[1]: It is not certainly known what Cicero refers to here.
[2]: This refers to the same subject as the previous note.
[3]: In any given case the litigant parties agreed upon a judex, or accepted him whom the magistrates proposed; a party had the power of rejecting a proposed judex, though there must have been some limit to this power. (Cic. Pro Cluent. 43.) Smith, Dict. Ant. v. Judex. What the limits to this power were, or under what restrictions it was exercised, we do not now know.
[4]: Because the provinces which involved all these obligations were distributed by lot to the different magistrates.
[5]: The proconsul or praetor who had the administration of a province was attended by a quaestor. This quaestor had undoubtedly to perform the same offices as those who accompanied the armies into the field. They had also to levy those parts of the public revenue which were not farmed by the publicani. . . . In the provinces they had the same jurisdiction as the curule aediles at Rome. . . . The relation existing between a praetor or proconsul and his quaestor was according to ancient custom regarded as resembling that between a father and his son. When a quaestor died in his province, the praetor had the right to appoint a proquaestor in his stead.—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 814, v. Quaestor.
[6]: The coast of Sicily being much infested by pirates, it was the custom of the praetors to fit out a fleet every year for the protection of trade. This fleet was provided by a contribution of the maritime towns, each of which usually furnished a ship, properly appointed with men and provisions; but Verres, for a sufficient bribe, often excused them from providing the ship, and always discharged as many men as were willing to pay for it. On one occasion a fleet was fitted out, and the command of it given, not to any Roman officer, but to Cleomenes, a Syracusan, who being both incapable, and also short of hands from the proceedings of Verres, was attacked in the port of Pachynus, two of his ships taken, and the rest burnt, after which the pirates sailed into the port of Syracuse, and returned back in safety; but Verres compelled all the captains of Cleomenes’ fleet to sign a document testifying that this disaster had not happened through any deficiency in the equipment of their ships, which were fully provided with everything necessary, and then he put them to death.
[7]: This refers to the way in which Hortensius had once marked the judges whom he had bribed, as is mentioned in the speech against Caecilius.
[8]: The comitia centuriata for the election of consuls for the succeeding year were held on the 26th of July.
[9]: This arch had been erected to commemorate the victory obtained by Fabius over the Allobroges; and it was erected in the Via Sacra, as Cicero mentions in his speech Pro Plancio.
[10]: The order in which the centuries voted was decided by lot, and that which gave its vote first was called centuria praerogativa.—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 274, v. Comitia. We also find the plural praerogativae, because they were of two kinds, juniorum and seniorum.—Riddle’s Dict. in v. Praerogativa.
[11]: Caesonius was now aedile elect with Cicero. In the prosecution instituted by Cluentius against Oppianicus, while Verres was praetor urbanus, Oppianicus had tried to ensure his acquittal by bribing Stalenus, Ballus and Gutta, three of the Judges; but Caesonius divulged the corrupt nature of their motives, procured the conviction of Oppianicus, and the subsequent impeachment and punishment of the judges who had been bribed.
[12]: The Latin is, ut comperindinem. Comperendinare is, when the cause has been pleaded on each side, to order that on the third day both the defendant and the prosecutor appear to speak a second time.—Hottoman. The parties appeared before the judex on the third day (comperendinatio), unless the praetor had deferred the judicium for some sufficient reason.—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 529. v Judex.
[13]: That is to say, when the power of appealing to the tribunes of the people was taken away.
[14]: The senator was Dolabella
[15]: Cicero several times in these orations takes credit to himself for his industry and intrepidity in striking all judges liable to suspicion off the list of those who were to try this case.
[16]: The Lex Acilia was carried by Marcus Acilius Glabrio, the father of this Glabrio, when tribune of the people; it abridged the proceedings in trials for extortion, and did not allow of the adjournment and delays which were permitted by previously existing laws.
[17]: This refers to the following act of Verres:—A single pirate ship had been taken by his lieutenant; the captain bribed Verres to save his life, but the people were impatient for the execution of him and his chief officers. Verres, who had in his dungeons many Roman citizens who had offended him, muffled up their faces, so that they could not speak and could not be recognised, and produced them on the scaffold, and put them to death as the pirates for whose execution the people were clamouring.
[18]: By vote or the money was voted to the tribuni aerarii, and was paid by them to the quaestor, to be paid by him to the army.
[19]: Ariminum had been betrayed by Albinovanus, Marius’s lieutenant, to Sulla.
[20]: It was allowed to the aediles, and it was not uncommon for them to borrow of the cities of the allies celebrated and beautiful statues to adorn the shows in the games which they exhibited; and afterwards they were restored to their owners.
