Imperium

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.