Soon after delivering a speech, Cicero might decide to circulate it to friends, who could have it copied and circulated to others. The orator could encourage this broader circulation, but would have little control over its extent. ‘‘Publication’’ was no more than the circulation of a speech’s text that could be read and copied by others (see esp. Starr 1987). While it is impossible to characterize Cicero’s immediate readership in any precise way, his audience would largely be composed ofmembers of the socioeconomic elite, many with enough rhetorical training to have clear expectations and a special appreciation for a published oration. The texts themselves do not seem to derive from verbatim scripts prepared beforehand (with the exception of Post Reditum in Senatu). Although Cicero will have written out important parts of a speech before delivering it, he relied largely on an outline (Quint. Inst. 10.7.30). His published speeches seem regularly to have been reconstructed from memory after the fact, with ample scope for correction of minor factual inaccuracies and for stylistic polish. Still, modern scholars generally find little reason to doubt that most of the speech texts we have generally represent the content and emphases of the arguments that Cicero presented orally (for literature see Craig 2002a: 515-17). There are obvious exceptions. The second action of the Verrines was never delivered orally, nor was the Second Philippic. We know from the ancient commentator Asconius, who had access to a record of what Cicero had said in defense of Milo, that that pleading differs substantively from the published speech (Asc. 41.9-42.4, Clark 1907; Cic. Mil. 72-91). On the other hand, in Pro Murena (57) and in the fragmentary Pro Vareno (Crawford 1994: 7-18), Cicero omitted material in the published version, but these omissions were indicated by rubrics in the text (Plin. Ep. 1.20.7; see Riggsby 1995). Pro Fonteio 20 and perhaps Pro Caelio 19 have similar rubrics. The Catilinar-ian Orations of 63 bce, published as a part of a group of consular orations three years after they were delivered (Att. 2.1.3; Cape 2002 with literature), are usually thought to contain accretions and changes to address the political circumstances of 60.
While there was a Roman tradition of publishing orations, Cicero published his speeches much more frequently than did other orators of his generation, and in fact his are the only substantially preserved orations from this period. (The pathetic remains of other Roman republican oratory are collected in Malcovati 19764; see chapter 18.) He says that he circulates his speeches to provide models for the young (Att. 2.1.3, 4.2.2, QFr. 3.1.11). In fact, Cicero publishes speeches expressing different and even inconsistent views before the senate and the people (see chapter 10), and we can best understand this if he intended his published speeches as educational examples of the orator’s handling of different audiences and circumstances. Of course these documents could further serve, within the highly personalized politics of the late republic, as political manifestos. Sent to friends, they may also have been simply a way ofconveying what was happening in Rome. But whatever the other motives for publishing his speeches, the constant that runs through these texts is Cicero’s own attention to his public persona. From the beginning to the end of Cicero’s career, his published speeches demonstrate that he is dutiful, courageous, compassionate, prudent, altogether worthy of a place in public life, and finally in the leadership of the governing elite.
This was an argument that Cicero needed to make. The orator, although born into an affluent family which was very well connected to powerful families in Rome, was from the small town of Arpinum. Such an individual realistically had little or no chance to rise to prominence in Rome. But oratory could provide a way (Mur. 24; see chapter 8). Cicero cultivated his gifts to achieve his ambitions. His circulation of selected speeches in written form would insure a wider audience for his self-presentation. Speeches which might cause awkwardness or embarrassment, or which could not be made to conform to that end, he simply did not circulate.
So a reader of the speeches can feel a tension between two especially important perspectives. As exemplar of persuasion, the text invites us to imagine the speech as an oral performance before a specific audience, to assess Cicero’s persuasive goals and the challenges that he must overcome to achieve them, and to see our text as a representation of an act of the progressive manipulation of the audience. This is the essence of persuasive process criticism (for literature see Craig 2002a: 517-21). But the depiction of Cicero the persuader is also the self-presentation of Cicero the model public figure. This self-presentation may be seamlessly integrated with the depiction of an oral persuasive act. But it may also weaken or break the illusion of oral performance, leaving the reader to judge it as a literary exercise in self-promotion cast within an oratorical genre.
Cicero’s early career was spent in the courts, where he preferred the role of defender. The way in which the defense attorney’s role is conceived nicely joins Cicero’s exemplifying and self-presentational goals. He is called a patronus. While the exact status of this role was under intense negotiation in Cicero’s time, the metaphor is that of a great man helping one in need. He does so because noblesse oblige, and is prohibited by law, although a law easily circumvented, from receiving any payment for his services. The orator’s eloquent practice of this role, and publication of exemplars of his success, can only benefit his public persona.
With the exception of four speeches concerned with civil suits, the anomalous pleading Pro C. Rabirio, and his two latest pleadings before Caesar as sole judge, all of Cicero’s judicial orations were pled before quaestiones publicae, courts with juries composed of the socioeconomic elite who rendered judgment on charges that seemed to affect the welfare of the republic itself. Only in this sense were these courts fundamentally political. There were such courts to try murder, provincial misgovern-ment, seditious violence, election bribery, treason, and official malfeasance. The defendants in these trials were regularly people in public life, and Cicero’s participation in them brought visibility and prestige. Even in a murder case, in which the defendant need not be a public figure, the political dimension could loom large.
Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino
Such was Cicero’s first case before a quaestio publica, in 80 bce, pled at the age of twenty-six on behalf of Sextus Roscius of Ameria on a charge of patricide. In this first case to come before the murder court since Sulla’s proscriptions had ended, the orator boldly asserts that it was more likely that the victim’s other relations, who were behind the prosecution of his client, had themselves killed the elder Roscius (esp. Rosc. Am. 35, 83-123). Most strikingly, he asserts that they profited from the victim’s death through their collusion with Chrysogonus, the powerful freedman of Sulla (esp. 6-7, 35,124-42). This was sensational. Although the defendant seemed to have some powerful allies in Rome, the fact that his defense fell to so inexperienced an advocate underscores the genuine risk that Cicero took in speaking out against a crony of Sulla. From the outset his self-presentation is, properly, that of a courageous young man driven by duty to help a defenseless innocent.
The jury, comprised completely of senators, would feel at once the boldness of the young orator’s strategy. Their expectations for how he would proceed, both in argument and in organization, came in large part from a shared training in rhetorical theory (see chapter 13). To take one example from the argumentatio, rhetorical theory requires that in a question of fact (Did the defendant do the deed or not?), the prosecutor does everything possible to vilify the defendant’s character by adducing all shortcomings, whether directly related to the charge or not (Cic. Tnv. Rhet. 2.32). So Cicero’s dismissal of the best efforts of Erucius, the prosecutor, to assassinate Roscius’ character is a tactic that could be keyed to a rhetorical handbook (Rosc. Am. 38; cf. 62 on motive).
