Imperium

a Roman knight, Lucius Flavius, an old friend of Cicero’s, who had plenty of stories of Verres’s corruption and cruelty to add to our already bulging stock. There was the tale of the pirate captain, Heracleo, who had been able to sail right into Syracuse at the head of a squadron of four small galleys, pillage the warehouses, and leave without encountering any resistance. Captured some weeks later, farther up the coast at Megara, neither he nor his men had been paraded as prisoners, and there were rumors that Verres had exchanged him for a large ransom. Then there was the horrible business of a Roman banker from Spain, Lucius Herennius, who had been dragged into the forum of Syracuse one morning, summarily denounced as a spy and, on Verres’s orders, beheaded—this despite the pleadings of his friends and business associates, who had rushed to the scene. The similarity of Herennius’s case to that of Gavius in Messana was striking: both Romans, both from Spain, both involved in commerce, both accused of spying, and both executed without a hearing or a proper trial.
    That night, after dinner, Cicero received a messenger from Rome. He read the letter, then immediately excused himself and took Lucius, young Frugi, and me aside. The dispatch was from his brother Quintus, and it contained grave news. Hortensius was up to his old tricks again. The extortion court had unexpectedly given permission for a prosecution to be brought against the former governor of Achaia. The prosecutor, Dasianus, a known associate of Verres, had traveled to Greece and back to present his evidence two days before the deadline set for Cicero’s return. Quintus urged his brother to return to Rome as quickly as possible to retrieve the situation.
    “It is a trap,” said Lucius, “to make you panic, and cut short your expedition here.”
    “Probably so,” agreed Cicero. “But I cannot afford to take the risk. If this other prosecution slips into the court’s schedule before ours, and if Hortensius spins it out as he likes to do, our case could be pushed back until after the elections. By then Hortensius and Metellus will be consuls-elect. That youngest Metellus brother will no doubt be a praetor-elect, and this third will still be governor here. How will that be for having the odds stacked against us?”
    “So what are we going to do?”
    “We have wasted too much time pursuing the small fry in this investigation,” said Cicero. “We need to take the war into the enemy’s camp and loosen some tongues among those who really know what has been going on—the Romans themselves.”
    “I agree,” said Lucius. “The question is: how?”
    Cicero glanced around and lowered his voice before replying. “We shall carry out a raid,” he announced. “A raid on the offices of the revenue collectors.”
    Even Lucius looked slightly green at that. Short of marching up to the governor’s palace and attempting to arrest Metellus, this was the most provocative gesture Cicero could make. The revenue collectors were a syndicate of well-connected men, of equestrian rank, operating under statutory protection, whose investors would certainly include some of the wealthiest senators in Rome. Cicero himself, as a specialist in commercial law, had built up a network of supporters among exactly this class of businessman. He knew it was a risky strategy, but he was not to be dissuaded, for it was here, he was sure, that the dark heart of Verres’s murderous corruption would be found. He sent the messenger back to Rome that same night with a letter for Quintus, announcing that he had only one more thing left to do, and that he would depart the island within a few days.
    Cicero now had to make his preparations with great speed and secrecy. He deliberately timed his raid to take place two days hence, at the least-expected hour—just before dawn on a major public holiday, Terminalia. The fact that this was a day sacred to Terminus, the ancient god of boundaries and good neighbors, only made it more symbolically attractive. Flavius, our host, agreed to come with us, to point out the location of the offices. In the interim, I went down to the harbor in Syracuse and found the trusty skipper I had used years before, when Cicero made his ill-judged return to Italy; hired a ship and crew; and told him to be ready to sail before the end of the week. The evidence we had already collected was packed in trunks and stowed aboard, and the ship was placed under