1

Cicero, Verres and the Classics in Eighteenth-Century Britain

In his classic monograph on Greek studies in England, M. L. Clarke notes that, from the sixteenth century onwards, the education of the British cultural and political elite was ‘based entirely on the classics. […] Other languages and other subjects were scarcely taught at all’.¹ Throughout the eighteenth century, tutors, philosophers and scholars discussed and published extensively on the advantages or disadvantages of such an education.² Unsurprisingly, the established system had its critics. As early as 1693, for example, the renowned philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) admitted the necessity of Latin for a gentleman and Greek for a scholar. For a boy intended for trade or business, instead, the study of the Classics was useless.³ In spite of Locke’s and other critics’ remarks, however, the education of the elite was not modified until well into the nineteenth century.⁴ A significant example, in this sense, is provided by John Stuart Mill (1806–73), the celebrated philosopher and economist whose family had extensive connections with India.⁵ In 1873, he wrote in his autobiography:

He [my father] advised me to make my next exercise in composition one of the oratorical kind on which suggestion, availing myself of my familiarity with Greek history and ideas, and with the Athenian orators, I wrote two speeches, one an accusation, the other a defence of Pericles, on a supposed impeachment for not marching out to fight the Lacedemonians on their invasion of Attica.⁶

As John Stuart Mill’s memoirs suggest, members of the governing class regarded the study of Greek and Latin as a means of acquiring a quick wit, precision in speech and sharpness of thinking: ‘classical attainments contribute much to the refinement of the understanding, and the embellishment of the style. The utility of Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic, are known and felt by every one’, the jurist John Dunning (1731–83) wrote in a letter to a gentleman of the Inner Temple in 1779.⁷ With political careers depending largely on rhetorical skills, eighteenth-century gentlemen were trained in classical models, and Greek and Latin orations, as well as classical treatises on rhetoric, were at the heart of their education.⁸ A quotation from the correspondence of one of the most profound scholars of the century, Sir William Jones (1746–94), will suffice for many examples. In an epistle addressed to Viscount Althorp (1758–1834), his fifteen-year-old pupil destined for a political career, Jones noted in 1773: ‘I am glad you admire Tully, and his charming work De officiis […]. He is the Man, whom I propose to you as your model, and whom I hope you will imitate’.⁹

The powerful influence exercised by the Classics on the eighteenth-century British aristocracy and gentry is a matter too vast to be developed here. Insightful studies, such as Philip Ayres’s Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (1997), have demonstrated how classical antiquity, and in particular Republican Rome, represented for the English elite a source of paramount values, including political liberty and civic virtue. In this chapter, I will not repeat Ayres’s observations. Confining my attention to a number of emblematic examples, I will show, instead, how classical orators and allusions to the ancient world figured prominently in eighteenth-century British parliamentary debates, as well as in the press and satirical prints. After this, I will turn to the numerous biographies of Cicero and translations of his speeches circulating in Britain at the time. In particular, I shall look at notions of character and eighteenth-century historical judgement of the great Roman orator who played a crucial role in Burke’s life and rhetoric. By means of a few significant instances, I will argue that, although to a lesser extent, also Verres, the villain governor of Sicily, as well as the Verrines, were mentioned and referred to in a number of eighteenth-century texts. In doing so, I will make clear how, at the end of the century, it was possible for Burke to imply that he himself was Cicero and that Hastings was Verres ‘without a trace of irony’.¹⁰ In fact, the identification that the Irish-born orator was attempting to foster in his audiences was made not just by the former in his speeches but also by his contemporaries, both inside and out of the doors of Westminster Hall. As we will see in particular in Chapter 5, newspaper reporters and satirists portrayed Burke and Hastings as though they had simultaneously been eighteenth-century gentlemen discussing a grave legal case in front of the Lords and the protagonists of an ancient trial held in the Forum of Rome.

Latine loqui

Throughout the eighteenth century, debates in the Commons and the Lords echoed with quotations from classical authors in their original languages, and British politicians and orators were often compared to Cicero or Demosthenes.¹¹ In his Life of Edmund Burke (1798), the Scottish writer Robert Bisset (1758/9–1805), for example, included a ‘Comparison of Burke and Cicero, in materials, disposition, language, and object of eloquence’.¹² At the time, newspapers and magazines largely commented on Bisset’s comparison. The Times (25 August 1798), for instance, reported that:

Dr. BISSET’s life of Mr. BURKE has given much offence to the Author of the Preface to Bellendenus. This grave Gentleman thinks the comparative merits of Cicero and Burke have been too partially weighed, and laments that the modern orator should be deemed superior to the ancient.¹³

It is from this perspective that we should also read the Oracle Bell’s New World celebration of the Earl of Mansfield (1705–93). On 7 November 1789, commenting on an important speech delivered at the House of Commons, the paper stressed how the Earl:

so eminently distinguished himself, that Sir Robert Walpole declared the merit of his speech to be so great, that it almost appeared to him to have been an oration of Cicero. Mr. Pulteney in the same instant rose to complete the eulogium, by observing, that he not only could imagine the speech which had been just delivered, was the composition of Cicero, but that the Roman Orator had himself pronounced it.

