NO ONE CAN REALLY CLAIM to know politics properly until he has stayed up all night writing a speech for delivery the following day. While the world sleeps, the orator paces by lamplight, wondering what madness ever brought him to this occupation in the first place. Arguments are prepared and discarded. The exhausted mind ceases to have any coherent grip upon the purpose of the enterprise, so that often-usually an hour or two after midnight-there comes a point where failing to turn up, feigning illness, and hiding at home seem the only realistic options. And then, somehow, just as panic and humiliation beckon, the parts cohere, and there it is: a speech. A second-rate orator now retires gratefully to bed. A Cicero stays up and commits it to memory.

Taking only a little fruit and cheese and some diluted wine to sustain him, this was the process Cicero went through that evening. Once he had the sections in order, he released me to get some sleep, but I do not believe that he saw his own bed for even an hour. At dawn he washed in freezing cold water to revive himself and dressed with care. When I went in to see him, just before we left for court, he was as restless as any prizefighter limbering up in the ring, flexing his shoulders and rocking from side to side on the balls of his feet.

Quintus had done his job well, and immediately the door was opened we were greeted by a noisy crowd of well-wishers, jammed together all the way up the street. In addition to the ordinary people of Rome, three or four senators with a particular interest in Sicily had turned out to demonstrate their support. I remember the taciturn Gnaeus Marcellinus, the righteous Calpurnius Piso Frugi-who had been praetor in the same year as Verres, and despised him as a scoundrel-and at least one member of the Marcelli clan, the traditional patrons of the island. Cicero waved from the doorstep, hoisted up Tullia and gave her one of his resounding kisses, and showed her to his supporters. Then he returned her to her mother, with whom he exchanged a rare public embrace, before Quintus, Lucius, and I cleared a passage for him and he thrust his way into the center of the throng.

I tried to wish him luck, but by then, as so often before a big speech, he was unreachable. He looked at people but he did not see them. He was primed for action, playing out some inner drama, rehearsed since childhood, of the lone patriot, armed only with his voice, confronting everything that was corrupt and despicable in the state. As if sensing their part in this fantastic pageant, the crowd gradually swelled in number, so that by the time we reached the Temple of Castor there must have been two or three hundred to clap him vigorously in to court. Glabrio was already in his place between the great pillars of the temple, as was the panel of jurors, among whom sat the menacing specter of Catulus himself. I could see Hortensius on the bench reserved for distinguished spectators, examining his beautifully manicured hands and looking as calm as a summer morning. Next to him, also very easy with himself, was a man in his mid-forties with reddish, bristling hair and a freckled face, whom I realized must be Gaius Verres. It was curious for me to actually get a good look at this monster, who had occupied our thoughts for so long, and to find him so ordinary looking-more fox than boar.

Two chairs had been put out for the contesting prosecutors. Caecilius was already seated, with a bundle of notes in his lap, and did not look up when Cicero arrived, but nervously preoccupied himself with study. The court was called to order and Glabrio told Cicero that he, as the original applicant, must go first-a significant disadvantage. Cicero shrugged and rose, waited for absolute quiet, and started slowly as usual, saying that he assumed people might be surprised to see him in this role, as he had never before sought to enter any arena as a prosecutor. He had not wanted to do it now, he said. Indeed, privately he had urged the Sicilians to give the job to Caecilius. (I almost gasped at that.) But, in truth, he said, he was not doing it simply for the Sicilians. “What I am doing I do for the sake of my country.” And very deliberately he walked across the court to where Verres was sitting and slowly raised his arm to point at him. “Here is a human monster of unparalleled greed, impudence, and wickedness. If I bring this man to judgment, who can find fault with me for doing this? Tell me, in the name of all that is just and holy, what better service I can do my country at the present time!” Verres was not in the least put out, but grinned defiantly at Cicero and shook his head. Cicero stared at him with contempt for a while longer, then turned to face the jury. “The charge against Gaius Verres is that during a period of three years he has laid waste the province of Sicily-that he has plundered Sicilian communities, stripped bare Sicilian homes, and pillaged Sicilian temples. Could all Sicily speak with a single voice, this is what she would say: ‘All the gold, all the silver, all the beautiful things that once were in my cities, houses, and temples: all these things, you, Verres, have plundered and stolen from me; and on this account I sue you in accordance with the law for the sum of one million sesterces!’ These are the words all Sicily would utter, if she could speak with a single voice, and as she cannot, she has chosen me to conduct her case for her. So what incredible impudence it is that you ”-and now he finally turned to Caecilius-“that you should dare to try to undertake their case when they have already said they will not have you!”