[21]: The custom was for the accuser to put a seal on the house and effects of the man whom he was preparing to prosecute, in order that no evidence of the theft to be imputed might be removed by the removal of the stolen goods.
[22]: The quaestores aerarii were sent to take possession in the name of the people of the effects of a man who was convicted; the sectores or brokers attended them to appraise the goods seized.
[23]: In some editions the passage from Qua de re Charidemum, to Non ad se pertinere, is transferred to the previous chapter, and inserted after deferri opertere, but there is not the least reason for this transposition, which is contrary to the authority of every manuscript.
[24]: This had happened about twelve years before, in the consulship of the younger Marius and Carbo, A.U.C. 672.
[25]: Dolabella was governor of Cilicia at the time Verres was acting as his lieutenant and proquaestor. On his return from his government he was prosecuted by Scaurus for corruption, and was condemned mainly through the evidence of Verres.
[26]: Cicero here, one may almost say, plays on the meanings of the word legatus, which means not only a lieutenant, but also an ambassador The persons of ambassadors have always, by the laws of nations, been considered to be sacred but Verres was not an ambassador, but a lieutenant.
[27]: It was in the month of February that the senate was used to give audience to the deputies from the provinces: and the consuls elect, as has been said before, were notoriously in the interest of Verres.
[28]: As slaves often acted as factors or agents for their masters in matters of business, and, as such, were often entrusted with property to a large amount, there arose a practice of allowing the slave to consider part of the gains as his own; this was his peculium . . . . According to strict law the peculium was the property of the master, but according to usage it was the property of the slave. . . . Sometimes a slave would have another slave under him, who had a peculium with respect to the first slave, just as the first slave had a peculium with respect to his master. On this practice was founded the distinction between Servi Ordinarii and Vicarii.—Smith, Dict. Ant. pp. 869, 870. v. Servus.
[29]: Hottomann makes sure that there is some corruption of the MS. here, and Graevius agrees with him. The whole passage is very obscure and the more difficult because we are not acquainted with the forms of proceeding which were followed against magistrates convicted of extortion. It is not clear, as far as appears from Cicero’s speech, that, though there was a discrepancy between the accounts of Verres and that of Dolabella, the fault was necessarily in the accounts of Verres; especially as Dolabella had been justly convicted of extortion and malversation already. Undoubtedly Cicero produced witnesses who assisted to put the case in the point of view in which he wished it to be looked at.—Desmenorius.
[30]: After the praetors were appointed, before they entered on the discharge of their duties as judges, they were in the habit of issuing an edict, setting forth the principles which they intended should govern their decisions; and they used to do this in the public assembly after they had taken the oath to observe the law.—Hottoman.
[31]: By the lex Voconia it was enacted, that no person who should be included in the census, after the census of that year, BC 169, should make any female his heir. Cicero does not state that the Lex fixed the census at any sum; but it appears from other writers that a woman could not be made haeres by any person who was rated in the census at a hundred thousand sesterces. The Lex only applied to girls, and therefore a daughter or other female could inherit ab intestato to any amount. The Vestal virgins could make women their haeredes in all cases, which was the only exception to the provisions of the law. If the terms of the law are correctly reported by Cicero, a person who was not census might make a woman his haeres whatever was the amount of his property. Still there is a difficulty about the meaning of census. If it is taken to mean that a person whose property was above a hundred thousand sesterces, and who was not included in the census, could dispose of his property as he pleased by will, the purpose of the law would be frustrated and further, the not being included in the census (neque census esset) seems rather vague. Another provision of the law, mentioned by Cicero, forbade a person who was census to give more in amount in the form of a legacy or a donatio mortis causu to any person than the haeres or haeredes should take.—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 1059, v. Voconia Lex, with especial reference to this passage.
[32]: There is a pun here on the name of Verres, which means a pig, boar: and on the name of Sacerdos, which means also a sacrificing priest.
[33]: The praetexta was a token of the tender age of the youth, as it was only worn by boys under the age of seventeen, and then was exchanged by the toga virilis.
[34]: Dressed, that is, in the mourning robe in which defendants in criminal prosecutions usually appeared in court.
[35]: The bulla was an ornament of gold worn by children, suspended from their necks, especially by the children of the noble and wealthy; it was worn by children of both sexes, as a token of paternal affection and of high birth. Instead of the bulla of gold, boys of inferior rank, including the children of freedmen, wore only a piece of leather.—Smith, Dict. Ant. v. Bulla.
