empire of Rome. We shall, therefore, briefly give the dates and periods of Verres's public career, and dwell rather on the history of the cause than on that of the criminal.

That he took an active part in Sulla's proscription may be inferred from Cicero (Verrin. i. 1. § 16), who, while exploring the darkest recesses of the defendant's life, purposely passes over his apprenticeship in crime,—“ Omni tempore Sullano ex accusatione circumscripto -as common to the times, and not peculiar to the man. For a like reason he excepts from exposure whatever vices and excesses Verres had displayed or committed previous to his holding a public magistracy.

decessor in the Cilician quaestorship, C. Malleolus, of his patrimony: he exacted from the heir and executors of P. Junius a heavy fine for neglecting to repair the temple of Castor; and intercepted the fine from the state's coffers; and, instead of rebuilding, whitewashed the defective columns of the temple; his edicts varied with the person or rather with the price, and were drawn in defiance of precedent, law, and common sense; and unless his political preferences were for the moment suspended by his avarice or his lust, his summary decisions were invariably favourable to the oligar chical party. In B. c. 74, occurred the notorious Judicium Junianum [JUNIUS, No. 5]. In this Verres was quaestor to Cn. Papirius Carbo transaction, Verres was not so deeply involved as (No. 7) in his third consulship B. c. 82. He was others of his party; but neither was he exempt therefore at that period of the Marian faction from the ignominy attached to the verdict, since (Schol. Gronov. in Verrin. p. 387, Orelli), which he declared that the list of the judices had been he quitted for that of Sulla, betraying Carbo by tampered with, and their signatures forged, himdesertion, and the republic by embezzling the self having previously subscribed the list, and monies with which as quaestor he was intrusted sanctioned the verdict officially. The repeal of for the administration of Cisalpine Gaul. Sulla Sulla's laws had been guarded against by the sent his new adherent to Beneventum, where he dictator himself, who imposed a mulct on any was allowed a share of the confiscated estates, person who should attempt to abrogate or modify but at the same time narrowly watched by the any portion of the Cornelian constitution. But veterans. He was, however, called to account for in B. c. 75, M. Aurelius Cotta as consul brought his receipts from the treasury by the quaestores forward a bill for exempting the tribunes of the aerarii for B. c. 81, with what result is unknown. plebs from that clause of the Lex Cornelia Verres next appears in the suite of Cn. Cornelius which excluded them from the higher offices of Dolabella (No. 6), praetor of Cilicia in B. c. 80- the commonwealth, and Q. Opimius, tribune of 79, and one of the most rapacious and oppressive | the plebs, introduced it to the comitia. Opinius, of the provincial governors. On the death of the in the following year, was condemned and fined regular quaestor C. Malleolus, Verres, who had by Verres for this offence: his property was put up been Dolabella's legatus, became his pro-quaestor. to auction, and Verres enriched himself equally at In Verres Dolabella found an active and unscru- the expense of the defendant and the treasury. pulous agent, and, in return, connived at his ex- On the expiration of