In 66 BC Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey), already known as Magnus (the Great), was proposed, in a law put forward by the tribune Manilius, as supreme commander in the war against Mithridates. The proposal had widespread support, and among those who spoke in its favor was Cicero, at that time praetor, and ambitious for the consulship. His speech On the command of Gnaeus Pompeius is notable for its clear structure and for the elaborate praise of Pompey which dominates it: the whole offers a very convincing justification for the law. But there are grounds for being skeptical about what Cicero says, as two examples will demonstrate.
One way in which Cicero demonstrates Pompey’s suitability for this appointment is by appealing to his past record, and particularly to his campaign against the pirates the previous summer. Cicero emphasizes Pompey’s speed and his comprehensiveness: the entire Mediterranean has been cleared of piracy through his actions in the course of a single season (31-35), and he speaks as though the problem has been solved once and for all. And yet other evidence indicates that piracy did not cease to be a problem in the years after Pompey’s command: indeed, in 59 bc, Cicero himself had to explain why there were still pirates in the Mediterranean, in the course of defending Flaccus, who was facing prosecution for extortion while governor of Asia: one of the charges was of extorting money to pay for a fleet (On behalfof Flaccus 29). Cicero greatly exaggerates the scale and scope of what Pompey achieved (de Souza 1999: 149-78).
Another point at which Cicero embellishes Pompey is in his description of Pompey’s early career, which he does three times during the course of the speech: providing evidence of both his knowledge and his skill as a commander and of the beneficial effects of previous constitutional innovations which were made in Pompey’s case. Cicero draws attention to Pompey’s youth, his unbroken run of success in military matters, and the range of enemies which he has faced: these are all topics likely to appeal to his audience of Roman citizens. However, it would be misleading to use Cicero’s evidence here as the basis for an account of Pompey’s early career, and the bias lies not only in the hyperbole of Cicero’s praise - Pompey’s talents alone, for example, are greater than those of all other generals put together (29) - but also in a number of omissions and misleading descriptions which serve to conceal certain aspects of what Pompey has done which might not appeal so much to his audience. In discussing Pompey’s military knowledge, Cicero implies that he moved without break from serving in the army of his father (Pompeius Strabo, who was consul in 89 bc) to command of his own forces (28). Cicero’s use of the word imperator to describe Pompey’s position at this time is a sleight-of-hand, since his raising of an army was illegal, and only retrospectively approved by Sulla. And he also obscures the period of four years which intervenes between the two periods of military service, during which time Pompey was, like many Romans, accommodating himself to Cinna’s regime.
When Cicero moves to Pompey’s warfare from the time of Sulla’s dictatorship onward, he emphasizes the geographical scope of his activity: Italy, Sicily, Africa, Gaul and Spain have all witnessed Pompey’s courage and his defeat of the enemies of Rome. As soon, however, as one reflects on the circumstances, it becomes obvious that these campaigns were all part of the civil war between Sulla and his opponents which carried on in parts of the Roman empire outside Italy for some years after Sulla’s capture of Rome, and indeed his death. Pompey fought against Roman forces in Sicily, in North Africa and finally in Spain, and had been responsible for the execution of a number of the opposing Roman commanders at the conclusion of hostilities. Cicero substantially improves the appeal of the narrative of Pompey’s early activities by removing the ugly details of civil war from it. He also turns Pompey into a solitary figure who achieves his successes on his own (28). This, too, is a statement which could be challenged. In Spain, in the campaign against Sertorius, Pompey joined Metellus Pius; in the slave war in Italy, he arrived only when Crassus had substantially concluded the fighting; and during the recent campaign against the pirates, he found himself in dispute with the governor of Crete, who regarded the defeat of those pirates with a land base in Crete as his achievement. So far from being a lone hero, Pompey might seem to some to be someone whose career has been marked by episodes of unhappy collaboration.
Cicero’s oratory offers his audiences an improved version of Pompey. It is far from being fictional, but it provides an interpretation of what Pompey has done, backed up by Cicero’s own authority as a speaker, which is as favorable as possible. It is necessary to approach the factual content of ancient oratory with sustained skepticism. The questions to be asked, above all, are in what way does this piece of evidence support the speaker’s case, and would his audience have access to material which could disprove it. If, as is very often the case, the answers to those questions are, respectively, “to a very great extent” and “no,” then one cannot place much confidence in the material the orator presents. Ancient orators were trained to make the best possible case; and doing this in the face of contrary evidence was a source of pride. Cicero, for example, is said to have boasted of having thoroughly confused the jury at the trial of Cluentius, who was being prosecuted for murder (Quint. 2.17.21).
These observations about the unreliability of the evidence provided by ancient oratory would still be true even if what we were dealing with, when reading ancient oratory, were impartial transcriptions of the actual words spoken. However, that is not the case; and considering the ways in which speeches survived in written form offers a further set of concerns about their use as historical evidence. The difficulty in relation to oratory arises not only because of the processes of transmission during the post-antique period until the invention of printing; the initial transfer from speech to writing is also far from straightforward. Greek and Roman orators almost always delivered their speeches from memory: the capacity to speak fluently and at length from memory was one of the five canonical skills of the orator, and highly elaborate methods of memory training were part of what young men acquired when they trained to be orators. Written texts were not therefore an essential part of speaking in public, and almost all of the surviving texts of speeches are the result of conscious decisions, usually on the part of the orator himself, to write down what he had said and make this version available to others. In the case of Athenian forensic oratory, the creation of texts is a consequence of the absence of advocacy: since plaintiff and defendant spoke on their own behalf, professional help could most easily be transferred by means of a written text. This, indeed, can be regarded as the product for which payment was made: after all, no logographer could guarantee his client’s success. But deliberative oratory in the Greek world, and oratory generally at Rome, did not automatically make the transition to written form. Those speeches which were written down were the product of conscious decisions that they were worth disseminating and thereafter being preserved.
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