He strolled across to Caecilius and stood behind him. He gave an exaggerated sigh of sadness. “I am now going to speak to you as one friend to another,” he said, and patted his shoulder, so that his rival had to twist around in his seat to see him-a fidgety movement which drew a good deal of laughter. “I earnestly advise you to examine your own mind. Recollect yourself. Think of what you are, and what you are fit for. This prosecution is a very formidable and a very painful undertaking. Have you the powers of voice and memory? Have you the intelligence and the ability to sustain such a burden? Even if you had the advantage of great natural gifts, even if you had received a thorough education, could you hope to stand the strain? We shall find out this morning. If you can reply to what I am now saying, if you can use one single expression that is not contained in some book of extracts compiled from other people’s speeches and given to you by your schoolteacher, then perhaps you will not be a failure at the actual trial.”

He moved toward the center of the court and addressed the crowd in the Forum as well as the jury. “‘Well,’ you may say, ‘what if that is so? Do you then possess all these qualities yourself?’ Would that I did, indeed. Still, I have done my best, and worked hard from boyhood, in order to acquire them if I could. Everyone knows that my life has centered around the Forum and the law courts; that few men, if any, of my age have defended more cases; that all the time I can spare from the business of my friends I spend in the study and hard work which this profession demands, to make myself fitter and readier for forensic practice. Yet even I, when I think of the great day when the accused man is summoned to appear and I have to make my speech, am not only anxious, but tremble physically from head to foot. You, Caecilius, have no such fears, no such thoughts, no such anxieties. You imagine that, if you can learn by heart a phrase or two out of some old speech, like ‘I beseech almighty and most merciful God’ or ‘I could wish, gentlemen, had it only been possible,’ you will be excellently prepared for your entrance into court.

“Caecilius, you are nothing, and you count for nothing. Hortensius will destroy you! But he will never crush me with his cleverness. He will never lead me astray by any display of ingenuity. He will never employ his great powers to weaken and dislodge me from my position.” He looked toward Hortensius and bowed to him in mock humility, to which Hortensius responded by standing and bowing back, eliciting more laughter. “I am well acquainted with all this gentleman’s methods of attack,” continued Cicero, “and all his oratorical devices. However capable he may be, he will feel, when he comes to speak against me, that the trial is among other things a trial of his own capacities. And I give this gentleman fair warning well beforehand, that if you decide that I am to conduct this case, he will have to make a radical change in his methods of defense. If I conduct the case, he will have no reason to think that the court can be bribed without serious danger to a large number of people.”

The mention of bribery produced a brief uproar and brought the normally equable Hortensius to his feet, but Cicero waved him back into his place. On and on he went, his rhetoric hammering down upon his opponents like the ringing blows of a blacksmith. I shall not quote it all. The speech, which lasted at least an hour, is readily available for those who wish to read it. He smashed away at Verres for his corruption, and at Caecilius for his previous links with Verres, and at Hortensius for desiring a second-rate opponent. And he concluded by challenging the senators themselves, walking over to the jury and looking each of them in the eye. “It rests with you, then, gentlemen, to choose the man whom you think best qualified by good faith, industry, sagacity, and weight of character to maintain this great case before this great court. If you give Quintus Caecilius the preference over me, I shall not think I have been beaten by the better man. But Rome may think that an honorable, strict, and energetic prosecutor like myself was not what you desired, and not what senators would ever desire.” He paused, his gaze coming to rest at last on Catulus, who stared straight back at him, and then he said very quietly: “Gentlemen, see that this does not happen.” There was loud applause.

And now it was Caecilius’s turn. He had risen from very humble origins, much more humble than Cicero’s, and he was not entirely without merit. One could even say he had some prior claim to prosecute, especially when he began by pointing out that his father had been a freed Sicilian slave, that he had been born in the province, and that the island was the place he loved most in the world. But his speech was full of statistics about falling agricultural production and Verres’s system of accounting. He sounded peevish rather than impassioned. Worse, he read it all out from notes, and in a monotone, so that when, after an hour, he approached his peroration, Cicero pretended to fall asleep. Caecilius, who was facing the jury and could not see what everyone was laughing at, was seriously knocked off his stride. He struggled through to the end and then sat down, crimson with embarrassment and rage.