Fortune's Favorites (123 page)

“I will listen to what Marcus Tullius Cicero proposes,” said Glabrio, and added gently, “without interruptions.”

“I wish to dispense with the long speeches,” said Cicero, “and concentrate upon one offense at a time. The crimes of Gaius Verres are so many and so varied that it is vital the members of the jury keep each crime straight in their heads. By dealing with one crime at a time, I wish to assist the court in keeping everything straight, that is all. So what I propose to do is briefly to outline one particular crime, then present each of my witnesses plus my evidence to do with that crime. As you see, I intend to work alone-I have absolutely no assistant advocates. The actio prima in the case of Gaius Verres should not contain any long speeches by either the prosecution or the defense. It is a waste of the court's time, especially in light of the fact that there is at least one more case for this court to hear before this year is ended-that of Quintus Curtius. So I say, let the actio secunda contain all the magnificent speeches! It is only after all the magnificent speeches of the actio secunda have been given that the jury hands down its verdict, so I do not see how my colleague Quintus Hortensius can object to my asking for an actio prima procedure which will enable the jury to listen to our impassioned oratory during the actio secunda as if it had never heard any of what we said before! Because it won't have heard any of it! Oh, the freshness! The anticipation! The pleasure!”

Hortensius was now looking a little uncertain; there was sound sense in what Cicero was saying. After all, Cicero hadn't asked for anything which might detract from the defense's entitlement to the last word, and Hortensius found himself very much liking the idea of being able to deliver his absolute best as a shock of juridical surprise at the end of the actio secunda. Yes, Cicero was right! Get the boring stuff over as quickly as possible in the actio prima, and save the Alexandrian lighthouse stuff for the grand finale.

Thus when Glabrio looked at him enquiringly, Hortensius was able to say smoothly, “Pray ask Marcus Tullius to enlarge further.”

“Enlarge further, Marcus Tullius,” said Glabrio.

“There is little more to say, Manius Acilius. Only that the defending advocates be allowed not one drip more of time to speak than I spend speaking-during the actio prima only, of course! I am willing to concede the defense as much time as they wish during the actio secunda. Since I see a formidable array of defending advocates, whereas I alone staff the prosecution, that will give the defense as much of an advantage as I think they ought to have. I ask only this: that the actio prima be conducted as I have outlined it.”

“The idea has considerable merit, Marcus Tullius,” said Glabrio. “Quintus Hortensius, how do you say?”

“Let it be as Marcus Tullius has outlined,” said Hortensius.

Only Gaius Verres looked worried. “Oh, I wish I knew what he was up to!” he whispered to Metellus Little Goat. “Hortensius ought not to have agreed!”

“By the time the actio secunda comes around, Gaius Verres, I can assure you that the jury will have forgotten everything the witnesses said,” his brother-in-law whispered back.

“Then why is Cicero insisting on these changes?”

“Because he knows he's going to lose, and he wants to make some sort of splash. How else than by innovation? Caesar used the same tack when he prosecuted the elder Dolabella-insisted on innovations. He got a great deal of praise, but he lost the case. Just as Cicero will. Don't worry! Hortensius will win!”

The only remarks of a general nature Cicero made before he plunged into an outline of the first category of Gaius Verres's crimes were to do with the jury.

“Remember that the Senate has commissioned our urban praetor, Lucius Aurelius Cotta, to enquire into the composition of juries-and has agreed to recommend his findings to the Assembly of the People to be ratified into law. Between the days of Gaius Gracchus and our Dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the Senate completely lost control of a hitherto uncontested right-to staff the juries of Rome's criminal courts. That privilege Gaius Gracchus handed to the knights-and we all know the result of that! Sulla handed the new standing courts back to the Senate. But as the sixty-four men our censors have expelled have shown, we senators have not honored the trust Sulla reposed in us. Gaius Verres is not the only person on trial here today. The Senate of Rome is also on trial! And if this senatorial jury fails to conduct itself in an honorable and honest way, then who can blame Lucius Cotta if he recommends that jury duty be taken off us Conscript Fathers? Members of this jury, I beseech you not to forget for one moment that you carry an enormous responsibility on your shoulders- and the fate!-and the reputation!-of the Senate of Rome.”

