Chapter 57: Against Verres

Phillips had drawn the middle section of "On Friendship".

He walked up to the podium holding a cup of tea he had procured from who knows where.

Upon reaching the front, he seemed to realize he was still holding it, so he calmly bent down and placed the teacup on the podium's bottom crossbar.

This action drew a few scattered chuckles from the audience.

His performance was perfectly by the book.

His pronunciation was accurate, his rhythm steady, and his rhetorical flourishes handled appropriately.

Much like the tea in his hand, it was neither scalding nor stone-cold, and it left no lasting impression once finished.

After he finished, he picked the teacup back up and took a sip as he walked off the stage.

Palmer, on the other hand, predictably failed to make it to the third paragraph.

He paused at the end of the second paragraph, mouthed a few silent words, and then offered a very sincere bow to the judging panel:

"Doleo, sed memoriam non habeo."

(I apologize, but I cannot remember.)

The audience couldn't help but laugh. Even Montagu laughed—it was restrained, though his shoulders shook slightly.

Palmer looked completely unbothered as he stepped down, exchanging a glance with Hutchinson.

Hutchinson fared slightly better, stumbling his way through the entire passage.

However, he placed the stress on almost all the wrong syllables, the equivalent of playing a piece of music entirely off-beat.

After coming off stage, he patted Palmer on the shoulder. "Want to grab some pie after the competition?"

"Sure."

By the time it was Richard's turn, nearly an hour had passed.

"Number twenty-three, Richard Williams, Greenwood School."

When the host read the school's name, the audience barely reacted.

Greenwood's reputation in academic circles was practically zero, and the performances of the previous two students had only reinforced that fact.

Richard walked from the competitor seating area to the podium.

His pace was unhurried. He held nothing in his hands, having left his bag at his seat.

The stone podium was polished smooth, its edges decorated with a shallow bas-relief of laurel patterns.

Down below, over five hundred pairs of eyes were fixed on him, and six pens were simultaneously readied at the judging panel.

The Seven Sages painted on the dome silently looked down at everyone.

He stood firm and took a breath.

The dome of St. Augustine completely suppressed the ether field, and the Micro-circulation within his body lay quietly dormant.

But the Breathing skill was at work, providing a steady, even flow of air to support his vocal cords.

He spoke:

"Quid enim Siculis facere potuit, qui omnia sua iam pridem amiserant?"

(What could the Sicilians do, those who had long since lost everything they owned?)

The moment the first sentence left his lips, several people in the front three rows looked up.

Montagu's voice was a mellow brass instrument, and Catherine's a sharp bowed string, but Richard's voice was something else entirely.

It was deep, but not murky; steady, but not rigid.

The Breathing skill had given him an incredibly precise vocal instrument.

The resonance of every vowel naturally settled into its optimal cavity. Open vowels expanded in the front of his mouth, while closed vowels tightened at the roof of his nasal cavity.

There was no need for deliberate control; with his physical structure optimized, it reacted on pure instinct.

Cicero had done something highly brilliant in "Against Verres": he never directly called Verres a robber.

He listed the plundered statues and sacrificial vessels one by one, describing in exhaustive detail how countless generations had once worshipped, adorned, and maintained them in the temples.

Immediately after that description, he pivoted: Where were they now? In the private villa of a corrupt official.

The anger was buried beneath the details. Every single artifact named was a piercing thorn.

"Heraclio signum Dianae (omitted) ac dignitatem venerabantur..."

(That statue of Diana by Heraclius, the most beautiful and sacred of all, which everyone worshipped for its great antiquity and lofty majesty...)

Pulcherrimum, "the most beautiful." Richard slowed his pace on this word.

It certainly wasn't to show off his pronunciation; it was to give the statue's beauty time to be seen.

The Learning skill elevated his understanding of the etymology, context, and rhetorical intent of every Latin word far beyond rote memorization.

The root of pulcherrimum, pulcher, came from the Old Latin for smooth and graceful, and the suffix errimus was the superlative.

When Cicero used a superlative to modify a statue, he was telling the Senate:

The thing you once cherished most has been stolen by one man.

And as Richard recited the names of these artifacts, the vivid images surfacing in his mind guided him to the truest emotional anchor.

"...ea sunt ablata, iudices, e locis sacratissimis."

(...these things, judges, were taken from the most sacred places.)

His voice sank, dropping until the stone walls of the chapel began to resonate.

His chest became a resonance chamber, and the breathing of over five hundred people vanished.

In the following passage, Cicero listed every plundered statue, every sacrificial vessel, and every mural.

The tempo slowed. The silence left between each syllable was drawn out, carrying more weight than the words themselves.

"Nihil in aedibus cuiusquam, (omitted) nihil denique in loco quisquam relictum est."

(Nothing was left in anyone's house, nor even in the towns; nothing in public places, nor even in the shrines; nothing with allies, nor with guests; in short, nothing was left anywhere.)

This was the climax of the entire passage, an unbroken string of "nihil" (nothing).

Cicero was well known for his parallel structures, and here he used them to lay bare the tragedy of utter desolation. Every repetition of "nihil" added another layer of despair.

Six times "nihil," six steps of escalation.

By the time he reached the final "nihil," he was forcing the word out through clenched teeth.

The lower he suppressed it, the heavier the anger became.

After the entire passage concluded, only the sound of his breathing drifted back and forth beneath the vaulted dome of the chapel.

In the third row of the audience, Mr. Holland was unconsciously tapping a beat against his knee, perfectly synchronized with Richard's rhythm.

He had been teaching for twenty years, and for the very first time, he felt that all his effort had been entirely worth it.

Beside him, Ms. Grant took off her gold-rimmed glasses and wiped the lenses with a handkerchief... they had likely fogged up.

Mr. West sat with his arms crossed, utterly motionless in his chair.

A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, but he didn't even bother to wipe it away. He was completely engrossed.

At the judging panel, pens flew across the grading sheets.

The Bald Professor had filled half a page.

The elderly, white-haired professor beside him wrote even faster. When his pen finally stopped, he glanced at the grading rubric, likely confirming whether a certain sub-category deserved a perfect score.

However, the pen of the woman in the dark blue skirt suit on the far right remained still.

Isabella Ashford hadn't written a single thing on her grading sheet.

She glanced at the contestant profiles and raised an eyebrow.

In the competitor seating area, Montagu took his hand off the armrest and placed it on his knee.

His posture was no different than before—composed, relaxed, his spine straight.

Yet, during Richard's speech, he had leaned forward ever so slightly.

It was likely during the escalating sequence of those six "nihil"s.

Catherine sat further away, her red hair draped over her shoulder, her eyes never leaving the podium.

There was an incredibly subtle curve at the corner of her mouth—acknowledgment, but not concession.

When Richard's final sentence fell, the echoes within the dome were still slowly fading.

Thunderous applause abruptly erupted, rolling on without end.

Simon leaned in as he sat back down. "I'm starting to feel a lot of pressure sitting next to you right now."

"You performed pretty well yourself," Richard said.

"I haven't even gone up yet."

"Just giving you some early encouragement."

"...Thanks, but now I'm even more nervous."