Cicero's Political Personae 1108839460, 9781108839464

Citation preview

and crises of his time. In this book, Joanna Kenty examines Cicero’s persuasive strategies and the subtleties of his Latin prose, and shows how he the senator, the partisan ideologue, and others – to maximize his political leverage in the latter half of his career. These personae were what made his arguments convincing, and drew audiences into Cicero’s perspective. Nonspecialist and expert readers alike will gain new insight into Cicero’s corpus and career as a whole, as well as a better appreciation of the context, details, and nuances of individual passages. Kenty. 9781108839464. Jacket. C M Y K

Joanna Kenty earned her PhD in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and subsequently held positions at the University of New Hampshire, Radboud University in the Netherlands, and Temple University’s campus in Rome. Her research focuses on the confluence of literature, history, and politics in the late Roman republic. She has also

Cicero’s Political Personae

used eight political personae – the attacker, the grateful friend, the martyr,

Kenty

Cicero’s speeches provide a fascinating window into the political battles

published articles on classical receptions in the American Revolution, as well as continuities from ancient to modern American political rhetoric.

Printed in the United Kingdom

Cover image: Statue of Cicero in front of the Old Palace of Justice in Rome. Photo: Cristiano Fronteddu/Alamy Stock Photo with design consultation by Matthew Eckrich and Jienne Alhaideri.

Cicero’s Political Personae Joanna Kenty

C I C E R O’ S P OLITICAL PE RSONAE

Cicero’s speeches provide a fascinating window into the political battles and crises of his time. In this book, Joanna Kenty examines Cicero’s persuasive strategies and the subtleties of his Latin prose, and shows how he used eight political personae – the attacker, the grateful friend, the martyr, the senator, the partisan ideologue, and others – to maximize his political leverage in the latter half of his career. These personae were what made his arguments convincing, and drew audiences into Cicero’s perspective. Non-specialist and expert readers alike will gain new insight into Cicero’s corpus and career as a whole, as well as a better appreciation of the context, details, and nuances of individual passages. joanna kenty earned her PhD in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and subsequently held positions at the University of New Hampshire, Radboud University in the Netherlands, and Temple University’s campus in Rome. Her research focuses on the confluence of literature, history, and politics in the late Roman republic. She has also published articles on classical receptions in the American Revolution and continuities from ancient to modern American political rhetoric.

CICERO’S POLITICAL PERSONAE JOANNA KENTY

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108839464 doi: 10.1017/9781108878098 © Joanna Kenty 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Kenty, Joanna, author. title: Cicero’s political personae / Joanna Kenty. description: Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lccn 2020014618 (print) | lccn 2020014619 (ebook) | isbn 9781108839464 (hardback) | isbn 9781108878098 (ebook) subjects: lcsh: Cicero, Marcus Tullius – Criticism and interpretation. | Speeches, addresses, etc., Latin – History and criticism. | Rhetoric, Ancient. | Rome – Politics and government – 265-30 B.C. classification: lcc pa6320 .k45 2020 (print) | lcc pa6320 (ebook) | ddc 875/.01–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014618 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020014619 isbn 978-1-108-83946-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Preface Acknowledgments

page vii ix 1

Introduction

10 17 23

Objectives Cicero’s Personae Outline

1 The Orator as Attacker

26

Introduction Demolishing Vatinius Repressing Clodius Ridiculing Piso Resisting Antony Conclusion

26 32 35 40 46 50

2 The Orator as Friend

53

53 57 62 67 71 75 80

Introduction Gratitude and Praise Panegyric in Pro Balbo Friendship with Caesar Praise as Pressure Cicero’s “Friends” in 44–43 bce Conclusion

3 The Orator as a Martyr

82

Introduction The Weeping Martyr in De Domo Sua Martyrdom as Exemplum in Pro Sestio Cato the Younger as the Ideal Martyr Martyrdom in the Philippics Conclusion

v

82 85 88 91 95 100

Contents

vi

4 The Orator without Authority Introduction Tiptoeing around Pompey in Pro Milone Insecurity and Inappropriate Jokes in the Caesarian Orations Self-Fashioning in Silence Conclusion

5 The Champion of the Senate Introduction Defending His Consulship The Senate’s Oppressors in 58 bce Caesar as the Senate’s Champion Reviving the Senate in the Philippics Conclusion

6 The Popular Orator Introduction The Triumphant Return Unpopular Populares The Will of the People Popularity in the Philippics Conclusion

7 The Voice of a Faction Introduction Partisan Invective in De Domo Sua A “True” and a “False” Populus Legitimate Force vs. Wanton Violence in Pro Sestio Pompeians and Populares in 43 bce Conclusion

8 A Great Man’s Spokesman

103

103 106 113 120 127

129

129 133 139 143 147 151

154

154 158 161 165 169 175

177

177 181 185 189 193 197

199

Introduction Friends of the “First Triumvirate” Clodius’ Avengers Caesar’s Tribunes Conclusion

199 203 210 213 220

Conclusion

223

Works Cited Index locorum Index

228 261 272

Preface

In this book I present and analyze eight personae routinely adopted by Cicero, depending on which approach offered the greatest leverage in particular circumstances. These include such personae as the attacker, the martyr, the champion of the senate, and the voice of a faction. I consider not Cicero’s self writ large across genres, but the range of oratorical roles he routinely adopted to achieve political ends in his speeches, and I explore how and why he plays those roles in particular orations. History, politics, philology, close reading, and rhetoric are integrated in my discussions of how and why Cicero took on a particular role, and how that role changed over time. The personae Cicero inhabits largely determine the perspective he takes on the world around him and thus how he describes his world to us, and so shape our evidence about the ancient world. In the chapters, I analyze common terms such as friendship and inimicitia, the optimates, the populares, the people’s opinion, and the will of the senate as rhetorical constructs, not as historical facts. The book proves the practical importance of literary techniques and situates data from the speeches in their rhetorical context. Latin quotations follow the Oxford Classical Texts for the speeches, the Teubner editions for the rhetorica and the philosophica, and Shackleton Bailey’s editions of the letters. Abbreviations follow the system of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. The chronological focus of this book is limited to oratory of the period from Cicero’s return from “exile” in September of 57 bce to April of 43 bce, when he gave the last speech he published. The book directs new attention to little-read texts in Cicero’s corpus and integrates them into a broader picture of his career and experience. Personae give us a mechanism by which to order the entire corpus of speeches from this period in a new way that incorporates all of the speeches more fully. The value of this study lies in using these personae as a framework within which to dissect, deconstruct, and interrogate particular arguments in the vii

viii

Preface

speeches, to reveal the inner workings and hidden logic of Cicero’s strategies. Personae are the foundation of arguments in every speech and of Cicero’s political activity as a whole, so the scope of this project is broad and inclusive, allowing parallels and threads of continuity over time to emerge across a surprising variety of speeches. Each chapter proceeds chronologically through a series of passages, read closely and in detail, to illustrate big ideas and broader patterns.

Acknowledgments

Several different institutions on two continents have provided me the time and support I needed to finish this project and to become a better scholar. The last steps were taken in the United States after a premature end to a semester at Temple University’s campus in Rome; the last revisions were done during a postdoctoral fellowship for the Anchoring Innovation project, at Radboud University in the Netherlands; the first draft was written at the University of New Hampshire; the project was born as a dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania; and my first Latin and classics courses happened at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Moving from place to place has probably cost a lot of time, but the benefit was the opportunity to meet so many colleagues who have helped and supported me in this process. My students have given me the clarity of fresh eyes and the luxury of reading the Latin texts closely together with a group. My Radboud colleagues, Bé Breij, Marc van der Poel, and Giovanni Margiotta, were always ready and willing to talk through all things Cicero with me, and Kit Morrell helped me to refine a recalcitrant chapter. In New Hampshire I connected with the MACTe reading group of junior classics faculty in New England and got to workshop several chapters with them, despite New England weather. My UNH colleagues, Harriet Fertik, Mike Leese, and Stephen Trzaskoma, and Ann Vasaly and others at Boston University were kind enough to read or listen to various pieces of the project and offer their thoughts. Chris van den Berg and Scott Smith took on the Herculean task of reading the whole manuscript and helped me to improve the final product with their advice. None of this would have been possible without Cynthia Damon, my advisor and mentor at Penn, who helped me to build my foundations as a philologist and taught me to find joy in the challenges of translating Latin. Emily Wilson, Joe Farrell, and James Ker also provided guidance and feedback, as did my colleagues in the dissertation workshop and dissertation prospectus workshop (I wish all grad programs had both). Across several of these institutions Cambridge’s ix

x

Acknowledgments

readers pushed me to make the book better and better, and I’m so pleased with the results; I owe so much to them, whoever they are. It’s not as easy to acknowledge what I owe to my friends, too many to name here; even those who never read a word of the book made it possible for me to write it by helping me to maintain some semblance of balance and sanity in the process. My sister Nora and my cohort-mates Heather, Anna, and Kate taught me the value of friendship, solidarity, and a good workout. I don’t want to think about where I would be now, never mind the book, without them. I’m so lucky to have my family’s love and support, not to mention the exempla of so many published authors in my family. I know exactly where my love of language, laughter, learning, reading, storytelling, cooking, crosswords, trivia, travel, and candy canes comes from. My dad would have loved this book, and my mom is my best editor.

Introduction

In the first century bce, Rome saw the rise of its greatest orator, Cicero. He was a master of the art of rhetoric, the art of persuading people, which was vital in republican political deliberations. His published speeches and theoretical works had massive and lasting influence on ideas about communication. At the same time, Rome also witnessed the destabilization and ultimate implosion of their political system, through decades of unrest and several civil wars. At the very moment when the art of oratory was reaching new heights in Rome, republican governance and deliberation were reaching new depths of dysfunction. What power did oratory or the orator have in this time of crisis? Cicero’s eloquence was pitted against the military force wielded by generals, the machinations of conspiratorial political cabals, and mass unrest. Yet Cicero was sought out, by the “first triumvirate”1 and later by Caesar as dictator and by Mark Antony as consul, as a leader in senatorial deliberation and as an ally.2 How did he accomplish that? First, Cicero was unusually good at articulating political ideals, not only in his orations but in his written works. He was ingenious at finding ways to argue that whatever he was proposing would bring the republic closer to those ideals, and that his was the right side. That ability to connect the real to the ideal made him valuable, as a sort of generator of political justifications. Several scholars have devoted recent monographs to Cicero’s 1 2

I use the quotation marks because of the doubt Gruen has rightly shed on the actual coherence or influence of this trio; Gruen 1974: 88–101, 149–50. Prov. Cons. 17, 41; Att. 4.6.2, 9.9.3, 9.11a, 9.15.2, 9.16.2–3, 9.17, 10.8.3. “He was an unrivaled swayer of opinion, who was held in high esteem by large numbers of substantial men throughout Italy. Caesar had thought it worth his while to bid high for his support and cooperation in 60–59 bce. He had been prepared to risk a good deal of unpopularity with certain important sections of opinion in order to be rid of him when he refused to cooperate. It had been worth Pompey’s while to go to a good deal of trouble to get him back, and Caesar thought him sufficiently dangerous to insist on certain guarantees of good behavior before he would call off his opposition to his recall. … And he was an unrivaled orator and advocate. The dynasts were very anxious to have him defend men like Gabinius or deliver speeches like the De provinciis consularibus”; Stockton 1962: 487–8.

1

2

Introduction

ingenuity in creating a framework for understanding Roman society and the world around it. Most notably, Vasaly takes note of Cicero’s “representations” of his physical surroundings, Connolly explores “the state of speech” Cicero inhabits and generates, and Gildenhard investigates Cicero’s “discursive constructions of realities at the level of the human being and the human condition, politics, society, and culture, and the sphere of the supernatural.”3 Cicero came to embody republican tradition by means of his own rhetorical inventiveness in describing that tradition, even though he was a new man, and so his approval or disapproval carried extra significance to his colleagues. He also portrayed himself as resisting the destructive political trends of his time in certain specific ways, as we will see. In this book, I argue that Cicero’s “creative eloquence” had another crucial object that was essential to his political success, especially in the latter half of his career: himself. Given the constraints of a particular set of circumstances in which he was to speak, Cicero showed remarkable versatility in devising a strategy of self-fashioning to give him the leverage he needed. For each occasion, he found a narrative interpretation of his circumstances to suit him, and cast himself as a protagonist in that story. Political circumstances thus operated less as limits on the possibilities open to him than as a starting point for his inventive process. In 1988, James May published his study Trials of Character, in which he illustrated the importance of êthos for Cicero’s success as a forensic advocate, with a focus on moral authority – not only Cicero’s êthos, but those he constructed for his clients and opponents as well.4 Like May, I use Cicero’s orations as direct evidence for his practice. While May looked at how strategies of êthos helped Cicero to win certain cases, I take a broader look at how Cicero defined himself in relation to the political actors around him, in and out of the courts. Catherine Steel, John Dugan, and Henriette van der Blom (to name a few) have also studied Cicero’s ingenuity in self-fashioning, especially in his ascent up the cursus honorum as a “new man,” and in his creation of a new cultural and literary program in Latin.5 The work of these scholars helps us to understand how Cicero became the Cicero known through later ages. Cicero the real historical person developed a distinctive persona throughout his published works, a performative and artful version of 3 4

Vasaly 1993; Connolly 2007; Gildenhard 2011: 2. Guerin 2009 also addresses persona in the framework of rhetorical theory, including Cicero’s. May 1988. 5 Steel 2005; Dugan 2005; Van der Blom 2010.