In this question of fact, where character truly counts, the opponent had gamely painted Roscius as one who resented his father’s decision to keep him on a family farm rather than in Rome, and who committed the crime because he was convinced that his father would disinherit him (Rose. Am. 52). Cicero’s defense, on the same ground, shows that his client is incapable of patricide by painting him as the embodiment of rustic virtue, a Roman farmer cut from the same cloth as the farmer-soldiers who made Rome great (50; cf. Vasaly 1985). This sort of characterization, demanded by the common education of Cicero and his juries, is a hallmark of his judicial arguments (Riggsby 2004).
Another educated expectation of Cicero’s juries that he richly fulfills is the weighing of probability arguments concerning motive, opportunity, circumstances surrounding the deed, and subsequent behavior. Cicero uses the jury’s expectations for such arguments virtually to go down a list of topics showing that no effective argument can be made against his client (see esp. Rose. Am. 62-81 with Inv. Rhet. 2.16-46). Going further, he applies those same topics to those behind the prosecution in order to show that they are more likely to have committed the murder (Rosc. Am. 83-123). Generally, one can see the argumentative and organizational prescriptions ofthe handbooks played out in Cicero’s earliest speeches. This does not mean that one could sit down with De Inventione and the facts of the case and produce something close to the speech for Roscius. Instead, rhetorical theory provides a basic set of expectations that the speaker can fulfill, and demand that his opponent fulfill, but that he can also elide or manipulate to persuade his audience.
Yet another hallmark, although one that grows directly from practice rather than from the handbooks, is the ‘‘rhetoric of advocacy’’ (Kennedy 1968; May 1981). This is Cicero’s ability to speak on his client’s behalf, and virtually with his client’s voice, in passages rousing emotion (Rosc. Am. 145, 150), but to claim in arguments that might offend the jury that he is speaking out of his own concern, here a concern for the republic, and is not representing his client’s views at all (129-42). Cicero’s selfpresentation as a defense attorney concerned with the welfare of the state argues that he is the sort of person who does credit to the political elite, and this indirectly advances his ambitions in public life. More immediately, it also helps fulfill an expectation of the Roman jury, who regard the argument from authority, the implicit vouching for the defendant’s character by respectable individuals, as an integral part of a proper defense. Even at the age of twenty-six, Cicero fashions himself as a courageous and dutiful Roman, and his client benefits from this self-presentation.
While character depiction and self-presentation are salient features of Ciceronian argument and Roman expectation, emotional appeals are also expected. In the triad of instructing, pleasing, and moving the audience, moving the emotions is what guarantees success (see De Or. 2.114-15, 121, 128, 178 ff., Orat. 128; see too chapter 19). Here Cicero famously excels (Brut. 190, Orat. 130). While a detailed consideration of Cicero’s styles is beyond our scope, in this context we must note some of his comments on the special fate that awaits a patricide, to be sewn into a leather sack and thrown into a river to drown (Rose. Am. 72; cf. Orat. 107):
Etenim quid tam est commune quam spiritus vivis, terra mortuis, mare fluctuantibus, litus eiectis? ita vivunt, dum possunt, ut ducere animam de caelo non queant, ita moriuntur ut eorum ossa terra non tangat, ita iactantur fluctibus ut numquam adluantur, ita postremo eiciuntur ut ne ad saxa quidem mortui conquiescant. (Cicero, Pro Sexto Roseio Amerino 72)
For what is so common as air to the living, earth to the dead, the sea to the storm-tossed, the shore to those cast upon it. They live, while they can, in such a way that they are not able to draw breath from the sky. They die in such a way that the earth does not touch their bones, they are tossed by the waves in such a way that they are never washed, finally they are thrown out in such a way that not even in death do they rest on the rocks.
Cicero’s defense of Sextus Roscius was successful in its arguments, its character depiction, and its emotional appeal. But the energetic, elaborate, and copious style of speaking, evident even in this brief quotation, made excessive demands on his health. Further, if we are to believe Plutarch (Cic. 3), his successful opposition to Sulla’s pet freedman may have put him in danger. So he took two years to go to the east, where he studied philosophy in Athens, and rhetoric in Asia Minor and Rhodes. Exactly how Cicero’s style and delivery changed as a result is debatable (see Albrecht 2003), but his purple passages will not again have the ostentatious combination of symmetry and emotionalism of the speech for Roscius.
The Verrines
After returning to Rome in 78 bce, attaining entrance to the senate through election to the quaestorship in 76, and serving as quaestor in western Sicily in 75, Cicero became a regular presence in Rome as a patronus. Still, it was his first prosecution that was to cement his reputation as the foremost speaker in the quaestiones publicae. His prosecution in 70 of Gaius Verres, the extravagantly corrupt governor of Sicily from 73 to 71, was an opportunity to serve his Sicilian clients, cast himself as a voice in the senate for the integrity of senatorial juries, show himself a friend of the equestrian class of businessmen whom Verres had cheated, and depict himself as a champion of Rome’s citizens and her empire in the face of the malevolent and rapacious enormities of a singularly wicked Roman provincial governor. Cicero made his Verrine orations serve all these functions first by triumphing over long odds and then by vigorously molding the public perception of his victory (Vasaly 2002: 87-103).
We have seven speeches in three different genres. The first, the Divinatio in Caecilium, is Cicero’s plea that he, rather than a Sicilian, be allowed to take the prosecution. It is our only example of a divinatio, and shows Cicero explaining and embodying the rhetorical training and persuasive powers in which he surpasses his competitor (Craig 1993a: 47-66). The other two unequal sections of the Verrine corpus correspond to the two separate hearings mandated by the law on provincial misgovernment (res repetundae; on which see Riggsby 1999: 120-9). In 70 bce, for the last time before the jury reforms of that year, a jury composed completely of senators would hear prosecution and defense make their introductory speeches, then hear the witnesses and other evidence presented and rebutted. The law then mandated an adjournment (ampliatio), followed by a second hearing, when all of this ground would be replowed before the jury cast their votes.