[36]: This temple of Castor had been vowed by Postumius, the dictator at the battle of Lake Regillus. It was decorated with statues and other embellishments by Lucius Metellus surnamed Dalmaticus, out of the wealth he acquired by, and the spoils he brought back from, the war in Illyricum.
[37]: The praetors appointed the judges, but had not themselves the right of sitting as judges in all criminal cases, only in a few special ones.
[38]: This law had been passed by Sulla to take away from the tribunes the power of interposing their veto, but Pompeius restored it to them.
[39]: In the trial between Cluentius and Oppianicus, Junius was the presiding judge. The imputation on him was, that he had used fraudulent tricks to pack the tribunal, in selecting by lot the judges who were to act instead of those who had been objected to by both parties.
[40]: The allusion is to the golden ring which Verres, when leaving Sicily, had publicly decreed to his secretary, as is mentioned also in the fourth oration against Verres, that De Re Frumentaria.
[41]: With the passing of special enactments for the punishment of particular offences was introduced the practice of forming a body of judices for the trial of such offences as the enactments were directed against. Thus it is said that the lex Calpurnia de pecuniis repetundis established the album judicum, or the body out of which the judices were to be chosen. It is not known what was the number of the judges so constituted, but it has been conjectured that the number was three hundred and fifty, and that ten were chosen from each tribe, and thus the origin of the phrase, decuriae judicum is explained.—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 531, v. Judex.
[42]: [The rest of this oration is lost.]
[43]: Sicily had two quaestors, one for the western or Lilybaean district, one for the Syracusan.
[44]: This is another pun on the name of Verres, from its similarity in sound to the word verro, I sweep.
[45]: It was forbidden by the Roman Law, as by our own, for the advocates to give evidence against his clients of matters which had come to his knowledge by confidential communication.
[46]: At Rome the praetor urbanus, in the provinces the propraetors and the proconsuls, decided whether there was reason for an action at law, and it they decided that there was, then they assigned judges to try the action.
[47]: The text here is very much disputed, and is probably wholly corrupt. I have endeavoured to give what is certainly the general sense intended to be conveyed, though it can scarcely be extracted from the Latin Graevius reads, . . .Si Siculi essent, tum si eorum legibus. . . printing it all in large letters, as if they were the words of a decree of Verres.
[48]: He was in fact his son-in-law elect.
[49]: In honour of Quintus Mucius Scaevola, who had been praetor in that province, and had established a high character for lenity and incorruptibility.
[50]: There is a recurrence here to the pun on the word verres, a boar.
[51]: The compromissum was money deposited by both parties as a security for their obeying the decision of the judge, though the same term was also employed to express the engagement by which parties agreed to settle their differences by arbitration, without the intervention of the praetor.—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 530, v. Judex.
[52]: In the month of February, as has been said before, the senate gave audience to the deputies from foreign nations, and these deputies were accustomed to bring rich presents to the senators who favoured their respective nations.
[53]: Hortensius is meant here.
[54]: Bulbus and Stalenus had been judges in the action between Cluentius and Oppianicus, which had been already mentioned, and had been convicted of corruption in that trial.
[55]: The Latin is, domo ejus emigrat, atque adeo exit, nam jam ante migrarat. Emigrat has only a simple meaning; exit is said of him who goes forth without any baggage; he then appeared migrasse when he plundered Sthenius of all his furniture and plate, and removed it to his own house.—Garaton.
[56]: The Latin word is Venereus: the officers who attended on the Roman magistrate in Sicily were so called from Venus Erycina, who was the patron goddess of all the west of Sicily.
[57]: A capital charge at Rome does not necessarily mean one affecting the life of the prisoner, but his status as a free citizen. A charge which involved infamia, disfranchisement, was res capitalis; though as it is impossible to render caput when used in this sense so as to give its accurate meaning, I have been forced occasionally to render it life.
[58]: To turn the pen was to erase what had been written At one end the stilus was sharpened to a point for scratching the characters on the wax, while the other end, being fat and circular served to render the surface of the tablets smooth again, and so to obliterate what had been written. Thus vertere stilum means to erase, and hence to correct—Smith, Dict. Ant. in v. . . .
[59]: I have in some instances translated hospes friend, and oftener still connection, though either word is far from representing adequately the idea of the Latin hospes, because, as modern manners are unacquainted with the usage, modern languages have no word to express it.
[60]: The original puns on the resemblance between caelum, heaven, and caelatum, carved or chased.
[61]: Athenio was a Cilician slave who had headed a revolt of slaves in Sicily, A.U.C. 650. He was at last defeated and slain by the consul Aquilius, A.U.C. 651.