These are but a few examples among the multitude of cases that could be mentioned. Indeed, references to and comparisons with the greatest orators of antiquity were so copious in parliamentary debates, literary publications and the London press, that – as David H. Solkin has noted – the leading figures of antiquity seemed to have ‘miraculously returned to life, in order to participate in the most pressing political and social debates of the day’.¹⁴

The practice of comparing renowned Members of Parliament and orators to eminent figures of classical antiquity leads us to another consideration, which is that throughout the eighteenth century, the Classics represented a significant point of interconnection and mutual influence between different media, such as the London papers and satirical prints. Leading political figures were, in fact, often associated with Greek and Roman orators in caricatures.

One of the best examples is Design for the New Gallery of Busts and Pictures (17 March 1792: BM 8072) by James Gillray (1756–1815). In 1787, Catherine II of Russia (1729–96) had begun a second war against the Ottoman Empire. Owing to troubles in the north, by 1789 she was anxious to conclude a peace and entered into negotiations. A crucial point was Catherine II’s unwillingness to surrender the fortress of Ochakov on the north coast of the Black Sea – the episode is known as the ‘Ochakov crisis’. The Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806), persuaded the King to side with the Ottomans, while Whig leader Charles James Fox mounted an effective attack on Pitt, emphasizing the economic argument for cultivating an alliance with Russia, rather than going to war with her. In Gillray’s etching, the bust of Fox – very lifelike and depicted without any inscription – is portrayed between the images of ‘Demosthenes against Aeschines’ and ‘Cicero against Catiline’, suitably inscribed. Demosthenes and Cicero are depicted with intense frowns, as if upset by the presence of the British politician. Above the busts of the Greek and Roman orators, two pictures depicting the corpulent Empress of Russia are ironically titled ‘Justice’ and ‘Moderation’.¹⁵

It is quite likely that Gillray drew inspiration for his satire from rumours circulating in the British papers the previous year. The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser reported on 8 August 1791 that:

The Imperial Catharine [sic], it is said, has written, with her own hand, to her Ambassador, to request Mr. Fox to sit to Nollkens [sic; Joseph Nollekens (1737–1823) was the most fashionable English portrait sculptor of his time] for his bust in white marble, which she intends to place between the statues of Demosthenes and Cicero, as a mark of her esteem for the man whose eloquence and wisdom saved his own country and the Russian empire from an unprovoked and ruinous war.¹⁶

Gillray may have also been inspired by some ironic epigrams published in the columns of the Public Advertiser (8 September 1791):

ON A BUST INTENDED TO BE PLACED BETWEEN THE BUSTS OF CICERO AND DEMOSTHENES IN A FOREIGN GALLERY.

THESE Busts – with such a Bust between,

Give satire all its strength, Sir;

Here Wisdom’s on the outside seen,

There Gambling in the center [sic].¹⁷

ANOTHER IN A CONVERSATION BETWEEN CICERO AND DEMOSTHENES

DEMOSTHENES.

Brother Tully,

What a sully

On our honours, is this BUST!

Cheeck by jowl,

’Pon my soul,

’Tis neither classical, or just.

CICERO.

Then why stand we shilly shally,

Brother, let us instant rally!

For let me say – Odzooks, ’tis

A cruel and unheard of case;

let him seek his proper place,

and find his nick at Brookes’s.¹⁸

As a matter of fact, not only star orators but also less renowned Members of Parliament were associated with their celebrated Greek and Roman counterparts. Eighteenth-century readers would have found nothing strange in the idea that a certain Henry Flood (1732–91), ‘a most distinguished member of the House of Commons’, could be described as an emulator of Demosthenes’s strength and vehemence, ‘without aiming at the diffusion and brilliancy of Cicero’.¹⁹ Indeed, so intimate was the interconnection between the Roman Senate and the British Parliament, that it did not escape the notice even of foreigners visiting London, including, notably, Voltaire. In his Letters on the English, the French philosopher significantly observed: ‘The members of the English Parliament are fond of comparing themselves to the ancient Romans as much as they can’.²⁰