his praetorship, Verres obcesses. But the proquaestor proved as faithless tained the wealthiest and most important province to Dolabella as he had been to Carbo; turned of the empire. Sicily was not merely the granary evidence against him on his prosecution by M. of Rome, but from its high civilisation, its proScaurus in B. c. 78, and by shifting his own crimes ductive soil and vicinity to Italy, had long been to the praetor's account, and stipulating for a par- the favourite resort of Roman capitalists. The yoke don for himself, mainly contributed to the verdict of conquest pressed more lightly on this island against Dolabella. During this pro-quaestorship than on any other of the state's dependencies. Verres first acquired or affected a taste for the fine The ancient Greek nobility had rather gained arts. It is not clear, indeed, whether Cicero be- than lost by their change of rulers: the fiscal relieved him to possess a genuine relish for the gulations of the Hieros and Gelos were retained: beautiful, or whether he considered the legate's the exemptions which the Marcelli had granted appropriations as a mere brutal lust of pillage, and and the Scipios confirmed, were respected; and a means of purchasing the support of the oligarchy the Sicilians hardly regretted their turbulent deat Rome. The criminality of the acts was the mocracies in the enjoyment of personal freedom same. But Cicero at one time describes Verres, and social luxury. Verres and his predecessor ironically, as a fine gentleman and a connoisseur; Sacerdos came to the government of that province and, at another, as better fitted for a porter than at a critical period. Two servile wars had rean artist (Verrin. ii. 4. 44, 57). The wealth cently swept over the island, and during the two Verres acquired in Achaia and Asia, he employed years of Verres's administration, Italy itself was in securing a praetorship in B. c. 74. The lot as- ravaged by Spartans, and the Mediterranean signed to him the urbana jurisdictio, and he re- swarmed with the Cilician pirates. The loss or the hearsed at Rome the blunders, the venality, and retention of Sicily was, therefore, an object of higher the licence, which afterwards marked his Sicilian moment than ever to Rome; and even an ordinary administration. His official duties were mostly praetor might have risked by supineness or cadischarged by his clerks and his freed woman and price this portion of the state-demesnes. But mistress Chelidon. Without the interest of the in Verres, Sicily received a governor, who, even in latter, indeed, nothing could be obtained from tranquil times, would have tried its allegiance or him, and she, accordingly, charged high for exert-provoked disaffection. Accompanied by his son, ing it. The city-praetor was the guardian of his daughter's husband, and a suite of rapacious orphans; the curator of public buildings, civil and clerks, parasites and pandars, he began his extorreligious; the chief judge in equity; and the sit- tions even before he landed in the island. No ting magistrate within the bounds of the pomae- class of its inhabitants was exempted from his rium, during his year of office. In each of avarice, his cruelty, or his insults. The wealthy these departments, according to Cicero, Verres vio- had money or works of art to yield up; the lated a trust. He defrauded the son of his pre- middle classes might be made to pay heavier im