Verres had powerful friends, including his patronus, Hortensius, who was consul-elect when the trial began in August; the other consul-elect, Quintus Metellus, and Metellus’ brother, who would be the praetor in charge of the extortion court the following year; and another brother of Metellus, who had succeeded Verres as governor of Sicily and impeded Cicero’s collection of evidence. Delay worked for the defense, and the procedure of the court, with two separate hearings, would abet that delay. Avoiding this trap, Cicero made the First Verrine a short (fifty-six section) preamble for his immediate introduction of witnesses and evidence. This evidence was overwhelming; Verres retired into exile before the second hearing of the case.
This outcome was glorious for Cicero in the short term, but left him without a venue for the oratorical presentation that could sound the themes noted above and show him as an honest, courageous, selfless, and patriotic leader who harnessed his remarkable eloquence for the public good. Instead, his victory was based more on the evidentiary management of an equestrian businessman than on the qualities of a senatorial leader (so S. Butler 2002: 71-84, esp. 82-4). Cicero would not be cheated. Employing the transparent fiction that Verres had returned for the second hearing, the orator published the speeches he would have given to seal the conviction. The five parts of the second action against Verres, freed from any correspondence to an actual oral performance, serve Cicero’s needs at remarkable length. The whole, covering Verres’ urban praetorship, his Sicilian governorship, his devastating peculations of the grain supply, his rapacity for works of art including cult images of deities, his failure as a military commander against the pirates, and his savagery toward Roman citizens, sprawls to some 350 pages of a modern text. This massive work shows in its purest form the public self-fashioning that Cicero hoped to achieve by publication of his speeches. The speeches of the actio secunda are as engaging as they are self-serving, with the possible exception of the third, on the grain supply, which even Cicero admits is a taxing subject (Verr. 2.3.10). While their length was felt burdensome by some even in antiquity (quis quinque in Verrem libros exspectabit?, ‘‘who will last through five books against Verres?’’, Tac. Dial. 20.1), they sustain interest by means of remarkably clear organization, variety in tone, well placed appeal to emotion, and a presentation that consistently invites the reader to imagine oral performance (cf. Nisbet 1992). The culminating emotional moment near the end of the fifth section (Verr. 2.5.158-68) is the description of the flogging and crucifixion of one Publius Gavius, despite the fact that Gavius was a Roman citizen:
Caedebatur virgis in medio foro Messanae civis Romanus, iudices, cum interea nullus gemitus, nulla vox alia illius miseri inter dolorem crepitumque plagarum audiebatur nisi haec, ‘‘civis Romanus sum.’’ hac se commemoratione civitatis omnia verbera depulsurum cruciatumque a corpore deiecturum arbitrabatur; is non modo hoc non perfecit, ut virgarum vim deprecaretur, sed cum imploraret saepius usurparetque nomen civitatis, crux, crux, inquam, infelici et aerumnoso, qui numquam istam pestem viderat, compar-abatur. (Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.162)
In the middle of the Forum at Messana, Judges, a Roman citizen was being cut to pieces with rods, while meanwhile no groan, no other word of that wretched man was heard in the midst of his agony and the sound of the blows except this, ‘‘I am a Roman citizen!’’ With this mention of his citizenship he thought that he would repel all blows and hurl the cross away from his body. He not only did not succeed in escaping the violence of the rods, but when he begged the more and invoked the title of citizenship, a cross, a cross, I say, was prepared for the unlucky and suffering man who had never seen that horror before.
Cicero, already elected aedile for the coming year, made in the actio secunda a suitable projection of himself as vindicator of the public interest, the integrity of the senate, the rights of the equites, and the well-being not only of Rome’s subjects but of Rome’s citizens. He was now more than the foremost speaker in the Roman courts; he was ready for greater things.
Pro Lege Manilla
Cicero’s ambition for public life, augmented by his carefully chosen legal defense work, the prosecution of Verres, and the selective publication of his speeches, was enough to earn him unanimous election by the centuriate assembly as one of the eight praetors for 66 bce. During his praetorian year, at the age of forty, he first ventured to mount the rostra in the Roman Forum and to address the Roman people formally in a contio (see chapter 7). A contio could only be called by a magistrate, who could then produce other speakers at will. Its purpose was persuasive and informational, and did not include any formal decision by the audience. (That said, the audience for a contio could be disbanded and instantly reconvened as a voting assembly at need.) Although the audience for a contio consisted simply of those who came to the Forum to hear it, and might include hired claqueurs, its responses could be represented as the Will of the Roman People. It was especially important that a man in public life appeal to the audience of a contio, or at the very least not excite their hostility in any consistent way. As Morstein-Marx (2004) has recently shown, the rhetoric of the contio, with its themes of libertas, of the rights and privileges (commoda) of the Roman People, and of the authority of the Roman People which the orator strives to revere, leads to an ideological sameness. The contio does not pit the claims of the prerogatives of the senatorial oligarchy (optimates) against those of politicians who would ingratiate themselves with the plebs (populares). Rather in the contio all speakers, certainly Cicero, depict themselves as populares and their opponents as less concerned with the freedom, privileges and authority of the Populus Romanus. While the audience for a contio need not be unsophisticated, it is usually only partially informed. Given that the people are excluded from meetings of the senate and other venues for substantive public policy discussion, the contio becomes a mechanism for an audience with limited knowledge of issues to confer favor on those who seem best to represent its interests. It can thus become a contest in which the audience rewards those who project the most believable personae as leaders who have the people’s freedom and privileges at heart.
Cicero’s first speech before a contio does just that. He speaks in support of the Lex Manilia, a tribunician law which would give to Gnaeus Pompeius, Rome’s greatest general and the darling both of the equestrian class and of the urban plebs, an extraordinary command to pursue the intractable war against Mithridates of Pontus. (For what follows, cf. esp. Steel 2001: 113-56.) Pompey had received an extraordinary command against the pirates the previous year, and had eliminated this obdurate and serious threat within six months. He was already in the east, and poised to take command of a Roman army in disarray, one that had until recently been commanded by the well-born and well-connected Lucullus. The challenge for Cicero, already looking toward an electoral campaign for the consulship, is to support the popular measure of giving this command to Pompey in a way that is most gratifying to the greatest number, that answers or elides the substantive objections of the measure’s powerful senatorial opponents, and that causes least annoyance to those opponents. Certain or probable points of contention are that the senate already has in place a mechanism for assigning commands and making commanders accountable, while an extraordinary command gives a commander too much power, leaves no clear mechanism to check that commander’s appetites, and invests too heavily in the success of one individual, leaving the state at a loss if he should die or fail. Further, Pompey himself may arouse special concerns. The astonishing youthful successes that had made it so easy to compare him with Alexander the Great did not show a character that would be easily amenable to senatorial control, and his past was subject to different and disturbing interpretations; he would be called adulescentulus carnifex, the teenage executioner (Malcovati 19764 71.1).