Each of these examples reveals the extent to which leading Greek and Roman rhetoricians acted as inspiring and unrivalled models for the eighteenth-century elite and its parliamentary representatives. A closer analysis of the press, however, also suggests that, oratory aside, classical culture tout court was the object of intense interest and much discussion among the nation’s readers. New translations of the Classics into English were widely publicized and articles were commonly opened with epigraphs in Latin and Greek. Each number of the Spectator, for instance, was prefaced by a sententia (maxim) either in Latin or – although less frequently – in Greek, which remained untranslated.²¹ No less importantly, satirists and political reporters frequently hid their identities under noms de plume such as Aristophanes, Junius, Sallust, Cato, Historicus, Philologus, Decius, Marcus and Candidus. As Solkin writes, ‘Latin pseudonyms, it should be pointed out, were used by writers of all shades and political opinion, from the most radical to the most reactionary’.²² To offer but one eminent example, the pamphleteer and classical scholar Thomas Gordon (d. 1750) and the critic John Trenchard (1662–1723) co-authored Cato’s Letters, a series of essays concerning the contemporary British political system. The essays were published under the pseudonym of Cato, the Roman aristocrat who preferred committing suicide rather than submitting to Caesar.

If we shift our attention to British papers issued in India in the period of the Hastings trial, they equally abounded in citations from the Classics and allusions to Greek and Roman cultures. A precious source of information, in this respect, is the British Library’s collection of early English-language Indian newspapers. A survey of the latter shows, for instance, that on 23 October 1788 the Calcutta Chronicle: And General Advertiser gave over much of its front page to an article titled On Roman Actors. Similarly, a close examination of the India Gazette: Or, Calcutta Public Advertiser reveals that classical, particularly Roman, culture was a frequent topic. One may think of such articles as Of the Head-Dresses of Roman Ladies (20 October 1788), discussing Roman ladies’ hairstyles, ornaments and fashions, including that of covering the hair ‘with gold dust, to make it still more brilliant’; or Of Roman entertainments (10 November 1788), concerning Roman amusements before and during supper.²³ Many issues then offered imitations of classical poetic forms, particularly odes. In this respect, Horace was probably the most frequently emulated poet.²⁴

Public interest was also kindled by new English versions of classical texts. The Hircarrah, a British newspaper issued in Madras, publicized in 1794 the ‘admirable translation of the works of Tacitus’ by the actor-playwright Arthur Murphy (1727–1805), a volume tellingly dedicated to Edmund Burke. It is interesting to note that the Hircarrah printed both Murphy’s dedication to Burke (7 January 1794) and two passages taken from Murphy’s translation of Tacitus’s Agricola, namely the speech of Galgacus to his army on the Grampian Hills (12 August 1794) and the speech of Agricola to his army (2 September 1794). Published in 1793, Murphy’s translation was immensely popular and continued to be reprinted until the beginning of the twentieth century. Burke found this translation extremely enjoyable. In a letter penned on 8 December 1793, he wrote to Murphy: ‘You have done what hitherto, I think, has not been done in England: you have given us a translation of a Latin prose-writer which may be read with pleasure. […] I have always thought the world much obliged to good translators, like you.’²⁵

Popular perceptions of Cicero and Verres

Among the classical models that were a constant source of inspiration for the political and cultural elite, Cicero was certainly prominent. At the time, the most authoritative classical text on his life was Plutarch’s Lives. Providing a window on the ancient world, the Lives, in Susanne Gippert’s words, ‘were most widely celebrated throughout the eighteenth century as the ideal biographical model’.²⁶ Plutarch had already been translated into English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For example, Shakespeare probably used Thomas North’s The Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes [sic], compared together by that grave, learned philosopher and historiographer Plutarke [sic] of Chaeronea: translated out of Greeke [sic] into French by I. Amyot and into Englishe [sic] by T. North (1579). A version attributed to Dryden, but in fact translated by several hands, appeared more than a century later.²⁷ In 1770, two brothers, John (1735–79) and William (1721–72) Langhorne, started publishing a new translation in six volumes, which soon became widely renowned and fashionable.

