Oh, yes. Verres was a thoroughly charming bloke. First employed by a megalomaniac (Gaius Marius, Uncle to Julius Caesar, who rose to supreme power and, through threats of violence from slavishly loyal military, got himself re-elected as Consul SEVEN times, when the Law was that you could only be Consul once), he chummed up to anyone corrupt and powerful and looted and double-crossed his way to the top.
I believe the Prosecution of Verres was the first time Cicero acted on behalf of the Prosecution. (I have a soft spot for Cicero – he once wrote “A room without books is as a body without a soul”, so how could I not?)
I haven’t read about the Sicilian Vespers, though. My bad. Medieval is interesting, or course, but I’m mostly Greek mythology and Roman History – End of the Republic (Marius again) to . . . the end of the Flavian Dynasty, I suppose.
<whispers quietly> But the only reason I was reading about the Quelling of the Druids on Mona was because I’d just been watching Merlin, and it made me wonder how the druids in the show might have survived the Roman purge. 🙂