afterwards unblushing corruption, had been his steps to preferment. He was supported by the Metelli, the Scipios, and Hortensius, because their interests were accidentally involved with his. But the reasons which detract from the individual importance of Verres add historical value to the impeachment. Verres was the representative of the grosser elements of a revolutionary era, as Catiline was of its periodical crimes and turbulence. And with every allowance for exaggeration on Cicero's part, Verres was a type of Roman provincial governors, and, as such, his career forms no unimportant chapter in the annals of the expiring commonwealth."

Cicero had been Lilybaean quaestor in Sicily in B. C. 75, and on his departure from that island had promised his good offices to the Sicilians, whenever they might demand them. They committed to him the prosecution of Verres. For a rising

posts; and the exports of the vineyards, the arable land, and the loom, be saddled with heavier burdens. By capricious changes or violent abrogation of their compacts, Verres reduced to beggary both the producers and the farmers of the revenue. On the native Greeks, he accumulated worse evils than the worst of their ancient despots, the worst of their mobs, or the worst of their previous praetors had inflicted. His three years' rule desolated the island more effectually than the two recent servile wars, and than the old struggle between Carthage and Rome for the possession of the island. Messana alone, where he deposited his spoils and provided for himself a retreat, was spared by Verres; but even Messana sighed for the mild government of Sacerdos, and for the arrival of the new praetor Arrius, whom the war with Spartacus detained in Italy, and whose detention added eighteen months to the sufferings of the Sicilians. Verres, therefore, instead of re-advocate at the bar, depending on his own exerturning to Italy in B. c. 72, remained nearly three tions alone for preferment, the opportunity was years in his government, and so diligently em- critical, whether for advancement or defeat. On ployed his opportunities, that he boasted of having the one hand, Cicero's attack on the aristocracy amassed enough for a life of opulence, even if he would win for him the equites and the people; were compelled to disgorge two-thirds of his on the other, it closed upon him an effective plunder in stifling inquiry or purchasing an ac- source of patronage, and involved him with a party quittal. The remainder of Verres's life is con- which he deserted on the first occasion. He tained in the history of the Verrine orations, which seems, however, without scruple to have redeemed we shall presently examine. On his condemnation, his promise to the Sicilians, and to have heartily he retired to Marseilles, retaining so much of his entered into their cause. The Verrine trial is one ill-gotten wealth, as to render him careless of of the three eras of Cicero's life, and perhaps that public opinion, and so many of his treasures of art, in which his cause was best, and his motives were as to cause, eventually, his proscription by M. most pure. He may have amplified the vices of Antonius in B. c. 43. Before his death, Verres had Verres; he could scarcely exaggerate the faults of the consolation of hearing of the murder of his the provincial government of Rome. In the congreat enemy Cicero, and during his long exile of duct of the prosecution, he infringed upon no law: twenty-seven years, had the satisfaction of wit- on obtaining his verdict, he displayed no offennessing from his retreat the convulsions of the sive vanity. In Catiline and Antonius, he was oprepublic, and the calamities of the friends who posed to political rivals: in Verres, he encountered abandoned, and of the judges who convicted him. the enemy of the law, of social and domestic sancVerres married a sister of a Roman eques, Vettius tities, of the faith of compacts, and the security Chilo (Verrin. ii. 3. 71, 72), by whom he had a of life and property. Neither during his adminison, whom, at fifteen years of age, he admitted as stration, nor after his return to Rome, had Verres the spectator and partner of his vices (1b. 9. 68; neglected to enlist for himself staunch and numePseudo Ascon. in loc.), and a daughter, who was rous supporters. With some, a bribe in its crudest married at the time of her accompanying Verres to form sufficed; but in many cases it was accomSicily. (Sen. Suas. p. 43, Bip. ed.; Lactant. Div. panied with some choice production of the chisel, Inst. ii. 4.) the easel, or the loom. But his services were most in demand when his partisans in their official characters exhibited games in the forum. Hortensius and the Metelli were thus enabled to exhibit, for the first time, to a Roman mob many of the most exquisite specimens of Mentor, Myron, and Polycleitus, collected from nearly every province from the foot of Mount Taurus to the Lilybaean promontory. The practice of borrowing works of art from the provincials with which to adorn the capital on festivals, was not indeed peculiar to Verres or his age. But neither the refined Cornelii nor the rude Mummii had, when the occasion ended, adorned their own villas with these treasures, or distributed them among the galleries of their friends and adherents.

The trial of Verres was a political as well as a judicial cause. From the tribunate of the Gracchi (B. c. 133-123), when the judicia were transferred to the equites, to the dictatorship of Sulla (B. C. 81-79), who restored them to the senate, there had been an eager contest at Rome for the judicial power. The equites and the senators had proved equally corrupt, and the Marian party, supported by the Italians and the provincials, clamoured loudly for a reform of the courts. Verres was a criminal whose condemnation might justify Sulla's law, whose acquittal would prove the unfitness of the senate for the judicial office. Cicero, accordingly, in his introductory speech (Verrin. i.), puts "this alternative prominently forward." In Verres's condemnation, he urges upon the senato rian bench of judices, "lies your order's safety; in his acquittal, your degradation now and henceforward." This rather than the weight of evidence adduced was the à priori ground for Verres's condemnation. The defendant himself had neither previous reputation nor ancestral honours to recommend him. At first, guilty compliance, and