Plutarch’s Cicero is not a monolithic figure, but presents three different facets: the orator, the statesman and – though less prominently – the philosopher. Repeatedly, the Greek biographer celebrates the power and magnificence of the orator’s performances: his rhetoric is called ‘victorious’, his speeches displaying ‘such a variety of pathos, so irresistible a charm, that his colour often changed’.²⁸ Along with this, the Greek writer incessantly highlights Cicero’s ‘diligence, justice and moderation’, as well as his ‘great integrity and honour’.²⁹ It is particularly in the description of Catiline’s conspiracy – which occupies a long section of the Life of Cicero – that the great orator emerges as an indefatigable and capable statesman. Cicero’s devotion to philosophy, conversely, is dealt with quite hastily. Plutarch remarks that Cicero preferred being called a philosopher to being called an orator ‘because he had made philosophy his business, and rhetoric only the instrument of his political operations’.³⁰ After eulogizing the Roman statesman’s undisputed merits, the Greek historian alludes to Cicero’s numerous flaws and moral imperfections, including ‘[his] continually praising and magnifying himself’ and a ‘natural avidity of glory’.³¹

If we turn to the lives of Cicero composed and published in Britain throughout the eighteenth century, the orator’s narcissism and insatiable craving for honour and fame were very much the focus of Observations on the Life of Cicero (1733) by the Whig statesman George Lyttelton (1709–73). Even though Lyttelton admits that the Roman orator’s writings were ‘the noblest Lessons of Publick [sic] Honesty, Disinterestedness, and the Love of Liberty, that are to be found in all Antiquity’, he also frequently refers to Cicero’s unlimited ambition, private interests and passions.³² Lyttelton’s criticism of Cicero increases in severity when considering the period of Caesar’s ascendency in Rome, blaming Cicero for leading ‘a most inglorious and dishonourable Life, courting the Usurper whom in his Heart he hated, with the most abject and servile Adulations, entirely forgetting the Dignity of his former Character’.³³

That Lyttelton’s portrait of Cicero is overall negative, and in some cases even scornful, is quite ironic. Two years after the publication of the Observations, Lyttelton formed a group of young politicians known as Cobham’s Cubs or the Boy Patriots (all the members were less than thirty years old). According to Christine Gerrard, ‘they attracted praise for their apparently disinterested patriotism as well as ridicule for the Ciceronian rhetoric which distinguished their political speeches’.³⁴

Less than a decade after the appearance of Lyttelton’s Observations, the clergyman Conyers Middleton (1683–1750) completed what was probably the most authoritative eighteenth-century biography of Cicero, the monumental History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero.³⁵ First published in London in 1741, Middleton’s Life was subscribed to by the royal family as well as the most influential members of the social, political and literary circles, including Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745), Alexander Pope (1688–1744) and Samuel Johnson (1709–84).³⁶ Its hefty volumes had a vast resonance also on the Continent; it was translated into French in 1763 by the Abbé Prévost (1697–1763) and into Spanish in 1790.³⁷ Even in the thirteen colonies, where it was read in the original edition, Middleton’s Life was extremely influential, particularly in the early years after the War of Independence. In this context, Yasunari Takada has suggested that ‘Middleton’s Life of Cicero had an important role to play in forming what can be termed English and American Ciceronian culture for at least a hundred years after its publication’.³⁸ In contrast with Plutarch’s Life and Lyttelton’s Observations, Middleton’s blockbuster biography of 1741 may be regarded as a panegyric or a hagiography of Cicero. Indeed, in the Reverend’s own words, Cicero was ‘the man, who after a life spent in perpetual struggle against vice, faction and tyranny, fell a Martyr at last to the liberty of his country’.³⁹ Within this laudatory context, even Cicero’s most renowned flaw, his vanity, was eventually justified: ‘if we attend to the circumstances of the time, […] we shall find it not only excusable, but in some degree even necessary.’⁴⁰

Middleton’s idealization of the Roman orator raised a number of criticisms.⁴¹ Among others, The Death of M-L-N in the Life of Cicero: Being a Proper Criticism on That Marvellous Performance by an anonymous ‘Oxford scholar’ is remarkable for its witty satire. Published in London in the same year of Middleton’s Life, The Death of M-L-N is ironically dedicated ‘To the Right Honourable, Right Reverend, Right Worshipful, Honourable, Reverend, and Worshipful SUBSCRIBERS to Dr. M---n’s Life of Cicero; as likewise TO the Mr’s, Mrs’s, Masters, Misses, & c., in the same Subscription-List’. Given the sarcastic title and dedication of this treatise, it comes as no surprise that Middleton is accused of ‘ignorance and presumption’ and his work is described as ‘Much-a-do about nothing; […] a crude, indigested, incoherent Mass’.⁴² If, the anonymous writer continues, Lyttelton depicted ‘the Man Cicero, of Caesar’s and Pompey’s Times’, the ‘Reverend Author’, instead, conjures up ‘a faultless Monster of his own creation’, ‘a Patch-Work Hero [sic] of his own Imagination’.⁴³ After offering a number of examples testifying to Middleton’s ignorance and inability to translate Latin into English, the Oxford Scholar concludes his text with an expression of utter disdain and contempt: ‘[Middleton] has poisoned and perverted every Part of History he has laid his Fist upon, and warped and misrepresented every Character which he has attempted with his Sign-Post Pencil’.⁴⁴

