Camille DESMOULINS – Precious autograph manuscript of 45 pages.

Camille DESMOULINS

Autograph manuscript.

45 pages in-4° bound in a half-morocco burgundy volume.

Slnd [circa 1785-1790]

Course in Eloquence, or the Masterpieces of MT Cicero. Plea Against the Plunder of Verres.

Rare and precious 45-page manuscript entirely in the revolutionary journalist's own handwriting. Includes erasures and corrections.

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Desmoulins exalts his political sense of law and justice in light of the Ciceronian pleas that accused the Roman governor Caius Licinius Verres of a thousand patrimonial pillages on the lands of Sicily.

"I cry out that in all of Sicily, this province so rich, so ancient where there are so many numerous and opulent families, there is not a single piece of silverware, not a single Corinthian or Delian vase, not a single gemstone, not a single work of gold or ivory, not a statue of marble or bronze, not a painting, not a single embroidery that Verres has not sought out, examined, taken away from which he has pleased.

I am not exaggerating when I say he left nothing in the entire province; I mean absolutely nothing. He plundered indiscriminately, from the Sicilian to the Roman citizen. With which city, O Verres, shall I begin the list of your plunderings rather than with the one that alone was yours, that alone brought you delight at the hands of the victims of your greed…

In 70 BC, Verres, propraetor of Sicily since 73 BC, was accused of embezzlement at the end of his term by all the Sicilian cities, with the exception of Messina and Syracuse. The Sicilians' grievances were numerous: all kinds of misconduct, organized plundering of the province, violence, abuse of power, embezzlement, and theft of works of art

While Verres was certainly a detestable administrator, he was especially unfortunate to be tried in exceptional political circumstances and to be confronted by an equally exceptional accuser, Cicero, who was to transform him for posterity into the archetype of the bad governor.

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