Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics)
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This success was followed up in 70 by his election as plebeian aedile for 69. But, more significantly, he decided in 70 to undertake a prosecution: having served as an honest quaestor in Sicily five years earlier, he was only too happy to help the Sicilians by bringing a charge of extortion against the rapacious governor, Gaius Verres, who had systematically fleeced the province from 73 to 71. Verres’ defence, however, was undertaken by Hortensius, who was to be consul in 69, and he was also aided by one of the leading families in Rome, the Metelli. One Metellus had become Verres’ successor in Sicily, and made it difficult for Cicero to collect evidence; another was to be Hortensius’ consular colleague the following year; and a third would be praetor in charge of the court if, as the defence hoped, the case could be prolonged into 69. But in the event Cicero overcame all these obstacles. He collected his evidence quickly, delivered a brief opening speech, and then brought out his witnesses. In his speech he dwelt upon the political aspect of the case: if someone as obviously guilty as Verres were let off, the people would judge the exclusively senatorial juries (prescribed by a law of Sulla’s) to be unfit to try cases, and a law would be passed handing the courts over to the equites instead. Once this speech had been given and the evidence presented, Verres went into exile, without waiting to hear more; and Cicero then published the speeches he would have gone on to deliver—In Verrem (‘Against Verres’) or, in English, the Verrines, a damning and sometimes hilarious exposé of Verres’ crimes. With this success Cicero took Hortensius’ place as Rome’s foremost advocate: Hortensius all but abandoned the courts, returning only when Cicero had reached the consulship, and then as his partner, not his opponent.
Cicero’s irresistible rise continued. In 67 he was elected praetor, by all the centuries (voting units in the centuriate assembly), three times over (because the election had to be repeated), and at the earliest age permitted by law (he was by now 39). He served his year of office as praetor in charge of the extortion court, the scene of his success against Verres; and in 66 he also gave his first deliberative speech, De imperio Cn. Pompei (‘On the command of Gnaeus Pompeius’), alternatively known as Pro lege Manilia (‘For the Manilian law’). Rome had recently suffered a serious reverse in the Third Mithridatic War (73–63). Public opinion wanted the command of the Roman forces, which since the beginning of the war had been held by Lucullus, to be given to Pompey, who had just enjoyed a spectacular success in wiping out the pirates of the Mediterranean, and was already on the scene; the traditionalists in the senate, however, such as Hortensius, did not wish to see Pompey’s career advanced any further. The tribune Gaius Manilius proposed a bill to have the command transferred to Pompey, and invited Cicero to support it. As a praetor, Cicero could not avoid expressing an opinion—and yet he did not wish to alienate either the senate or the people, given that he would shortly be standing for the consulship. His solution was to give the bill his enthusiastic support, while also taking care to compliment Lucullus. The bill was passed, Cicero published his speech, and Pompey concluded the war in 63. A nonpolitical speech, but a celebrated one, was also delivered in 66, Pro Cluentio (‘For Cluentius’). This was an oratorical triumph in which Cicero, as he afterwards boasted, ‘threw dust in the eyes of the jury’ (Quint. Inst. 2.17.21).
In 64 he was elected to the consulship for 63, again at the earliest age permitted by law (he was 43 in 63). With this success his family entered the ranks of the nobility (a ‘noble’ was a direct descendant of a consul through the male line). It was certainly unusual for new men to rise as high as the consulship: the last one to do so had been Gaius Norbanus twenty years previously. Cicero’s consulship was an eventful one, and one that afforded further scope for the exercise of his oratorical talents. It began with his four speeches De lege agraria (‘On the agrarian law’), in which he successfully opposed the land redistributions proposed by the tribune Publius Servilius Rullus; the speeches demonstrate Cicero’s ability to persuade the people to vote down a proposal that was in their interest. He claimed to be a popular consul acting in the people’s interest, but was actually taking a conservative line. Now that he had reached the highest place in the ‘sequence of offices’ (cursus honorum), he was always to follow the conservative, traditional, and republican line which by nature he preferred. Having been allowed to join the club, he would defend its rules to the death.