The orator makes the answers to these misgivings seem easy by casting his speech as an encomium (cf. Rhet. Her. 3.10-15; Cic. Inv. Rhet. 2.177-8; see too chapter 11). This genre, while useful injudicial and deliberative speeches (Rhet. Her. 3.15), is itself ceremonial and celebratory rather than pointedly argumentative. Under cover of this genre, Cicero can satisfy all these diverse audiences, including a supportive group of equestrians and the less affluent, a suspicious group of distinguished senators, and those of whatever station who may have misgivings about Pompey the individual. His performance is a careful argumentation in its own right (see Steel 2001: 113-56; Classen 1985: 268-303), but is also a masterpiece of Cicero’s self-presentation. Following an exceptionally well-demarcated formal structure (Donnelly 1939; reproduced in MacKendrick 1995: 3-6), the orator describes the nature and magnitude of the war that require an extraordinary command (Leg. Man. 6-19, 21-6) and the singular knowledge of military affairs, virtue (both moral and practical), prestige, and luck that combine to make Pompey uniquely qualified to accept that command (27-50). This organization, arguing the indisputable point that the war is important and using the full resources of the genre of encomium to show that Pompey is a qualified general, shift the focus away from substantive constitutional objections. They also allow Cicero, through the sustained laudatio, to diminish, without confronting, the concern for giving Pompey so much power. The style is measured and rounded, but lively (cf. Orat. 102). To take an example almost at random:
Age vero, ceteris in rebus quae sit temperantia considerate. unde illam tantam celeritatem et tam incredibilem cursum inventum putatis? non enim illum eximia vis remigum aut ars inaudita quaedam gubernandi aut venti aliqui novi tam celeriter in ultimas terras pertu-lerunt, sed eae res quae ceteros remorari solent non retardarunt. non avaritia ab instituto cursu ad praedam aliquam devocavit, non libido ad voluptatem, non amoenitas ad delectationem, non nobilitas urbis ad cognitionem, non denique labor ipse ad quietem. (Cicero, Pro Lege Manilia 40)
But come, consider what moderation he [Pompey] has in other matters. From what source do you think is found such remarkable swiftness and such incredible speed of movement? For neither the exceptional strength of rowers nor an unheard-of skill in navigation nor some new winds took him so quickly to the ends of the earth. Rather those things which usually slow others did not delay him. Avarice did not beckon him from his set course toward any loot, nor lust toward sexual enjoyment, nor a pleasant prospect toward delight, nor the fame of any city toward sight-seeing, nor finally labor itself toward rest.
While Cicero is extremely respectful in his handling of Pompey’s recent predecessor, the distinguished nobilis Lucullus (5, 10, 20-1, 26), Pompey easily wins any implicit comparison. Having made an easy case, the orator then politely but decisively sweeps away the constitutional arguments of Hortensius and Catulus (51-68), largely by misrepresenting them as a clinging to tradition for tradition’s sake. Hortensius’ authority is counterbalanced by amplifying the success of Pompey’s command against the pirates, which Hortensius had opposed (51-6), while Catulus’ principal objection is flattened to a mindless concern with tradition (60). The orator answers this burlesqued position by a counterappeal to the way of the ancestors, who adopted extraordinary measures in crises, by pointing out that Catulus himself has in the past endorsed such extraordinary measures concerning Pompey (60-3), and by the counterweight of the authority of other consulars who support the proposal (68). In the tactic which is a hallmark of contional rhetoric, the orator ostentatiously places the will of his opponents in opposition to that of the Roman People (63-4). At the end of the day, Cicero’s first contional speech has advanced a popular proposal in a way that represents the orator as assiduous in helping citizens (1, 2), grateful to the Roman people (2) and selflessly devoted to them (69-71), concerned with the Glory of Rome (6, 11-12, 14 and passim), attentive to the economic welfare of the equestrian class (4, 14-17), and more broadly to the welfare of all Romans (6, esp. 19). The welfare of the provincials is at once a point of honor (14) and an unproblematic means to these Roman ends (17-19 and passim; see Rose 1995). So Cicero harnesses the form and attendant expectations of the epideictic genre ostentatiously to place not only Pompey but the orator who praises him at the service of the Roman People.
Pro Cluentio
In this year of his praetorship, Cicero continued his service as a patronus in the courts. One monument of this service is his longest single speech, Pro Cluentio. While this lurid tale of familial strife in an Italian town is exceptionally rich, and richly analyzed (e. g., Stroh 1975: 194-227; Classen 1985: 15-119; Kirby 1990), we will focus only upon one salient aspect, that of Cicero’s credibility. Cluentius was brought before the quaestio publica for murder cases, charged with trying to poison his stepbrother, the younger Oppianicus. But the orator spends most of the speech defending his client against another charge, that he had eight years previously bribed a jury to convict his stepfather, the elder Oppianicus, whom Cluentius had charged with trying to poison him. The court in which the elder Oppianicus had been convicted, known as the iudicium lunianum from the name of its president, was a byword for the judicial corruption of the old juries consisting solely of senators before the reform of 70 bce. Whether the prosecution in 66 brought as a formal charge the bribery of the earlier jury has been much debated, perhaps unnecessarily so (see Alexander 2002: 184-5). What is clear is that Cicero spends most of the speech rehabilitating his client from what he styles the prejudiced belief that Cluentius had in fact bought the conviction of his stepfather. This task is all the more challenging since Cicero had himself asserted in both spoken and published speeches that this belief was accurate, and had even defended a client whose conviction might be taken to tell against the elder Oppianicus. Thus the prosecution was able to read aloud in court Cicero’s utterances supporting their version of what had happened eight years before (see Clu. 138-42 with Verr. 1.29, 38-40, 2.1.157, 2.2.79, Caecin. 28-9, Clu. 49-55). Cicero’s defense of his inconsistency is remarkable:
Sed errat vehementer, si quis in orationibus nostris quas in iudiciis habuimus auctoritates nostras consignatas se habere arbitratur. omnes enim illae causarum ac temporum sunt, non hominum ipsorum aut patronorum. nam si causae ipsae pro se loqui possent, nemo adhiberet oratorem. nunc adhibemur ut ea dicamus non quae auctoritate nostra con-stituantur sed quae ex re ipsa causaque ducantur. (Cicero, Pro Cluentio 139)
But if anyone thinks that he has our own certified opinions in our speeches which we have delivered in the courts, he is seriously mistaken. For all those views are products of the cases and the circumstances, not of the individuals themselves or of the patroni. For if cases could speak for themselves, no one would engage a speaker. As it is, we are engaged, in order that we may say not those things which are established by our own judgment, but those things that can be inferred from the matter itself and from the case.