[62]: See the note on the next oration, De Re Frumentaria, for an explanation of this; and on points connected with the topic of corn, and the societas of the publicani, see the Argument of the next oration.
[63]: The foederatae civitates were those states which were connected with Rome by a treaty, foedus. The name did not include Roman colonies, or Latin colonies, or any place which had obtained the Roman civitas. They were independent states, yet under a general liability to furnish a contingent for the Roman army; they were nearly all confined within the limits of Italy, though Gades, Saguntum and Massilia were exceptions, as well as Tauromenium. Vide Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 427.
[64]: This is said of the officers of the court who have the account in their keeping during the trial.
[65]: c. Verr. act. ii. lib. iii.
[66]: Fruges minutae probably pulse—Riddle’s Lat. Dict. in v. Minutus.
[67]: Cic. c. Verr. ii. iii. 7.
[68]: Cic. c. Verr. ii. iii. 64
[69]: 33
[70]: Cic. c. Verr. i. 51, 52
[71]: Cic. c. Verr. ii. 74
[72]: Cic. c. Verr. ii. iii. 39
[73]: Cic. c. Verr. ii. iii. 57
[74]: Cic. c. Verr. ii. iii. 41.
[75]: Cic. c. Verr. ii. iii. 77
[76]: ch. 45,
[77]: 46
[78]: Thensa was the chariot or car on which the images of the gods were carried in the Ludi Circenses.
[79]: The recuperatores were a kind of judges, usually appointed by the praetors in some particular kinds of action, and especially in those relating to money.
[80]: The Latin word here is conventus, which often occurs in these orations; properly it means any assembly of men, but when the Romans had reduced foreign countries into the form of provinces, it assumed a nave definite meaning. Sometimes it was applied to the whole body of Roman citizens who were either permanently or temporarily settled in a province. Also in order to facilitate the administration of justice, a province was divided into a number of districts, each of which was called conventus. . . Roman citizens living in a province, at certain times of the year, fixed by the proconsul, assembled in the chief town of the district, and this meeting bore the name of conventus. At this conventus litigant, parties applied to the proconsul, who selected a number of judges from the conventus to try their causes. The proconsul himself presided at the trial, and pronounced the sentence according to the views of the judges who were his assessors.—Smith, Dict. Ant in v. Conventus.
[81]: Orellius considers that all the figures and measures in this and the next chapter are in a state of hopeless corruption and confusion; and they are certainly not very easily reconciled with each other. The effect of the oration in general is not weakened, but we must not suppose that we have the exact statements which were addressed by Cicero to the Judges.
[82]: The Latin is accensus. The accensus was a public officer who attended on several of the Roman magistrates. He anciently preceded the consul, who had not the fasces. . . . It was his duty to summon the people to the assemblies, and those who had law-suits to court; and also, by command of the consul and praetor, to proclaim the time, when it was the third hour, the sixth, &c. Accensi also attended on the governors of provinces, and were commonly freedmen of the magistrate on whom they attended.—Smith, Dict. Ant. in voce.
[83]: The Latin is viator. Viator was a servant who attended upon and executed the commands of certain Roman magistrates, to whom he bore the same relation that the lictor did to other magistrates. The name viator was derived from the circumstance of their being chiefly employed in messages, either to call upon senators to attend the meeting of the senate, or to summon people to the comitia.—Smith, Dict. Ant. in voce.
[84]: The Latin is apparitor, which was the general name for the public servants of the magistrates at Rome,—accensi, carnifex, lictores, scribae, &c. &c. They were called apparitores because they were at hand to execute the commands of the magistrates. Their service or attendance was called apparitio.—Smith, Dict. Ant. in voce.
[85]: The Latin is caede, concide. N.B. caede concide, Cic. proverbially; i.e. use every means in your power—Riddle’s Lat. Dict. in Concido.
[86]: The Latin is divisor, on which Riddle says, a decider a distributor. There were also divisores at the comitia, through whom the candidates caused money to be distributed among the tribes, this was a name given by way of reproach, and not that of an office.
[87]: Towards the close of the republic the interest of money became due on the first of every month; therefore centesimae usurae, which seems to have been reckoned the ordinary rate of interest at Rome, was a payment of the hundredth part of the debt every month, or twelve hundredths, or, as we say, twelve per cent every year; binae centesimae were twice as much. Niebuhr is of opinion that the monthly rate of the centesimae was of foreign origin, and first adopted at Rome in the time of Sulla. The old yearly rate established by the Twelve Tables was unciarium foenus, a little over eight per-cent a year. See Smith, Dict Ant. p. 525, v. Interest.
