One of
the consuls for the year and the consuls for the year which was to come
next were pledged to support him. The judges would be exclusively
senators, each of whom might require assistance in a similar situation.
The chance of justice on these occasions was so desperate that the
provincials preferred usually to bear their wrongs in silence rather than
expose themselves to expense and danger for almost certain failure. But,
as Cicero said, the whole world inside the ocean was ringing with the
infamy of the Roman senatorial tribunals.
Cicero, whose honest wish was to save the Senate from itself, determined
to make use of Verres's conduct to shame the courts into honesty. Every
difficulty was thrown in his way. He went in person to Sicily to procure
evidence. He was browbeaten and threatened with violence. The witnesses
were intimidated, and in some instances were murdered. The technical
ingenuities of Roman law were exhausted to shield the culprit. The
accident that the second consul had a conscience alone enabled Cicero to
force the criminal to the bar. But the picture which Cicero drew and laid
before the people, proved as it was to every detail, and admitting of no
answer save that other governors had been equally iniquitous and had
escaped unpunished, created a storm which the Senate dared not encounter.
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