Talking against Verres

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Bust of Cicero in the Capitoline Museums , 1st century BC Chr.

As speeches against Verres ( Latin Orationes in Verrem , German also Verrine ) are speeches Marcus Tullius Cicero referred to these 70 v. In connection with a repetition trial against the noble Gaius Verres , a corrupt former governor of the province of Sicily .

With his victory in this criminal case, the only one in which he ever appeared as a prosecutor, the homo novus Cicero, who shortly before became aedile for the year 69 BC Had been elected to achieve high public prestige. He became the most important Roman speaker because he was able to beat Quintus Hortensius Hortalus , who until then was considered the most important speaker in Rome - Hortensius appeared as Verres' defender.

prehistory

In the years 73 to 71 BC Verres was a propaetor in Sicily, one of the most important grain suppliers of the Roman Empire . During these years Italy was shaken by the slave revolt of Spartacus , which was the reason why Verres was not replaced by Quintus Arrius as originally planned. During his tenure, Verres was guilty of a large number of violations of law and statute: In cooperation with the Publicani , profit-oriented tax tenants from the equestrian order , he squeezed Sicily financially, and as the highest court lord of the province, he took on what appeared to be lucrative processes, and he too He rewarmed disputes, some decades ago, he confiscated mostly Greek works of art from temples, public places and from private individuals for his collection and covered provincial residents who resisted him with illegal trials, whereby he did not shy away from corporal punishment and executions of Roman citizens .

In 71 BC A delegation from several Sicilian parishes asked Cicero to bring Verres to court as their patronus . Cicero himself was 75 BC. He worked as a quaestor in Sicily and made many contacts there that helped him to collect extensive evidence during the trial of Verres. The year 70 BC BC seemed favorable, because the two consuls Gnaeus Pompeius and Marcus Licinius Crassus were preparing to take away the monopoly of power from the Senate aristocracy , which had ruled Sulla's unrestricted constitutional reform . In particular, they changed the composition of the repetition courts, which were responsible for the trial of corrupt promagistrates. They were no longer to be occupied solely with members of the senatorial class, who, as former or future governors, had no interest in restricting the possibilities of exploiting provinces, but also with members of the knightly class and with aero tribunes . Even if this reform was only completed after the Verres Process, it is still closely related to it and shows the political atmosphere in which Cicero operated.

For the year 69 it was foreseeable that the situation for Verres would be more favorable again, because then political friends of his would come to power: Verres' defenders Hortensius and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus were elected as consuls ; his brother, Marcus Caecilius Metellus, was to preside over the court de repetundis as praetor . Therefore, Verres' supporters wanted to buy time and postpone the process until the coming year if possible. The first attempt was made to remove the mandate from Cicero for the trial: Quintus Caecilius Niger, a former Quaestor des Verres, moved to be allowed to indict his former superior himself - apparently with the intention of protecting him from more serious harm. At the beginning of the year 70, Cicero had to fight for the right to indict Verres in a preliminary trial; his related speech, the Divinatio in Caecilium , has been preserved.

The responsible praetor Manlius Acilius Glabrio gave Cicero 110 days to prepare his indictment: in February 1970 he therefore traveled to Sicily for two and a half months to interview witnesses, collect evidence and request the communities to send embassies to Rome for the trial. Verres' successor as governor Lucius Caecilius Metellus , the brother of the consul-designate, had no success in his attempts to thwart Cicero's research.

The Verres party's plan to artificially reduce the time available for the process in order to be able to drag it into the following year seemed more promising. For this purpose, they had put another repetitive trial before the trial against Verres and, as Cicero states, delayed it by three months. The proceedings should therefore only begin on August 5th with the actio prima , the detailed opening speech, which should be followed by a first pass through the evidence including questioning the witnesses, which usually took about ten days. The actio secunda , the second round, which is customary in repetition proceedings , could then begin in the second half of November at the earliest due to the particularly overloaded Roman festival calendar in 70 . At the beginning of December, however, several judges should resign to take over magistrates ; the resulting necessary by-elections would make it impossible to complete the process before the turn of the year.

The process

In order to thwart the defense's plan, at the beginning of the trial on August 5, 1970, Cicero made a statement of only about an hour in which he waived the usual plea of ​​several days and announced that he would immediately enter into the taking of evidence. This lasted until August 13th. Cicero was able to prove that Verres had extorted about 40 million sesterces from the inhabitants of his province during his tenure . Because Cicero had come to an end much faster than Hortensius had expected, the second date of the trial took place on September 20. At this point Verres had already gone into exile in Massilia on the advice of his defense counsel - the evidence presented by Cicero had been too overwhelming. The court found Verres guilty and sentenced him to the payment of three million sesterces - according to Manfred Fuhrmann's assumption, this was the sum that could still be confiscated since Verres had been allowed to take his property with him into exile.