[88]: These decuries were colleges, or guilds, in which the different bodies of inferior officers, librarians, clerks, lictors, accensi, nomenclators, &c were enrolled.
[89]: Caius Cato was the grandson of Marcus Cato the censor, and nephew of the younger Scipio Africanus; he had been praetor of Sicily, but was convicted of having received eighteen thousand sesterces illegally.
[90]: This has been mentioned before, owing to the way in which Verres had disabled the fleet for his private gain, excusing towns from providing ships who were inclined to pay for the relaxation, and discharging too all the sailors who chose to buy their discharges, it was so powerless that a small squadron of pirates sailed into the harbour of Syracuse and burnt it. Afterwards, a single pirate ship was taken, the officers of which purchased their pardon of Verres, who, not daring to avow it, as the people clamoured for their execution, brought on the scaffold the captains of those Roman ships which had been burnt, and officers who he feared might hereafter bear witness against him, with their heads muffled up so that they could not be recognised, and had them executed as the pirates.
[91]: A denarius was about eight pence half-penny; a sestertius only fraction over two-pence.
[92]: The Latin word is imperium. Imperium(as opposed to Potestas) is the power which was conferred by the state upon an individual who was appointed to command an army. . . . The imperiumwas as necessary for the governor of a province, as for a general who merely commanded the armies of the republic; as without it he could not exercise military authority. . . . It was conferred by a special law, and was limited, if not by the terms in which it was conferred, at least by usage. It could not be held or exercised within the city.—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 508, v. Imperium.
[93]: The Latin word in each case is potestas. According to Paulus, potestas, as applied to a magistrate, is equivalent to imperium. . . But potestasis applied to magistrates who had not the imperiumas, for instance, to quaestors and tribunes of the people; and potestasand imperiumare often opposed in Cicero. Thus it seems that potestas, like many other Roman terms, had both a wider signification and a narrower one; in its wider signification it might mean all the power that was delegated to any person by the state, whatever might be the extent of that power; in its narrower signification, it was on the one hand equivalent to imperiumand on the other, it expressed the power of these functionaries who had not the imperium. Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 727 v. Potestas.
[94]: Attalus, king of Pergamus, had been the inventor of weaving gold thread into tapestry work, and therefore tapestry with gold threads interwoven in it was called by his name.
[95]: Thericles was a potter in the time of Aristophanes, who made earthenware vessels of a peculiar black clay. In subsequent time, any goblets made in imitation of his, whether of wood, silver, or glass, were called Thericlean.—Graevius.
[96]: The Capitol had been burnt in the civil war between Marius and Sulla, and it was now being restored under the superintendence of Quintus Catulus, to whom that office had been entrusted by the senate.
[97]: We have the same advantage as, or rather greater advantages than Cicero in this respect, for we have heard the story from our boyhood told far more beautifully than any Sicilian ever imagined it. See Ovid Fasti, iv. 419.
[98]: Neapolismeaning new city, or as we might say, Newtown, from the Greek words Νέα πόλις, as Tyche is the Greek name of Fortune—Τύχηcompare with this passage the description of Syracusegiven by Thucydides in his sixth and seventh books.
[99]: The Latin is quos vectigales aut stipendiarius fuerant—Stipendiariiand vectigalesare thus distinguished: Stipendiariiare those who pay annually a fixed sum as tribute; vectigales, those who pay in proportion to their property or income.—Riddle’s Dict. v. Stipendiarius.
[100]: Theoractus seems a sort of nickname, to indicate his insanity, being derived from Θεός, God, and ῥήγνυμι, to break; while Theomnastas derived from Θεόςand μέμνημαι, to remember.
[101]: Temsa is a town of the Bruttii, whither some of the relics of Spartacus’s army had fled. Verres had passed through it, or close to it, on his return from Sicily.
[102]: The Fetiales were a college of Roman priests, who acted as the guardians of the public faith; it was their province to determine the circumstances under which satisfaction was to be demanded from, or hostilities declared against any foreign state. They were the especial arbiters of peace, of war, and of treaties. Their number was probably twenty. They were selected from the most noble families, and their office was held for life. The name is of uncertain derivation—See Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 416, in voce.
[103]: See the first book of this second pleading, c. 26.
[104]: See the 27th chapter of the first book of the second pleading against Verres.
[105]: See the seventh book of Thucydides.
[106]: Dianium was a town in Spain which had been occupied by Sertorius.
[107]: See the first book of this second pleading against Verres, c. 37.
[108]: This refers to the tablets on which the judges signified their decision, which, as has been said before, were covered with wax.