province of Sicily-that he has plundered Sicilian communities, stripped bare Sicilian homes, and pillaged Sicilian temples. Could all Sicily speak with a single voice, this is what she would say: ‘All the gold, all the silver, all the beautiful things that once were in my cities, houses, and temples: all these things, you, Verres, have plundered and stolen from me; and on this account I sue you in accordance with the law for the sum of one million sesterces!’ These are the words all Sicily would utter, if she could speak with a single voice, and as she cannot, she has chosen me to conduct her case for her. So what incredible impudence it is that you”-and now he finally turned to Caecilius-“that you should dare to try to undertake their case when they have already said they will not have you!”
He strolled across to Caecilius and stood behind him. He gave an exaggerated sigh of sadness. “I am now going to speak to you as one friend to another,” he said, and patted his shoulder, so that his rival had to twist around in his seat to see him-a fidgety movement which drew a good deal of laughter. “I earnestly advise you to examine your own mind. Recollect yourself. Think of what you are, and what you are fit for. This prosecution is a very formidable and a very painful undertaking. Have you the powers of voice and memory? Have you the intelligence and the ability to sustain such a burden? Even if you had the advantage of great natural gifts, even if you had received a thorough education, could you hope to stand the strain? We shall find out this morning. If you can reply to what I am now saying, if you can use one single expression that is not contained in some book of extracts compiled from other people’s speeches and given to you by your schoolteacher, then perhaps you will not be a failure at the actual trial.”
He moved toward the center of the court and addressed the crowd in the Forum as well as the jury. “‘Well,’ you may say, ‘what if that is so? Do you then possess all these qualities yourself?’ Would that I did, indeed. Still, I have done my best, and worked hard from boyhood, in order to acquire them if I could. Everyone knows that my life has centered around the Forum and the law courts; that few men, if any, of my age have defended more cases; that all the time I can spare from the business of my friends I spend in the study and hard work which this profession demands, to make myself fitter and readier for forensic practice. Yet even I, when I think of the great day when the accused man is summoned to appear and I have to make my speech, am not only anxious, but tremble physically from head to foot. You, Caecilius, have no such fears, no such thoughts, no such anxieties. You imagine that, if you can learn by heart a phrase or two out of some old speech, like ‘I beseech almighty and most merciful God’ or ‘I could wish, gentlemen, had it only been possible,’ you will be excellently prepared for your entrance into court.
“Caecilius, you are nothing, and you count for nothing. Hortensius will destroy you! But he will never crush me with his cleverness. He will never lead me astray by any display of ingenuity. He will never employ his great powers to weaken and dislodge me from my position.” He looked toward Hortensius and bowed to him in mock humility, to which Hortensius responded by standing and bowing back, eliciting more laughter. “I am well acquainted with all this gentleman’s methods of attack,” continued Cicero, “and all his oratorical devices. However capable he may be, he will feel, when he comes to speak against me, that the trial is among other things a trial of his own capacities. And I give this gentleman fair warning well beforehand, that if you decide that I am to conduct this case, he will have to make a radical change in his methods of defense. If I conduct the case, he will have no reason to think that the court can be bribed without serious danger to a large number of people.”
The mention of bribery produced a brief uproar and brought the normally equable Hortensius to his feet, but Cicero waved him back into his place. On and on he went, his rhetoric hammering down upon his opponents like the ringing blows of a blacksmith. I shall not quote it all. The speech, which lasted at least an hour, is readily available for those who wish to read it. He smashed away at Verres for his corruption, and at Caecilius for his previous links with Verres, and at Hortensius for desiring a second-rate opponent. And he concluded by challenging the senators themselves, walking over to the jury and looking each of them in the eye. “It rests with you, then, gentlemen, to choose the man whom you think best qualified by good faith, industry, sagacity, and weight of character to maintain this great case before this great court. If you give Quintus Caecilius the preference over me, I shall not think I have been beaten by the better man. But Rome may think that an honorable, strict, and energetic prosecutor like myself was not what you desired, and not what senators would ever desire.” He paused, his gaze coming to rest at last on Catulus, who stared straight back at him, and then he said very quietly: “Gentlemen, see that this does not happen.” There was loud applause.
And now it was Caecilius’s turn. He had risen from very humble origins, much more humble than Cicero’s, and he was not entirely without merit. One could even say he had some prior claim to prosecute, especially when he began by pointing out that his father had been a freed Sicilian slave, that he had been born in the province, and that the island was the place he loved most in the world. But his speech was full of statistics about falling agricultural production and Verres’s system of accounting. He sounded peevish rather than impassioned. Worse, he read it all out from notes, and in a monotone, so that when, after an hour, he approached his peroration, Cicero pretended to fall asleep. Caecilius, who was facing the jury and could not see what everyone was laughing at, was seriously knocked off his stride. He struggled through to the end and then sat down, crimson with embarrassment and rage.
In terms of rhetoric, Cicero had scored a victory of annihilating proportions. But as the voting tablets were passed among the jury, and the clerk of the court stood ready with his urn to collect them, Cicero knew, he told me afterwards, that he had lost. Of the thirty-two senators, he recognized at least a dozen firm enemies, and only half as many friends. The decision, as usual, would rest with the floaters in the middle, and he could see that many of these were craning their necks for a signal from Catulus, intent on following his lead. Catulus marked his tablet, showed it to the men on either side of him, then dropped it in the urn. When everyone had voted, the clerk took the urn over to the bench, and in full view of the court tipped it out and began counting the tablets. Hortensius, abandoning his pretense, was on his feet, and so was Verres, trying to see how the tally was going. Cicero sat as still as a statue. Caecilius was hunched in his chair. All around me people who made a habit of attending the courts and knew the procedure as well as the judges were whispering that it was close, that they were recounting. Eventually the clerk passed the tally up to Glabrio, who stood and called for silence. When he said that the voting was fourteen for Cicero-my heart stopped: he had lost!-but there were thirteen for Caecilius, with five abstentions. Marcus Tullius Cicero was therefore appointed special prosecutor (nominis delator) in the case of Gaius Verres. As the spectators applauded and Hortensius and Verres sat stunned, Glabrio told Cicero to stand and raise his right hand, and then had him swear the traditional oath to conduct the prosecution in good faith.