They talk

Cicero published his speeches shortly after the trial was won. This not only affected his brief statement in the actio prima , but also the much more extensive material that he had prepared in the event that Verres had faced the progress of the process. He added this as actio secunda in five books, all of which were also dressed in the form of speeches. In it, Cicero addresses the judges, the presiding praetor and the accused, uses numerous rhetorical stylistic devices , switches from irony to emotional indignation, is again emphasized factual etc. and does everything to convince an imagined audience of the guilt of the accused. Since these speeches were never actually given and are therefore a fiction , Egidius Schmalzriedt describes them as "the first work by Cicero, which is largely of a purely literary character ".

Map of Sicily with the crime scenes of Verres' art theft

In terms of content, the first book of the actio secunda deals with the previous life of Verres, a topic that is actually alien to the process, but the polemically flavored vita ante acta was a topos of the ancient court speech. Book two accuses his administration as a propaetor in the fields of administration and jurisdiction. Book three deals with the ruin of the Sicilian grain cultivation, which Verres is said to have caused. Book four is about the theft of works of art, with the looting of the Ceres sanctuary in henna playing a central role. Finally, book five deals with the persecution of innocent people by Verres and the domestic and foreign policy repercussions that his arbitrary regime resulted in. This topic was actually alien to the proceedings, since Verres was indicted de repetundis and not of judicial murder , but these incidents seemed likely to spark the indignation of the audience against the accused. Here there is also the effective description of the fate of Publius Gavius , whom Verres had whipped and crucified as the alleged spy of Spartacus : His desperate cries " Civis romanus sum " - "I am a Roman citizen!", With which he vainly asserted his right to Not to be mistreated, not to seek to demand, have become a household word .

The third and fourth books of the actio secunda are of great importance as sources for the Roman provincial administration, the tax system and for the relationship of the Roman leadership elite to the Greek visual arts.

reception

In his historical novel Imperium , Robert Harris describes in detail the trial of Verres, Cicero's role in it, and its meticulous preparations. Contrary to the facts, however, Harris portrays it as if Cicero became a well-known public figure in Rome in the first place through the Verres trial. However, this had already been the case ten years earlier, 80 BC. BC, Sextus Roscius had successfully defended.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Manfred Fuhrmann : Cicero and the Roman Republic. A biography . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2007, p. 63.
  2. ↑ Marieluise Deißmann-Merten : Verres . In: The Little Pauly . dtv, Munich 1979, Vol. 5, Sp. 1207 f.
  3. ^ Karl Christ : Crisis and Fall of the Roman Republic . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1979, p. 249 f.
  4. ^ Manfred Fuhrmann: Cicero and the Roman Republic. A biography . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2007, p. 66 ff.
  5. ^ Gerhard Krüger: Afterword . In: Cicero: Speeches against Verres I. Speech in the preliminary proceedings against Q. Caecilius. First speech against Verres. Latin / German . Reclam, Stuttgart 1983, p. 124 f.
  6. ^ Manfred Fuhrmann: Cicero and the Roman Republic. A biography . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2007, p. 67.
  7. ^ Gerhard Krüger: Afterword . In: Cicero: Speeches against Verres I. Speech in the preliminary proceedings against Q. Caecilius. First speech against Verres. Latin / German . Reclam, Stuttgart 1983, p. 126 f.
  8. ^ Manfred Fuhrmann: Cicero and the Roman Republic. A biography . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2007, p. 68 f.
  9. ^ Egidius Schmalzriedt: Actio secunda in C. Verrem . In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . Paperback edition, dtv, Munich 1986, vol. 2, p. 751.
  10. ↑ Marieluise Deißmann-Merten: Verres . In: The Little Pauly . dtv, Munich 1979, vol. 5, col. 1207 f .; Egidius Schmalzriedt: Actio secunda in C. Verrem . In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . Paperback edition, dtv, Munich 1986, vol. 2, p. 751; Manfred Fuhrmann: Cicero and the Roman Republic. A biography . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2007, p. 70 f.
  11. ↑ Georg Büchmann : Winged words . The classic treasure trove of quotes . 39th edition, edited by Winfried Hofmann. Ullstein, Berlin 1993, p. 315.
  12. ^ Manfred Fuhrmann: Cicero and the Roman Republic. A biography . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2007, p. 66 ff.

literature

  • Christoff Neumeister : Principles of forensic rhetoric shown in Cicero's court speeches. Hueber, Munich 1964 ( Langue et parole 3, ZDB -ID 532712-x ), (also: Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 1962).
  • Egidius Schmalzriedt: Actio prima in C. Verrem and Actio secunda in C. Verrem . In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . Paperback edition, dtv, Munich 1986, vol. 2, p. 750 f.

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