Thanks for the convincing and detailed reply, Quimmik. Sorry not have replied earlier… a few unexpected and unwanted things have happened over the last few days…
I spoke to someone who is also a very good Latinist indeed and she too suggested this thing where a subordinate clause already dependent on a subordinate clause may revert to historic sequence.
What I wonder given your examples, and given yet more examples she cited from Cicero, is what is the differentiating factor between using and not using the sequence of tenses rule in primary sequence? After all, if the rule is any subordinate clause dependent on another, then theoretically any subordinate clause in indirect speech (which is itself a subordinate clause) could follow historic sequence when the verb of saying would require primary. Cicero is obviously a great stylist, so I wonder what he means to emphasise when he does do this? Unless it is purely random, and one is just more common than the other. Perhaps it is as simple as one is less common and so adds extra emphasis just by this, or I wonder whether it is do emphasise the past tense? I like your explanation of the contrast between Verres’ eripuisse and the others’ surripuissent, but I wonder whether there is a more general explanation - maybe it is to contrast more the things done in past with those of the present?
The books I cited don’t suggest any unifying principle for the departure from the normal sequence of tenses, and apparently it’s quite a rare phenomenon. In this passage, maybe, as I mentioned, Cicero is representing Verres as dismissive of others who have plundered on a small scale, shoving them off into the pluperfect, to contrast them with his own large-scale depredations.
Cicero is speaking to the Roman Senate, a body composed of ex-magistrates who, if they have not already done so, have every hope and intention of enriching themselves as provincial governors in the same manner if not quite to the same degree as Verres. Maybe Cicero is somehow playing to their insecurities.
My recollection is that Cicero actually delivered only one or two of the Verrine Orations, after which Verres felt compelled to exile himself to Marseilles. Later he ostentatiously conveyed his gratitude to Cicero for forcing him to live in a city that offered such excellent seafood.
Ha, very inventive (and most likely) suggestions indeed! I guess we will never know ultimately what his intentions were but that he is entitled to do so, but I do like your extrapolations .
Yes, after he delivered the actio prima, Verres went into self-exile. The actio secunda in its various parts was never delivered but published presumably to show off what are, in my view, exemplary polemics. About the seafood, this is something I did not know! Beatus ille…
According to the Wikipedia article, Verres eventually fell victim to what might be called long-delayed poetic justice, though at an advanced age.
There [at Marseilles] he lived in exile until 43 BC, when he was proscribed by Mark Antony, apparently for refusing to surrender some art treasures that Antony coveted.
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