428. facinus…tollere (429): note the climactic progression of both nouns and verbs, facinus (bad deed), scelus (crime), parricidium (murder of a relative), and vincire (to bind), verberare (to beat), necare (to murder), and finally (civem) in crucem tollere, a violation so heinous, Cicero suggests, that it is beyond his power to describe (quid dicam).
430. digno: here, fitting, appropriate.
433. unum hominem nescio quem: just some single human being.
Verres is a menace to all Roman citizens.
Sed quid ego plura de Gavio? quasi tu Gavio tum fueris infestus, ac non nomini, generi, iuri civium hostis. Non illi, 415 inquam, homini sed causae communi libertatis inimicus fuisti. Quid enim attinuit, cum Mamertini more atque instituto suo crucem fixissent post urbem, in via Pompeia, te iubere in ea parte figere quae ad fretum spectaret et hoc addere—quod negare nullo modo potes, quod omnibus audientibus dixisti palam—te 420 idcirco illum locum deligere, ut ille, quoniam se civem Romanum esse diceret, ex cruce Italiam cernere ac domum suam prospicere posset? Itaque illa crux sola, iudices, post conditam Messanam, illo in loco fixa est. Italiae conspectus ad eam rem ab isto delectus est ut ille, in dolore cruciatuque moriens, 425 perangusto fretu divisa servitutis ac libertatis iura cognosceret, Italia autem alumnum suum servitutis extremo summoque supplicio adfixum videret. (V.169)
The audacity of the crime.
Facinus est vincire civem Romanum, scelus verberare, prope parricidium necare: quid dicam in crucem tollere? Verbo satis 430 digno tam nefaria res appellari nullo modo potest. Non fuit his omnibus iste contentus; “Spectet,” inquit, “patriam; in conspectu legum libertatisque moriatur.” Non tu hoc loco Gavium, non unum hominem nescio quem, sed communem libertatis et civitatis causam in illum cruciatum et crucem egisti. Iam vero 435 videte hominis audaciam. Nonne eum graviter tulisse arbitramini, quod illam civibus Romanis crucem non posset in foro, non in comitio, non in rostris defigere? Quod enim his locis in provincia sua celebritate simillimum, regione proximum potuit, elegit. Monumentum sceleris audaciaeque suae voluit esse in conspectu 440 Italiae, vestibulo Siciliae, praetervectione omnium qui ultro citroque navigarent. (V.170)
435. nonne…defigere (437): Cicero suggests that Verres aspires to be dictator, with the power to crucify citizens in the very strongholds of Rome (the forum…the assembly place…the rostra); hence he is a menace not only to someone like Gavius but to the state itself and all its citizens.
436. non…non (437): ANAPHORA and ASYNDETON.
437. Quod…elegit (438): = elegit (id) quod…(esse) potuit, he chose that (place) which could be.
his locis: i.e., foro…rostris; dat. with simillimum and proximum.
438. celebritate: in its populousness.
regione:location.
440. praetervectione: praetervectio, passing place.
441. ultro citroque: adv., up and down, back and forth.
442. ad cives…ad scopulos (446): another highly effective use of climax.
446. scopulos: scopulus, crag, cliff; with saxa, used for any wild and desolate region.
conqueri et deplorare: note the intensive force of the prefixes, to complain loudly and lament bitterly, and cp. commoverentur (447).
450. non…dignus: sc. iudicetur from the next cl.; that one citizen (i.e., Verres) may not be judged deserving.
451. paulo: adv., a little, somewhat.
452. nauarchorum: nauarchus, captain of a ship; in an earlier passage Cicero told how pirates had destroyed the Syracusan fleet and killed the captains in the forum, and he implied that this had been done through Verres’ connivance.
456. postulat: postulare, to demand.
457. ubicumque: adv., wherever, anywhere, everywhere.
459. commoda: here, interests.
461. versari: to be turned, be busy, engaged, involved (in), depend (on).
Limestone quarries Syracuse, Sicily, Italy
James C. Anderson, jr.
Cicero’s confidence in a just decision.