Introduction

3

himself for public view. However, as these scholars would all probably acknowledge, the more closely one looks at Cicero’s speeches, the more this figure of the great Cicero dissolves into contradictions, reversals, compromises, and variability. As a political actor, Cicero was never a finished product, nor an entirely coherent one. That the same orator made conciliatory speeches bowing to the authority of Pompey and Caesar in 56 bce and launched vicious attacks on Antony for undermining the Republic’s constitutional foundations in 44–43 bce, for example, was contradictory and demanded compelling political justifications.6 In addition to discussing Cicero’s monolithic persona, therefore, it is also possible to analyze Cicero’s multiple, diverse personae. In this book, I consider not Cicero’s self writ large across genres, but the range of oratorical roles he routinely adopted to achieve political ends, and I explore how and why he plays those roles in particular orations. These roles, which I call Cicero’s political personae, admit of a greater degree of flexibility than his literary self as a whole across his career. They are not merely stances he took in various debates, but fully formed characters that he played, each of which had its own style, tone, and concomitant tropes, and a distinctive way of relating to others. These are different facets of the unified whole persona of Cicero, but each facet can also be seen as a complete character in its own right. The focus of this project is Cicero’s recorded practice as a response to politics from day to day, as opposed to the relationship between practice and rhetorical theory or a longer view of his legacy.7 In any oration, Cicero’s starting point was not a blank canvas, but a complex political arena historically situated and filled with obstacles, including the arguments of his opponents and detractors. His political personae gave him a greater range of options in operating in the present and the short term, during a time of political turmoil and constitutional crisis. They are best understood as specific responses to specific historical exigencies, to the challenges Cicero faced when he set out to deliver an oration on a given day. His lasting legacy was shaped for a time when political nuances had faded from memory, but in the present, in his lived reality, those nuances had to be carefully navigated; they influenced his choices of what people 6

7

Psychologizing explanations that Cicero had a change of heart or was pushed too far or feared Pompey and Caesar are not compelling political explanations, i.e., would not persuade an audience of the soundness of his behavior in such a way that they would be willing to go where he leads them. Dugan, for example, focuses on how Cicero “situates his own self-presentation within a more wideranging project designed to influence Roman cultural values” and “turns to the construction of a textual and discursive self within cultural writings in reaction to the loss of more conventional political sources of authority”; 2005: 13. He identifies Narducci 1997 as a model for this approach (17).

4

Introduction

and causes to support, and how to justify that support, in ways that I will illustrate in each chapter. The eight personae I address are: the attacker, the friend, the martyr, the authority figure (or rather its inverse), the senator, the popular orator, the voice of a faction, and the spokesman of a great man. The projection of a persona is not limited to orators; we are all doing it all the time in our social lives. That process has fascinated anthropologists and cultural critics of all stripes. Erving Goffman was a pioneer in discussing the everyday projection and shaping of “face,” or the public self, in dialogue or interaction with others:8 “a correctly staged and performed character leads the audience to impute a self to a performed character, but this imputation – this self – is a product of a scene that comes off, and not the cause of it.”9 One’s self is not always the same, but is performed differently to correspond to situation-specific roles. Orators elevate this mundane, often unconscious practice to the level of an art form,10 although the particulars may still be produced unconsciously. Personality, traits, impression management, self-presentation (especially through narrative), and role theory are popular fields of inquiry in psychology and sociology as well.11 Stephen Greenblatt, who introduced the literary term “self-fashioning” into common academic circulation in his 1980 work Renaissance Self-Fashioning,12 describes Sir Walter Ralegh in an earlier book in a way that seems strikingly apt of Cicero as well. Ralegh, he writes, displays an “intense histrionic sensibility constantly striving for a moving presentation of the self” and also sometimes “succumbs to the dangers of the histrionic sensibility: self-indulgence, self-pity, posturing.”13 He adds: Ralegh’s self-fashioning is paradoxical: it bends art to the service of life – advancing his career, justifying his actions, enhancing his reputation – and it transforms life into art, leading ever further from the career toward symbolic characterization and transcendent meaning. It exists in time and in spite of time; it addresses a specific historical audience and yet turns inward, cryptically mirroring the self; it reflects the world and creates its own world.14 8 9 10 11

12

Goffman 1959; Goffman 1967; Mauss 1985 takes a comparative anthropological approach. Goffman 1959: 252. Literally, in the case of declaimers’ embodiment of various personae after Cicero’s lifetime; Bloomer 1997a. I have found Applbaum 2000; Mcadams 2006; Paulhus and Trapnell 2008; John, Robins, and Pervin 2010, especially the chapters by John & Srivastava and McCrae & Costa, Jr.; Cottam et al. 2015 particularly relevant for this project. Greenblatt 1980. 13 Greenblatt 1973: 23. 14 Greenblatt 1973: 59–60.

Introduction

5

For Cicero, too, the art of self-fashioning pervades all his works and activities, so that the man is inseparable from the character and from the world in which the character lives.15 Self-fashioning was likewise crucial for Cicero’s career and reputation. The product, Cicero’s personae, is partially an artistic creation and partially an unconscious “mirroring the self” or an instinctive response rooted in social norms, and it is impossible for us to see where one ends and the other begins. I focus on Cicero’s recorded practice here, the end product of his self-fashioning as it survives today, without speculating about what was conscious or not, or how his practice corresponds to his inner psychology. I also take a more specific, granular approach to self-fashioning than previous scholars have done, treating it as having many distinct outputs over time and aimed at a moving target in changing conditions, rather than a single end product. It is also useful to think of Cicero’s political personae as analogous to the personae or characters of Roman theater: each play was different and each narrative imposed its own constraints, but each featured instantiations of character types that could be adapted and reused – the king, the clever slave, the nurse, etc.16 Each type, like each of Cicero’s personae, was already familiar to the audience as having certain characteristics overlaying his or her social role (e.g., pride, irreverence, or caring solicitude). Aristotle’s claim in the Poetics holds true for the rhetorical actor as well as the dramatic persona: “it is not in order to provide mimesis of character that the agents act; rather, their characters are included for the sake of their actions” (1450a). Characters, in the sense of individuals with distinct traits, motivations, and backgrounds, provide the logic for why the story takes the direction it does, and make it feel believable. Cicero’s personae thus function as a component of narrative storytelling, the way Cicero answers the basic, always latent question of what brings him before an audience to make the case he is making.17 15

16

17

In an article on Pliny the Younger, Leach writes that Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning is so useful because it “deemphasizes the value judgments fostered by traditional debates” about authenticity and sincerity, and promotes rhetorical analysis; Leach 1990: 16. Dugan 2005 also cites Greenblatt’s concept as a model. Self-fashioning and persona have also become major topics of study among scholars of Roman poetry, especially Horace; see, e.g., Freudenberg 1993; Oliensis 1998; McNeill 2001. Many scholars have made this connection between rhetoric and drama; see especially Nédoncelle 1948; Edwards 1993: 98–136; Bartsch 1994; Gunderson 2000: 111–48; Roller 2001; Zerba 2002; Hall 2006: 353–92; Wiseman 2008: 153–76; Batstone 2009; Hölkeskamp 2011a; Papaioannou, Serafim, and da Vela 2017. See also Oliensis 1998 on Horace’s authorial persona. Wright (1931: 100–3) lists instances of the word persona used in Cicero’s works as a theatrical metaphor. Or “where he is coming from,” to use the topographical metaphor preferred by some feminist scholars of rhetorical ethos; Reynolds 1993; Jarratt and Reynolds 1994.

6

Introduction

Cicero’s personae help to make his arguments persuasive. They draw the audience into seeing a case or proposal from Cicero’s point of view by establishing a narrative framework as well as an emotional response: anger at a villain, fidelity to a tradition, eager support of an ally, etc. Personae make arguments engaging by implicating a receptive audience in a certain desired perspective. In rhetorical theory, Aristotle, Cicero, and others insist on the central importance of êthos for persuasion,18 because without successful self-fashioning, the orator’s audience will not trust him, and therefore will be less likely to give him what he is asking for. By laying narrative groundwork through a persona, Cicero gives the impression to his audiences that the political arguments he makes in his speeches are reasonable and sincere. Anyone with those traits, with that perspective, would react and argue that way in such circumstances. A devoted statesman or martyr will prioritize the common good over individual expediency; a good friend will look for opportunities to repay his friends’ support and will indulge his friends’ mistakes or failings. The audience must feel as if they know him as an individual, consistent and familiar over time in a general sense. Cicero is always Cicero, but he may appear on any occasion as Cicero the attacker, Cicero the witty epigrammatist, Cicero the champion of the senate, etc. Cicero’s personae are his way into any case, and set him up to make certain kinds of arguments more convincingly. For us, that means that when we focus on Cicero’s personae, we are better able to notice and evaluate the way he sets up his arguments. While Steel, Dugan, and Van der Blom have dealt with Cicero’s speeches up to his consulship and have then turned largely to focus on his written works in the 50s bce, I focus in this book on the orations of (roughly) the latter half of Cicero’s career, from his return from exile to his death.19 In 58 bce, Cicero left the city of Rome, fearing prosecution under a new law because he had executed conspirators against the republic without a trial when he was consul five years earlier.20 He was subsequently banned from Rome and spent a painful year and a half away from the city, feeling that the powerful men whom he had considered his friends had betrayed him in allowing this to happen. When new consuls took office in 57 bce, a movement began to recall Cicero, which ultimately resulted in 18 19

20

Ar. Rhet. 1.2.2–4, 2.1.5–6, 3.7.4; Cic. Inv. 1.21–2, 3.32–7, De Orat. 2.182. For scholarship on this topic in rhetoric, see especially Wisse 1989; Guerin 2009. Greenblatt 1980 is also interested in the self-invention of political figures from more obscure backgrounds, but I will be discussing self-reinvention, when Cicero is already established as a political figure. I discuss Cicero’s narratives of these events in some detail in Chapters 3 and 5.

Introduction

7

his restoration in September of that year. This was a watershed moment in Cicero’s career, and a bittersweet one: the joy of his return did not erase his anger and grief at being driven out of the city, and the real insecurity of his political status had been revealed. After his return, even though he claimed to have successfully recovered his status in the space of a few months,21 Cicero operated under considerable political constraints. His personae were crafted to face specific historical exigencies as obstacles, and his exile was among the most prominent of the obstacles he had to navigate.22 The prospect loomed of somehow being driven out of the city and into exile again, which led him to support the “first triumvirate” despite serious misgivings about the danger they posed to the republic, in hopes of political protection. As Pompey and Caesar gained more power, Cicero and others may have calculated that open opposition to these powerful men would be dangerous, and so curtailed the opinions they expressed in public. However, these constraints were not all-encompassing. Take, for example, Cicero’s speech De Provinciis Consularibus, probably the first major speech he gave after the renewal of the “first triumvirate” at the Conference of Luca in 56. Pompey had told him to fall in line and to support Caesar if he wanted to continue counting Pompey as his ally, but we do not know the particulars of what that support meant (Fam. 1.9.9). Cicero then wrote what he calls his “palinode” or “retraction,” probably a letter that does not survive,23 indicating that he would do so. Perhaps that was enough to satisfy Pompey. It is possible, however, that Pompey and/or Caesar further required Cicero to speak in the senate in support of an extension of Caesar’s command in Gaul, as Cicero in fact did in his oration De Provinciis Consularibus. Perhaps he could have simply given a brief opinion in the senate, not a long oration, to satisfy such a request. Even if a brief statement was not satisfactory, and Pompey and Caesar did also press him to give a full speech, it strains credulity to think that Pompey and Caesar went so far as to instruct the master orator in how to organize his speech, or what approach to take. Cicero was thus left with important choices, at a minimum: what personae to adopt to preserve his credibility? How to 21 22

23

Q. fr. 2.1.4. Dugan argues that “his subsequent self-fashioning strategies … were essentially attempts to recapture that fleeting moment of the convergence of the powers of the powers of his consular voice and of political office in the face of later events that undermined that legacy: his exile of 58, the rise of the first triumvirate, and the ascendancy of Caesar”; (2005: 13). This describes part, but not all, of Cicero’s political activity after his exile. See Chapter 8.