In 1747, six years after the publication of The Death of M-L-N, the Poet-Laureate, actor and theatre manager Colley Cibber (1671–1757) launched another attack on Middleton’s Life in Character and Conduct of Cicero, Considered, From the History of his Life, by the Reverend Dr. Middleton. Following Middleton’s Life page by page, Cibber paints a new portrait of the ancient orator, in which he appears to be anything but perfect; repeatedly, the Poet-Laureate dwells on Cicero’s want of firmness during the exile, his vanity, his political opportunism and ‘his frequent changing from and to the Interests of Pompey and of Caesar’.⁴⁵ Even the episode Cicero was most famous for, Catiline’s defeat, is contemptuously described as ‘the work of Fortune not of Cicero’.⁴⁶

New clouds on Middleton’s success were cast again almost forty years later, in 1782, when the poet and literary critic Joseph Warton (1722–1800) accused the Reverend of plagiarism. According to Warton, Middleton had drawn largely from a seventeenth-century rare book, De Tribus Luminibus Romanorum (1634), by the Scottish classicist William Bellenden (c.1550–c.1633). The three ‘lights’ of the title referred to Cicero, Seneca and the elder Pliny; the author had intended to write a section on each ‘light’, but had in the end only managed to complete the first part on Cicero. Juxtaposing Middleton’s Life with Bellenden’s unfinished study, Warton came to the conclusion that:

The life of Tully procured Dr. Middleton a great reputation, and a great sum of money. […] It may be worth observing, that he is much indebted, without acknowledging it, to a curious book little known, entitled, G. Bellendeni, Scoti, de Tribus Luminibus Romanorum, Libri 16. Parisiis. Apud Tassanum du Bray, 1634. Folio; dedicated to King Charles. […] In his book Middleton found every part of Cicero’s own history, in his own words, and his works arranged in chronological order, without farther trouble.⁴⁷

The criticisms did not stop there. In 1787, the accusation of appropriating Bellenden’s work was once more made against Middleton by the schoolmaster and illustrious classical scholar Samuel Parr (1747–1825). In his Prefatio ad Bellendenum – significantly dedicated to three of the most renowned orators of the time – Edmund Burke, Frederick Lord North (1732–92) and Charles James Fox – Parr maintained that, after diligently collating Middleton’s composition with De Tribus Luminibus, he was finally able ‘to speak decisively on the subject’:⁴⁸ ‘to conclude the whole’, the schoolmaster asserted, ‘whatever Middleton ostentatiously declares it to be his wish and his duty to do, had been already done to his hands, faithfully and skilfully, by Bellendenus, from the beginning of the work to its final conclusion’.⁴⁹

Assessing the veracity of Warton’s and Parr’s accusations lies beyond the purpose of this study.⁵⁰ What needs to be stressed, however, is that this animated, vehement and constant debating about Cicero occurred at a time when some of the most crucial stages of the trial against Hastings were taking place. For example, in 1782, while Warton vilified Middleton’s work, Burke called for Hastings’s punishment.⁵¹ Even more significantly, in 1787 and 1788, when Parr’s Prefatio ad Bellendenum and its translation into English appeared respectively, Burke launched the impeachment of Hastings. This context is particularly noteworthy, if we consider that Burke – as we will see in some detail in Chapter 4 – conducted the arraignment of the Governor-General of Bengal as though he were Cicero and Hastings Verres, the propraetor of Sicily brought to trial in Rome in 70 BC.

Our review of the most influential eighteenth-century British biographies of Cicero, and of the polemics and critical quarrels that sprang from them, would not be complete without reference to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. First published in Edinburgh between 1768 and 1771, the Encyclopaedia was soon praised as one of the century’s most credited sources of information on art, science and literature. Starting from the second edition (1778–83), the name of Cicero appeared among its entries. Indeed, as its frontispiece promised, the second edition was enriched with new sections, including an ‘Account of the Lives of the most Eminent Persons in every Nation, from the earliest ages, down to the present times’. Before the end of the century, a third, enlarged edition was issued in Dublin (1791–7). This time, the account of the life of Cicero – largely drawn from Middleton’s eulogy – was followed by two critical commentaries, the first on the orator’s character, and the second on his rhetorical style.

