Imperium

terrified, both for his safety and my own, but he stretched out his arms as if he was embracing the whole world. When they had settled him on their shoulders they spun him around to face the Forum. The blast of applause was like the opening of a furnace door and the chant of “Cic-er-o! Cic-er-o! Cic-er-o!” split the skies of Rome.

    AND THAT, AT LAST, was the end of Gaius Verres. We never learned exactly what went on inside the temple after Glabrio suspended the sitting, but Cicero’s opinion was that Hortensius and Metellus made it clear to their client that further defense was useless. Their own dignity and authority were in tatters: they simply had to cut him adrift before any more harm was done to the reputation of the Senate. It no longer mattered how lavishly he had bribed the jury—no member of it would dare to vote to acquit him after the scenes they had just witnessed. At any rate, Verres slipped out of the temple when the mob had dispersed, and he fled the city at nightfall—disguised, some say, as a woman—riding full pelt for southern Gaul. His destination was the port of Massalia, where exiles could traditionally swap their hard-luck stories and pretend they were on the bay of Naples.
    All that remained to do now was to fix the level of his fine, and when Cicero returned home he called a meeting to discuss the appropriate figure. Nobody will ever know the full value of what Verres stole during his years in Sicily—I have heard an estimate of forty million—but Lucius, as usual, was eager for the most radical course: the seizure of every asset Verres possessed. Quintus thought ten million would be about right. Cicero was curiously silent for a man who had just recorded such a stupendous victory, and he sat in his study moodily toying with a metal stylus. Early in the afternoon, we received a message from Hortensius, relaying an offer from Verres to pay one million into court as compensation. Lucius was particularly appalled—“an insult,” he called it—and Cicero had no hesitation in sending the man away with a flea in his ear. An hour later he was back, with what Hortensius called his “final figure”: a settlement of one and a half million. This time, Cicero dictated a longer reply:

From: Marcus Tullius Cicero
To: Quintus Hortensius Hortalus
Greetings!
In view of the ludicrously low sum your client is proposing as compensation for his unparalleled wickedness, I intend asking Glabrio to allow me to continue the prosecution tomorrow, when I shall exercise my right to address the court on this and other matters.

    “Let us see how much he and his aristocratic friends relish the prospect of having their noses rubbed further into their own filth,” he exclaimed to me. I finished sealing the letter, and when I returned from giving it to the messenger he set about dictating the speech he proposed to deliver the next day—a slashing attack on the aristocrats for prostituting their great names, and the names of their ancestors, in defense of such a scoundrel as Verres. Urged on by Lucius in particular, he poured out his loathing. “We are aware with what jealousy, with what dislike, the merit and energy of ‘new men’ are regarded by certain of the ‘nobles’; that we have only to shut our eyes for a moment to find ourselves caught in some trap; that if we leave them the smallest opening for any suspicion or charge of misconduct, we have to suffer for it at once; that we must never relax our vigilance, and never take a holiday. We have enemies—let us face them; tasks to perform—let us shoulder them; not forgetting that an open and declared enemy is less formidable than one who hides himself and says nothing!”
    “There go another thousand votes,” muttered Quintus.
    The afternoon wore on in this way, without any answer from Hortensius, until, at length, not long before dusk, there was a commotion from the street, and soon afterwards Eros came running into the study with the breathless news that Pompey the Great himself was in the vestibule. This was indeed extraordinary, but Cicero and his brother had time to do no more than blink at one another before that familiar military voice could be heard barking, “Where is he? Where is the greatest orator of the age?”
    Cicero muttered an oath beneath his breath and went out into the tablinum, followed by Quintus, then Lucius, and finally myself, just in time to see the senior consul come striding out of the atrium. The confines of