Cicero | Page 6

were added
afterwards, under the Empire.]

No wonder the young official's head (he was not much over thirty) was
somewhat turned. "I thought", he said, in one of his speeches
afterwards--introducing with a quiet humour, and with all a practised
orator's skill, one of those personal anecdotes which relieve a long
speech--"I thought in my heart, at the time, that the people at Rome
must be talking of nothing but my quaestorship". And he goes on to tell
his audience how he was undeceived.
"The people of Sicily had devised for me unprecedented honours. So I
left the island in a state of great elation, thinking that the Roman people
would at once offer me everything without my seeking. But when I was
leaving my province, and on my road home, I happened to land at
Puteoli just at the time when a good many of our most fashionable
people are accustomed to resort to that neighbourhood. I very nearly
collapsed, gentlemen, when a man asked me what day I had left Rome,
and whether there was any news stirring? When I made answer that I
was returning from my province--'Oh! yes, to be sure', said he; 'Africa,
I believe?' 'No', said I to him, considerably annoyed and disgusted;
'from Sicily'. Then somebody else, with the air of a man who knew all
about it, said to him--'What! don't you know that he was Quaestor at
_Syracuse_?' [It was at Lilybaeum--quite a different district.] No need
to make a long story of it; I swallowed my indignation, and made as
though I, like the rest, had come there for the waters. But I am not sure,
gentlemen, whether that scene did not do me more good than if
everybody then and there had publicly congratulated me. For after I had
thus found out that the people of Rome have somewhat deaf ears, but
very keen and sharp eyes, I left off cogitating what people would hear
about me; I took care that thenceforth they should see me before them
every day: I lived in their sight, I stuck close to the Forum; the porter at
my gate refused no man admittance--my very sleep was never allowed
to be a plea against an audience".[1]
[Footnote 1: Defence of Plancius, c. 26, 27.]
Did we not say that Cicero was modern, not ancient? Have we not here
the original of that Cambridge senior wrangler, who, happening to enter
a London theatre at the same moment with the king, bowed all round

with a gratified embarrassment, thinking that the audience rose and
cheered at _him_?
It was while he held the office of Aedile that he made his first
appearance as public prosecutor, and brought to justice the most
important criminal of the day. Verres, late Praetor in Sicily, was
charged with high crimes and misdemeanours in his government. The
grand scale of his offences, and the absorbing interest of the trial, have
led to his case being quoted as an obvious parallel to that of Warren
Hastings, though with much injustice to the latter, so far as it may seem
to imply any comparison of moral character. This Verres, the corrupt
son of a corrupt father, had during his three years' rule heaped on the
unhappy province every evil which tyranny and rapacity could inflict.
He had found it prosperous and contented: he left it exhausted and
smarting under its wrongs. He met his impeachment now with
considerable confidence. The gains of his first year of office were
sufficient, he said, for himself; the second had been for his friends; the
third produced more than enough to bribe a jury.
The trials at Rome took place in the Forum--the open space, of nearly
five acres, lying between the Capitoline and Palatine hills. It was the
city market-place, but it was also the place where the population
assembled for any public meeting, political or other--where the idle
citizen strolled to meet his friends and hear the gossip of the day, and
where the man of business made his appointments. Courts for the
administration of justice--magnificent halls, called _basilicae_--had by
this time been erected on the north and south sides, and in these the
ordinary trials took place; but for state trials the open Forum was itself
the court. One end of the wide area was raised on a somewhat higher
level--a kind of daïs on a large scale--and was separated from the rest
by the Rostra, a sort of stage from which the orators spoke. It was here
that the trials were held. A temporary tribunal for the presiding officer,
with accommodation for counsel, witnesses, and jury, was erected in
the open air; and the scene may perhaps best be pictured by imagining
the principal square in some large town fitted up with open hustings