And after that, having neatly confined the defense to the same time span as he used himself, Cicero plunged into hearing his witnesses and presenting his inanimate evidence. One by one they testified: grain thefts to the amount of three hundred thousand modii in just one year from just one small district, let alone the amounts looted from other districts; thefts of property which reduced the farmers of just one district from two hundred and fifty to eighty in three years, let alone the thefts of property from many other districts; embezzlement of the Treasury's moneys intended for the purchase of grain; usury at twenty-four and more percent; the destruction or alteration of tithe records; the looting of statues and paintings from temples; the dinner guest who in front of his host prised the jewels out of ornamented cups; the dinner guest who on his way out scooped up all the gold and silver plate and popped it in bags the easier to carry it away; the building of a ship free of charge in which to carry back some of his loot to Rome; the condoning of pirate bases and cuts of pirate profits; the overturning of wills; and on, and on, and on.

Cicero had records, documents, wax tablets with the changed figures still visible-and witnesses galore, witnesses who could not be intimidated or discredited during cross-examination. Nor had Cicero produced witnesses to grain thefts within just one district, but within many districts, and the catalogue of works by Praxiteles, Phidias, Polyclitus, Myron, Strongylion and every other famous sculptor which Verres had looted was supported by bills of “sale” that saw the owner of a Praxiteles Cupid obliged virtually to give it away to Verres. The evidence was massive and absolutely damning. It came like a flood, one category of theft or misuse of authority or exploitation after another for nine full days; the actio prima concluded on the fourteenth day of Sextilis.

Hortensius was shaking when he left the court, but when Verres tried to speak to him he shook his head angrily. “At your place!” he snapped. “And bring your brothers-in-law!”

The house of Gaius Verres lay in the best part of the Palatine; though it was actually one of the biggest properties on that hill, the amount of art crammed into it made it look as small and overcrowded as the yard of a sculptural mason in the Velabrum. Where no statues could stand or paintings hang there were cupboards in which resided vast collections of gold and silver plate, or jewelry, or folded lengths of gloriously worked embroidery and tapestry. Citrus-wood tables of rarest grain supported on pedestals of ivory and gold jostled against gilded chairs or collided with fabulous couches. Outside in the peristyle garden were jammed the bigger statues, mostly bronzes, though gold and silver glittered there too. A clutter representing fifteen years of plundering and many fortunes.

The four men gathered in Verres's study, no less a jumble, and perched wherever the precious objects allowed them.

“You'll have to go into voluntary exile,” said Hortensius.

Verres gaped. “You're joking! There's the actio secunda still to come! Your speeches will get me off!”

“You fool!” roared Hortensius. “Don't you understand? I was tricked, bamboozled, hoodwinked, gulled-any word you like to describe the fact that Cicero has ruined any chance I ever had to win this wretched case! A year could go by between actio prima and actio secunda, Gaius Verres, I and my assistants could deliver the world's best oratory for a month, Gaius Verres-and still the jury would not have forgotten that utter landslide of evidence! I tell you straight, Gaius Verres, that if I had known a tithe of your crimes before I started, I would never have agreed to defend you! You make Mummius or Paullus look like a tyro! And what have you done with so much money? Where is it, for Juno's sake? How could any man have spent it when that man pays a pittance for a Praxiteles Cupid and mostly doesn't pay at all? I've defended a lot of unmitigated villains in my time, but you win all the prizes! Go into voluntary exile, Gaius Verres!”

Verres and the Metelli Little Goats had listened to this tirade with jaws dropped.

Hortensius rose to his feet. “Take what you can with you into exile, but if you want my advice, leave the art works you looted from Sicily behind. You'll never be able to carry more than you stole from Hera of Samos anyway. Concentrate on paintings and small stuff. And ship your money out of Rome at dawn tomorrow-don't leave it a moment longer.” He walked to the door, threading his way through the precious artifacts. “I will take my ivory sphinx by Phidias, however. Where is it?”

“Your what?” gasped Verres. “I don't owe you anything-you didn't get me off!”

“You owe me one ivory sphinx by Phidias,” said Hortensius, “and you ought to be thanking your good luck I didn't make it more. If nothing else is worth it to you, the advice I've just given you most definitely is. My ivory sphinx, Verres. Now!”

