Marcus Tullius Cicero, In Verrem [Against Verres]

Kathryn Tempest (University of Roehampton)

Ed. by William John Dominik, University of Otago
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.1.2: Ancient Roman Writing and Culture (Republic and Empire), -750-476.
Vol. editors: William John Dominik (University of Otago), Giacomo Fedeli (University of Exeter), Thomas Habinek (University of Southern California), Emily Kneebone (University of Nottingham), Elodie Paillard (University of Sydney), Sophia Papaioannou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Jula Wildberger (The American University of Paris)

Domains

Rhetoric and Oratory

Dates

First circulation or publication 70

Places

Ancient Rome (Republic & Empire) (Country of Origin)

Resources

In 70 BCE Cicero launched the only major prosecution of his career: the prosecution of C. Verres. Verres had been the governor of Sicily (73–71 BCE) and reports of his widespread extortion were forthcoming. Cicero claims that he undertook the prosecution because the Sicilians begged him to help them; for Cicero was popular among the provincials, having served there as quaestor in 75 BCE (Cicero, Divinatio in Caecilium 2). The collection of speeches called the In Verrem contains three main speeches: the Divinatio in Q. Caecilium, the Actio Prima (In Verrem I), and the long Actio Secunda (In Verrem II) which can be further divided into five books (II.1–5), often treated by scholars as separate …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1032 words

Citation: Tempest, Kathryn. "In Verrem". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 June 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=20485, accessed 25 April 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article