Meanwhile, neither threats nor offers were spared. Hortensius and Verres at Rome, and M. Metellus, the successor of Verres in Sicily, alternately flattered and bullied the deputies of that island, and Cicero more than once insinuates that money was indirectly offered to himself. The prosecutors, however, had nothing further to lose, and were desperate; Cicero had reputation to

the impeachment be put off to the next year, Verres was safe. Hortensius himself would then be consul, with Q. Metellus for his colleague, M. Metellus would be city-praetor, and L. Metellus was already praetor in Sicily. For every firm and honest judex whom the upright M. Acilias Glabrio [No. 5], then city praetor, had named, a partial or venal substitute would be found. Glabrio himself would give place as quaesitor or president of the court to M. Metellus, a partisan, if not a kinsman of the defendant; public curiosity would cool; the witnesses be frightened or conciliated; and time be allowed for forging and organising a chain of counter-depositions. It was already the month of July. The games to be exhibited by Cn. Pompey were fixed for the middle of August, and would occupy a fortnight; the Roman games would immediately succeed them,

win, and was firm. Upon this, Hortensius changed his tactics. The impeachment could not be stopped entirely; but it might be parried. Q. Caecilius Niger had been quaestor to the defendant, had quarrelled with him, and had the means of exposing officially his abuse of the public money. To this prosecutor, said Hortensius, we do not object; he is seeking redress; but Cicero, notoriety. But the Sicilians rejected Caecilius altogether, not merely as no match for Hortensius, but as foisted into the cause by the defendant or his advocate. By a technical process of the Roman law, called Divinatio, the judices, without hearing evidence, determined from the arguments of counsel alone, who should be appointed prosecutor. They decided in Cicero's favour. Of all the Verrine orations, the Divinatio in Q. Caecilium is the most argumentative, and the most in accordance with modern practice. The orator demonstrates that the Si-and thus forty days intervene between Cicero's cilians rejected Caecilius, and demanded himself: that a volunteer accuser is as objectionable as a volunteer witness: that Caecilius cannot come into court with clean hands, since, as quaestor, he must officially have been cognizant of the peculations of his principal: and that his quarrel with Verres the ground of his alleged fitness for prosecutor was all a pretence. [NIGER, Q. CAECILIUS.]

-

The pretensions of Caecilius were thus set aside. Yet hope did not yet forsake Verres and his friends. Evidence for the prosecution was to be collected in Sicily itself. Cicero was allowed 110 days for the purpose. Verres once again attempted to set up a sham prosecutor, who undertook to impeach him for his former extortions in Achaia, and to gather the evidence in 108 days. Had this been really done, the effect would have been, that the false impeachment would have taken precedence, and the Sicilian cause either been referred to a packed bench, or indefinitely adjourned. But the new prosecutor-one Piso or Damianus-never went even so far as Brundisium in quest of evidence, and the design was abandoned. (Verrin. i. 2; Schol. Gronov. p. 388, Orelli; ii. 1, 11; Pseud. Ascon. p. 165, ib.) Instead of the 110 days allowed, Cicero, assisted by his cousin Lucius, completed his researches in 50, and returned with a mass of evidence and a crowd of witnesses gathered from all parts of the island, from the rich and the poor, the agriculturist and the artisan, in differently. At Syracuse and Messana alone did Cicero meet with reluctance or opposition. At the former city he completely overcame Verres's partisans, carried away with him a huge budget of vouchers and documents, and procured the erasure from the public register of an honorary decree, which had been extorted by Verres from the Sy racusans. At Messana he was less successful. That city had, comparatively, been favoured by the ex-praetor. Here also Cicero encountered his old enemy Caecilius Niger, and the praetor L. Metellus, an alleged kinsman of Verres. The praetor forbade the Messanese to aid or harbour the orator or his suite reproached him for tampering with Greeks, and addressing them in their own tongue; and threatened to seize the documents he brought with him. Cicero, however, eluded the praetor and all attempts of Verres to obstruct his return, and reached the capital nearly two months before either friends or opponents expected him.