But the major event of Cicero’s consulship, and indeed of his life, was his controversial suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy. The conspirators were a small group of failed politicians some of whom had ruined themselves financially in their attempts to secure political advancement and live up to their social status; some, in marked contrast to Cicero, were high-ranking aristocrats. Led by the patrician Lucius Sergius Catilina (‘Catiline’ in English), they hoped, by assassinations, arson, and a march on Rome, to seize power; then they would reward themselves with political office and put forward legislation for a general cancellation of debts (there is no evidence of any plans for wider reform, or of any genuine social concern). The conspiracy began in earnest with Catiline’s failure to be elected consul in July, and by mid-November he had thrown in his lot with an agrarian rising in Etruria led by one Gaius Manlius, a former Sullan centurion. Cicero’s vigilance and prompt action saved his own life from an assassination attempt and prevented the conspiracy from breaking out at Rome—but at the cost of executing without trial five leading conspirators (including one ex-consul, Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura), who had been arrested and had confessed their guilt. His illegal execution of the five men on5 December had the explicit backing of the senate and overwhelming public support (on Cato’s motion, he was voted father of his country by the people), and probably saved a great many lives. Nevertheless, it was to lay him open to attack for years afterwards, and required him constantly to be justifying the action that he had taken (something which has unfairly caused him to be perceived as boastful and vain). His publication in 60 of his four magnificent speeches against Catiline (In Catilinam (‘Against Catiline’) or, in English, the Catilinarians) was a major exercise in self-justification. The effectiveness of his attack ensured that Catiline’s name was blackened for all time. Catiline himself, together with his army, was destroyed in the field by Cicero’s colleague as consul, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, at the beginning of 62.
In the midst of the Catilinarian crisis (in November) Cicero also found time to undertake the defence of one of the consuls-elect for 62, Lucius Licinius Murena, who had been prosecuted for electoral malpractice by one of the unsuccessful candidates; the law under which the case was brought was Cicero’s own bribery law, the lex Tullia de ambitu, which he had successfully carried earlier in the year. Together with Hortensius and Crassus, he secured his acquittal, arguing that, in the face of the danger from Catiline, the necessity of having as consul an experienced military man such as Murena overrode all other considerations. Pro Murena (‘For Murena’) is Cicero’s funniest and most enjoyable speech (unless one prefers Pro Caelio). Much of it is taken up with making fun of the prosecutors, the lawyer Servius Sulpicius Rufus and the Stoic philosopher Marcus Porcius Cato, both men for whom Cicero had in reality a considerable regard.
Cicero’s suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy won him enormous prestige, and on 1 January 62 he was the first senator to be asked for his opinion in the senate: he was viewed as the leading senator present (Pompey was still in the east). We have two speeches of his from this year, Pro Sulla (‘For Sulla’) and Pro Archia (‘For Archias’). Pro Sulla is a defence of a wealthy aristocrat, the nephew of the dictator Sulla (and probably the brother-in-law of Pompey), on a charge of participation in the conspiracy; Cicero secured his acquittal by arguing that he of all people would hardly have undertaken his defence if he had believed him to be guilty. In this speech we see Cicero seeking to present himself as a mild and compassionate person, to counteract his enemies’ portrayal of him as cruel and vindictive in his execution of the conspirators. Pro Archia, by contrast, is one of
the least political of Cicero’s forensic speeches. A defence not of a Roman aristocrat but of a Syrian poet, Cicero’s old teacher, on a charge of illegally assuming Roman citizenship, it contains not just a legal defence of Archias’ claim, but a lengthy encomium of literature. This is of great interest to literary historians, and shows the degree to which Cicero had to go to present Archias’ profession to a Roman jury in a favourable light. Archias was acquitted.
At the end of the year a scandal occurred at Rome which was to have disastrous consequences for Cicero. A young aristocrat, Publius Clodius Pulcher, was discovered to have dressed up in women’s clothes and attended the festival of the Bona Dea, to which only women were admitted, and which was being held at the house of Caesar, the pontifex maximus. The suggestion was that he had taken advantage of Caesar’s absence from his house to commit adultery with his wife. Caesar divorced his wife on the grounds that ‘Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion’ (Plut. Caes. 10.6). At Clodius’ trial for sacrilege in May 61, Cicero gave evidence which disproved his alibi. Nevertheless, Clodius managed to bribe his way to an acquittal; and he was henceforward to be a far more troublesome enemy to Cicero than Catiline had been.
