In Verrem - The First Speech

The First Speech

The first speech was the only one to be delivered in front of the praetor urbanus Manius Acilius Glabrio. In it, Cicero took advantage of the almost unconditional freedom to speak in court to demolish Verres' case.

Cicero touched very little on Verres' extortion crimes in Sicily in the first speech. Instead, he took a two-pronged approach, by both inflating the vanity of the all-senator jury and making the most of Verres' early character. The second approach concerned Verres' defense's attempts to keep the case from proceeding on technicalities.

Verres had secured the services of the finest orator of his day, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus for his defense. Immediately, both Verres and Hortensius realized that the court as composed under Glabrio was inhospitable to the defense, and began to try to derail the prosecution by procedural tricks that had the effect of prolonging the trial. This was done by first trying to place a similar prosecution on the docket before Verres' trial, one concerning a Bythnian governor also on trial for extortion.

The point of the attempted derailment of the case hinged on Roman custom. At the time the case was being argued, the year was coming to a close and soon a number of public festivals (including one in honor of Pompey the Great) would commence. All work ceased on festival days, according to Roman customs, including any ongoing trials. Cicero alleged that Hortensius was hoping to draw the trial out long enough to run into the festival period before Cicero would have an opportunity to conclude his case, thereby making it a statistical impossibility that Glabrio and the jury would deliver a verdict before the new year, when the magistrates were replaced with their newly elected successors.

Hortensius and Verres both knew, Cicero argued, that Quintus Metellus, a friend and ally would be in charge of the extortion court in the new year, and so saw a benefit to such a gaming of the system. Cicero remarked that one of his friends had heard Hortensius congratulate Verres in the Forum soon after Metellus' election, announcing that this meant that Verres was as good as acquitted.

Cicero, too, had a unique strategy in mind for his prosecution. In 81 BC, the Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix had changed the composition of criminal courts, allowing only Senators to serve as jurymen. This had, apparently, caused friction and at least the appearance of "bought" justice, particularly when Senators were the accused, or the interests of a popular or powerful Senator were threatened. There had also been, concurrent with this, an almost perpetual scandal of wealthy senators and knights bribing juries to gain verdicts favorable to them. By 70, as the trial against Verres was proceeding, Lucius Aurelius Cotta had introduced a law that would reverse Sulla's restrictions on jury composition, once again opening the juries up to Senators, Equites and tribuni aerarii as a check on such over-lenient juries. Cicero devoted a significant amount of time in his oration to the perception of Senatorial juries, arguing that not only was Verres on trial for his malfeasance in Sicily, but the Senate was on trial as well for charges of impropriety, and that whatever verdict they handed down to Verres would reflect on them to either their credit or shame. The surest way, Cicero argued, to get the Lex Aurelia passed and take the juries away from the Senate was to acquit Verres on all charges.

Further, to counteract Hortensius' attempts to draw the trial out, Cicero begged the court's indulgence to allow him to alter the trial's flow from the usual format. In normal trials, both prosecution and defense would make a series of adversarial speeches before witnesses were called. Cicero realized that this would inevitably drag out the proceedings past the new year, and so he requested that he be allowed to call witnesses immediately to buttress his charges, before the speeches were made.