The fact that Cicero would advance such an explanation successfully certainly demonstrates his persuasive skill. But it is a radical departure from the image of the orator as statesman that we have seen developed both in earlier judicial speeches and in his first political speech this same year. Now Cicero is simply a pleader. He has the virtuosity to look his jury in the eye as he pleads, tell them that a pleader’s arguments do not have to represent his own views, and do so without losing the jury’s trust. Quintilian (Inst. 2.17.21) reports with no further context Cicero’s remark that he had blinded the jury in this case. Certainly this virtuosity was part of that successful deception. But for the orator to show himself as a man of convenient convictions, and to publish the speech, a monument of his deceptive behavior, seems at first sight very much at odds with the construction of a successful public self-image. In fact, this seeming contradiction adds another dimension to our understanding of the public perception of the usefulness of the pleader’s role. Cicero is not only a praetor and a successful patronus in the courts. He is part of a growing cadre who are redefining the role of pleader in a way that conforms with our modern ideas of a defense attorney, and are tying their activity to a notion of serving the law and protecting those in need. As Burnand (2004) has argued, Cicero expects the audience, even the audience of the published speech, to see this pseudo-professional pleader’s role, with all its insincerity, as a benefit for the Roman people, and an activity for which they should be grateful. The balance of the two guises of noble and old-fashioned patronus or skilled and practiced pleader is one that Cicero must constantly negotiate with his audiences, both listening and reading. But he is confident that both guises will earn their goodwill.
The Catilinarians
The combination of Cicero’s remarkable speaking ability, his political savvy, and the accidents of an unstable time led him to be elected consul for 63 bce, at the earliest possible age. Faced with treachery in Rome and the threat of a rebel army in Etruria, he saved the state from the conspiracy of Catiline through the force of his oratory and the vigor of his leadership. In this time of crisis, the various groups of the state rallied together in a concordia ordinum, a harmony of the orders. And the senate, which would naturally look askance at an upstart from Arpinum, passed a resolution praising Cicero in the highest terms (Cat. 3.14). He would even be hailed as pater patriae (‘‘the Father of his Country’’; cf. Juv. 8.244). So Cicero’s consulship, and Catiline, provided the crowning moment of the orator’s public life.
The crisis passed, and unity with it. Cicero’s action in executing five of the conspirators without trial on December 5 in 63 gave his enemies much leverage, and would lead to his withdrawal into exile in March of 58. The speeches that Cicero chose to publish from his consular year thus have several interrelated functions. They are at once exemplars of persuasion, an advertisement for concordia ordinum, a record of events as Cicero wanted them remembered, an effective portrait of the talent and heroism of the orator as the champion of good and savior of Rome, and a response to the withering charge that he had acted despotically and illegally in executing Roman citizens without trial. It was apparently for these ends that Cicero three years later circulated an ensemble of consular speeches (Att. 2.1.3; see Cape 2002). Four of these are the Catilinarian Orations.
All four orations, the first and fourth to the senate, the second and third in contiones, depict the orator as an energetic leader acting heroically, exposing himself to personal and political danger for the good of all: (1) he confronts Catiline; (2) rallies the people and cows any of Catiline’s would-be followers; (3) reveals to the people the evidence, already presented to the senate, that convicts five men, including a sitting praetor, as part of the plot; and (4) declares himself ready to take the consequences if these five are executed without trial. Because the speeches were published as part of an ensemble in 60, this self-portrait has invited scholars to see in the text later accretions that are poorly matched to the circumstances of 63. These include references to the orator’s natural mercy (e. g., 1.4), and his insistence both on his own heroic action and on the desire of good men to defend him from the enemies that his acts have made (e. g., 2.14-15, 3.26-9, esp. 4.20-4). Some have even labeled as accretions passages they find excessively dramatic or artificial, a highly risky procedure where Cicero is concerned (see Nisbet 1965: 62-3). Finally, we cannot know whether the speeches were individually published before they appeared in the collection of 60, and the conviction that any given passage is a later accretion is in the eye of the beholder.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem adfinem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? (‘‘How far, finally, will you abuse our patience, Catiline? For how long will your frenzy still elude us? To what limit will your unbridled brazenness flaunt itself?’’, 1.1). The First Catilinarian is the most famous prose work in classical Latin literature; its vehement opening words have even served as a badge ofshared culture between people who have no other language in common. That said, this speech is so famous not because of its oratorical perfection, but because it has served generations as an engaging school text, short (thirty-three sections) and dramatic. Among careful readers, the speech has been described or attacked as an unreal pamphlet (Nisbet 1965), as a speech that does not ask the senate for any specific action (Batstone 1994), and as a failure rescued only by the subsequent positive turn of events (Price 1998). It has further been used to show how Cicero responds in a troubled time to a governmental crisis of legitimacy; in contrasting the good of his side to the evil of his opposition, he offers clear choices by assuming what he is trying to prove (Konstan 1993; cf. Habinek 1998a).
The circumstances of the second speech, a contio delivered the day after the first, are significantly different in that Catiline has fled Rome. It also shows how the orator treats a subject differently before senate and people. As in the senate, he is very much the consul in control of the situation (see May 1988: 51-8). But in the contio, there is much greater emphasis on diminishing the threat even as Cicero explains it (2.1-2, 5, 22-5 and passim), and on urging the competence of the consul and the government to lead through this crisis (esp. 2.26-8).
A religious overtone, already sounded in the perorations of the first two speeches, is even stronger in the third, a contio in which Cicero reports the arrest of the conspirators with incriminating evidence on the night of December 2-3 in 63. Here Cicero’s description of the bravery and competence of the government, and his deft representation of the documentary evidence (S. Butler 2002: 85-102), go hand in hand with an extended reflection that the new statue of Jupiter being installed on the Capitol, within sight of the assembly, shows the divine will to protect Rome (3.19-22). Not unlike Martin Luther King’s ‘‘I have a dream’’ speech delivered before the Lincoln Memorial, Cicero’s presentation appropriates the symbolism of the monuments that surround his audience for his persuasive ends (Vasaly 1993, esp. 40-1, 75-87).