It was small enough for Hortensius to tuck under his left arm, hidden by folds of toga; an exquisite piece of work that was perfect down to the last detail in a feathered wing and the minute tufts of fur protruding between the clawed toes.

“He's cool,” said Marcus Little Goat after Hortensius went.

“Ingrate!” snarled Verres.

But the consul-elect Metellus Little Goat frowned. “He's right, Gaius. You'll have to leave Rome by tomorrow night at the latest. Cicero will have the court seal this place as soon as he hears you're moving things out-why on earth did you have to keep it all here?”

“It isn't all here, Quintus. These are just the pieces I can't bear not to see every day. The bulk of it is stored on my place at Cortona.”

“Do you mean there's more! Ye gods, Gaius, I've known you for years, but you never cease to surprise me! No wonder our poor sister complains you ignore her! So this is only the stuff you can't bear not to see every day? And I've always thought you kept this place looking like a curio shop in the Porticus Margaritaria because you didn't even trust your slaves!”

Verres sneered. “Your sister complains, does she? And what right does she have to complain, when Caesar's been keeping her cunnus well lubricated for months? Does she think I'm a fool? Or so blind I can't see beyond a Myron bronze?” He got up. “I ought to have told Hortensius where most of my money went-your face would have been mighty red, wouldn't it? The three Little Goats are expensive in-laws, but you most of all, Quintus! The art I've managed to hang on to, but who gobbled up the proceeds from sales of grain, eh? Well, now's the end of it! I'll take my sphinx-stealing advocate's advice and go into voluntary exile, where with any luck what I manage to take with me will stay mine! No more money for the Little Goats, including Metella Capraria! Let Caesar keep her in the style to which she's accustomed-and I wish you luck prising money out of that man! Don't expect to see your sister's dowry returned. I'm divorcing her today on grounds of her adultery with Caesar.”

The result of this speech was the outraged exit of both his brothers-in-law; for a moment after they had gone Verres stood behind his desk, one finger absently caressing the smooth painted planes of a marble cheek belonging to a Polyclitus Hera. Then, shrugging, he shouted for his slaves. Oh, how could he bear to part with one single item contained in this house? Only the salvation of his skin and the knowledge that keeping some was better than losing all enabled him to walk with his steward from one precious object to the next. Go, stay, go, go, stay ...

“When you've hired the wagons-and if you blab about it to anyone, I'll crucify you!-have them brought round to the back lane at midnight tomorrow. And everything had better be properly crated, hear me?”

As Hortensius had predicted, Cicero had Glabrio seal the abandoned house of Gaius Verres on the morning after his secret departure, and sent to his bank to stop the transfer of funds. Too late, of course; money was the most portable of all treasures, requiring nothing more than a piece of paper to be presented at the other end of a man's journey.

“Glabrio is empaneling a committee to fix damages, but I'm afraid they won't be huge,” said Cicero to Hiero of Lilybaeum. “He's cleaned his money out of Rome. However, it looks as if most of what he stole from Sicily's temples has been left behind-not so with all the jewels and plate he stole from individual owners, alas, though even that he couldn't entirely spirit away, there was so much of it. The slaves he left behind-a poor lot, but their hatred of him has proven useful-say that what is in his house here in Rome is minute compared to what he has hidden away on his estate near Cortona. I imagine that's where the brothers Metelli have gone, but I borrowed a tactic from my friend Caesar, who travels faster than anyone else I know. The court's expedition will reach Cortona first, I predict. So we may find more belonging to Sicily there.”

“Where has Gaius Verres gone?” asked Hiero, curious.

“It seems he's heading for Massilia. A popular place for the art lovers among our exiles,” said Cicero.

“Well, we are delighted to have our national heritage back,” said Hiero, beaming. “Thank you, Marcus Tullius, thank you!”

“I believe it will be I who ends in thanking you-that is,” said Cicero delicately, “if you are pleased enough with my conduct of the case to honor our agreement about the grain next year? The Plebeian Games will not be held until November, so your price need not come from this year's harvest.”

“We are happy to pay you, Marcus Tullius, and I promise you that your distribution of grain to the people of Rome will be magnificent.”