Imperium

when. Since you saw a chance to use him as a way of advancing yourself, you shitty little seditious lawyer.”
    “Take this down, Tiro,” Cicero said without turning his gaze from Metellus. “I want a verbatim record. Such intimidation is entirely admissible in court.”
    But I was too frightened even to move, for there was a lot of shouting now from the other men in the room, and Metellus had jumped to his feet. “I order you,” he said, “to return the documents you stole this morning!”
    “And I remind the governor,” replied Cicero calmly, “with the greatest respect, that he is not on the parade ground, that he is addressing a free Roman citizen, and I shall discharge the duty I have been assigned!”
    Metellus had his hands on his hips and was leaning forward, his broad chin thrust out. “You will undertake to return those documents now, in private—or you will be ordered to return them tomorrow in court, before the whole of Syracuse!”
    “I choose to take my chance in court, as always,” said Cicero, with a tiny inclination of his head. “Especially knowing what an impartial and honorable judge I shall have in you, Lucius Metellus—the worthy heir of Verres!”
    I know I have this conversation exactly right, because the moment we were outside the chamber—which was very soon after this last exchange—Cicero and I reconstructed it while it was still fresh in our memories, in case he did indeed have occasion to use it in court. (The fair copy remains to this day among his papers.)
    “That went well,” he joked, but his hand and voice were trembling, for it was now plain that his whole mission, perhaps even his mortal safety, were in the gravest peril. “But if you seek power,” he said, almost to himself, “and if you are a new man, this is what you have to do. Nobody is ever going to simply hand it to you.”
    We returned at once to the house of Flavius and worked by the weak light of smoky Sicilian candles and stuttering oil lamps all night, to prepare for court the following morning. Frankly, I did not see what Cicero could possibly hope to achieve, except humiliation. Metellus was never going to award judgment in his favor, and besides—as Cicero had privately conceded—the right of law lay with the tax company. But fortune, as the noble Terence has it, favors the brave, and she certainly favored Cicero that night. It was young Frugi who made the breakthrough. I have not mentioned Frugi as often in this narrative as I should have done, chiefly because he had that kind of quiet decency which does not attract much comment, and which is only noticed when its possessor has gone. He had spent the day on the tax-company records, and in the evening, despite having caught Cicero’s cold, he refused to go to bed and switched his attention instead to the evidence collected by the Syracusan senate. It must have been long after midnight when I suddenly heard him utter a cry and beckon us all over to the table. Laid out across it was a series of wax tablets, detailing the company’s banking activities. Taken on their own, the list of names, dates, and sums loaned meant little. But once Frugi compared it with the list compiled by the Syracusans of those who had been forced to pay a bribe to Verres, we could see they tallied exactly: his victims had raised the funds they needed to buy him off by borrowing. Better still was the effect produced when he laid out a third set of accounts: the company’s receipts. On the same dates, exactly the same sums had been redeposited with the tax company by a character named “Gaius Verrucius.” The depositor’s identity was so crudely forged, we all burst out laughing, for obviously the name originally entered had been “Verres,” but in every case the last two letters had been scraped off and “ucius” added as a replacement.
    “So Verres demanded a bribe,” said Cicero, with growing excitement, “and insisted his victim borrow the necessary cash from Carpinatius—no doubt at an extortionate rate of interest. Then he reinvested the bribe with his friends in the tax company, so that he not only protected his capital but earned an extra share of the profits as well! Brilliant villain! Brilliant, greedy, stupid villain!” And after executing a brief dance of delight he flung his arms around the embarrassed Frugi and kissed him warmly on both cheeks.
    Of all Cicero’s courtroom triumphs, I should say that the one he enjoyed the following day was