Roman magistrate Gaius Verres had initially supported Gaius Marius and the Populares, but soon went over to the Optimates.

Sulla had made him a present of land at Beneventum, and secured him against punishment for embezzlement.

In 80 BCE, Verres was quaestor in Asia on the staff of Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella, governor of Cilicia.

The governor and his subordinate plundered in concert until 78 BCE, when Dolabella had to stand trial at Rome.

He was convicted, mainly on the evidence of Verres, who thus secured a pardon for himself.

In 74, by lavish use of bribes, Verres secured the city praetorship, and abused his authority to further the political ends of his party.

As a reward, he was then sent as governor to Sicily, the breadbasket of the Roman Republic and a particularly rich province thanks to its central position in the Mediterranean making it a commercial crossroads.

The people are for the most part prosperous and contented, but under Verres, the island experiences more misery and desolation than during the time of the First Punic or the recent servile wars.

The wheat-growers and the revenue collectors are ruined by exorbitant imposts or by the iniquitous canceling of contracts.

Temples and private houses are robbed of their works of art and the rights of Roman citizens are disregarded.

Another major charge leveled against Verres during his Sicilian tenure is that, during the time of the Third Servile War against Spartacus, he had used the emergency to raise cash.

He would, allegedly, pick key slaves of wealthy landowners and charge them with plotting to join Spartacus' revolt or otherwise causing sedition in the province.

Having done so, he would sentence the slave to death by crucifixion, and then lay a broad hint that a sizable bribe from the slave's owner could expunge the charge and sentence.

Other times he would name nonexistent slaves, charging that the landowner held a slave that was suspected of plotting rebellion and that the owner was actively hiding him.

When the owner, quite understandably, could not produce the slave (which he didn't own), Verres would throw him in prison until a bribe could be paid for the landowner's release.

Pompey serves in 70 BCE with Crassus as partner.

His meteoric rise to the consulship is unprecedented; his tactics offend the traditionalist nobility whose values he claims to share and defend.

He had left them no option but to allow his consulship.

Crassus and Pompey undermine the Sullan system by obtaining modification of Sulla's laws to their advantage.

They help to restore powers to the tribunes, revive the dormant censorship, and permit reform of the jury courts.

Verres returns to Rome in 70, and Cicero, at the request of the Sicilians, prosecutes him in the same year: the prosecution speeches will later be published as the Verrine Orations.

Verres has entrusted his defense to the most eminent of Roman advocates, Quintus Hortensius, and he has the sympathy and support of several of the leading Roman patricians.

The court is composed exclusively of senators, some of whom may have been his friends.

The presiding judge, the city praetor, Manius Acilius Glabrio, is a thoroughly honest man, however, and his assessors are at least not accessible to bribery.

Verres vainly tries to get the trial postponed until 69 when his friend Quintus Caecilius Metellus Caprarius will be the presiding judge.

Hortensius tries two successive tactics to delay the trial.

The first is trying to sideline Verres' prosecution by hoping to get a prosecution of a former governor of Bithynia to take precedence.

When that fails, the defense then looks to procedural delays (and gaming the usual format of a Roman extortion trial) until after a lengthy and upcoming round of public holidays, after which there would be scarce time for the trial to continue before Glabrio's term was up and the new and more malleable judge would be installed.

Cicero opens the case in August, however, and vows to short-circuit the plans by taking advantage of an opportunity to change the format of the trial to bring evidence and witnesses up much sooner, and opens his case with a short and blistering speech.

The effect of the first brief speech is so overwhelming that Hortensius refuses to reply, and recommends his client leave the country.

Before the expiration of the nine days allowed for the prosecution, Verres is on his way to Massilia (today Marseille), where he will live in exile until 43 BCE, when he will then be proscribed by Mark Antony, apparently for refusing to surrender some art treasures that Antony coveted.

Julius Caesar, lacking means since his inheritance had been confiscated, has acquired a modest house in a lower-class neighborhood of Rome and turned to legal advocacy.

On his return to Rome, he had been elected military tribune, a first step in a political career.

He has become known for his exceptional oratory, accompanied by impassioned gestures and a high-pitched voice, and ruthless prosecution of former governors notorious for extortion and corruption.