The Fourth Catilinarian, delivered in the senate on December 5 in the debate over the fate of those arrested, seems most like a pamphlet of 60 bce in that it does not explicitly demand that the conspirators be executed, holds up the danger that Cicero will face if they are executed, and does so in a way that at once makes the consul responsible for what is really the senate’s decision and impels all patriots to protect him from suffering for his selfless leadership (4.20-4). But even here, at least part of the apparent unreality of the speech may come from incorrect expectations. This is our only oration by a presiding officer in a senatorial debate, and it is not the consul’s job to argue emphatically for a position, only to summarize and guide the discussion (Cape 1995).
In sum, these four speeches are Cicero’s own monument to what he judged his greatest achievement. Whatever the faults and oddities that one can note in their presentation, whatever the currents of artificiality and later revision that one may suspect, the monument successfully endures.
Pro Murena
In the midst of the Catilinarians, between Catiline’s departure on November 8 in 63 BCE and the arrest of the conspirators on the night of December 2-3, Cicero again played the advocate in a high-profile political case in the criminal courts. The consuls designate for 62, Lucius Licinius Murena and Decimus lunius Silanus, had won an election marked by bribery so egregious that the young Marcus Porcius Cato, the Stoic conscience of the senate, had promised to prosecute whoever was elected. He declined to prosecute Silanus, his brother-in-law, but threw his considerable moral weight into a prosecution of Murena. The lead prosecutor, Servius Sulpicius Rufus, was not only a friend of Cicero, but the man whom Cicero had supported against Murena in the consular elections. This was embarrassing. Another potential source of embarrassment was the law under which Murena was indicted for illegal election practices. Cicero himself had carried this law earlier in the year, and so it bore his name, the lex Tullia.
The speech for Murena shows a new dispensation in Cicero’s work as a patronus. He is one of three patroni who speak for Murena, along with Hortensius and Crassus. In this case, as regularly, Cicero spoke last since he was especially effective at stirring the emotions (Brut. 190, Orat. 130). As the last speaker, he might have detailed charges to treat, or might be able to summarize or reinterpret what had gone before as he saw fit. Whatever its relation to the other speeches, Cicero circulated his speech separately and expected it to be understood on its own.
As a consul, Cicero could bring to the role of patronus enormous prestige, and his speech for Murena is perhaps the most extreme example of Cicero’s use of this consular ethos to vouch for a client (cf. May 1988: 58-69). From the beginning, the orator makes clear that he and Murena are fellow guardians of the state, and he flatly argues that Murena’s conviction would leave Rome with only one consul for the coming year, and so would play into Catiline’s hands (Mur. 78-9). This argument for acquittal based on national security must be decisive. But that does not mean that Cicero completely ignores the criminal charges. Rather he argues that Murena’s displays, dinners, and other kindnesses for the voters were all traditional actions done by aristocrats to help their poorer fellow citizens, the humiliores. The only way that the humiliores can reciprocate is with their political support, and they should not be deprived of this traditional right (68-77). As Riggsby (1999: 21-49) has argued, Cicero’s defense presupposes that ambitus, corrupt electoral practice, has as its extreme case a quid pro quo, most clearly money in return for a vote. The use of this quid pro quo will only be necessary for those too poorly connected to exercise the more traditional aristocratic forms of largesse. That largesse is part of a social economy in which it is impossible to say that a discrete action such as a gift of money triggers a discrete result such as a vote, and that the parties are then quits. Rather it is part of a longer term and less explicitly calculated web of kindnesses and obligations. The question for this jury then becomes, how much did Murena’s actions converge on a naked quid pro quo? And the orator can raise some doubt here. So, despite his overriding national security argument in this case, he may actually have made an acceptable argument for Murena’s innocence as well.
Cicero’s treatment of political and personal friends who are prosecuting is the most celebrated aspect of this speech, and one of its greatest practical challenges (see esp. Leeman 1982). When an unsuccessful candidate accused a successful candidate of election bribery, one expected topic seems to have been the contentio dignitatis (Mur. 14-53), a comparison of the relative prestige, and electability, of the two men. So Cicero must make a case for the prestige of his client against that of the man whose campaign he had supported. With high humor, he lectures Sulpicius on the roads to a dignitassuitable for the consulship (24). The military route is best (since Murena had more military experience), followed by oratory. Sulpicius’ knowledge of the law is cheerfully lampooned as pettifogging (23-30). The minor prosecutors are dismissed with a rubric in the text (57). As for Cato, he is earnest in his Stoic principles, but has completely misunderstood what his teachers were trying to impart (58-67). Cicero’s humorous burlesque of Cato as an ivory tower philosopher is said to have prompted the young Stoic to remark: wj yeXoEov, t av8pes, eyop-ev xmarov (‘‘gentlemen, what a funny consul we have,’’ Plut. Comp. Dem. et Cic. 1.5; cf. Cato Min. 21.8). Despite that wicked oxymoron, Cicero continued to have good relations with both of Murena’s famous and aristocratic prosecutors. The published speech thus stands as an exemplar of political civility as well, and as a showcase for the new man’s effectiveness in the social milieu of the governing elite. While it was worth publishing for those reasons, the ‘‘funny consul’’ is dissonant with the heroic image of the Catili-narians. That may explain why Pro Murena was excluded from the collection of consular speeches that Cicero would circulate in 60 (Att. 2.1.3).
Pro Murena, with its special challenges to Cicero’s political and personal relationships in defense of a client who is arguably guilty, is an especially apt candidate for persuasive process criticism, which judges the achievement by the magnitude of the challenge. By this standard, as the exemplary analysis of Leeman (1982) demonstrates, the challenges in Cicero’s defense of Murena make his client’s acquittal, and his continued good relations with the prosecutors, a remarkable achievement indeed.
Pro Sestio
The power of consular ethos and all the respect that Cicero had earned in the year of his consulship proved exquisitely fragile. Within five years, his enemies, most notably Publius Clodius Pulcher, had used his role in the death of the five Catilinarian conspirators on December 5 of 63 bce to drive him into exile. Although Cicero was reinstated by a law of the centuriate assembly and returned to Rome in September of 57, the supreme prestige which he had earned during his consulship was now crippled. His restoration, encouraged by the same powerful men who had not resisted his exile - Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar (the so-called first Triumvirate) - was a return to a more subservient, sometimes humiliating, position in Roman public life. Cicero’s attempt to reestablish his prestige runs through the so-called post reditum speeches, those orations that treat the circumstances of his exile and return. These have in common a set of strategies, well elucidated by Riggsby (2002) that frame the events of his exile and restoration in a way that denies or elides his disgrace (cf. Robinson 1994), puts the best face on his relationship with each of the triumvirs, and claims for him a special heroic status for manfully leaving Rome rather than causing bloodshed and harm to the state. Finally, Cicero equates his forced departure and triumphant return with the fortunes of the state itself (cf. May 1988: 88-127). These themes are perhaps best exemplified in the speech for Sestius. Sestius had been tribune of the plebs in 57, and had worked for Cicero’s restoration in the face of the violent opposition of Clodius and others. Sestius, along with another tribune, Cicero’s great champion Milo, fought violence with violence, and this led both to carnage in the streets and to each side’s attempt to prosecute the other. In 56, Clodius prosecuted Sestius before the standing court for charges of seditious violence.
