THE ARGUMENT

The subject of this oration is the manner in which Verres had plundered not only private individuals, but even some temples, of valuable statues, and other works of art. Among the instances given some of the most prominent are the plunder of Heius, a Messanian; of Philarchus, or Centuripa; of several other private citizens; of Antiochus, the king; and of the temples of Diana, Mercury, and Ceres. A French translator in commenting on this orations says, with reference to the slighting way in which Cicero speaks of the works of art thus stolen: "The Romans struggled for some time against the seductive power of the arts of Greece, to which for many ages they were strangers. At first they really did despise them; afterwards they affected to despise them; but at last they were forced to bow the head beneath the brilliant yoke of luxury; and Greece, industrious, learned, and polite, subdued by the admiration which it extorted, the ignorant, unlettered, and rude barbarians who had conquered her by force. Faithful to the ancient maxims of the republic, Cicero in this oration speaks only with a sort of disdain of the arts and works of the most famous artists. He even pretends sometimes not to be too well acquainted with the names of the most celebrated statuaries; he often repeats, and with a kind of affectation, that he knows very little of painting or sculpture; and rather prides himself, as one may say, on his ignorance. He seems to regard a taste for art as unworthy of the Romans, and the finest chefs d’oeuvre * as children’s toys, fit to amuse the trifling and frivolous minds of the Greeks, whose name he usually expresses by a contemptuous diminutive (Graeculi), but little calculated to fix the attention, or attract the esteem or wishes of a Roman mind. In general there runs through these orations a tone more calculated to render Verres ridiculous than to make one feel how much there was in all his attempts which was odious and horrible. The orator even permitted himself some pleasantries, for which his taste has been, perhaps too severely, called in question. Cicero had no dislike to puns, and has played a good deal on the name of Verres, which means a boar. He was too eager to acquire the reputation of a wit. It is true that the person of Verres was sufficiently inviting as a subject for ridicule. He was one of those gross men overloaded with fat, in whom the bulk of body appears to stifle all delicacy of moral feeling. As he had tried to carry off a statue of Hercules which his people could with difficulty move upon its pedestal, Cicero calls this the thirteenth of the labors of Hercules. And playing continually on the name of Verres, he compares him to the boar of Erymanthus. At another time he calls him the drag-net of Sicily, because the name Verres has some resemblance to the word everriuclum , which signifies a drag-net."

* In DOS versions italicized text is enclosed in chevrons .

Hortensius endeavored to defend Verres from the charge of having stolen these statues, etc., of which he admits that he had become the possessor, by contending that he had bought them. But it was contrary to the laws for a magistrate to purchase any such articles in his province; and Cicero shows also that the prices alleged to have been given are so wholly disproportionate to their value that it is ridiculous to assert that the things had been purchased and not taken by force.