Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

SPEECHES
He executed all the prisoners who were not goodlooking, and distributed the remaining
loot to his friends and hangers-on, sending six musicians to a friend at Rome. But
nothing was seen again of the pirate captain. Would-be spectators of his being led in
chains and beheaded were fobbed off. A man who was presumably a substitute was
kept, not in the famous Syracusan quarries, where the imposture would have been
detected, but in comfortable circumstances in an inland town which had never seen
any sort of pirate but Verres' agent. Meanwhile he did have others beheaded, not all
together (since he knew there were Syracusans who would count them) but in driblets.
Yet some did keep a count, and demanded to see the rest of them. So Verres substituted
some Roman citizens he had casually imprisoned on trumped up charges. Their
friends recognized them though they were hooded, and protested in vain. But provoked
in court, Verres lost his head: he admitted he had not beheaded all the pirate
captains, but had kept two imprisoned in his own house - because he knew he would
be charged with receiving bribes for not having executed the real pirate captain. No
one doubted that he had in fact been so bribed, and that diese two were in reserve in
case that other substitute died or escaped (32—79)-
Cicero now returns to the lunch parties at those summer quarters by the bay.
Verres and his young son were the only men present — if you could call them men -
except that his freedman Timarchides was occasionally invited. Apart from Tertia,
the women were all wives of Syracusans. Among them was Nike, wife of Cleomenes,
said to be very goodlooking. Even Verres would have felt uncomfortable if her husband
had been around; so he put this Syracusan Greek in command of Roman naval
forces, though there were plenty of Romans, up to the rank of quaestor, on his staff.
And why, when so many Sicilian cities had always been loyal, choose a citizen of
Syracuse, so suspect a city that ever since its capture by Marcellus no citizen had been
allowed to live on its strategic island of Ortygia? Cleomenes' squadron of seven
vessels set sail with skeleton crews only, most of the sailors having paid Verres for
immunity from service. The Governor, unseen for days past, turned out to watch it,
in a purple Greek cloak and a long, skirted tunic, leaning on a woman's arm. After
four days at sea the ships put in at Pachynus because he had kept them so short of
provisions; and while Cleomenes enjoyed himself in Verrine fashion, the sailors were
reduced to grubbing up the roots of palm trees to eat. News then reached the inebriated
captain that there were pirates at Odyssea. He had hoped to fill up the crews from the
land garrison, but that too proved to have been depleted by Verrine exemptions. His
flagship, far superior for action to those of the pirates, was the fastest, and got away.
The last two ships were picked off, and the rest, having put in at Helorus following
him, were burnt by the pirates when darkness fell (80—91).
Verres meanwhile had returned to the palace with his train of women. So strict was
his discipline, that his orders that no one should disturb him were obeyed even in this
crisis, while poor Cleomenes found no wife at home to comfort him in his troubles.
Alerted however, not by any official beacon but by the glare of the burning ships,
a fiercely hostile crowd gadiered. Finding the Governor himself obviously dazed and
only half awake, they encouraged each other to arm themselves and occupy the forum
and island. The pirates, anxious no doubt to take their only chance of viewing
Syracuse and its splendid fortifications, put to sea again next day and with their four
ships entered the Grand Harbour, the heart of the city, passing Verres' deserted
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008