In both the second and third editions, the biography of the orator occupies fewer than six pages and is reconstructed around some salient events of Cicero’s life. The prosecution of Verres is discussed at length and described as ‘one of the most memorable transactions of his life; for which he was greatly and justly celebrated by antiquity, and for which he will, in all ages, be admired and esteemed by the friends of mankind’.⁵² According to the Encyclopaedia, the episode shows Cicero as an outstanding rhetorician, as well as a clement and merciful man, as in the remark that, when Verres submitted to a voluntary exile, ‘he is said to have been relieved in this miserable situation by the generosity of Cicero’.⁵³

First and foremost, however, the Encyclopaedia casts Cicero as ‘the celebrated Roman orator’.⁵⁴ Not only did he achieve perfection in the ars rhetorica, but he also attained excellence in nearly every field: ideally without flaws, he was the quintessence of virtus. As such, the Encyclopaedia variously depicts him as a great supporter of the res publica and an enemy to the triumvirate. For example, when Caesar defeated Pompey and Cicero retired from the public scene, ‘he [Cicero] paid a constant attention to public affairs; missed no opportunities, but did every thing that human prudence could do for the recovery of the republic’.⁵⁵ In such a eulogy, Cicero’s only weakness appears to have been his despondence during the exile. Conversely, his notorious vanitas is hinted at, and his divorce from Terentia is presented as a consequence of his wife’s ‘imperious and turbulent spirit’.⁵⁶

Starting from the third edition of the Encyclopaedia, this laudatory biography was complemented with the critical comments of the traveller Henry Swinburne (1743–1803) and the minister and literary critic Hugh Blair (1718–1800). After the death of his parents and elder brother, the former began travelling around Europe and visited, amongst other places, an archaeological site adjacent to the putative spot where Cicero was murdered by the killers sent by Antony. The fascination and evocative power of the area inspired Swinburne’s reflections, which were recorded in his Travels in the Two Sicilies, 1777–1780 (1783–5). In evident contrast with the Encyclopaedia’s previous section of the biography of Cicero, Swinburne’s remarks are introduced by a significant sentence which sets the tone for the traveller’s negative thoughts: ‘A modern writer, however, is of opinion that posterity has been too much seduced by the name of Cicero, and that better citizens were sacrificed to the jealousy of the triumvirs without exciting too much indignation’.⁵⁷ Indeed, Swinburne’s observations are particularly harsh, as he suggests, for instance, that from ‘an impartial survey of Cicero’s conducts and principles’, one would ‘find more to blame than to admire’ or that Mark Antony ‘caused Cicero to be killed, as an angry man that has been stung, stamps on a venomous animal that comes within reach of his foot’.⁵⁸

The second comment on Cicero’s life is by the illustrious Scottish rhetorician Hugh Blair. Interested in classical rhetoric since an early age, in 1759 Blair began to deliver a course of lectures on composition. Indeed, so successful was this course that in 1762 King George III (1738–1820) appointed Blair as Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh. Like Swinburne, Blair does not hesitate to reprimand Cicero: ‘this great orator […] is not without his defects’.⁵⁹ After admitting that ‘No one knew the force of words better than Cicero’, Blair is quick to note that ‘In most of his orations there is too much art, even carried to a degree of ostentation. He seems often desirous of obtaining admiration rather than operating conviction’.⁶⁰

From the 1750s onwards, the large number of Ciceronian biographies and the heated discussions to which they gave rise were paralleled by a flourishing market of new editions and translations of Cicero’s texts into English. Middleton himself was involved in a controversy over the authenticity of the epistles Ad Marcum Brutum. A convinced and relentless supporter of the authenticity of these letters, in 1743 he published an English version with parallel text, which became the object of many criticisms.⁶¹

One later volume, which encapsulates the eighteenth-century British fascination with Cicero, is A view of the English Editions, Translations and Commentaries of Marcus Tullius Cicero, with Remarks (1795), by the German chaplain to the Prussian king, Ludwig Wilhelm Brüggemann (1743–1817).⁶² As the title suggests, Brüggemann’s thirty-six-page compilation offers us a glimpse into the sheer range of Cicero’s English versions and editions, the most recent of which are followed by a detailed critical commentary derived from either the Monthly Review or the Critical Review. According to Brüggemann, up until 1795, Cicero’s works circulating in Britain were: Rhetorica, De Oratore, Brutus, Orator, Orationes, Epistolae ad Familiares, Epistolae ad Atticum et ad M. Brutum, Academica, De Finibus, Tusculanae Quaestiones, De Natura Deorum, De Divinatione et de Fato, De Legibus, De Officiis, Cato Maior, Laelius, Paradoxa, Somnium Scipionis, Consolatio, Fragmenta Oeconomicorum Ciceronis.

