A few notes on Cicero For a short biography CLICK HERE.  For a Cicero Home Page CLICK HERE

. Cicero was the son of a wealthy family of Arpinium and was admirably educated in Rome and in Greece. His held is first office in 75, and his first great triumph was the prosecution of Verres, a partisan of Sulla. In a time of turmoil he became consul, a ‘new man’ (although he was never really liked by the Optimates), put down Cataline, but also illegally executed Roman citizens without a trial. When the first triumvirate developed, Caesar allowed Clodius, his deadly enemy (whom he had prosecuted) to force him into exile; Pompey less than two years later brought him back. Cicero was forced to support the triumvirs, and governed the province of Cilicia in 51. Cicero eventually succeeded in detaching Pompey from Caesar. He supported Pompey against Caesar in civil war, was pardoned by Caesar. After Caesar’s death and the formation of the 2^nd triumvirate, he tried to split up Octavian and Marc Antony, and savagely attacked Antony in his Philippics. But Octavian and Antony reconciled, and Antony got Cicero proscribed and murdered.

Cicero was deeply conservative, and deeply patriotic, and his ideal state was a concord between the knights, senators and all the ‘best people’. Cicero was no believer in the democracy of the common people, and he had no real practical comprehension of the true problems of the Roman aristocracy.

In oratory Cicero was trained by Molon of Rhodes, whose own tendencies were eclectic, and he believed that an orator should command and blend a variety of styles. He is the real creator of the "periodic" style, which occurs in the Greek rhetoric of Isocrates, in which phrase is balanced against phrase, with subordinate clauses woven into a complex whole. Cicero's rhetoric was a complex art form, and the ears of the audience were keenly attuned to these effects. His view of what an orator should be is very humanistic, unlike the thoughts of men like Fronto in the later Empire. Cicero was able to fashion different kings of speeches to suits various events and audiences, and the emotional power of his speeches are well known.

Cicero in the Brutus implicitly gives his own description of his equipment as an orator--a thorough knowledge of literature, a grounding in philosophy, legal expertise, a  storehouse of history, the capacity to tie up an opponent and reduce the jury to laughter, the ability to lay down general principles applicable to the particular case,   entertaining digressions, the power of rousing the emotions of anger or pity, the faculty of directing his intellect to the point immediately essential. It is the humanitas of the speeches that turns them into a lasting possession.

Not only did he establish a high point of Roman oratory, but he transmitted a huge amount of Greek philosophy to the Latin speaking world, mostly in the form of dialogues, a form which Plato began and Aristotle and Heracleides Ponticus developed further. Cicero loved philosophy all his life, and studied philosophy under the Epicurean Phaedrus (c. 140-70 BC), the Stoic Diodotus (d. c. 60 BC), and the Academic Philo of Larissa (c. 160-80 BC), and thus he had a thorough grounding in three of the four main schools of philosophy. He was no orthodox member of any school, although he favored the New Academy, which tended toward skepticism and the notion of truth as a type of probability. In terms of religion he supports traditional practice but probably wavered between agnosticism and a type of theism, which acknowledges the existence of gods, but denies they can be moved or respond to human prayer and worship.

More than 900 letters of Cicero survive, and over half are addressed to his friend, financial adviser, and publisher, the knight Titus Pompons Atticus, and 419 to one or other of some 94 different friends, acquaintances, and relatives.

Notes on the  speeches we shall cover in Class.

Cicero the ‘New Man’ in Against Rullus. Notice how Cicero feels he is not in a position to talk about his ancestors ? because, compared to these Senators, he hasn’t got any. Note how he mentioned how guarded the senatorial order is to any new person, yet (and he is flattering them) it is open to those willing to work hard, and to merit.

In defense of Sestius - Cicero’s notion of the ‘best men’, with a definitely Optimate slant. The best men do not seek the approval of the ‘rank and file, that is the ‘common’ people. They seek ‘law and order’ above all, and have managed their lives prudently; they are financially secure ? and therefore must be aristocrats. They defend religion and its rites, the power of the officers of the state, the Authority of the Senate, the laws, the courts, the traditions, the provinces, the allies and the whole state. They are opposed to those criminal citizens who are looking for radical movements. Good citizens are slow to act.

In Defense of Caelius Cicero here has got to make the best of a bad situation, since Caelius’ reputation is poor. Cicero wants the chance to attack Clodius’ family. Some of Cicero’s tactics

• The case is basically trivial, the result of the passions of a loose woman, not the prosecutor Atratinius, who is a good, but deluded, young man
• Points out that he in fact does not have such a bad reputation; his father is in court supporting him, his town has given him honors.
• Young men, however, do have a bit of license to misbehave when young; the prosecutor Herennius was being a prude, and attacking him for the sins of a generation.
• Concerning the real charges, his defense is an attack on Clodia. He imagines her being accused by her distant relative, the very famous Appius Claudius Caecus, who constructed the Appian Way. Think of what we learned about how women were supposed to maintain the respectability of the home; Cicero has Appius ask her what on earth she was doing mixed up with a younger man in such an affair. Note the vividness of the picture. Note how Cicero brings up the long line of ancestors, which shows how influential this was at Rome. He then descends to real abuse, by flinging images of incest between the two, and finally suggesting that she is too loose to be taken seriously. Note how this speech reflects on the elegant, if loose, culture that Catullus also writes about.

In defense of Milo. A much more serious speech. Milo was a conservative leader of a band of urban thugs, and he had actually been on the conservative side; Pompey destroys him in part to show his ‘law and order side’ and to make sure he is the Senate’s man. This speech is Cicero’s ‘ideal’ defense -- the real speech was quite a bit weaker. Some parts of Cicero’s tactics:

• Mentions his fear due to Pompey’s soldiers surrounding the court, yet, because he needs Pompey’s good will, Cicero tries to show they are there just to keep law and order.
• He constants portrays Clodius as a revolutionary and terrorist, and will try to provide that Clodius intended to kill Milo.
• He keeps, of course, showing Milo as a noble man.
• He stresses that the law does allow a citizen to kill another in self-defense. Note the proofs from history and myth.
• Cicero must show that the Senate has not already condemned him. Apparently (as note 14 shows) the fact that the Senate had voted that the riot in which Clodius was killed was not in the public interest was seen as proof that the Senate was anti-Milo; Cicero says that the ‘riot’ was against the interest of the state, and thus needed an investigation, but only as any fatal action needs one; this implies no prejudgment against Milo, whom the Senate supported (or so says Cicero)
• Cicero also must make it clear that, although this is a hand-picked jury by Pompey, he did this so that the proceedings would have extra legitimacy, not so that he would get a guilty verdict.
• Then he gets to the case. He first pictures Clodius as a terrorist aimed at causing chaos, who feared Milo as consul, and thus was going to have him killed. He had planned the attack, and it is clear that Milo did not act as one about to try to commit murder (Actually, the truth was that the encounter was probably accidental).

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