Cicero's Verrines: Rhetoric or Record?
A student is writing a 2,000-word essay on 'Cicero as a source for Roman provincial government.' The student has two texts: the published Verrines (70 BCE), which describe Verres' extortion in Sicily with vivid anecdotes (the crucifixion of a Roman citizen, the theft of statues), and a private letter to Atticus written during the prosecution, in which Cicero admits that the case is a career opportunity and that he is managing his political risk. The draft quotes the Verrines as factual evidence of Verres' crimes. The teacher asks: 'What would it mean to treat the Verrines as a source for Cicero's rhetoric rather than for Verres' guilt?' The student must also address the fact that Verres went into exile before the trial concluded, and that Cicero then published five speeches he never delivered. The student has four days and has already written 600 words on the historical background.
1. Explain the difference between using the Verrines as evidence for Verres' actions and as evidence for Cicero's rhetorical strategy.
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Used as evidence for Verres, the Verrines are partisan: they select anecdotes, heighten details, and frame Verres as a sacrilegious enemy of the province. The crucifixion of a Roman citizen is chosen because it shocks and because it reverses the expected hierarchy of citizen and provincial. The theft of statues is chosen because it makes Verres an enemy of art and religion as well as of property. None of this means the anecdotes are false, but it means their evidentiary status is rhetorical. Used as evidence for Cicero, the same speeches are rich: they show how a Roman advocate constructed a case, what emotions and values he appealed to, and how he positioned himself as the province's patron. The student must not collapse the second use into the first. The question 'what did Verres do?' and the question 'what did Cicero need his audience to believe?' are different questions, and the Verrines answer the second more securely than the first.
2. How does the fact that Cicero published speeches he never delivered change their status as evidence?
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It changes them from trial transcripts into literary and political texts. The published Verrines were designed for readers after the case, to consolidate Cicero's reputation as the prosecutor of corruption and as the defender of Sicily. They may preserve the arguments he planned, but they were not tested in court; Verres had already gone into exile after the first action. The published speeches therefore cannot be treated as a record of what was actually said or proved. They can be treated as evidence for Cicero's self-presentation and for the values he expected Roman readers to share. The student should note the gap between the courtroom and the bookshop, and use that gap as part of the argument rather than as an inconvenience.
3. Draft a paragraph that uses both the Verrines and the letter to Atticus without reducing one to the other.
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Sample paragraph: 'The Verrines are evidence less for what Verres did than for what Cicero needed Roman readers to believe he had done. The speeches construct Verres as a predator on Sicily's temples, property, and citizens, and in doing so they construct Cicero as the patron who could stop him. The private letter to Atticus complicates this picture without destroying it: Cicero admits that the prosecution is a career opportunity and that he is managing political risk. Read together, the two texts show a skilled advocate whose public rhetoric and private calculation are not contradictory but mutually dependent. The letter does not prove that the Verrines are false; it proves that their truth-claims were produced within a strategy. The historian can therefore use the Verrines for Verres only with caution, and for Cicero with confidence.'