From Brüggemann’s survey, one may easily infer that Cicero’s most frequently translated texts were the Orationes – the majority of the translations being the work of either William Guthrie (c.1708–70) or William Melmoth (1710–99). From this we gather that the latter was constantly eulogized in British critical reviews. For instance, his edition of Cato; or, an Essay on Old Age (1773) was described as ‘executed by a masterly hand. The language is pure and classical and expresses the sense of the original with fidelity and spirit’.⁶³ Conversely, Guthrie’s versions are often dismissed as inaccurate, hasty and bearing ‘upon them the strongest marks of want of attention’.⁶⁴

Interestingly enough, the first and sole eighteenth-century English version of the orations in Verrem – a ‘version’, the Critical Review noted, ‘not only spirited but generally correct’⁶⁵ – was published in 1787, a year before the start of the trial against the Governor-General of Bengal. J. M. S. Tompkins has stressed that ‘the book was no mere exercise in scholarship’: its translator, James White (1759–99), ‘had in mind the preparations for the impeachment of another provincial governor – Warren Hastings’.⁶⁶ In the introduction to his translation, White tellingly exhorts ‘the statesman and the senator’, as well as the ‘patriot Englishman’, to consider ‘the political observations with which they [the Verrines] abound’.⁶⁷ Parallels between Verres’s misrule of Sicily and the British presence in India radiate out from practically every page in the preface. For example, after observing that Verres ‘could, for three years, act the tyrant uncontrollably’, in spite of his being ‘within reach of Roman justice’, White significantly wonders: ‘how numerous must be the temptations to an European officer for oppressing the human species beneath the Equinoctial?’⁶⁸ The preface terminates with an ominous admonition in the form of a sententia: ‘Justice and probity are the main pillars of an empire: remove them, and, be its pride, infatuation, and insolence what they may, the speedy ruin of that empire is inevitable’.⁶⁹

If Cicero the orator was admired and imitated, particularly by the governing elite, Verres, the tyrannous propraetor of Sicily persecuted by Tully, was no less renowned, as several texts penned throughout the eighteenth century demonstrate. Margaret M. Miles, for instance, notes that Verres and the Verrines were often evoked by ‘private persons concerned with issues of plundering or extortion’.⁷⁰ Her point is supported by a few concise examples, among which is an anonymous pamphlet in verse titled Verres and his Scribblers: A Satire in Three Cantos (1732). In this specific case, the unknown author’s irony is directed at Sir Robert Walpole, then first lord of the treasury, and his ‘heavy-handed monetary policy’.⁷¹ The text also includes ‘an examen of the piece’, from which we may assume that contemporary readers were well acquainted with the story of Verres: ‘I have laid the Scene in Sicily, at the time, or soon after Verres govern’d there, (that Verres who was immortalized by Cicero’s Orations against him)’ – the anonymous pamphleteer explained.⁷² The ‘key to the poem’ also proves quite illuminating, as it provides a list of the main vices and misdeeds for which Verres – and his eighteenth-century alter ego ‘Lawlope’ (an anagram of Walpole) – were notorious. Among them, the author lists the (illegal) ‘Practice or Practices’ by means of which Verres/Lawlope ‘has amassed prodigious Sums’. Other similarities between them include their being ‘litigious, odd, avaritious squandring, vain, […] bullying, noisy, haranguing, powerful, wealthy’ and their employing ‘a pert, noisy, illiterate, ignorant, impudent Sett [sic] of Fellows’ to perform scandalous actions in their name.⁷³

In political satire, the stratagem of portraying a powerful public figure in the guise of Verres was not new. In 1710, Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) had published an anonymous article in the Examiner (23–30 November 1710) juxtaposing Thomas, first Earl of Wharton (1648–1715), with the propraetor of Sicily. Before drawing directly on Cicero’s first Verrine, Swift himself elucidates the expedient (‘frequently practic’d with great safety and success by Satyrical [sic] Writers’) he is about to use: ‘That of looking into History for some Character bearing a Resemblance to the Person we would describe; and with the absolute Power of altering, adding or suppressing what Circumstances we please’. Readers are further informed that, prior to choosing Verres as the ancient counterpart to the Earl of Wharton, Swift consulted Livy and Tacitus, but, being unable to find any parallel, ‘without doing Injury to a Roman Memory’, he resolved ‘to have Recourse to Tully’.⁷⁴ This introduction is followed by Swift’s own translation of a section of the Actio Prima. As with the protagonist of Verres and His Scribblers, also in Swift’s hands, the Roman governor of Sicily comes to represent the prototype of a degenerate politician, acting ‘with Rashness or Wilfulness, Corruption, Ignorance or Injustice’.⁷⁵