8

Introduction

build his argument? How to explain the shift away from his previous challenges to Caesar’s status, if at all?24 These choices are, in fact, much more important than the overall thrust of the argument, because the argument would carry no persuasive weight without them, and because they are much more consequential for Cicero’s political credibility, not only for this speech but for speeches thereafter. In the event, as I discuss more fully in Chapters 1–2, he chose to launch an attack on Piso and Gabinius at the outset of the speech, which he did not have to do and which Caesar, Piso’s son-in-law, presumably did not suggest; he chose to argue that he (Cicero) and Caesar had always been friends in private despite their political differences, to make his new stance seem less strange; he chose to praise Caesar, and to use considerable rhetorical artistry to embellish that encomium; and he chose to argue more philosophically that persistence in political enmity did not reflect consistency but obstinacy and selfishness. He rejected other potential personae, which is also worth noting: he showed little consideration for popular opinion, he chose not to foreground his optimate bona fides or promise that this proposal would help in his crusade against demagoguery and sedition, and he elected not to make the speech particularly humorous. Finally, he chose to write down and publish the speech, documenting the choices he had made. Cicero always had a range of choices of personae and arguments to hand, even within apparently insoluble political constraints, and chose the ones that he thought would best achieve his ends in every case. This versatility is worth appreciating in itself as a rhetorical technique in Cicero’s speeches, but it also determined the ways in which Cicero described himself, his world, and his contemporaries, as we will see in each chapter. This has important consequences for how we use Cicero as a historical source. Many of Cicero’s claims about Roman history and culture have effectively become the basis for modern historical narratives of the time – Clodius’ sedition, Antony’s vulgarity, or the partisan fight between optimates and populares, for example – but we should be critical in assessing when Cicero came to generate those narratives and why, what purpose they served, and how they function as narrative frames for him as an acting character. As Lintott warns in his study Cicero as Evidence, “Cicero stressed the importance of adapting the narration, the account of the ‘facts of the case’, to the later argument. … Cicero is not a detached and 24

Likewise, Steel writes, “we should not assume that Cicero had no choice about the tactics to adopt” in Pro Balbo some months later; “he could presumably have constructed a different sort of defence, as indeed he does in On Behalf of Archias”; Steel 2005: 87.

Introduction

9

impartial narrator of either the world in which he himself moved or the past history of Rome.”25 The persona he inhabits largely determines the perspective he takes on the world around him and thus how he describes his world to us, and so frames our evidence about the ancient world. In the chapters, I analyze common terms such as friendship and inimicitia, the optimates, the populares, the people’s opinion, and the will of the senate as rhetorical constructs, not as historical facts. Persona is the foundation upon which arguments are built, not only in a forensic context but in the larger world of politics. Even if Cicero failed to achieve his immediate political goals after he had made his case, making his voice heard and making himself (or perhaps his self ) known to his audience was a worthy goal in itself, which he was consistently able to achieve. In the period on which I focus, the period from Cicero’s return from exile to his death, his process of self-fashioning is especially crucial and delicate. His expulsion from Rome had exposed a serious weakness in his political status, and when he returned, it was only by the grace of Pompey, and possibly Caesar. In May’s estimation, “Cicero, the Republic’s premier orator, suffered not a little humiliation and anxiety as an unsympathetic and less than willing pawn at the hands of the Roman autocrats. He struggled throughout this time to maintain, without overstepping his bounds, an ethos in possession of some dignitas.”26 This book explores what techniques and strategies he used in this struggle. In the field of political oratory, self-fashioning is a major determinant of the orator’s ability to win his cases and persuade his audiences. When Cicero explains why he feels the way he does about a case by explaining his relationships to the individuals involved and how those relationships condition his reactions, he creates a compelling narrative explanation for his actions that is designed to reaffirm his independence and sincerity. His audiences might otherwise have dismissed him as a mere mouthpiece for the will of others, but he uses his persona and his relationships to make his arguments feel more authentic. In reshaping and redefining his own role vis-à-vis other politicians, Cicero also showed others how an orator could use his art to carve out a place for himself in the political arena, and thus redefined the political role of the orator in the late republic more broadly through his orations. Cicero 25

26

Lintott 2008: 3. Stephanie Kurczyk (2006) has also illuminated Cicero’s reframing and presentation of autobiographical details as a persuasive technique, more complex and goal-oriented than simple self-presentation. May 1988: 128. Lowrie writes likewise that “it is exactly the fact that circumstances are not going according to Cicero’s will that threatens the constitution of his identity” in this period; Lowrie 2008: 140.

10

Introduction

was likely more adept at this than his contemporaries, but I believe that self-fashioning strategies like these on a basic level were typical of Roman oratory in general (and indeed of oratory beyond Rome). I will try to show whenever possible how Cicero’s practices correspond to those of his contemporaries, particularly in Chapters 3 and 8.27 It is also possible, and in fact seems likely, that Cicero’s personae set useful precedents and offered potential models to his contemporaries, so that these resemblances may be the result of Cicero’s influence rather than a shared rhetorical tradition.

Objectives This book addresses eight political personae or roles Cicero plays in his orations from his return from “exile” in 57 bce to his death. Put another way, the project deals with Cicero’s rhetorical positioning of himself as a protagonist in eight types of political narrative. It is not primarily a book about his actual role or roles in politics, or about his actual relationships with his contemporaries (a topic ably explored by Lintott28), but rather a book about the stories he tells about those things. In that sense, it is a literary study of political rhetoric, not a historical account, although of course political rhetoric is inseparable from the historical events to which it responds, and which it helps to shape. While I don’t intend to take Cicero at his word by any means, it is worthwhile to consider how the speeches were designed to work, and what impression they might have created on an audience without the luxury of a written text and the time to reflect and think critically, both assets to the modern reader. The eight roles I study are not identified as such by Cicero in his surviving works, and they may not be exhaustive in accounting for every variation in Cicero’s self-fashioning, but they cover his political activity in his later career as well as any one book can. His ingenuity and versatility defy systematization, and the rhetoric of political relationships is not an element that ancient theorists, including Cicero, dealt with directly. To define these personae, in the absence of a preexisting theoretical framework, I have gone to the orations themselves, examined the characters Cicero seems to me to have played, and extrapolated from those individual instances to larger patterns and tropes.29 In doing so, I have followed 27 29

Building on the work of Steel and Van der Blom 2013; Van der Blom 2016. 28 Lintott 2008. Greenblatt articulates a methodological outlook similar to mine here, in his study of Renaissance self-fashioning, connecting his work to that of Geertz and other anthropologists: “These figures do not enlist themselves under a single banner, still less do they share a single scientific method, but they have in common the conviction that men are born ‘unfinished animals,’ that the facts of life are less artless than they look, … that anthropological interpretation must address itself less to the

Objectives

11

somewhat in the footsteps of other practitioners of “persuasive process criticism,” a methodology that has become the new normal in Ciceronian scholarship since the 1980s.30 This approach focuses on the texts of the speeches first and foremost, asking how Cicero’s language met its goal of persuading an audience, independent of the concerns over form and rhetorical theory on which earlier scholars focused. Christopher Craig, Ann Vasaly, and John Dugan have provided particularly influential models for the present study in pursuing this type of scholarship.31 They also represent a move toward a less negative moral assessment of Cicero (and of rhetoric in general32) in scholarship in the twentieth century, and an inclination to appreciate his ingenuity rather than censuring his vanity or equivocations, although many Cicero scholars still seem to feel compelled to apologize for the latter before exploring the former. My chronological focus in this book is limited to oratory of the period from Cicero’s return from “exile” in September of 57 bce to April of 43 bce, when he gave the last speech he published. The decision to focus on the second half of Cicero’s career is a practical way to make his corpus of speeches more manageable, but is also a response to a fundamental change in the political world in which Cicero operated. In antiquity, Asinius Pollio chose to begin his history of the civil wars in 60 bce, the year in which Caesar was elected consul, beginning the era of the influence of the “first triumvirate.”33 Ever after, the Roman “republic,” if it even existed anymore,34 was in crisis. Cicero was forced to face this reality by his humiliating expulsion from the city in 58 bce, a calamity that Pompey and Caesar could have prevented, but did not. Upon his return from exile, Cicero needed to rehabilitate his reputation. He was not campaigning for office, and he was already a senior statesman of consular status, but he had to become more forceful than ever in asserting his right to be heard and heeded. He also had to rebuild his reputation when it was now inextricably tied to the reputations of Caesar and Pompey. His debt to them – both

30 31 32 33 34

mechanics of customs and institutions than to the interpretive constructions the members of a society apply to their experiences. A literary criticism that has affinities to this practice must be conscious of its own status as interpretation and intent upon understanding literature as a part of the system of signs that constitutes a given culture; its proper goal, however difficult to realize, is a poetics of culture”; 1980: 4–5. Early advocates include Neumeister 1964; and Stroh 1975; Craig 1993: 1–8 summarizes its development; see also Craig 2002. Craig 1981, 1993, 2001, 2008; Vasaly 1993; Dugan 2005; building especially on Stroh 1975; and Classen 1985. Vickers 1998; Leff 1998; Garsten 2009. Hor. Carm. 2.1; see André 1949: 47; Haller 1967: 97; Henderson 1997; Morgan 2000: 54. See Flower 2010.

12

Introduction

financial35 and political – caused a sort of lingering miasma of subordination and dependence, undermining his authority as a political actor. In the 50s and 40s in particular, Cicero’s status was always contingent to some degree on the goodwill of Pompey and Caesar, and so his autonomy was always suspect: it was always a latent possibility that Cicero was rationalizing a position that they had forced upon him, rather than offering his own views and explaining them freely. Politics from this point onward was qualitatively different, and so I begin my study at that turning point of his return from exile. Many of the speeches of the 50s and 40s seem to me to have been rather neglected, with some notable exceptions: Pro Caelio and Pro Milone are benchmarks in the history of Roman oratory, but other orations from the 50s are seen as technically inferior – or so went the judgment of a previous generation of scholars, focused on rhetorical theory and oratory as its product.36 Likewise, while the “divine”37 Second Philippic is well known, the other Philippics are less often read.38 May, for example, analyzes less than a third of the speeches surviving from this latter half of Cicero’s career. The orations of the 50s bce are not as homogeneous as is sometimes presumed: Cicero delivered the vitriol of De Domo Sua (57) and Pro Sestio (56), the satire of Pro Caelio (56), and the high drama of Pro Milone (52), but he also published the more conciliatory De Provinciis Consularibus and Pro Balbo (both 56). Many of the speeches from this period are unconventional, departing from familiar habits and tropes in purposeful and innovative and therefore interesting ways. In contrast to exemplary speeches like the Verrines and the Catilinarians, Cicero’s rants against Clodius in 57 and 56 strike some readers as diffuse and unsophisticated. His praise of Pompey and Caesar in orations from 56 to 45 has struck many readers as embarrassing.39 In addition, the tendency of Cicero’s own corpus to defy generalization and systematization has been the downfall of some of these speeches. To 35 36

37 38 39

Q. fr. 2.10.5, 2.13.1–4, 2.14.3; Fam. 1.9.21; Att. 5.1.2, 5.4.3, 5.5.2, 5.6.2, 5.10.4, 5.13.3. Watts notes controversies over the authenticity of many of these speeches in the introductions to his translations; Watts 1935. The four speeches after Cicero’s return were designated as inauthentic by Wolf 1801. Juv. Sat. 10.125. Manuwald’s commentary on Philippics 3–9 will, I hope, spark new interest in those speeches; Manuwald 2007. At the end of his chapter on this period of Cicero’s career, May concludes: “the tone of these orations is at times strident, grating, and unappealing. We actually seem to feel the feelings of a man who appears to be grasping almost desperately in his attempt to regain his self-confidence and his public persona. Reading passages from these speeches or others written in this same period (e.g., In Pisonem) can be an embarrassing and uncomfortable ordeal”; May 1988: 127. This judgment is subjective, and in any case May also calls Cicero’s use of ethos in these speeches “brilliant” (ibid.).

Objectives

13

make the corpus more manageable, chronological arrangement into phases offers an appealing solution. We learn of Cicero’s meteoric rise to prominence, his glorious consulship, his subsequent humiliation (briefly interrupted by his return from exile), and his turn away from the forum to the gentler Muses of philosophy.40 But these phases are reductive, insofar as they fail to accommodate specific speeches. His Caesarian orations41 and Philippics do not fit into that biographical schema or conform to rhetorical models very well, which makes them easy to leave out of our stories of Cicero’s career, even though Cicero clearly did not give up oratory after exile or after the civil war.42 While he generated new worlds and conversations entirely under his control in his rhetorical and philosophical works, he could not exercise the same control over the forum, and his self-fashioning in his speeches is therefore less straightforward than in his dialogues and treatises. Crawford points out that Cicero published less than 30 percent of the orations he delivered in the 50s, a significant decrease from the 60s, and attributes this to his lack of autonomy under the “first triumvirate,” but he was certainly still active as an orator and advocate, and may simply have had less need to publicize his skills after his consulship.43 Steel points out that he still published as many speeches, even if they represented a smaller proportion of his activity, and perhaps was just too busy to publish more.44 If he was frustrated with them, or if they do not live up to our expectations, one might see that as all the more reason to study them closely rather than writing them off as failures or as waste. Personae give us a mechanism by which to order the corpus of speeches in a new way that is coherent, but incorporates all of the speeches more fully. Personae are the foundation of arguments in every speech, and the foundation of Cicero’s political activity as a whole, so the scope of this project is broad and inclusive, allowing parallels and threads of continuity over time to emerge across a surprising variety of speeches. I have arranged this book thematically, treating one role at a time, rather than chronologically (although each chapter proceeds chronologically). While this may be disorienting to readers familiar with Cicero’s biography, disorientation can help to put matters in a new light and open up new ways of perceiving patterns in the corpus, to tell a different 40 41

42 44

See May 2002; Steel 2005; Lintott 2008. Of course, Cicero’s own prefaces to his philosophical and rhetorical works support that narrative themselves. These three speeches are absent entirely from Van der Blom’s study, as is Pro Balbo, because they do not “display any hints as to Cicero’s personal exempla”; Blom 2010: 241. They are departures from Cicero’s usual self-fashioning techniques, outliers in the corpus, but not without interest. As Lintott is careful to demonstrate; Lintott 2008: 215–52. 43 Crawford 2002: 309–10. Steel 2005: 26.

