Velia was a health resort, with a well-known temple to Apollo Oulius, then a fashionable god of healing. But it was shuttered now and out of season, and as we made our way down to the harbor-front, where the gray sea battered the wharf, Cicero remarked that he had seldom seen a less enticing holiday spot. In the port, aside from the usual collection of fishing boats, was moored one huge vessel, a cargo ship the size of a trireme, and while we were negotiating our journey with the local sailors, Cicero asked to whom it belonged. It was, we were told, a gift from the citizens of the Sicilian port of Messana to their former governor Gaius Verres, and had been moored here for a month.
There was something infinitely sinister about that great ship, sitting low in the water, fully crewed and ready to move at a moment’s warning. Our appearance in the deserted harbor had clearly already been registered and was causing something of a panic. As Cicero led us cautiously toward it, three short blasts sounded on a trumpet, and the ship’s hull sprouted oars, like some immense water beetle, and edged away from the quayside. It moved a short distance out to sea and dropped anchor. As the vessel turned into the wind, the lanterns at its prow and stern danced bright yellow in the gloomy afternoon, and figures deployed along its heaving decks. Cicero debated with Lucius and young Frugi what to do. In theory, his warrant from the extortion court gave him authority to board and search any vessel he suspected of connection with the case. In truth, we lacked the resources, and by the time reinforcements could be summoned, the ship would be long gone. What it showed beyond doubt was that Verres’s crimes were on a scale far more vast than anything Cicero had imagined. He decided we should press on south at redoubled speed.
I guess it must be 120 miles from Velia down to Vibo, running straight along the shinbone to the toe of Italy. But with a favorable wind and strong rowing we did it in just two days. We kept always within sight of the shore, and put in for one night on the sandy beach, where we cut down a thicket of myrtle to make a campfire and used our oars and sail for a tent. From Vibo we took the coast road to Regium, and here we chartered a second boat to sail across the narrow straits to Sicily. We set off on a misty early morning in a saturating drizzle. The distant island appeared on the horizon as a dreary black hump. Unfortunately there was only one place to make for, especially in midwinter, and that was Verres’s stronghold of Messana. Throughout all his three years as governor, he had bought the loyalty of its inhabitants by exempting them from taxes, and alone of the towns on the island, it had refused to offer Cicero any cooperation. We steered toward its lighthouse, and as we drew closer realized that what we had perceived as a large mast at the entrance to the harbor was not part of a ship at all, but a cross, facing directly across the straits to the mainland.
“That is new,” said Cicero, frowning as he wiped the rain from his eyes. “This was never a place of execution in our day.”
We had no option but to sail straight past it, and the sight fell across our waterlogged spirits like a shadow.
Despite the general hostility of the people of Messana toward the special prosecutor, two citizens-Basiliscus and Percennius-had bravely agreed to offer him hospitality, and were waiting on the quayside to greet us. The moment he stepped ashore, Cicero queried them about the cross, but they begged to be excused from answering until they had transported us away from the wharf. Only when we were in the compound of Basiliscus’s house did they feel it safe to tell the story. Verres had spent his last days as governor living full-time in Messana, supervising the loading of his loot aboard the treasure ship which the grateful town had built for him. There had been a festival in his honor about a month ago, and almost as part of the entertainment, a Roman citizen had been dragged from the prison, stripped naked in the Forum, publicly flogged, and finally crucified.
Cicero was incredulous. “A Roman citizen?” He gestured at me to begin making notes. “But it is illegal to execute a Roman citizen without a full trial. Are you sure that is what he was?”
“He cried out that his name was Publius Gavius, that he was a merchant from Spain, and and that he had done military service in the legions. Throughout his whipping he screamed, ‘I am a Roman citizen!’ every time he received a blow.”
“‘I am a Roman citizen,’” repeated Cicero, savoring the phrase. “‘I am a Roman citizen…’ But what was alleged to be his crime?”
“Spying,” replied our host. “He was on the point of boarding a ship for Italy. But he made the mistake of telling everyone he met that he had escaped from the Stone Quarries in Syracuse and was going straight to Rome to expose all Verres’s crimes. The elders of Messana had him arrested and held until Verres arrived. Then Verres ordered him to be scourged, tortured with hot irons, and executed on a cross looking out across the straits to Regium so that he could see the mainland throughout his final agonies. Imagine that-being only five miles from safety! The cross has been left standing by the followers of Verres as a warning to anyone else who feels tempted to talk too freely.”
“There were witnesses to this crucifixion?”
“Of course. Hundreds.”
“Including Roman citizens?”
“Yes.”
“Could you identify any of them?”
Basiliscus hesitated. “Gaius Numitorius, a Roman knight from Puteoli. The Cottius brothers from Tauromenium. Lucceius-he is from Regium. There must have been others.”
I took down their names. Afterwards, while Cicero was having a bath, we gathered beside his tub to discuss this development. Lucius said, “Perhaps this man Gavius really was a spy.”
“I would be more inclined to believe that,” replied Cicero, “if Verres had not brought exactly the same charge against Sthenius, who is no more a spy than you or I. No, this is the monster’s favored method of operation: he arranges a trumped-up charge, then uses his position as supreme justice in the province to reach a verdict and pronounce sentence. The question is: why did he pick on Gavius?”
Nobody had an answer; nor did we have the spare time to linger in Messana and try to find one. Early the following morning we had to leave for our first official engagement, in the northern coastal town of Tyndaris. This visit set the pattern for a score which followed. The council came out to greet Cicero with full honors. He was conducted into the municipal square. He was shown the standard-issue statue of Verres, which the citizens had been obliged to pay for and which they had now pulled down and smashed. Cicero made a short speech about Roman justice. His chair was set up. He listened to the complaints of the locals. He then selected those which were most eye-catching or most easily proved-in Tyndaris it was the story of Sopater, bound naked to a statue until the town yielded up its bronze of Mercury-and finally either I or one of my two assistants moved in to take statements, which would be witnessed and signed.
From Tyndaris we traveled on to Sthenius’s home city of Thermae, where we saw his wife in his empty house, who sobbed as we delivered letters from her exiled husband, and then ended the week in the fortress port of Lilybaeum, on the extreme western tip of the island. Cicero knew this place well, having been based here when he was a junior magistrate. We stayed, as so often in the past, at the home of his old friend Pamphilius. Over dinner on the first night, Cicero noticed that the usual decorations of the table-a beautiful jug and goblets, all family heirlooms-were missing, and when he asked what had become of them, was told that Verres had seized them. It quickly transpired that all the other guests in the dining room had similar tales to tell. Young Gaius Cacurius had been obliged to give up all his furniture, and Lutatius a citrus-wood table at which Cicero had regularly eaten. Lyso had been robbed of his precious statue of Apollo, and Diodorus of a set of chased silver cups by Mentor. The list was endless, and I should know, for I was summoned to compile it. After taking statements from each of them, and subsequently from all their friends, I began to think that Cicero had gone a little mad-did he plan to catalogue every stolen spoon and cream jug on the island?-but of course he was cleverer than I, as events would show.