A charge of seditious violence (vis) has two components (see esp. Riggsby 1999: 79-119). There is the question of fact, whether violence was committed, and the question of quality, whether such violence was contra rem publicam. Cicero speaking last, after Hortensius (Sest. 14), Crassus, and Calvus (Schol. Bob. 125.24-6; Stangl 1964), and claiming to speak in a summary way (Sest. 5), never treats in any detail the question of fact. Instead, he dwells upon the violence of Clodius and simply asserts that Sestius acted in response (75-81 and passim). The key to his pleading is the question of quality: Sestius, in supporting Cicero’s recall, was acting pro republican so could not have been guilty of seditious violence (31; cf. 112):
Mihi autem hoc propositum est ostendere, omnia consilia P. Sesti mentemque totius tribunatus hanc fuisse, ut adflictae et perditae rei publicae quantum posset mederetur. ac si in exponendis vulneribus illis de me ipso plura dicere videbor, ignoscitote: nam et illam meam cladem vos et omnes boni maximum esse rei publicae vulnus iudicastis, et P. Sestius est reus non suo, sed meo nomine: qui cum omnem vim sui tribunatus in mea salute consumpserit, necesse est meam causam praeteriti temporis cum huius praesenti defensione esse coniunctam. (Cicero, Pro Sestio 31)
Moreover it is my task to demonstrate that all the plans of Publius Sestius and the intention of his tribunate was this, to heal as much as he could an afflicted and ruined republic. But if in setting forth those wounds I seem to say too much concerning myself, pardon me. For you and all good men have judged that my disaster was the greatest wound to the republic, and Publius Sestius, although a defendant, is so in my name, not his own. Since he consumed all the force of his tribunate for my well-being, my cause of times past has necessarily been linked to his present defense.
The demands of arguing a case of vis on these fundamentally political grounds allow Cicero to recapitulate in a sprawling narrative the glory of his consulship (8-12), the viciousness of his enemies (36-66 and passim), the heroism of his retreat into exile (esp. 36-52), and the yearning of good people of all classes for his return (esp. 67-74, 106-31). While this argument is leisurely (he only comes to Sestius’ tribunate in section 72 at about the halfway point of the speech), the entire attempt to rehabilitate Cicero’s ethos, virtually to equate his presence with the welfare of the state, does more than insist on his own prestige. It is entirely relevant to the charge of vis. This is true as well of arguments which Cicero explicitly labels as exhortations to the young, such as the orator’s famous response to a charge of the nominal prosecutor that Cicero’s supporters are merely a tribe of aristocrats, a natio optimatium (96). Cicero here defines and discusses optimates and populares. All who support the senate and desire harmony for the state with prestige for its leaders, cum dignitate otium (98), comprise this enormous group. The orator also defines populares (96) in order to claim, as in the rhetoric of the contio, that his supporters are also the true populares, and that the Roman People perceive them as such (cf. Morstein-Marx 2004: esp. 204-40).
The speech may be seen as a political manifesto or as Cicero’s strident attempt to rewrite recent history and rehabilitate his reputation. But the orator addresses the charge of vis by sounding these themes, and it is worth noting that Sestius was unanimously acquitted (QFr. 2.4.1).
Pro Milone
Four years later, Cicero would defend Milo in another vis trial under very different circumstances, and would leave as a monument his most polished, and in some ways most frustrating, judicial speech. We know the circumstances better than those of any of Cicero’s other judicial speeches because of the invaluable commentary written by Asconius in the fifties ce (Asc. 30-42; Clark 1907). The violence of opposing factions so disrupted the elections that the year 52 bce opened without consuls or other officials except the tribunes. Milo, standing for the consulship, and Clodius, standing for the praetorship, had a chance meeting on the Appian Way. A brawl broke out among their followers. Clodius was wounded and retreated to a nearby inn. Milo ordered Clodius dragged from the inn and killed. The next day, Clodius’ supporters used the senate house for his funeral pyre. The senate declared the violent events of this time contra rem publicam. Despairing of elections, the senate appointed Pompey sole consul. He restored order and created a special vis court with a special procedure that tried Milo, whom he seems to have regarded as a mortal enemy. To preserve order, Pompey surrounded the tribunal with his soldiers. Cicero, ever grateful for Milo’s role in his restoration from exile, was the sole patronus. With a hostile crowd of Clodians and the presence of soldiers in the Forum, Cicero was upset, and did not give a speech up to his usual standard. The defense failed, and Milo retired into exile.
A record of the speech that Cicero gave that day was somehow made, and this excepta oratio (Asc. 42.2; Clark 1907) was noted and quoted until perhaps the fifth century (Quint. Inst. 9.2.54; Schol. Bob. 112.10-12, 173.8-10; Stangl 1964). But it is not preserved. Instead, we have only the speech for Milo that Cicero circulated. This is remarkable among the extant speeches in three ways: (1) From other sources, especially the commentary of Asconius, we know that our speech describes the killing of Clodius in a way that is baldly, egregiously false, and one that at least some of the initial reading audience must have known was a fabrication. Ignoring the chance meeting of Milo and Clodius, Cicero offers the false choice of who laid an ambush for whom (Mil. 23, 31), then argues that Clodius is the more likely criminal. (2) The argument of our speech expands in a radical way upon what Cicero actually said in the trial. There he declined to argue that Milo should be acquitted because Clodius’ death was a benefit to the state (Asc. 41.9-14; Clark 1907). In a vis trial in which the senate had already declared the killing contra rem publicam, this was only sensible (but see also Riggsby 1999: 105-19, esp. 118-19). In our speech (Cic. Mil. 72-91 and passim), this argument, admittedly labeled as extra causam, is nonetheless central. As we have seen, there is preserved as well a quotation from the delivered speech that does not occur in the speech we have. (3) A final anomaly of this oration is that the ordering as well as the content of its arguments, especially concerning the question of fact, follow more closely than any other Ciceronian speech the prescriptions of the rhetorical handbooks that Cicero’s fellow senators, jurors, and readers would have known. It can be used as a companion piece to illustrate the conventional teachings of the ‘‘how to’’ manuals on judicial oratory (see esp. Clark 1895: xlix-lvii; see too chapter 13), and is among the speeches most cited by Quintilian.
