Imperium

from all sides. It was some time before he was able to proceed. “Due to ill health,” he repeated, “brought on by the strain of these proceedings, and wishing to spare the state any further disruption, my client, Gaius Verres, no longer proposes to offer a defense to the charges brought by the special prosecutor.”
    He sat down. There was applause from the Sicilians at this concession, but little response from the spectators. They were waiting to take their lead from Cicero. He stood, thanked Hortensius for his statement—“somewhat shorter than the speeches he is in the habit of making in these surroundings”—and demanded the maximum penalty under the Cornelian Law: a full loss of civil rights, in perpetuity, “so that never again can the shadow of Gaius Verres menace his victims or threaten the just administration of the Roman republic.” This elicited the first real cheer of the morning.
    “I wish,” continued Cicero, “that I could undo his crimes and restore to both men and gods all that he has robbed from them. I wish I could give back to Juno the offerings and adornments of her shrines at Melita and Samos. I wish Minerva could see again the decorations of her temple at Syracuse. I wish Diana’s statue could be restored to the town of Segesta, and Mercury’s to the people of Tyndaris. I wish I could undo the double injury to Ceres, whose images were carried away from both Henna and Catina. But the villain has fled, leaving behind only the stripped walls and bare floors of his houses here in Rome and in the country. These are the only assets that can be seized and sold. His counsel assesses the value of these at one and a half million sesterces, and this is what I must ask for and accept as recompense for his crimes.”
    There was a groan, and someone shouted, “Not enough!”
    “It is not enough. I agree. And perhaps some of those in this court who defended Verres when his star was rising, and who promised him their support if they found themselves among his jurors, might inspect their consciences—might inspect, indeed, the contents of their villas!”
    This brought Hortensius to his feet to complain that the prosecutor was talking in riddles.
    “Well,” responded Cicero in a flash, “as Verres equipped him with an ivory sphinx, the consul-elect should find no difficulty solving riddles.”
    It cannot have been a premeditated joke, as Cicero had no idea what Hortensius was going to say. Or perhaps, on second thought, having written that, I am being naïve, and it was actually part of that store of spontaneous witticisms which Cicero regularly laid up by candlelight to use should the opportunity arise. Whatever the truth, it was proof of how important humor can be on a public occasion, for nobody now remembers a thing about that last day in court except Cicero’s crack about the sphinx. I am not even sure, in retrospect, that it is particularly funny. But it brought the house down and transformed what could have been an embarrassing speech into yet another triumph. “Sit down quickly”: that was always Molon’s advice when things were going well, and Cicero took it. I handed him a towel and he mopped his face and dried his hands as the applause continued. And with that, his exertions in the prosecution of Gaius Verres were at an end.

    THAT AFTERNOON, the Senate met for its final debate before it went into a fifteen-day recess for Pompey’s games. By the time Cicero had finished smoothing matters over with the Sicilians, he was late for the start of the session, and we had to run together from the Temple of Castor right across the Forum to the Senate House. Crassus, as the presiding consul for the month, had already called the house to order and was reading the latest dispatch from Lucullus on the progress of the campaign in the East. Rather than interrupt him by making a conspicuous entry, Cicero stood at the bar of the chamber, and we listened to Lucullus’s report. The aristocratic general had, by his own account, scored a series of crushing victories, entering the kingdom of Tigranes, defeating the king himself in battle, slaughtering tens of thousands of the enemy, advancing deeper into hostile territory to capture the city of Nisibis, and taking the king’s brother as hostage.
    “Crassus must feel like throwing up,” Cicero whispered to me gleefully. “His only consolation will be to know that Pompey is even more furiously jealous.” And indeed, Pompey, sitting beside