Book 4
The subject of this oration is the manner in which Verres had plundered not only private individuals, but even some temples, of valuable statues, and other works of art. Among the instances given some of the most prominent are the plunder of Heius, a Messanian, of Philarchus, of Centuripa, of several other private citizens, of Antiochus, the king; and of the temples of Diana, Mercury, and Ceres. A French translator in commenting on this oration says, with reference to the slighting way in which Cicero speaks of the works of art thus stolen,—“The Romans struggled for some time against the seductive power of the arts of Greece, to which for many ages they were strangers. At first they really did despise them, afterwards they affected to despise them, but at last they were forced to bow the head beneath the brilliant yoke of luxury; and Greece, industrious, learned, and polite, subdued by the admiration which it extorted, the ignorant, unlettered, and rude barbarians who had conquered her by force. Faithful to the ancient maxims of the republic, Cicero in this oration speaks only with a sort of disdain of the arts and works of the most famous artists. He even pretends sometimes not to be too well acquainted with the names of the most celebrated statuaries; he often repeats, and with a kind of affectation, that he knows very little of painting or sculpture; and rather prides himself, as one may say, on his ignorance. He seems to regard a taste for art as unworthy of the Romans, and the finest chefs d' oeuvre as children's toys, fit to amuse the trifling and frivolous minds of the Greeks, whose name he usually expresses by a contemptuous diminutive, (Graeculi,) but little calculated to fix the attention, or attract the esteem or wishes of a Roman mind. ******