Despite its divorce from what Cicero actually said, and despite its explicitly false statements about essential facts of the case, Asconius (42.2-4; Clark 1907) found in Pro Milone a masterpiece. Moderns, while similarly impressed with its formal perfections, are burdened by its artificiality (e. g., Nisbet 1965: 69-72; May 1988: 128-40; cf. May 2001). This nicely underscores the extent to which our enjoyment of any Ciceronian speech depends upon our unimpeded ability to imagine its effects in the world that it creates. We know that the actio secunda in Verrem was never delivered, and we can comfortably accommodate the transparent fiction that Cicero is speaking to his jury. But the fiction that the facts of a case are different from those known to an actual jury in a real pleading is very different. Of course Cicero can be eloquent if he can choose his own facts; this is no great challenge, and yields no great achievement.
That said, it is worth remarking that, soon after Milo’s conviction, his henchman Saufeius, who had actually stormed the inn and supervised the removal and killing of Clodius, was also tried for vis, and acquitted (Asc. 54.22-55.10; Clark 1907). If Milo could be convicted and Saufeius acquitted on the same facts, then the facts were not of primary importance to Saufeius’ jury, and perhaps not to Milo’s. Such a milieu is unlike that of the speech for Cluentius, where Cicero could claim a patronus’ license to take the most useful position regardless of his personal feelings. Here Cicero the writer puts his oratorical gifts in the service of a political position in the modern sense. With all the partisan disdain for veracity that we associate with political campaigning, he disregards known facts, and facts in evidence, to fabricate a narrative that supports his own truth. The resulting speech makes a strong show not only of Milo’s innocence, patriotism, and courage, but of Cicero’s supreme gratitude toward Milo and his eloquence in a noble cause. It also clearly, if implicitly, censures Pompey for his groundless fear of Milo and his partisan abuse of power (Stone 1980). And this political message is given greater traction by a form that renders the whole an exemplar for students of persuasion who are willing to suspend disbelief.
Pro Marcello
There is now a gap of six years in the corpus of published speeches. These years embrace most of the civil war, with Cicero’s vacillation, final siding with Pompey, and restoration by the victorious Caesar, who would now control the affairs of Rome.
Caesar showed remarkable respect for Cicero; in 46 the orator had been allowed to return to Rome and could be seen again in the senate. But Cicero kept a studied silence in the face of Caesar’s domination. He broke that silence in September of 46, after Caesar left it to the senate to decide whether Marcus Marcellus (consul 51), a vocal anti-Caesarian, should be allowed to return from exile. Cicero’s speech of thanksgiving before Caesar in the senate, represented by our text Pro Marcello, is the first of the three so-called Caesarian orations, Pro Marcello, Pro Ligario, and Pro Rege Deiotaro, addressed to Caesar in 46 and 45. These speeches are unique in that they show Rome’s greatest orator speaking before Rome’s most successful man of action, a man who is himself highly cultured and practiced in the art of oratory. Of these so-called Caesarian orations, Pro Marcello differs from the other two in that it is in no way a judicial speech, and in the sustained enthusiasm with which Cicero praises (or flatters) Rome’s new master. To take one example, Caesar had apparently said that he had lived long enough for nature or for glory (25). Cicero remonstrates that Caesar has not yet lived long enough for the fatherland, which still depends upon him:
‘‘parumne’’ inquies ‘‘magna relinquemus?” immo vero, aliis quamvis multis satis, tibi uni parum. quidquid est enim quamvis amplum sit id est parum tum cum est aliquid amplius. quodsi rerum tuarum immortalium, C. Caesar, hic exitus futurus fuit, ut devictis adver-sariis rem publicam in eo statu relinqueres in quo nunc est, vide, quaeso, ne tua divina virtus admirationis plus sit habitura quam gloriae, si quidem gloria est inlustris ac pervagata magnorum vel in suos [civis] vel in patriam vel in omne genus hominum fama meritorum. haec igitur tibi reliqua pars est; hic restat actus; in hoc elaborandum est, ut rem publicam constituas, eaque tu in primis summa tranquillitate et otio perfruare. tum, te si voles, cum et patriae quod debes solveris, et naturam ipsam expleveris satietate vivendi, satis diu vixisse dicito. (Cicero, Pro Marcello 26-7)
You say, ‘‘Will I leave a legacy that falls short of greatness?’’ Not at all. What you have done is enough for however many other men you please. For you alone it is too little. For however ample it may be, it is too little when there is still something more. For if this was going to be the end of your immortal deeds, Gaius Caesar, that having conquered your enemies you left the republic in the condition in which it is now, take care, I ask, that your divine courage will not hold more astonishment than glory, if indeed glory is the illustrious report of great and worthy deeds reaching to your fellow citizens or to your fatherland or to every race of humankind. This part then is left for you. This act remains.
In this you must labor on, that you may reestablish the republic, and that you first of all may enjoy it in the greatest serenity and peace. Then, if you like, when you have paid what you owe to the fatherland, and you have satisfied nature itself with a satiety of living, say that you have lived long enough.
One may dismiss this advice offered to Caesar as the grossest toadying. Gotoff (1993a: xxxii) notes that Wolf and Orelli in the nineteenth century both wanted to deny that Cicero could even have written Pro Marcello. But the oration is neither as debased nor as monochromatic as it may at first appear. The reading of this speech, as of the other Caesarian speeches, must depend upon one’s understanding of Cicero, of Caesar, and of the psychological dynamic between these two very different and extraordinarily talented men (Gotoff 1993a). Since Cicero’s letters are most plentiful in the forties, it is possible to extrapolate from his correspondence a shift in attitude as it becomes increasingly clear that Caesar is a despot who will leave no room for the old dispensation. If the published speech bears only a loose resemblance to what Cicero said, and dates in its published form to a time several months later, when Cicero’s hopes had been extinguished, one may read Pro Marcello as a supreme act of doublespeak. The orator’s extravagant praise of Rome’s master, flying as it does in the face of the liberty and dignity proper both to Cicero and to his senatorial
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