Cicero’s orations against Verres, and Verres himself, resurfaced also in legal treatises and travel accounts. For instance, in his Idea of the Modern Eloquence of the Bar (1711), the Advocate to King Charles II, George Mackenzie (1636/8–1714), refers to ‘the Pleadings of Cicero against Verres’ as ‘the best Models and Patterns in the World of just and natural Narrations’: that is to say, speeches pronounced by a crafty orator, who ‘makes those Things seem to be present and visible which are absent and already past’.⁷⁶

As we have previously seen with Swinburne’s example, Sicily was included among the itineraries of the Grand Tour from the 1770s onwards.⁷⁷ It goes without saying that those who could afford to travel were the members of an elite that was forged and modelled on Graeco-Roman culture and values. This thorough classical education, which included the study of oratorical treatises, as well as the speeches of the leading orators of antiquity, represented the powerful lenses through which the cities and archaeological remnants in southern Italy and Sicily were seen and understood.

Thus, one of the earliest English travellers to Sicily, John Breval (1680/1–1738), recorded in his memoirs that, during a walk ‘round Catanea’, he was ‘shewn [sic] the Foundations of the old Temple of Ceres (mention’d by Cicero in one of his Orations against Verres)’; similarly, while describing the precious objects of art in Syracuse’s most renowned shrines, he noted: ‘These Rarities were all carry’d [sic] off by Verres’.⁷⁸ References to the Verrines and the propraetor of Sicily also filter into what Edward Chaney has described as ‘the most widely read of all eighteenth-century travelogues’, namely A Tour through Sicily and Malta (1773) by Patrick Brydone (1736–1818).⁷⁹ The visit to the temple of Hercules in Agrigentum works as a sort of madeleine for the author, who is suddenly reminded that ‘it was here that the famous statue of Hercules stood, so much celebrated by Cicero; which the people of Agrigentum defended with such bravery, against Verres who attempted to seize it. You will find the whole story in his pleadings against that infamous praetor’.⁸⁰ Four years later, the same episode from the Verrines was evoked again – albeit more succinctly – by Richard Payne Knight (1751–1824), a traveller who was later to become a distinguished art collector. On the occasion of a trip to the same site, he observed: ‘In this temple was the famous Statue of Hercules, which Verres attempted to carry away but was prevented by the Spirit and Activity of the Agrigentines’.⁸¹

From this perspective, it is far from surprising that allusions to the governor of Sicily, as well as the orations In Verrem, may even be found in fictitious autobiographies, such as The Travels of Edward Brown, Esq (1739) by the historian John Campbell (1708–75). In the section concerning the island of Malta, after dwelling on some trivial considerations, including that ‘The Dogs and Cats of Malta are particularly handsome’, Brown/Campbell observes that ‘In ancient Times the Inhabitants of Malta were famous throughout all Europe for their Skill in maritime Affairs, their extensive Commerce, and for their refined Luxury, as appears from one of the Orations of Cicero against Verres, in which he upbraids him with being as voluptuous as a Maltese’.⁸²

Campbell’s Travels remind us that, throughout the eighteenth century, Cicero, Verres and the former’s speeches against the latter were mentioned, translated and alluded to in a variety of different contexts, from political satire and manuals of law, to travelogues and fictitious works. These references to the greatest Roman orator and the villainous propraetor of Sicily attest to a wide-ranging interest in classical culture. Hence the propensity of MPs and orators to imitate, compete and, possibly, even surpass the star rhetoricians of antiquity. Besides constituting the basis of the political and governing elite’s education, Graeco-Roman civilization, along with its languages, written texts and civic and spiritual values, was the subject of what we may imagine as a constant, lively discussion not only in the columns of newspapers but also among the reading nation, and the educated members of society at large. This Classics-saturated context constitutes the groundwork on which I begin my quest for the subtle and multiple classical presences in the trial of Warren Hastings – those of Cicero, Verres and the Verrines, in particular – that follows in the rest of this book. The identities of the ‘classicized’ protagonists of the impeachment – the British Cicero on the one hand, and the modern-day Verres on the other – comprise the theme to which we now turn.