Si haec non ad cives Romanos, non ad aliquos amicos nostrae civitatis, non ad eos qui populi Romani nomen audissent, denique si non ad homines verum ad bestias, aut etiam (ut longius 445 progrediar) si in aliqua desertissima solitudine ad saxa et ad scopulos haec conqueri et deplorare vellem, tamen omnia muta atque inanima tanta et tam indigna rerum acerbitate commoverentur. Nunc vero cum loquar apud senatores populi Romani, legum et iudiciorum et iuris auctores, timere non debeo 450 ne non unus iste civis Romanus illa cruce dignus, ceteri omnes simili periculo indignissimi iudicentur. Paulo ante, iudices, lacrimas in morte misera atque indignissima nauarchorum non tenebamus; et recte ac merito sociorum innocentium miseria commovebamur; quid nunc in nostro sanguine tandem facere 455 debemus? Nam civium Romanorum sanguis coniunctus existimandus est, quoniam id et salutis omnium ratio et veritas postulat. Omnes hoc loco cives Romani, et qui adsunt et qui ubicumque sunt, vestram severitatem desiderant, vestram fidem implorant, vestrum auxilium requirunt; omnia sua iura, commoda, 460 auxilia, totam denique libertatem in vestris sententiis versari arbitrantur. (V.171–72)
CICERO’S LETTERS
The nearly 800 letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero which have come down to us cover the quarter century from 68 B.C. to 43 B.C. and provide us with unrivaled source material for the political and social life of that period—one of the most important in Roman history—as well as an intimate acquaintance with Cicero’s thought and personality. A wide range of topics, both serious and light-hearted, are found here, from politics and literature to travel and the affairs of family and friends. Preserved in the collection are epistles to his wife Terentia and their children Tullia and Marcus, his younger brother Quintus Tullius Cicero, his life-long friend Titus Pomponius Atticus (there are altogether 16 books of Epistulae ad Atticum), his beloved freedman and personal secretary Marcus Tullius Tiro, and numerous other associates and politicians; in addition, there are, within the 16 volumes of the Epistulae ad Familiares, over 100 letters written to him by such public figures as Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great.
The letters survive thanks to Tiro, who collected and published the Ad Familiares after Cicero’s death, as well as to Atticus, who likely published those in his possession, and to other ancient scholars who understood the inestimable value of the correspondence. Cicero himself did not consider his Epistulae formal literary productions, as Pliny the Younger clearly did, and appears to have had little idea of ever publishing more than an abbreviated selection. Hence his style, while occasionally formal and close to that of his speeches, is more often that of an educated man’s sermo cotidianus, simple, colloquial, and free of the self-consciousness that often characterizes the letters of Pliny (as seen from the selections included later in this volume). These are the work not so much of Cicero the rhetorician and orator as of Cicero the man, revealing without inhibition his human feelings.
The selections chosen for this volume, nearly all of them complete and unexcerpted, include letters: to Atticus on a variety of topics, including the deteriorating relations between Pompey and Caesar; to his brother Quintus on the First Triumvirate and Clodius Pulcher’s threats to prosecute him for executing the Catilinarians; to his wife and children, lamenting his exile in Greece in 58; to his friend Marcus Marius on the vulgarity of Pompey’s public entertainments, an epistolary essay of sorts, like many of Pliny’s more formal letters; to Tiro on the freedman’s ill health and the volatile political situation in Rome following Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon River in early 49; to Sulpicius Rufus, a friend who had written Cicero a consolatio on the death of his daughter Tullia in 45; to Basilus, one of the conspirators who assassinated Caesar on the Ides of March, 44; and finally, in the autumn of 44, to Cassius, in whom (together with his fellow assassin Brutus) Cicero placed all hope of ridding Rome of Caesar’s successor, the “crazed gladiator” Mark Antony, and restoring the republic to senatorial control—a hope, of course, that was never to be realized.
A note on epistolary usages: Roman letters were typically written down, by the author or a secretary, using a reed pen on papyrus or, in the case of short notes, a stilus on a wax-covered folding tablet, then tied with a string, sealed with wax marked with a sealstone, and given to a slave or other courier for delivery. The salutation usually consists of the writer’s name in the nominative case, the addressee’s name in the dative, and some expression of greeting, generally abbreviated, such as S. or Sal. (salutem, sc. dicit) or S.P.D. (salutem plurimam dicit). The complimentary close, when there was one, was usually a simple vale or cura ut valeas, sometimes followed by the date (using abbreviations explained below in the notes). Often the past tenses are used to apply to the moment when the recipient reads a letter, not to the time it was written. In translating these so-called “epistolary tenses,” one should employ standard English idiom; hence, hanc epistulam Romae scribebam is equivalent to “I am writing this letter at Rome,” and scripseram to “I wrote.”
Paquius Proculus (?) and wife Fresco from Pompeii, house at region VII.ii.6, 1st century A.D. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Italy
Scala/Art Resource, NY.
1. Cicero Attico Sal.: i.e., salutem dicit, a standard epistolary salutation; lit., Cicero says good health to Atticus, = “Dear Atticus.” Titus Pomponius Atticus, dedicatee of the De Amicitia, was Cicero’s closest friend.
2. ames: admire, approve; volo takes a JUSSIVE NOUN CL. with or without ut.