14

Introduction

story about Cicero’s career. Tracking one persona at a time allows discussion of several similar speeches or passages together under each heading, rather than dealing separately with each or dividing them into the usual chronological phases. In each chapter, I begin with a general sketch of the persona and the narrative pattern it tends to follow, and use close readings of selected passages to elucidate Cicero’s practice in embodying that persona – or, in the case of Chapters 4 and 8, in consciously avoiding it. My intention here is to show in detail how Cicero built his personae in the text. The value of this study lies not in naming and defining the personae he inhabited, but in using those personae as a framework within which to dissect, deconstruct, and interrogate particular arguments in the speeches, to reveal the inner workings and hidden foundations of Cicero’s strategies. My study began as an attempt to answer the broader question of how oratory as a political and social practice changed from the end of the republic to the beginning of the principate. Recent scholarship in ancient history has done much to reevaluate the rhetorical processes by which the principate took shape, including its forerunners in Cicero’s lifetime, and especially to draw our attention to the ideas, concepts, and metaphors that gave everyone involved a framework through which to make sense of events, as they suffered through decades of instability and violence. The acerbic cynicism of historians like Syme, who saw echoes of Augustus in twentieth century totalitarian dictators, seems to be giving way to new perspectives, and with it the attitude that the principate was imposed on a passive population by the brute force and visionary genius of great men. In more recent scholarship, “binding links” with the republic, Concordia among social classes, and transitional phases have taken center stage, the inner workings and interior cultural logic of government as it develops over time.45 In fact, Republican historians are doing the same for an earlier time period as well, elucidating the ideological grammar that made all the cogs of the republican state fit together and run smoothly, in theory and in discourse if not in practice.46 This book builds on these trends by offering a study of the crisis of the late republic from Cicero’s standpoint, not from a biographical angle (already amply explored47) but from a rhetorical one, linking philology and persuasive process criticism with history. Cicero is an individual speaker and actor in a larger culture, describing and sometimes redefining the system so that he 45 46 47

Raaflaub and Toher 1990; Habinek and Schiesaro 1997; Lobur 2008; Ferrary and Scheid 2015. Edwards 1993; Moatti 1997; Morstein-Marx 2004; Hölkeskamp 2010; Arena 2012; Mouritsen 2017; Hodgson 2017; Cornwell 2017; Moatti 2018. Seel 1953; Kumaniecki 1960; Smith 1966; Stockton 1971; Shackleton Bailey 1971; Rawson 1975; Habicht 1990; Steel 2005; Tempest 2011; Manuwald 2014.

Objectives

15

can exploit it, and mourning its dysfunction when his efforts at exploitation misfire. This is a study of how he tried to operate successfully in that system by generating narratives to describe it, and particularly how he always found a way to assign himself a starring role. Cicero is only one cog in the machine, but he is also the author who has given us the most information about what the whole machine looks like and how it runs, not from an objective or impersonal standpoint but from a distinctly idiosyncratic perspective with particular, personal goals in mind. The way he describes his world is never inevitable, but always highly selective with regard to which “facts” are acknowledged or emphasized, and which are minimized, suppressed, or refuted.48 Likewise, his approach as a speaking persona is never exactly the same from speech to speech, but is adapted to deal with new circumstances. Cicero’s arguments in the orations, because they belong to the sphere of politics, are always constructed adversarially against the arguments of his opponents, and we know rather little about those alternatives to the world as Cicero saw it. We usually operate without any evidence as to how Cicero’s contemporaries reacted to his strategies, or which of them were particularly successful or not; we can analyze our own reactions and assessments, but in the absence of the original political context and belief system, we cannot reconstruct the contemporary reception(s) of the speeches. Many of the stories reported about Cicero’s most famous contemporaries – Caesar, Pompey, Cato – may be apocryphal, generated for declamations or the rumor mill,49 and Cicero himself is often a rather unreliable narrator of his own political status.50 With all this uncertainty in mind, a critical awareness of rhetorical tactics, here focused around the central concept of persona, is fundamentally important. One of the premises of this book is that oratory and orators played an important role in the last decades of the republic. Cicero is commonly cited as an authority on religion, as a connoisseur of Greek and Roman art, as a devotee of philosophy, as a literary expert, and as a more or less representative example of an elite male husband and father. He saw, thought about, and recorded a historical moment in great detail. But when we think about great men who made history, who asserted their control over the course of events, who factor into historical narratives of what happened and why,51 48 49 50

51

Cf. Lintott 2008: 33–9. On declamation and historiography see Roller 1997; Wright 2001; Keeline 2018: 102–46. In discussing the Verrines, for example, Tatum writes: “we must be wary of being misled by Cicero, who habitually alleged that vast political forces were arraying themselves against whatever case he undertook”; Tatum 2013: 140. I don’t mean to endorse this variety of historiography, but it is always a tempting way to read the history of the late republic and so exerts a great deal of influence.

16

Introduction

Cicero often fades into the background (a background that he himself defined and described for us). As a literary author, Cicero’s preeminence is obvious; as a historical actor, less so.52 This dismissal, I suspect, is partially the result of a general bias (in classics and other fields) toward military history, which presumes that history is made by force and proceeds through battles: to the winner go the spoils, and the power. History is written by the winners, while orators and political speakers merely come along afterwards to tell the story of what happened to all the people who had no part in it, to sing the conqueror’s praises and become his propagandists (unless they choose to be sore losers or martyrs instead). To Mommsen, one of the great narrators of Roman republican military history, Cicero seems to be no more than a minor distraction from (and obstacle to) the main storyline of Caesar’s visionary greatness.53 However, this view of oratory as epiphenomenal, superficial window dressing to the main current of history is not at all inevitable. The orator is at the front lines of the negotiation of (or with) political power through dialogue, deliberation, and contestation – the “first rough draft of history,” as journalism is sometimes described today. History may be written to favor or flatter the winners, but the narrative shaping of causes and effects is performed by rhetoricians in real time.54 If the early twenty-first century has taught us anything, it is the degree to which rhetorical framing can determine the ways in which people interpret and rationalize their political reality. Rhetoric shapes the political landscape, establishes expectations, and makes “sense” of events in a particular, selective way. Multiple, conflicting rhetorical narratives can exist simultaneously, struggling for dominance, in a single community. The orator is the principal generator of such political narratives in Rome. Orators assign causes to events, provide coherent explanations, and affirm or deny the legitimacy of other individuals’ actions. When others accept the story as told by the orator, those narratives become historical memory. They also become the framework for future decisions: the man cast as a villain may choose to redeem himself, the man cast as an invader may try to act in such a way as to recast himself as a liberator, and the hero will try to live 52

53

54

I.e. “the familiar dichotomy between Cicero the brilliant orator of the literary studies and Cicero the fairly ineffectual politician of the biographers and the historians, overtaken by events and eventually extinguished by them”; Steel 2001: 16. This division began in antiquity, as shown by Roller 1997; Kaster 1998. The main diatribe against Cicero occurs at Mommsen 1856: Band iii, Buch v.12 619–20. Mommsen’s influence on Ciceronian scholarship is discussed in Douglas 1968: 5–8; Bernett 1995: 3–16; Narducci 2004; Altman 2015a. In referring to the narrative shape of history, I follow theoretical thinkers in the tradition of Hayden White; White 1966; White 1973.

Cicero’s Personae

17

up to his reputation (note the importance of personae here). Even the greatest visionary genius has to explain himself, what he has done and what he will do, in a way that is persuasive. Cicero’s narratives were not always accepted by his audiences, but that does not mean that he had no role as a maker of history. Rather, his is one voice in a dialogue, one contestant in the competition to impose an advantageous political narrative. He thus contributed to a larger, dialogic process of selecting out a single narrative that best accounted for events, in the eyes of the greatest number of listeners.55 From this perspective, the orator’s language is not a distraction from history; it is history.56 Before saying more about the content of my study, I want to clarify the model of persona that underlies my methodology here, and how it corresponds to and deviates from Cicero’s theory. My focus in the chapters will be on individual passages and speech occasions rather than on this framework, but the model underlies and informs the discussions in each chapter.

Cicero’s Personae How can Cicero, as a public figure, represent himself in so many different ways, and yet still be intelligible and familiar to his audience? How can he balance flexibility against consistency, and maintain his credibility? Certain aspects of his personae are more flexible and subject to reshaping than others. Although we tend to think of individuals as having relatively fixed personalities, those personalities are divisible into multiple aspects, as Cicero himself notes. In fact, Cicero describes each individual as having four personae, by which he means four dimensions or layers of one’s social role. In De Officiis, Cicero writes that: Intellegendum etiam est duabus quasi nos a natura indutos esse personis; quarum una communis est ex eo, quod omnes participes sumus rationis praestantiaeque eius, qua antecellimus bestiis, a qua omne honestum decorumque trahitur et ex qua ratio inveniendi officii exquiritur, altera autem quae proprie singulis est tributa. One ought to realize it is actually with two personae that nature has endowed us, so to speak: one of these is shared, derived from the fact that we are all participants in reason and the superiority by which we stand above beasts. From this persona all virtue and propriety is drawn, and the logic of determining obligation is derived; the second is what is attributed particularly to individuals. (1.107) 55

Leff 1998; Connolly 2007: 12–17.

56

Stockton 1971: 254. See also Vickers 1998.

18

Introduction

Later, he adds: Ac duabus iis personis, quas supra dixi, tertia adiungitur, quam casus aliqui aut tempus imponit, quarta etiam, quam nobismet ipsis iudicio nostro accommodamus. nam regna, imperia, nobilitatem, honores, divitias, opes eaque, quae sunt his contraria, in casu sita temporibus gubernantur; ipsi autem gerere quam personam velimus, a nostra voluntate proficiscitur. To these two personae that I mentioned above a third is added, which chance or circumstance sometimes imposes; and a fourth, which we fit to ourselves by our own election. For kingship, commands, elite social status, offices, riches, resources, and the opposites of these things are dependent on chance and governed by circumstance. What persona we ourselves want to put on, however, originates from our own will. (1.115)

Most aspects of persona (or most personae in the plural in Cicero’s formulation, since each individual has four) are outside the individual’s control, as Cicero presents them here: we are born into particular circumstances, with particular expectations to fulfill and roles to play,57 and with particular talents and proclivities that limit our choices even further.58 Like Aristotle (Rhet. 2.12–17), Cicero includes age, political rank, and social status among the factors that dictate what is appropriate for the third persona (122–5).59 The orator’s political personae, as they operate in Cicero’s speeches, instead reflect five aspects or layers: social role, identity, individual character, and affect are the components of the personae of the individual, but his relationships to others are also inextricably connected as an aspect of his personae as well. Cicero’s first level, which defines us as human, can be taken as a given here. What I call social role is Cicero’s second persona, which for the purposes of this study means an elite, educated, Latinspeaking male citizen.60 While those qualities persist throughout an orator’s career, his age, social status, and place in the political hierarchy change (but are outside his control), and constitute his identity, Cicero’s third and our second aspect of persona. In his chapter on Cicero’s êthos before his consulship, for example, May highlights Cicero’s rhetorical expertise as well as his ambition to overcome a lack of authority in comparison to more influential opponents.61 As Cicero’s career progressed, that êthos necessarily shifted. Young, up-and-coming characters are – and should sound – different from experienced veterans. Old, censorious Appius Claudius can censure Clodia, in the famous prosopopoeia in Cicero’s Pro Caelio 57 59 60

On the ethics of role obligations, see Hardimon 1994. 58 Gill 1988. Cf. Sorabji 2014: 158–62; Maric 2014. On the philosophical background of this passage, see De Lacy 1977. On the importance of these qualifications, see Bloomer 1997b: 1–17. 61 May 1988: 13–14.

