page_title: Verres
section_title: Public career
hierarchical_section_title: Verres / Biography / Public career
caption_attribution_description: English: Bronze statue of Eros sleeping at Metropolitan museum of Art..
context_page_description: Gaius Verres was a Roman magistrate, notorious for his misgovernment of Sicily. His extortion of local farmers and plundering of temples led to his prosecution by Cicero, whose accusations were so devastating that his defence advocate could only recommend that Verres should leave the country. Cicero's prosecution speeches were later published as the Verrine Orations.
context_section_description: During the First Civil War (88–87 BC), Verres supported Gaius Marius and the Populares, but soon went over to Sulla and the Optimates. After Sulla’s return from the East and his subsequent victory in the Second Civil War (84-81) Verres found himself on the winning side. Sulla made him a present of land at Beneventum and secured him against punishment for embezzlement. In 80 BC Verres served on the staff of Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, governor of Cilicia. According to Cicero, the governor and his subordinate both ruthlessly plundered the province. In 78 BC Dolabella had to stand trial at Rome accused of extortion  and was found guilty with the evidence of Verres, who had secured a pardon.
  In 74 BC, by lavish use of bribes, Verres secured a praetorship. He abused his authority to further the political ends of his party. As a reward, the Senate sent him as governor (propraetor) to Sicily, the breadbasket of the Roman Republic – a particularly rich province thanks to its central position in the Mediterranean making it a commercial crossroads. The people were for the most part prosperous and contented, but under Verres the island experienced more misery and desolation than during the time of the First Punic War (264 to 241 BC) or the recent Servile Wars (135–72 BC). Verres ruined the wheat-growers and the revenue collectors by exorbitant imposts or by the iniquitous canceling of contracts. He robbed temples (notably that on the site of the Cathedral of Syracuse) and private houses of their works of art, and disregarded the rights of Roman citizens.
  Another major charge leveled against Verres during his Sicilian tenure alleged that, during the time of the Third Servile War (73–71 BC) against Spartacus, he had used the emergency to raise cash. He would, allegedly, pick key slaves of wealthy landowners and charge them with plotting to join Spartacus' revolt or otherwise causing sedition in the province.
  Having done so, he would sentence the slave to death by crucifixion, and then lay a broad hint that a sizable bribe from the slave's owner could expunge the charge and sentence. Other times he would name non-existent slaves, charging that the landowner held a slave suspected of plotting rebellion and that the owner was actively hiding him. When the owner, quite understandably, could not produce the slave (which he didn't own), Verres would throw the putative owner into prison until a bribe could be paid for his release.
  He was also criticized for his public relationship with Tertia, which was regarded scandalous, and Chelidon, who was attributed undue influence upon his office by his detractors. 
  Verres returned to Rome in 70, and in the same year, at the request of the Sicilians, Marcus Tullius Cicero prosecuted him: Cicero later published the prosecution speeches as the Verrine Orations. Verres entrusted his defence to the most eminent of Roman advocates, Quintus Hortensius, and he had the sympathy and support of several of the leading Roman patricians.
caption: Hellenistic bronze of Sleeping Eros, the type of work that Verres extorted from Sicilian collectors
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