Returning to Rome, Cicero works on a fourfold case: judicial corruption, extortion of taxes, plundering of property, and tyrannical punishments. Meanwhile, Hortensius’s decoy prosecution of the former governor of Achaia ties up the extortion court. Quintus’s chart shows that festivals and games will reduce the available trial days to about 20 before recess. As expenses mount—quartering witnesses, funding the aedile campaign, etc.—Cicero appeals again to Terentia, who advances another 50,000. Cicero increasingly resents relying on Terentia’s funds, prompting Tiro to reflect, “[I]t is from around this time that I date his increasing preoccupation with money, a subject that had never previously interested him in the least” (115). As witnesses arrive in Rome, Hortensius spreads rumors that Cicero has taken a bribe to bungle the case, forcing him to take time away from his existing legal practice and voter canvassing to reassure those providing testimony.

The decoy prosecution ends in acquittal on July 23. The jury for the Verres trial is selected; despite Cicero using all his challenges, it includes hostile aristocrats Catulus, Catilina, Servilius Vatia Isauricus, and Marcus Metellus. Soon after, Hortensius and Quintus Metellus are elected consuls, while Marcus Metellus is elected praetor. At the Senate’s lot-drawing, Marcus Metellus draws the extortion court, meaning that he will preside as judge from January. Cicero suspects that Crassus fixed the result and collapses briefly from stress. However, Terentia revives him and orders him to shorten his speech so that the trial will be wrapped up before Marcus Metellus takes office.

Cicero requests a meeting with Pompey and dines at his house with Palicanus, Afranius, Gabinius, and Varro; he returns shaken, saying only, “It is done” (124). At the supplementary elections, presided over by Crassus, Cicero canvasses alongside Julius Caesar, who is making his first run for the Senate. Despite Verres’s bribery, Cicero is elected aedile, winning 18 tribes. He returns home triumphant but says that the household celebrations must wait until Verres is defeated. He orders Tiro to summon all 100 Sicilian witnesses and have all evidence boxes brought to court the next morning; he also says that he will not need help with his speech.

On the fifth day of August, the trial of Verres opens before the praetor Glabrio at the extortion court at the Temple of Castor. Tiro and Frugi marshal witnesses from across the Mediterranean and stage the evidence boxes for maximum effect. Hortensius, defending Verres alongside Quintus Metellus and Scipio Nasica, attempts repeated procedural delays. When Cicero finally speaks, he announces that he will dispense with a long opening speech and instead immediately call witnesses one by one, presenting evidence and allowing cross-examination, completing his case within 10 days. This denies Hortensius the opportunity to drag proceedings past the upcoming games into the new year, when Marcus Metellus would preside.

Sthenius testifies first, recounting Verres’s abuses and revealing that Hortensius refused to take his case. Over successive days, witnesses including Dio of Halaesa and naval captains Phalacrus and Onasus describe extortion, judicial corruption, and bribery of the executioner Sextius. Lucius returns from Sicily with two Roman witnesses, Numitorius and Annius, who testify on the ninth day about the executions of Herennius and Gavius. Verres flees Rome that night.

Hortensius offers a settlement of 1.5 million sesterces; the true cost of Verres’s time in Sicily is likely closer to 40 million. However, Pompey visits Cicero personally and instructs him to accept the offer. Lucius is outraged when Cicero complies, and his disgust only grows when Cicero explains the favor he asked of Pompey when he visited before the elections: to speak to Glabrio and ensure that Pompey could call his witnesses without a preliminary speech. Lucius calls this “massive interference” and, when Cicero insists that he did it to secure justice for the Sicilians, demands that Cicero prove it by asking for a larger settlement anyway. In court the following day, however, Cicero merely laments that no damages could undo the harm Verres has caused. Later that day, he enters the Senate and claims Verres’s vacated praetorian rank.