Cicero’s Personae

19

(33–5), more convincingly than Cicero himself (or his opponents; 7, 71) can.62 Cicero mused that the reputation of his colleague Hortensius, once acclaimed the greatest orator in Rome, had declined partially because he did not change his style to suit his advancing age, and the disorienting perception of a young man’s speaking style flowing from an older man’s mouth made his audience uncomfortable and thus rendered him ineffective (Brut. 325–7).63 Cicero himself transitioned from arguing as a young upstart to condescending to young prosecutors. Likewise, a consul or censor is different from an aedile or a tribune, and a speech also needed to reflect these differences of dignitas and responsibilities.64 With character, we arrive at a level of the persona over which the orator exercises more control. The orator or politician is able to express his own individual traits or personality along several axes: for example, traditionalist or progressive; stern or sympathetic; lofty or relatable; unyielding or pragmatic; folksy or erudite; rational and objective or passionately partial; candid and succinct or eloquent and captivating. Consistency and intelligibility on this level are what can give us the impression that we “really know” a public figure (whether we actually do or not). Public figures have to speak in private and maintain personal relationships too, and if they are perceived to be entirely “different people” in different contexts, that conflict leads others to suspect them of insincerity. It makes their words ring false, especially to those who are unsympathetic to them before they speak, and can cripple them politically. As a rule, severe Cato the Younger cannot crack jokes or make light of political transgressions; Gaius Gracchus cannot express contempt for the plebs; Cicero, as he himself admitted, could not pretend to be uneducated in rhetoric (Orat. 145–6).65 Thus, it is not only 62 63 64

65

Bloomer 1997a: 68; Dufallo 2001; Christenson 2004. See also De Senectute 28 on the proper style for an older man. In De Oratore, Antonius explains at the end of his second lecture in Book 2 that he has only elaborated so much in order to prevent Crassus from successfully invoking his honores, his age, or his ignorance as reasons not to speak about rhetoric himself, since Antonius has the same qualifications (2.364). This illustrates the way in which identity or status dictates what is appropriate in behavior and in speech, as does Cicero’s emphasis on his identity as a consul in speeches of 63 to bolster various arguments; cf. Batstone 1994; Butler 2001. It is difficult to come up with more clear-cut examples here, because our evidence for the character of individual orators is so limited. Familiarity with an individual personality only emerges over time from a considerable quantity of interaction and evidence. We cannot get a sense of minor political actors, because consistency of character only really becomes vital as politicians progress up the hierarchy to more and more prominent positions, as the stakes become higher for their persuasive effectiveness and people’s feelings of trust for them. Perhaps we could just as easily say the inverse: that an orator’s ability to project a consistent, familiar, authentic (or believable) personality allows them to win over their audiences and progress further in their political careers, and to leave a deeper mark on the sources that survive today.

20

Introduction

possible but indeed essential for a politician to reflect his character in his way of speaking, if he wants his audience to trust him, and to be open to what he is saying, instead of suspicious and critical. Fourth, the most flexible and capacious level of one’s individual persona is what I will call the affect of the speaker. This is the speaker’s transient (apparent) mental state in reaction to the circumstances with which they are presented – or, to be more precise, in reaction to the circumstances as they interpret them. Affect is always reactionary and contingent, as the Latin prefix ad- (as in ad-fectus, i.e., “affect”) suggests.66 Cicero’s situationspecific demeanor may foreground indignation, contempt, despair, disappointment, joy, pride, admiration, ambivalence, fear, resignation, or other emotions. It falls to the orator to link his interpretation of the circumstances with his affect in responding to them, to explain why he feels the way he does, and thus to convince his audience that he does indeed feel that way and that they should feel the same. Cicero follows Aristotle and distinguishes pathos from êthos,67 separately from his discussion of personae, but in practice, the orator has to make them all appear to be connected. Moreover, the orator’s affect may be more or less consistent with his character. A serious man can find something funny, just as a permissive pragmatist can occasionally be driven to draw a dogmatic line in the sand; an educated man can use colloquialisms or obscenity to surprise and amuse his audience, and a man of few words can wax eloquent to great effect – if (crucially) he is provoked or inspired by an identifiable, plausible stimulus. In De Oratore, Caesar Strabo differentiates between using humor occasionally and being a clown or a buffoon more generally; the former is often useful in persuading an audience, while the latter, at the level of character rather than affect, is embarrassing (2.236–42).68 66

67

68

Nussbaum notes that in the Rhetoric, Aristotle describes emotions not as pure states of mind, but as beliefs, reactions to something that has happened or something that could happen, and ascriptions of worth to those real or hypothetical events; Nussbaum 1996: 303–14. Kaster 2005 takes the same approach, defining an emotion as a progressive reaction to a situation, originating in an “evaluative perception”: “the emotion properly understood, however, is the whole process and all its constituent elements, the little narrative or dramatic script that is acted out from the evaluative perception at its beginning to the various possible responses at the end” (8). De Orat. 2.178–87, 205–16; see May 1988: 1–6; Wisse 1989: 193–213. Cicero effectively describes ethos as stirring milder emotions like goodwill, and pathos as stirring strong emotions like anger or grief, representing them as more similar and contiguous on the same spectrum. He adds later that the graver and more serious the orator, the funnier his jokes become, because they are unexpected (2.289). Cf. Quint. Inst. 6.3.11–13, arguing that the difference between good and bad uses of humor depends on the orator’s nature and the circumstances, and 6.3.35, where he warns that “what the good man will say, he will say with his honor and modesty intact, for the price of a laugh is too great if it comes at the expense of our good reputation (probitatis inpendio).”

Cicero’s Personae

21

Finally, there is another crucial aspect of the orator’s personae: relationships between him and other people. Self-fashioning does not occur in a vacuum, but in relation to others, and not just to the audience.69 Social bonds – especially alliances and feuds – or the absence thereof are essential to how we perceive a political speaker. They are an important part of the situation or setting of a speech, in response to which the orator generates his affect. When a poet (as an analogy) reveals a relationship to his patron, to his friends, or to his lover, it helps us to understand him as a speaking character, just as his descriptions of himself or his affect do. They help us to define the role he is taking, formally or informally.70 Because Cicero is a certain sort of person – defaulting to congenial, witty, self-promoting, devoted to an idealized republic – he reacts to events and people in certain predictable ways, to maintain these relationships or values. It is his relationships with people that motivate him to intervene in political debates the way he does. Friendship or enmity, acquiescence or resistance, bullying or advocacy can define individual roles through relationships to others, and are crucial to the orator’s personae.71 To make strong emotions believable and contagious, the orator had to make the case for why he felt so strongly. Threats to our relationships can produce much stronger emotions than agreement or disagreement with a measure on principle. Who was the orator trying so strenuously to help, or to protect from danger, and why? What conflicts or strains threatened his relationships? Why was he taking the situation personally, and why should his audience feel sympathy for him? As we will see, Cicero also defined himself against other contemporaries and models (particularly Cato, Clodius, and Antony), responding to their actions and self-fashioning in a dialogic way. At Rome, a forensic advocate was supposed to have a personal investment in his client’s well-being, based on a preexisting relationship, so that aloof objectivity was not politically desirable.72 Interest and favoritism were expected. Personal loyalty was a more admirable motivation than cool calculation of political advantage, and advocacy in exchange for money was seen as 69 70

71

72

Cf. Ronald 1990. “The greater tangibility of formal statuses and organizational positions as compared with informal roles means further that there is a tendency to merge the latter with the former. Informal roles are often named by borrowing from formal statuses with which they are associated, as in references to a ‘fatherly’ role or a ‘judicious’ role.” Turner 1975: 93. In his study of role-taking, Ralph Turner notes helpfully the potential differences in roles, depending on interpersonal relationships: if “followers” already have a leader, a new claimant of a leader role becomes a “dissenter” and a “trouble-maker,” not just a “leader”; Turner 1975: 90. I have found that Turner and other theorists of roles are more general and more concerned with daily life than with politics. Kennedy 1968a.

22

Introduction

vulgar. Cicero was unlikely to win his case if the jury thought that he had only signed on to defend a client because he thought he could win, or in expectation of financial rewards,73 and explication of Cicero’s personal connection to the client might help to displace that perception of unfeeling utilitarianism. If he told a compelling story about his client, and especially about how the client had helped him in the past, his audience would be more likely to feel sympathetic to both of them. This applies to Cicero’s political relationships as well, beyond his forensic clients. Through narrative, he illustrated his relationships with his “friends” Caesar and Pompey and with his enemies, to tell a convincing story of why he was taking a certain position. Some interpersonal configurations focus around the orator as an individual, speaking only for himself, addressing either an individual or a group. The group may be composed of sympathetic supporters or constituents on whose behalf the speaker has taken an action, or may be a neutral or hostile crowd to be won over, or simply a group in need of the privileged information possessed by the speaker. Other configurations put the orator in the position of speaking together with or on behalf of another individual or group, voicing their concerns in a subservient position as spokesman or vessel. In sum, I base my discussion on a concept of persona in five aspects, as illustrated in this diagram:

Relationships Social role

Identity

Character

Affect

73

Cicero was accused of defending Faustus Sulla for money, for instance, by an opponent trying to undermine the legitimacy of his case; Gell. NA 12.12.2–4.

Outline

23

This diagram represents the different elements of an individual orator’s persona, and the hierarchical nature of those elements. The outermost, largest level is the most contingent, the most flexible, and the most capacious, while the innermost core is the least malleable or negotiable. The relationships with others are also quite flexible, because Cicero can be selective in which ones he chooses to emphasize as motivating his arguments, and because affection and hatred can rise and ebb. In general, while Cicero aged (of course) over the decades I’ll be covering, his social role and identity remained relatively constant: he was a former consul, an exemplary elder statesman, a preeminent orator and advocate. The chapters in this book will be treating variations on character, for the most part, as well as the affective dimensions of each character as they become relevant. In each chapter, I introduce a type of character more generally before investigating Cicero’s embodiment of that role, and sometimes other orators’ variations on the role, to help shed light on Cicero’s practice by contrast. I’ll also be focusing on the relationships that each character implies, and how Cicero rhetorically manages those relationships in different ways.74

Outline Each of the personae I examine in this book is a template of sorts, a generally familiar and intelligible role associated with its own particular narrative arc or trajectory. That template is a quick way for Cicero to put an interpretive framework in play for the audience, who are already familiar with it. At the beginning of each chapter, I describe the general contours of that typical narrative arc and the tropes, style, and affective stance that tend to appear together with it, the fellow travelers of the persona in question. The chapters proceed roughly from the most generic personae, useful in a wide variety of rhetorical contexts, to the more specifically late republican political roles adopted by Cicero. Some speeches appear in multiple chapters, as Cicero may combine or sequence personae within a single oration in any order he finds advantageous, and I will link separate discussions of the same speech. Chapter 1 deals with Cicero’s persona as attacker, the scourge of the wicked, the bitter enemy of his targets. In this mode, despite his penchant for fluent, 74

Cicero seems to be thinking of these roles not as personae but as rhetorical figures at De Oratore 3.205, in a list that includes “confrontation, reticence, commendation, a certain free speech and even lack of control for amplification, rage, rebuke, promise, criticism, supplication, brief departure from the topic (not like digression, mentioned before), forgiveness, reconciliation, attacking, begging, execration.” I’ll be treating them as rhetorical figures also, to a certain extent.

24

Introduction

dramatic vitriol, I show that he balances his approach with strategies to demonstrate self-control, lest he seem indecorous or worthy of attack himself. I focus on In Vatinium, De Haruspicum Responsis, In Pisonem, and Philippics 2 and 8. In Chapter 2, by contrast, I focus on his friendly side, and his rhetoric of friendship. This rhetoric was founded upon praise of his friends; in the mid50s (particularly the post reditum speeches, Pro Balbo, and De Provinciis Consularibus), his praise of two particular friends, Pompey and Caesar, grew ever more hyperbolic and effusive, to the point of sycophancy, in response to strains on those friendships. He also sought to exert pressure through “friendly” advice, in Pro Marcello, his letters to Dolabella and other young men, and the First Philippic. Cicero’s persona as a martyr is the subject of Chapter 3, especially his claims and promises of self-sacrifice for the republic in De Domo Sua, Pro Sestio, and Philippics 2, 3–4, and 12. This stance is noble and heroic; in Chapter 4, I propose that Cicero sometimes also adopted its opposite, an inversion of the role of the orator as authority figure in which he takes on a role as a buffoon (Pro Milone, Pro Ligario) or as fearful (Pro Milone, Pro Marcello, Pro Deiotaro) to achieve certain rhetorical ends and to succeed in certain challenging rhetorical circumstances. He even gives up his authority as a speaking figure entirely in embracing a public silence instead, in the Brutus and his letters after the civil war. This aspect of Cicero’s activity is more important and more strategic and purposeful than has often been assumed. With Chapter 5, we begin to move from the general to the particularly late republican roles embraced by Cicero, and ways in which Cicero positioned himself specifically as resisting destructive political trends: undermining of the senate, demagoguery, violence, and subordinating oneself politically to great men. Chapter 5 covers Cicero’s self-fashioning as a member of the senate, diligently obedient to the institution’s traditions and to the collective will of its members. The more the senate’s authority seems to erode in this period of crisis and dysfunction, the more Cicero insists on its solidarity and power. This chapter contains analysis of passages from De Haruspicum Responsis, In Pisonem, De Provinciis Consularibus, Pro Marcello, and Philippics 2, 5, and 7. In Chapter 6, I show that Cicero’s triumphant claims about his own popularity (especially in the post reditum speeches, De Domo Sua, Pro Sestio, Pro Plancio, and Philippics 1, 6, and 7) should be read as an inversion of the self-fashioning of the populares, the self-proclaimed champions of the Roman populus. The populares also feature as a counterpoint in Chapter 7, which deals with partisan rhetoric and Cicero’s role as a party leader of sorts. Especially in De