At the end of 60, Caesar, who was consul-elect for the following year, formed a political alliance with Pompey and Crassus conventionally known as the ‘first triumvirate’. He tried to persuade Cicero to join the alliance: Cicero would have lost his political independence, but would have been protected from Clodius and from the increasing attacks on his execution of the Catilinarians. He preferred to keep his independence—and was to pay for it. In 59 Caesar sanctioned Clodius’ adoption into a plebeian family (he was of patrician birth), thus enabling him to stand for election to the tribunate of the plebs, the office traditionally sought by popular politicians who wished to propose radical legislation or, in conservative eyes, to stir up trouble. Clodius was duly elected and, as tribune in 58, he proposed a bill outlawing anyone who had put a Roman citizen to death without trial. The senate put on mourning for Cicero and the towns of Italy passed resolutions in his favour. But Clodius, who had earlier carried a law to provide the people with free grain for the first time, had the support of the urban plebs. More importantly, he also had the tacit support of the triumvirs, who were angered at Cicero’s rejection of their advances and worried that he might lead the conservatives in the senate in an attack on their position. The consuls Piso and Gabinius did as the triumvirs wanted, and instructed the senate to resume normal dress. Cicero’s support melted away, and he himself left for exile in Macedonia on the day that Clodius’ law was passed. His house in Rome was plundered and burned, and Clodius consecrated the site as a shrine to Libertas (‘Liberty’), in order to portray Cicero as a tyrant and to prevent rebuilding.
Cicero’s exile, which lasted almost eighteen months, was the biggest disaster of his life. He had saved Rome, and had been exiled for his pains. The charge was executing citizens without trial; yet he had been denied a trial himself. In his despair he thought of suicide. Publicly he represented his departure as a deliberate act of self-sacrifice, intended to save Rome from the likelihood of civil war—the second time he had saved the city. But privately he felt he should have stood his ground. He was recalled to Rome the following year, when the triumvirs concluded that Clodius had become an obstacle to their plans. His actual return was glorious and gratifying. On Pompey’s motion the senate passed a decree, unanimous with the single exception of Clodius, describing Cicero as the saviour of his country; and the people passed a bill authorizing his recall. His journey through Italy resembled a triumphal procession: towns passed resolutions honouring him, and he was escorted by cheering crowds. But he never recovered from the blow to his pride; and, as the price of his recall, he had had to assure the triumvirs that in future he would serve their interests.
The speeches he gave in 57 and 56 are known as the Post reditum (‘After his return’) speeches. Post reditum in senatu (‘in the senate’, 57) and Post reditum ad quirites (‘to the citizens’, 57) offered thanks for his restoration. De domo sua (‘On his house’, 57) and De haruspicum responsis (‘On the answers of the omen-interpreters’, 56) dealt with the religious aspects of his feud with Clodius; he successfully persuaded the pontiffs that Clodius’ consecration of the site of his house in Rome had been invalid, and he secured compensation to enable him to rebuild. Other speeches of this period included defences of people who had campaigned for his recall and opposed Clodius. Publius Sestius and Titus Annius Milo were tribunes in 57 who had used violence against Clodius and worked tirelessly for Cicero’s recall. Sestius was prosecuted in 56 by dependants of Clodius, was defended by Hortensius, Crassus, and Cicero (the same team that had defended Murena in 63), and was unanimously acquitted. Cicero’s Pro Sestio (‘For Sestius’) contains a full exposition of the orator’s own political standpoint: the state can be divided into patriots and traitors, with Sestius and Milo and the majority of Roman citizens of all classes belonging to the former category, and Clodius, Piso, and Gabinius to the latter.
A month later Cicero was to revenge himself on Clodius in a more personal way. A former friend of Clodius’, Marcus Caelius Rufus, was prosecuted on an array of charges: violence, murder, and the attempted poisoning of Clodius’ sister, Clodia Metelli, with whom Caelius had previously had an affair. Caelius had originally been a pupil of Cicero’s, before switching allegiance to the Clodii, and now that he had broken with the Clodii he was to become a friend of Cicero’s again. In taking on his defence, Cicero saw his chance to hurt Clodius by publicly humiliating his sister, whom he had reasons for hating: she had persecuted his family during his exile. In Pro Caelio (‘For Caelius’) the charges are largely ignored, and Cicero instead focuses on Caelius’ affair with Clodia, portraying her as a common prostitute (she was a high-ranking society lady) and holding her up to ridicule. Ingeniously, he manages to do this while exempting Caelius from moral blame. The speech is wonderfully funny, and very cruel: Cicero won his case by avoiding the issue and making the jury laugh at his enemy. After the trial, Clodia (who has a one-in-three chance of being the same person as Catullus’ ‘Lesbia’) disappears from history.
