aratively little weight
to this branch of his profession;--"Busy as I am", he says in one of his
speeches, "I could make myself lawyer enough in three days". The jurors
gave each their vote by ballot,--'guilty', 'not guilty', or (as in the
Scotch courts) 'not proven',--and the majority carried the verdict.

But such trials as that of Verres were much more like an impeachment
before the House of Commons than a calm judicial inquiry. The men who
would have to try a defendant of his class would be, in very few cases,
honest and impartial weighers of the evidence. Their large number (varying
from fifty to seventy) weakened the sense of individual responsibility,
and laid them more open to the appeal of the advocates to their political
passions. Most of them would come into court prejudiced in some degree
by the interests of party; many would be hot partisans. Cicero, in his
treatise on 'Oratory', explains clearly for the pleader's guidance the
nature of the tribunals to which he had to appeal. "Men are influenced
in their verdicts much more by prejudice or favour, or greed of gain,
or anger, or indignation, or pleasure, or hope or fear, or by
misapprehension, or by some excitement of their feelings, than either by
the facts of the case, or by established precedents, or by any rules or
principles whatever either of law or equity".

Verres was supported by some of the most powerful families at Rome.
Peculation on the part of governors of provinces had become almost a
recognised principle: many of those who held offices of state either had
done, or were waiting their turn to do, much the same as the present
defendant; and every effort had been made by his friends either to
put off the trial indefinitely, or to turn it into a sham by procuring
the appointment of a private friend and creature of his own as public
prosecutor. On the other hand, the Sicilian families, whom he had wronged
and outraged, had their share of influence also at Rome, and there was
a growing impatience of the insolence and rapacity of the old governing
houses, of whose worst qualities the ex-governor of Sicily was a fair
type. There were many reasons which would lead Cicero to take up such a
cause energetically. It was a great opening for him in what we may call
his profession: his former connection with the government of Sicily gave
him a personal interest in the cause of the province; and, above all, the
prosecution of a state offender of such importanc