Outline

25

Domo Sua, Pro Sestio, a letter to Quintus, and Philippics 5 and 13, Cicero positions himself as the leader of a great crusade to restore law and order in the republic, safeguarding it from the violent threats of a few degenerate criminals, even with the use of force. Finally, in Chapter 8, I turn to a role that became more and more normalized in the 50s and 40s, but which Cicero steadfastly (narrowly) avoided: the role of the spokesman of a dynast. Pompey and Caesar often found young, ambitious politicians, especially tribunes, looking to boost their own careers by riding a dynast’s coattails, and the dynasts themselves were happy for the legislative and rhetorical support. I use De Haruspicum Responsis, Pro Caelio, Asconius’ commentary on Pro Milone, and letters from Cicero and Caelius as sources for Cicero’s contemporaries (Clodius, Curio, and Antony), and address passages from the letters, Pro Balbo, and Pro Marcello to compare Cicero’s practice with what we know of those other orators. Cicero’s rhetoric of friendship with Pompey and Caesar takes on additional importance in contrast to this spokesman role, and shows Cicero’s wariness of admitting too great a disparity between his own dignitas and that of other prominent politicians.

chapter 1

The Orator as Attacker

Introduction In his persona as attacker, Cicero claimed to be moved to defend the republic from assault by evil, corrupt, and often laughably incompetent adversaries. Cicero’s attacks on the political abilities of targets like Verres, Catiline, Clodius, and Antony are so effective that they have all but rewritten our historical understanding of those figures.1 Ronald Syme memorably declared that “the Second Philippic . . . is an exercise in petty rancour and impudent defamation like the invectives against Piso,” adding that “the survival of the Philippics imperils historical judgment and wrecks historical perspective” by mischaracterizing Antony and also by giving us an exaggerated sense of Cicero’s influence.2 In other words, Cicero’s persona as the scourge of the wicked is so convincing that it can lure readers, even modern ones, into believing that Cicero holds more political capital than he actually did, and that his targets are less worthy of note or less competent than they actually were. It would be fair to say that these invectives represent a (very convincing) distraction or diversion from the real tenuousness of Cicero’s position in many instances. Even during his lifetime, a lively attack could go a long way in inspiring support and confidence. Cicero often writes to his brother of instances in which he delivered an invective in the senate with the result that other senators rallied around him to praise him (Q. fr. 2.1.3, 2.10.2–3, 3.2.2). This has important consequences not only for how we see Cicero’s targets but for 1

2

Duplá’s generalization attests to Cicero’s power of invective, although it is an overstatement, as this chapter and Chapter 2 will show: “When speaking in public or writing in his correspondence, Cicero takes such an aggressive tone against his political rivals that we can consider him one of the most intolerant politicians ever known. His strategy generally implies the radical rejection of these rivals and their ideas and proposals, and their explicit or implicit exclusion from the community, without any possibility of agreement or discussion. This rejection concerns both their program of possible reforms and their own personality or character” (Duplá Ansuategui 2017: 186–7). Syme 1939: 146–7; cf. Craig 2004.

26

Introduction

27

how we see him: his pose as the censorial enforcer of political ethics is a convincing one. Typically, Cicero rails contemptuously at his target, especially at the target’s oratorical failures or incompetence, while also claiming to be holding himself back from a further extreme of aggression. I focus especially in this chapter on these claims of self-restraint as essential to Cicero’s persona as attacker in his invectives against Clodius in De Haruspicum Responsis and in the invectives In Vatinium, In Pisonem, and In Antonium (Philippics) 2 and 8. While this persona will be familiar to most readers of Cicero, it is a good initial example of how Cicero portrays contemporary people and events through a distorting lens. It is also a good example of how Cicero uses (or weaponizes) norms to police others, often by claiming to embody those norms himself. Here I focus on his ad hominem attacks on individuals; later, in Chapters 5–7, we will revisit his invectives against bad senators and populares as members of categories that are bolstered and sharpened by these personal attacks. In combining these themes of invective, he portrays his opponents’ ideas as not just wrongheaded but immoral and intolerable, and often inauthentic. As a persona, a political attacker is not merely an opponent by circumstance, appointed to take a position for the sake of argument. They are driven either by immediate, acute outrage or long-standing enmity to exceed the boundaries of normal, everyday speech as a last resort. The desired outcome of an attack like this is the utter humiliation or political destruction of the target, or even physical expulsion if the target can be driven away entirely by a verbal onslaught.3 Anger can be mixed with contempt, even though it might seem contradictory that the target can be both so threatening as to drive the attacker to extremes and yet so worthless as to be ridiculed and scorned. The attacker performs a sort of purification of the community by unleashing their emotions and purging what is intolerable or outrageous. They do not so much speak as rant, with the term’s implied passion, dynamism, fluency, and loosening (intended or not) of a normal degree of controlling reason. To an unsympathetic audience, ranting looks like insanity or empty blustering. If the attacker’s outrage is convincing and grounded successfully in shared values, however, their energy is contagious and exciting, an entertaining spectacle. Their policing of norms has a violent side, but it is a kind of violence that notionally helps and protects the community; it is the violence of the hero inflicting a just punishment on a villain, 3

Gildenhard calls this “conceptual disenfranchisement”; Gildenhard 2011: 80.

28

The Orator as Attacker

rather than the villain’s putatively unjust violence (a distinction to which we return in Chapter 7), a patriarch wielding protective violence on behalf of the household.4 This kind of hero has to be a prominent member of the community with considerable weight, combining the authority to command with the prestige of a leader responsible for their fellow citizens’ well-being.5 As a result, invective relies on a circumscribed group of moralizing tropes6 and tends to be deeply conventional and conservative in its outlook. Corbeill associates this sort of invective particularly with senatorial oratory and the policing of norms in that elite group through public shaming.7 Cicero depicts his own pose as an attacker as an exception to the rule, an affect that represents a departure from or break with his character. When he does resort to invective, he usually insists that he has been provoked and is acting out of self-defense and necessity, allowing him to draw on the dramatic appeal of the defiant martyr, as we will see in Chapter 3 (cf. De Orat. 2.182). While others might argue that it would be more virtuous to rise above provocation, Cicero claimed that he could not help himself, because his emotions or resentment on behalf of his friends or the state were driving him to attack his target. He thus argues for the morality of this retributive mentality much as the satirists do in Roman poetry: “it’s harder not to be writing satires” (Juv. Sat. 1.30, tr. Green).8 He did not often undertake prosecutions9 and even ended up defending a number of former enemies 4

5 6 8

9

“Romans resorted to invective in order to isolate and revile divergences from reputable habits and practices, an aggressive exertion that was intended at once to humiliate the alleged miscreant and to help to fashion the speaker (or writer) as a champion of normative values.” Tatum 2011: 167; cf. Corbeill 1996: 6; Corbeill 2002: 198–9. As Cicero notes in Verr. 2.3.1, prosecuting another man’s vices exposes the prosecutor to criticism himself for the rest of his life. 7 Corbeill 2002: 201 lists the ten most common invective tropes. Corbeill 2002: 210. Compare Walters’ treatment of the rhetorical background for Juvenal’s satirical attacks: “The act of stigmatization . . . brings to the attention of the community breaches of the norm. In so doing, it makes a claim to be defending that norm by enunciating it. . . . If successful in its appeal to its public, it creates a community of the respectable, the right-thinking or at least (in public at any rate) right-acting” (Walters 1998: 357). Cf. Corbeill 1996: 19 on flagitium. He prosecuted Verres in 70 and Munatius Plancus Bursa in 52 (Fam. 7.2.2–3). The role of prosecutor often went to young men trying to demonstrate their talents and rise out of obscurity, like Cicero at the time of the Verrines, rather than senior statesmen. Both Tacitus and Quintilian celebrate prosecution at the start of one’s career as a vital aspect of Republican oratory, naming such distinguished orators as Demosthenes, Crassus, Calvus, Pollio, and even Augustus himself as examples of orators who spoke in public at an early age (Tac. Dial. 34.1–7, Quint. 12.6.3). Caesar prosecuted Dolabella de pecuniis repetundis in his early days (Vell. Pat. 2.43.3); Pollio prosecuted C. Cato in 55 (Sen. Contr. 7.4.7); Calvus prosecuted Vatinius, whom Cicero was defending, in 54 (Catullus C. 53). All of these orators were under thirty years old at the time of their respective debuts. Dolabella’s son (cos. 44) in turn prosecuted Appius Claudius Pulcher at an early age (Fam. 8.6.1–2); Steel 2016.

Introduction

29

and antagonists,10 citing his natural inclination toward gratitude and forgiveness rather than holding grudges or stubbornly pursuing attacks. “It is not really even as necessary to give those who have treated you badly what they deserve, as those who have treated you well” (Red. Pop. 23), he maintains. Invective presents the orator with a challenge.11 A successful polemic is colorful, dramatic, exuberant, with a potential to shame one’s opponents and win the confidence and acclaim of one’s allies in a show of rhetorical strength.12 On the other hand, it would be a serious transgression of decorum to attack the wrong man for the wrong reasons or to engage in such attacks too often. Excessive vituperation makes the orator seem overly aggressive, boorish, and disrespectful. If the audience does not see an orator’s attack as forceful but as wrongheaded or excessive, the whole thing becomes an embarrassing spectacle of weakness rather than strength. In De Oratore Caesar Strabo warns that “by Hercules, even rather petulant jests move me, and those which are sort of bad-tempered, but not when they are said by someone who is bad-tempered; for in that case, not his wit but his nature is laughable” (2.279; cf. Orat. 88).13 The challenge for Cicero and his contemporaries was to play the part of the enforcer of norms by identifying and censuring (or satirizing) the failings of other orators14 without seeming abusive or contemptible themselves (cf. De Orat. 2.237; Off. 1.134–7). Cicero thus devotes considerable effort to explicitly demonstrating his self-control and social awareness in the course of his attacks. A show of selfcontrol, such as the typical statement that he could go further and say more but will refrain (an example of the figure termed aposiopesis by rhetoricians like Quintilian, 9.2.54–7), reminds the audience that Cicero is not belligerent by nature but has only become so in reaction to others’ immorality. In the late Republic, Roman politics permitted a degree of vitriol and ad hominem attacks that is shocking today, especially when it comes to lurid charges about the sexual proclivities of Roman politicians. “What was 10 11 12

13 14

In Pro Sulla, for example, he defended a rumored member of the Catilinarian conspiracy; and in 54 bce he defended his earlier targets Gabinius and Vatinius. For general studies of invective, see Opelt 1965; Koster 1980; Van der Blom 2014. On Cicero’s invective, Corbeill 2002; Booth 2007. Cf. MacKendrick 1995: 101–6, 217–30, 247–55, 335–51 on the frequency of metaphors in invectives. They also occur more often than usual in the panegyric Pro Marcello (412–16), suggesting that metaphors can offer a means of amplifying both praise and blame. On the vocabulary of political opposition, see Hellegouarc’h 1963: 186–201. Cf. Corbeill 1996: 6: “At Rome, deviant behavior is behavior that public speakers so define in their invective. As they label deviance through political humor, the positive values of society – the ‘proper’ way to look and behave – become reinforced by contrast.”