Hortensius now grasped at his last chance of an acquittal, and it was not an unlikely one. Could

charge and the reply of Hortensius, who again, by dexterous adjournments, would delay the proceedings until the games of Victory, and the commencement of the new year. Cicero therefore abandoned all thought of eloquence or display, and merely introducing his case in the first of the Verrine orations, rested all his hopes of success on the weight of testimony alone. The "king of the Forum," -so Hortensius was called — was disarmed. His histrionic arts of dress, intonation, pathos, and invective, found no place in dry crossexaminations. He was quite unprepared with counter-evidence, and after the first day, when he put a few petulant questions, and offered some trivial objections to the course pursued, he abandoned the cause of Verres. Before the nine days

occupied in hearing evidence were over, the defendant was on his road to Marseilles. The inpeachment of Verres presented a scene for the historian and the artist. The judices met in the temple of Castor- already signalised by one of the defendant's most fraudulent acts (Verrin. ii. }, 49, ff.). They were surrounded by the senate, whose retention of the judicia depended on their verdict. They were watched by the equites, whose recovery of the judicia rested on the same issue. But neither the senate nor the equites were probably the most anxious spectators of the proceedings. The range of the defendant's extortions had been so wide, that the witnesses alone formed no inconsiderable portion of the audience. From the foot of Mount Taurus, from the shores of the Black Sea, from many cities of the Grecian mainland, from many islands of the Aegean, from every city and market-town of Sicily, deputations thronged to Rome. In the porticoes and on the steps of the temple, in the area of the Forum, in the colonnades that surrounded it, on the house-tops and on the overlooking declivities, were stationed dense and eager crowds of impoverished heirs and their guardians, bankrupt publicani and cornmerchants, fathers bewailing their children carried off to the praetor's harem, children mourning for their parents dead in the praetor's dungeons, Greek nobles whose descent was traced to Cecrops or Eurysthenes or to the great Ionian and Minyan houses, and Phoenicians whose ancestors had been priests of the Tyrian Melcarth, or claimed kindred with the Zidonian Iah. "All these and more came flocking," and the casual multitude was swelled by thousands of spectators from Italy partly attracted by the approaching games, and

partly by curiosity to behold a criminal who had scourged and crucified Roman citizens, who had respected neither local nor national shrines, and who boasted that wealth would even yet rescue the murderer, the violator, and the temple-robber from the laws of man and from the nemesis of the Gods. The provincials scrupled not to avow that if Verres were acquitted, they would petition the senate to rescind at once the laws against malversation, that so for the time to come provincial governors might plunder, merely to enrich themselves, and not also to provide the means of averting penalties which were never enforced.

The fact that of the seven Verrine orationsfor the Divinatio in Caecilium belongs to themtwo only, the Divinatio and the Actio Prima, were spoken, while the remaining five were compiled from the depositions after the verdict, may seem at first sight to detract from their oratorical if not from their literary value. But so perfectly has Cicero imparted to the entire series the semblance of delivery, and so rarely did the orators of antiquity pronounce extempore speeches, that we probably lose little by the course which necessity imposed on the orator. For while following the various moods and evolutions of this great impeachment, it seems almost impossible to believe that Verres was not actually writhing beneath the Scourge, that Hortensius was not listening in impotent dismay, that the judices were not hurried along by the burning words and the glowing pictures of vice, ignominy, and crime, that the senate was not panic-struck, that the equites and the plebs were not hailing the dawn of retribution, and that the provincials were not gazing in fear and wrath upon the panorama of malversation exhibited by Cicero. In the Catilinarian orations the invective is perhaps more condensed, and the tone of the speech more strictly forensic: in the Philippies the assault is deadlier since the struggle was internecine. But in neither does the imagination of the orator embrace so wide a range of topics, expatiate so genially on whatever was collateral to the cause, or wield with such absolute sway the powers of language and rhetoric as in the Verrine orations. It is almost needless to point out instances of satire, invective, argument, and description which have ever since furnished works of rhetoric with examples and the practical orator with studies in his art. A few of the most striking in each kind may be ranged under the following heads. 1. Sacrilege. The details of this crime are summed up in the peroration of the 5th book of the 2d. Pleading. The peroration itself may be compared with Burke's conclusion to his general charge against Warren Hastings. Special narratives of sacrilege are found (ii. 1. 18, 19, 20), and throughout the oration De Signis.