Cicero owed his recall from exile to Pompey’s influence, and in return he had reluctantly undertaken to give the triumvirs his political support. But he soon detected an apparent rift between Pompey and Caesar (who was absent in Gaul from 58 to 49), and decided to drive the two men further apart by opposing Caesar. First he published an attack on Publius Vatinius which he had made at the time of Sestius’ trial (In Vatinium, ‘Against Vatinius’): Vatinus was a legate of Caesar’s who as tribune in 59 had procured for him his Gallic command. Secondly, he put a motion before the senate calling for discussion of Caesar’s controversial agrarian law of 59. This challenge to Caesar’s position did not split the triumvirate as Cicero had hoped: instead it drove the three men closer together. They reaffirmed their alliance, and Pompey and Crassus held a second joint consulship in 55 (they had held the consulship together in 70), with commands for each of them to follow afterwards. Caesar’s command in Gaul was extended for a further five years.
Cicero now realized that resistance to the triumvirs would be futile, and in any case he needed their protection against Clodius’ continuing attacks; he also felt that the conservatives in the senate, such as Hortensius, were failing to give him their full support. He therefore publicly declared his allegiance to the triumvirs: in De provinciis consularibus (‘On the consular provinces’, 56) he lavishes praise on Caesar and advocates the extension of his Gallic command.
The later 50s were unhappy years for Cicero. In 54 he had to defend Vatinius; although he won, he apparently chose not to publish his defence. Soon afterwards (in 54 or 53) he was compelled to defend Gabinius, the consul of 58 who had allowed Clodius to exile him; at least this time he had the satisfaction of losing. In his private moments he consoled himself by starting to write a series of philosophical treatises in which he explained the various philosophic
al systems of the Greeks (he was the first person to do this in Latin; the work involved formulating a Latin philosophical vocabulary, which then became standard). At the same time he began a series of treatises on oratory and rhetoric; some of these works also explore, in theoretical terms, his own political philosophy. In 53 (or 52) he was gratified to receive, on Hortensius’ nomination, an important political honour: he was elected to a place in the College of Augurs, in succession to Crassus’ son, who had been killed with his father at Carrhae.
Clodius during these years had become a powerful independent force in Rome with a large popular following. He had assembled a gang of thugs and used it to attack his enemies, most of all Cicero, and to terrorize the city. His chief opponent was Titus Annius Milo, who used similar tactics against him in return. The increasing willingness of politicians to resort to violence to achieve their ends was a symptom of the collapse of the republic; in the next decade, urban violence would be superseded by civil war. Clodius and Milo had fought numerous battles against each other, Milo defending Cicero’s interests; and in one such battle outside Rome on 18 January 52 Clodius was accidentally wounded, and then killed on Milo’s orders. Cicero must have been overjoyed. Amid the chaotic scenes which followed, Clodius’ supporters cremated his body in the senate-house, which was burned down. Pompey was appointed sole consul to restore order (the violence in Rome had prevented the elections for 52 from taking place), and Milo was put on trial and defended by Cicero. The evidence for his guilt was unimpeachable, and Pompey wanted him removed from public life, so Cicero’s defence stood no chance of success: he was convicted, and went into exile at Massilia (Marseilles). But later in the year public opinion swung against Pompey and the Clodians, and in Milo’s favour. Milo’s accomplices were tried and acquitted, whereas Clodius’ supporters, who were put on trial for the burning of the senate-house, were convicted. Cicero, who had played a leading part in these trials, now regarded himself and Milo as having been vindicated, and he wrote and published a new, more confident version of his unsuccessful defence. This is our Pro Milone (‘For Milo’), which has always been accepted as the oratorical masterpiece that Cicero intended it to be.