30

The Orator as Attacker

distinctive about inimicitiae in Roman political life was that they were so pervasively and violently pursued. . . . Inimicitiae consumed an enormous proportion of Roman republican society’s energy.”15 Still, even the Romans had their limits. One important way of implicitly demonstrating selfrestraint for Cicero is humor, the use of wit, to ease the tension somewhat and demonstrate that his anger has not run away with him and overwhelmed his intellectual capacities.16 Modern readers, and probably ancient audiences, often respond better to the witty Pro Caelio17 than to the more snappish and homogeneously aggressive De Domo Sua or De Haruspicum Responsis – although the latter speeches have their jokes as well, as we will see. As Cicero lectures his opponents in Pro Caelio, “it’s one thing to abuse, another to prosecute. Prosecution needs a charge, to define the issue, to censure a person, to prove with argumentation, to corroborate with a witness; abuse, on the other hand, has no purpose beyond insult. If it’s thrown out in a petulant way, it’s called abuse; if wittily, it’s called urbanity” (Cael. 6; cf. De. Orat. 2.340, Off. 1.103–4 on the urbane jest).18 Cicero is quick to identify and deride others’ failures to manage this delicate balance: his descriptions of Clodius and Piso as animals19 or as possessed by Furies,20 for example, imply that they have lost control of their emotions and transgressed the bounds of decorum as orators.21 Cicero’s attacks invert his own self-fashioning as an orator: while he is authoritative, moral, rational, and moderate, he portrays his opponents as the opposite sort. In his rhetorica Cicero calls boorish orators lacking in social graces rabulae and criticizes their “rabid,” excessively loud manner of speaking (De Orat. 1.202, Brut. 180, Orat. 47).22 Invective ran the risk of 15 16

17 18 19 20

21 22

Epstein 1987: 1–2. Caesar Strabo explicitly mentions the use of humor as a method of witty attack at De Orat. 2.236. Hickson-Hahn writes of jokes about incest: “listeners may focus on the humorous technique rather than on the taboo content and the aggressive hostility. Moreover, there is always the ‘only a joke’ excuse. Listeners take pleasure in the penalty-free expression of hostility and sexual aggression against the target and are won over to the side of the speaker who has given them that pleasure”; Hickson-Hahn 1998: 20. MacKendrick catalogues the uses of irony in Cicero’s speeches; MacKendrick 1995. On ridicule and wicked humor as a persuasive strategy in this speech, see Gotoff 1986. On urbanitas, see Ramage 1963; Krostenko 2001: 100–3, 191–9. May 1996; Maric 2014; Köster 2014. Dom. 99, 102; Har. Resp. 11; Sest. 33, 39, 106, 109; Vat. 33, 40; Pis. 3, 9, 91; Mil. 91. Lenaghan 1970: 155–7; MacKendrick 1995: 186; Berno 2007; Gildenhard 2007b; Gildenhard 2011: 324–43; Seager 2014. Kubiak 1989; Cuny-le Callet 2003. In a fragment of his Menippean Satires Varro uses this same word, rabula, to describe a student of the Latin rhetoric teacher Plotius Gallus as “screaming like an ox-driver (bubulcitarat)” (257); in another, he refers to a man, perhaps Plotius himself, who “stirs up that herd of charlatans (rabularum)” (379).

Introduction

31

transforming a rational, decorous orator into a rabula if unchecked. In Pro Caelio Cicero worries that his opponent is too much a gentleman to deliver an invective against Caelius convincingly, and suggests that it would be more appropriately delivered by “one of you brawnier fellows” (7).23 Again, it is implied that ad hominem attacks are beneath the gentleman orator’s dignity, a habit not to be indulged in too often. Connolly writes that “in a normative sense, Ciceronian performative ethics may be seen as a technology of civility, which he sees as the necessary ground for rational communication among political agents.”24 His invectives often include accusations that his opponents are no longer engaging in, or even capable of, that rational communication. Meanwhile, his use of humor in this sort of attack displays his own grace and mastery, elevating his invectives above the level of mere aggression and brawling, and adding entertaining variety to his orations.25 Caesar Strabo also warns in De Oratore that in applying ridicule, “one must defer especially to men’s popularity, so that you don’t say anything rashly about men who are held in high esteem” (2.237), and Cicero seems to follow this rule in refraining from targeting men of the greatest prestige with invective. Cicero’s claims of being provoked to outrage obscure the fact that going on the attack was always a calculated choice. He seems to sort his adversaries into two groups: those who could be attacked, and those who had to be dealt with more delicately, with the strategies we will see in Chapter 2. We might say that he miscalculated in the Philippics in placing Antony in the former group instead of the latter and gravely insulted Antony in choosing to attack him at all, especially since most of the orator’s fellow senators declined to follow his lead. Cicero’s speech In Vatinium begins with an attack combining many of these features: moral outrage and critique of oratorical skills, along with a performance of aposiopesis. In fact, most of the examples of Cicero’s persona as attacker in this chapter come from the exordia of his orations: this is where Cicero establishes a posture of strength and also where he is particularly careful to establish a balance for himself between aggression, moral rectitude, and wit, if only to build suspense for what is to come. 23 25

Cf. Craig 1981; May 1995: 434–6. 24 Connolly 2007: 153. May takes note of Cicero’s “jocular malice” in Div. in Caec. as a sign of Cicero’s growing confidence; May 1988: 36. After exile, Haury observes, “a peine retrouvée son assurance, une frénésie vengeresse l’enflamme et éclate en caricatures et en sarcasmes d’une férocité jamais encore atteinte. Leur accumulation provoquerait le dégoût si l’art et l’esprit n’en relevaient la crudité. Aussi la même saison voit-elle élore le Pro Sestio et le Pro Caelio, auprès de l’injure ordurière la fleur de l’urbanité nouvelle”; Haury 1955: 143. MacKendrick notes the unusual frequency of the word inimicus in Sest. (MacKendrick 1995: 216).

32

The Orator as Attacker

Demolishing Vatinius Cicero frames his invectives as promoting or restoring justice, transcending the merely personal. His attack on Vatinius is not just a forensic rebuttal (although it does serve that function) but an attempt to utterly destroy the reputation and the persuasive authority of his opponent.26 He represents Vatinius as a typical rabula or indecorous speaker (mentioned above), shouting and carrying on at the expense of whatever dignity he had, and dignitas was normally crucial. The governing elite of Rome held a virtual monopoly on oratory, from access to education in rhetoric to the prestige necessary to win elections. Cicero, in his persona as attacker, claims to represent the views of the elite and excludes targets like Vatinius from their number in any way possible. In doing so his aim is not only to win his case but to get the entire prosecution thrown out or disregarded by an audience made to share Cicero’s disgust for the man who had argued it. In Vatinium is the sole surviving Roman example of what we would call a cross-examination of a witness or opponent, in this case Vatinius, during the trial of Sestius in early 56 bce.27 It is not so much a series of questions, however, as a stunning example of character assassination.28 Cicero begins by instructing the jury not to take his speech as any sort of recognition of Vatinius’ political standing or oratorical skill: Si tantum modo, Vatini, quid indignitas postularet spectare voluissem, fecissem id quod his vehementer placebat, ut te, cuius testimonium propter turpitudinem vitae sordisque domesticas nullius momenti putaretur, tacitus dimitterem; nemo enim horum aut ita te refutandum ut gravem adversarium aut ita rogandum ut religiosum testem arbitrabatur. Sed fui paulo ante intemperantior fortasse quam debui; odio enim tui, in quo etsi omnis propter tuum in me scelus superare debeo, tamen ab omnibus paene vincor, sic sum incitatus ut, cum te non minus contemnerem quam odissem, tamen vexatum potius quam despectum vellem dimittere. . . . nulla me causa impulisset nisi ut ferocitatem istam tuam comprimerem et audaciam frangerem et loquacitatem paucis meis interrogationibus inretitam retardarem. 26

27 28

Pocock, in an effort to rescue Vatinius from Cicero’s grasp, produces a surprisingly positive portrait and concludes that Cicero’s attacks are “nothing but abuse; it proves nothing except that his enemies hated him for his obscure origin, his attacks upon their own interests, and his success,” and even that he “may fairly claim virtues not specially associated with his adversary’s name,” i.e., bravery (Pocock 1926: 44–5). It is unclear whether this oration pre- or postdates De Haruspicum Responsis; Lenaghan 1970: 11–31; Kaster 2006: 393–408. I discuss the Pro Sestio itself in Chapters 3 and 7. “In a letter written just after this speech was delivered, Cicero tells Quintus that he cut Vat. to ribbons (concidit; Q. fr. 2.4.1). The slashing weapon was invective, and rhetoric, especially metaphor, sharpened the edge of the sword” (MacKendrick 1995: 258). Cf. MacKendrick 1995: 244.

Demolishing Vatinius

33

If I had only wanted, Vatinius, to take into consideration what your worthlessness demanded, I would have done what pleased these men so much: you, whose testimony was thought to be of no importance because of the turpitude of your lifestyle and private degradations, I would silently let off the hook. You see, none of these men thought either that you should be refuted, as if you were a serious adversary, or interrogated, as if you were a proper witness. But perhaps earlier I controlled myself a little less than I should have. My hatred of you (even though I ought to surpass everyone in hating you because of your crime against me, I’m nearly surpassed by everyone else) spurred me on so much that, although I don’t have any less contempt than hatred for you, I wanted to send you away crushed rather than merely scorned. . . . Nothing motivated me except checking that savagery of yours, breaking your shamelessness, and slowing down your blathering, trapped by a few of my questions. (Vat. 1–2)

Cicero begins by citing Vatinius’ indignitas as deserving of no rebuttal at all: he “was [not] to be refuted like a serious opponent” by the normal rules of sociopolitical life in Rome. He did not fit the qualifications of a real advocate, and so it should go without saying that his testimony is entirely false. He has so little status that an audience or jury should not even register that he has spoken at all, by Cicero’s implication, and Cicero cites “these men” around him as supporting that view.29 However, the very fact that Cicero is delivering (and publishing) this speech falsifies his claim that Vatinius does not merit a response. Cicero describes himself as torn between contempt, which dictates that he not engage with Vatinius or recognize him in any way, and hatred, which “spurs” him to break loose from his own self-control – but just a little – and to rake Vatinius over the coals and to “break” Vatinius’ shamelessness.30 However, Cicero does not simply launch a direct attack here. His show of reflection and deliberation over two alternatives, whether or not to dignify Vatinius’ arguments with a response, shows the audience that he is fully in control and acting rationally. By contrast, he describes Vatinius as an irrational beast, universally hated, met with the silent treatment by his superiors. His affect is self-assured, fearless in the face of such a pathetic 29

30

Aulus Gellius notes that “one should not compete in abuse with the most vile men or skirmish with impudent and unjust men in slander, since you’ll be practically the same and comparable to them” (NA 7.11.2), citing Metellus Numidicus: “I’m not going to say more against him, for I think he is unworthy to be praised by good men, and not even good enough to be vituperated by bad ones. If you name a homunculus of this kind at a time when you cannot punish him, you give him more honor than insult” (7.11.3); cf. Gelzer 1937; Meyer 2003. Cf. Rabe 2015. On audacia as a term of invective, see Wirszubski 1961; Langerwerf 2015. See De Orat. 3.203 on dubitatio as a rhetorical trope.

34

The Orator as Attacker

enemy.31 Cicero also claims to have been provoked, attacking not preemptively but in self-defense. Vatinius had criticized various aspects of Cicero’s career in an earlier speech, to which Cicero responded: “attack (oppugnatio), which you are using now, is sometimes criticized, while arguing in someone’s defense (defensio) never is” (Vat. 5).32 Cicero’s attacks come from the pose of an enforcer of norms, while his lecture to Vatinius here suggests that this opponent doesn’t even know what the norms are and fails to live up to them. Vatinius’ own excessive use of the pose of attacker thus exposes him to punishment from the likes of Cicero, whose own mastery and force emerge more strongly through his invective.33 These attacks did have a real effect on the political arena. As the sense of crisis and factionalism in the republic grew in the 50s, Cicero and his contemporaries engaged in bitter invectives on ideological grounds, increasingly willing to make enemies of one another to defend imperilled principles and norms. We will return to this subspecies of invective in Chapter 7. Given these extreme tactics, it is no surprise that populares like Vatinius were increasingly pushed to extremes themselves, including the use of violence and mob tactics, to make themselves heard. It may also explain why Clodius’ network of men like Vatinius joined together as something like an opposition party in the 50s.34 As for Cicero, he achieved his ends, to judge from a letter to Quintus: Sestius was acquitted and Cicero had satisfied Sestius’ greatest wish, which was to see Vatinius humiliated. “Do you have to ask? That shameless, obnoxious man went away totally rattled and debilitated” (Q. fr. 2.4.1). However, the venom of his attack on Vatinius and his expressions of utter contempt for the man only made it more embarrassing when he had to reverse course and act as Vatinius’ advocate and defender a few years later (Fam. 1.9.4, 19).35 The kind of invective Cicero unleashed in his speech In Vatinium only made sense as an 31 32 33 34 35

This may seem like a prerequisite for political activity, but as we will see in Chapter 4, Cicero does express fear in some orations. Vatinius mocked Cicero for his claim that he had been carried back to Rome from exile “on the republic’s shoulders”: “then where did those varicose veins come from?” (Macrob. Sat. 2.3.5). Vatinius also suffered from some kind of goiterlike condition, which Cicero incorporated into his mocking invective; Corbeill 1996: 43–58; Bonsangue 2013. Epstein 1987: 81–8; Vanderbroeck 1987: 46–9. Also see Chapters 6 and 7 on populares. Vatinius and Cicero also corresponded in 45 bce (Fam. 5.9–11), so that Cicero’s invective did not permanently damage his relationship with Vatinius himself, even if others criticized the shift. Vatinius even asks Cicero to defend him again in court, “if you have affection for me, as you used to” (5.9.1), apparently referring to their relationship after 54, and asks him to put in a good word for him with Caesar (5.10a.3, 10b.1), suggesting that Cicero is now more in Caesar’s inner circle than Vatinius is. It’s unclear whether the several jokes Cicero is said to have made about wishing for Vatinius’ death come before or after their reconciliation; Quint. Inst. 6.3.68, 84.

Repressing Clodius

35

expression of lifelong enmity and hatred, and by failing to maintain that position, Cicero gave the lie to his own pose as the scourge of the wicked; it is no wonder that he chose not to publish that later speech.