2. Tampering with law and ignorance of precedents.

See the whole account De Practura Urbana (ii. 1. 40-60); the introduction to Jurisdictio Siciliensis (ii. 2.7—ff.) and (ii. 3) Leges Decumanae Hieronicae.

3. Extortion of money, works of art, &c. (ii. 1. 17, 34, 2. 6. 22-28); and the oration de Signis generally.

4. Corruption of morals (ii. 1. 24), and the oration de Suppliciis generally.

5. Negligence in administration (ii. 5. 23-46), and "Praetura Urbana.”

Cicero's own division of the impeachment is the following:

In Q. Caecilium or Divinatio. 1. Preliminary 2. Proemium-Actio Prima Statement of the Case.

These alone were spoken.

2. Orations
founded on
the Deposi-
tions.

13. Verres's official life to B. c. 73.
4. Jurisdictio Siciliensis.
5. Oratio Frumentaria.
De Signis.

6.

De Suppliciis. These were circulated as documents or manifestoes of the cause after the flight of Verres. A good abstract of the Verrine Impeachment is given by Drumann (Geschichte Roms, vol. v. p. 263-328, Tullii.) [W. B. D.]

VE'RRIUS FLACCUS [FLACCUS.] VERRUCOSUS, an agnomen of Q. Fabius Maximus [MAXIMUS, No. 4], and of Asinius Pollio, consul A. D. 81. [POLLIO, No. 4.] VERTICO'RDIA. [VENUS.]

VERTUMNUS or VORTUMNUS, is said to have been an Etruscan divinity whose worship was introduced at Rome by an ancient Vulsinian colony occupying at first the Caelian hill, and afterwards the vicus Tuscus. (Propert iv. 2. 6, &c.; Ov. Met. xiv. 642.) The name is evidently connected with verto, and formed on the analogy of alumnus from alo, whence it must signify "the god who changes or metamorphoses himself." For this reason the Romans connected Vertumnus with all occurrences to which the verb verto applies, such as the change of seasons, purchase and sale, the return of rivers to their proper beds, &c. (Comp. Horat. Sat. ii. 7. 14.) But in reality the god was connected only with the transformation of plants, and their progress from being in blossom to that of bearing fruit. (Schol. ad Horat. Epist. i. 20. 1; Ascon. in Cic. Verr. i. 59; Propert. iv. 2. 10, &c.) Hence the story, that when Vertumnus was in love with Pomona, he assumed all possible forms, until at last he gained his end by metamorphosing himself into a blooming youth. (Propert iv. 2. 21, &c.; Ov. l. c.) Gardeners accordingly offered to him the first produce of their gardens and garlands of budding flowers. (Propert. iv. 2. 18 and 45.) But the whole people celebrated a festival to Vertumnus on the 23d of August, under the name of the Vortumnalia, denoting the transition from the beautiful season of autumn to the less agreeable one. He had a temple in the vicus Tuscus, and a statue of him stood in the vicus Jugarius near the altar of Ops. (Propert. l. c.; Cic. in Verr. i. 59.) The story of the Etruscan origin seems to be sufficiently refuted by his genuine Roman name, and it is much more probable that the worship of Vertumnus was of Sabine origin, which in fact is implied in his connection with T. Tatius. (Varro, De L. L. v. 75.) The importance of the worship of Vertumnus at Rome is evident from the fact, that it was attended to by a special flamen (flamen Vortumnalis; see Varro, De L. L. vii. 45, with Müller's note; Festus, p. 379; Plin. H. N. xxiii. 1; Müller, Anc. Art and its Rem. § 404). [L. S.]

VERULA'NA GRACILIA. [GRACILIA.] VERULA'NUS SEVERUS. [SEVERUS.] VERUS, ATTILIUS, a primipili centurio, A. D. 69. (Tac. Hist. iii. 22.)

VERUS, whose other name is sometimes written VMIDIUS (Capitol. Anton. Pius, c. 12), and sometimes VINIDIUS, which different modes of