Repressing Clodius Cicero’s enmity with Clodius brought out an even greater range of rhetorical strategies for self-fashioning as an attacker. In the years after his recall from exile, Cicero never missed an opportunity to score political points against his enemy and repair his own damaged reputation. Leach writes about “a serious contest of masculinity” between Cicero and Clodius. As she writes, “interacting with his status as a novus homo, exile revealed the vulnerability of [Cicero’s] postconsular identity, and his distance from the boni whom he had craved to see as counterparts of himself.”36 Cicero’s powerful invectives against Clodius, and his attempt to deflect blame from the boni toward Clodius, offer some compensation for that vulnerability. The affect of the attacker is aggressive and intimidating, hypermasculine and forceful, the result of a long-escalating tension between these two individuals. In May’s judgment the result is “turgidity and a kind of grating shrillness” (89) in the speeches of the 50s.37 Still, Cicero uses shows of selfrestraint and deliberation as well as humor to balance out his rhetorical aggression, a strategy that unfolds clearly in the exordium of his speech De Haruspicum Responsis. Cicero capitalized on recent successes against Clodius – in his restoration, in the case De Domo Sua, and then in an altercation in the senate – to try to win another political battle with his enemy. In 56 bce 38 the haruspices apparently reported that political discord and strife between Rome’s leading citizens were polluting the city. Clodius and Cicero each blamed the other for this strife and accused each other of blasphemy: Clodius’ trespassing on the Bona Dea rites was alleged to have angered the gods, as was Cicero’s reclaiming of his property on the Palatine, which Clodius had dedicated to the goddess Libertas. In his oration De Haruspicum Responsis, Cicero begins by celebrating a triumph in this war of words between himself and Clodius,39 embracing a role as the

36 37 38 39

Leach 2001: 357. May 1988: 89, although May only discusses the speeches for Sestius, Plancius, and Caelius. On the complications of dating the speech, see Gelzer 1937; Meyer 2003. MacKendrick notes the unusual frequency of the word vituperatio in this speech, as Cicero criticizes the Clodians’ frequent recourse to it; MacKendrick 1995: 193.

36

The Orator as Attacker

scourge of the wicked in Roman politics, and celebrating his overpowering of Clodius’ ability to speak effectively:40 Hesterno die, patres conscripti, cum me et vestra dignitas et frequentia equitum Romanorum praesentium, quibus senatus dabatur, magno opere commosset, putavi mihi reprimendam esse P. Clodi impudicam impudentiam . . . Itaque hominem furentem exsultantemque continui simul ac periculum iudici intendi: duobus inceptis verbis omnem impetum gladiatoris ferociamque compressi. . . . Sed vaecors repente sine suo vultu, sine colore, sine voce constitit. Yesterday, senators, because your dignity and the crowd of Roman equestrians in attendance who had been given the floor moved me so powerfully, I thought that I ought to repress the obscene impropriety of Publius Clodius . . . Therefore, I contained the raving, swaggering man, as soon as I raised the threat of a trial: with those two words, I quashed all the gladiator’s momentum and ferocity. . . . The insane man suddenly stopped, without control of his face, his color, his voice. (Har. resp. 1–2)

With only two words issued from Cicero’s mouth, Clodius apparently lost control of his words and his facial expressions, silenced by fear of prosecution because, we are made to assume, he is conscious of his guilt. Cicero plays up the element of Clodius’ apparent insanity in order to portray Clodius’ speech (or lack thereof) as irrational and almost inhuman, in preparation for his argument later in this oration that Clodius has created cosmic disturbance and provoked divine retribution with his impious madness.41 Cicero’s authority and power seem to be at their peak here, not because Cicero attacked Clodius with words, but because he has (or claims to have) justice on his side, which strips Clodius of his ability to resist. Clodius’ ejection from the Curia also recalls the flight of Verres or of Catiline, two other victims of Cicero’s prosecutorial vigor. He also claims that he is defending the authority of the senate and of the equestrian order against Clodius’ transgressive “impropriety.” He attributes his decision to speak against Clodius to being moved, not by Clodius himself, but by a threat to the institutional dignity of the senate, framing himself as the vindicator of decorum and justice. However, in the following sentence, Cicero backs away immediately from this aggressive posture to demonstrate self-control and a sense of moderation. He implies that he is not so angry that he has lost selfawareness or consciousness of what others must be thinking – that he is 40 41

Corbeill attempts a reconstruction of Clodius’contio based on Cicero’s references to it; Corbeill 2018. Cf. Trejo 2017.

Repressing Clodius

37

only affecting piety and looking for an opportunity to attack Clodius because he hates him. To do this, he defers to the authority of P. Servilius, the colleague of Clodius’ father in the consulship of 79 BC, who had also reprimanded Clodius. He implies that Servilius’ critique of Clodius is more objective and therefore more meaningful than his own: “even if Servilius’ power and unique and practically divine gravity were attainable for me, I still have no doubt that the shots an enemy took would seem lighter and blunter than the ones his father’s colleague fired” (Har. Resp. 2). Cicero is Clodius’ inimicus, so that Cicero is expected to attack anything Clodius says,42 while Servilius’ critique is a specific reaction to Clodius’ behavior and therefore carries greater weight.43 Servilius is also a sort of father figure, as Clodius’ father’s colleague, not moved by anger but by ethical convictions and attachment to traditional civic values, and so brings a note of paternalistic gravitas to his rebuke. Cicero is careful to mitigate and restrain his aggression as Clodius’ enemy by demonstrating his awareness of what his audience must be thinking, and the reservations they might have about sympathizing with Cicero in this mood. He thus offers a self-defense for silencing Clodius, anticipating shock and horror at his own act of aggression: “I want to explain my reasoning for what I did yesterday to those who think that I, carried away by resentment and wrath, went a little further than a wise man’s premeditated reason demanded” (3).44 Cicero also mentions the presiding consul, Lentulus Spinther, and Milo as silent supporters of these attacks on Clodius (7). By 42

43

44

Cf. Epstein 1987: 21. Compare Alwine’s description of echthra in classical Athens: “Enmity was a relationship that entailed expectations of the participants, not simply an emotional state. It described not only how a person felt but how a person acted. If an Athenian referred to another person as an ‘enemy,’ he meant not only that he disliked him but that they both disliked each other and that at least one of them had taken steps to harm the other. A hostile act was required for an enmity to be consummated. Once this happened, it was assumed that enemies would be vigilant for opportunities to do injury to their rivals and would attempt to harm each other whenever possible” (Alwine 2015: 26–7). On inimicitia see Hellegouarc’h 1963: 186–201; Epstein 1987; Brunt 1988: 370. Alwine breaks enmity (echthra) into three components in Athenian thought, which offers a useful analogue here: “Enmity implies a matrix of three closely related concepts: emotion, action, and relationship. When echthra or similar words appear in our sources, it suggests all three: two people dislike each other (emotion), are actively seeking to harm each other (action), and believe that their emotions and actions verify their status as ‘enemies’ (relationship).” Alwine 2015: 28. On a similar apology at Har. resp. 17, Lenaghan notes: “this is the consistent and honorable excuse which Cicero gives for his conceit: he was stung to action on each occasion by irresponsible charges and a grudging lack of appreciation. The sincerity of the reply is not necessarily diminished by its frequency, or by the fact that it is something of a rhetorical stand-by” (Lenaghan 1970: 103). On expressions of anger in Roman society and politics, see Knight 2015. On the related concept of invidia and justified anger, Kaster 2005: 84–103. Cicero gives his own discussion of the vocabulary of anger at Tusc. Disp. 4.21.

38

The Orator as Attacker

citing these men as his allies, Cicero shows that his opinion of Clodius is not limited to him, but represents the consensus of the senate’s leading men, which dignifies Cicero’s aggression.45 Cicero himself leads the charge, as the voice of this anti-Clodian bloc, but carries out his invective with the sarcasm and flowing outrage expected of an inimicus, less grave but perhaps more satisfying. His mentioning of inimicitia may also work to remind his audience of exactly what Clodius had done to earn that hostility in the first place. As an additional mitigating technique, Cicero also introduces a note of variety and levity into the intensity of his invectives, a moment of comic relief for his audience in his performance of the role of the scourge: Atque paulo ante, patres conscripti, contionem habuit quae est ad me tota delata; cuius contionis primum universum argumentum sententiamque audite; cum riseritis impudentiam hominis, tum a me de tota contione audietis. De religionibus sacris et caerimoniis est contionatus, patres conscripti, Clodius: Publius, inquam, Clodius sacra et religiones neglegi violari pollui questus est! Non mirum si hoc vobis ridiculum videtur: etiam sua contio risit hominem, quo modo ipse gloriari solet, ducentis confixum senati consultis, quae sunt omnia contra illum pro religionibus facta, hominemque eum qui pulvinaribus Bonae deae stuprum intulerit, eaque sacra quae viri oculis ne imprudentis quidem aspici fas est non solum aspectu virili sed flagitio stuproque violarit, in contione de religionibus neglectis conqueri. Itaque nunc proxima contio eius exspectatur de pudicitia. And a little earlier, senators, he held a contio that was all about me. First, listen to the whole argument and opinion of that contio: when you’ve laughed at the man’s impudence, you’ll hear about the whole contio from me. He gave a speech about sacred rites and ceremonies, senators – Clodius! Publius Clodius, I repeat, complained that rites and rituals had been neglected, violated, polluted! It’s not surprising if this seems ridiculous to you – even his own contional audience laughed at the man, who was, as he often boasts himself, the target of two hundred senatorial decrees, all made against him on religious grounds. The same man who brought perversion into the Bona Dea’s shrine and desecrated the very rites that must not be seen by the eyes of a man, even a foolish one, not only with the sight of a man but with dishonor and perversion – that man complained in a contio about religious observances being neglected. So now we’re waiting for his next contio, about chastity. (Har. resp. 8)

Cicero’s description of farcical contiones on religion and chastity reduce Clodius’ own religious arguments to flagrant hypocrisy.46 The less 45

Steel 2005: 65–7.

46

On this passage see Hickson-Hahn 1998: 24; Corbeill 2018: 183–4.

Repressing Clodius

39

authority Clodius has on questions of religion, the more likely Cicero is to be successful in winning this particular argument. Clodius, meanwhile, had lambasted Cicero himself as the guilty blasphemer, so that Cicero’s marshalling of purifying religious authority also helps to contradict and deflect Clodius’ allegations. In De Haruspicum Responsis, this all-out attack on Clodius’ claims to religious authority lays the groundwork for the rest of Cicero’s speech, in which he advances his own interpretation of religious omens to vindicate his own political views, and portrays Clodius as the perpetrator of blasphemy and impiety that threaten the whole state.47 Cicero claims authority of a religious sort as he takes it upon himself to punish Clodius’ sins, exorcising the threat to the state again as he had on the previous day, as he describes in the exordium. The cutting sarcasm Cicero displays here is a close cousin of pure invective, but a step removed: the orator is not seeing red or overwhelmed by emotion, but is relaxed, confident, and sharp-witted enough to shape his criticism into a facetious joke. In De Domo Sua, too, after Clodius had argued that Cicero’s house ought to remain a consecrated shrine of Libertas on religious grounds, Cicero had also ridiculed the notion that Clodius had become the voice of piety: “‘the dedication has great religious import,’ he says. Doesn’t it seem to you all like Numa Pompilius himself is speaking?!” (127), referring to the famously pious second king of Rome. Clodius’ violation of the rites of the Bona Dea, Cicero argues, invalidates any contribution he might make on the subject of piety,48 but Cicero chooses to make that point particularly with biting sarcasm.49 Cicero used the same strategy twice in less than a year, suggesting that it was effective the first time. In fact, Cicero’s earlier joke in De Domo Sua (and perhaps on other occasions) may have been at least partially responsible for the laughter of Clodius’ audience at his contio on the haruspices: they have already been led to see any religious argument from Clodius as ridiculous. Cicero thus demonstrates his control – over Clodius, over himself, and over the political climate – in several ways: he silences Clodius in the first instance, and he undermines Clodius’ other performances with an urbane joke, demonstrating his own mental acuity and composure. Cicero’s invectives against Clodius seem to be extravagant, caustic, wideranging attacks on every aspect of his opponent’s history and behavior, but their breadth should not be mistaken for complete freedom on Cicero’s part. 47 49

Corbeill 2010; Beard 2012. 48 Cf. Trejo 2017. On religion as a theme of Cicero’s invectives, see Bergemann 1992; Sauer 2013.

40

The Orator as Attacker

Despite the apparent freedom with which Cicero attacks his enemies, such attacks are in fact subject to strict social rules, and must be conducted with decorum.50 Cicero is careful to mark explicit boundaries to his attacks, in order to preserve his own moral authority, and to use humor and other techniques to distance his attacks from unthinking rage or brute force. He used many of these strategies in his attacks on Piso, the consul of 58 bce who (according to Cicero) had abetted Clodius in his subversion of republican institutions. In both his attacks on Piso and on Clodius here, Cicero was using his persona as an attacker to compensate for political weakness and to assert his autonomy: his attack on Clodius in De Haruspicum Responsis comes in the context of his rehabilitation of his political status after exile, and his attacks on Piso have been read as attempts to prove that he was not afraid of Caesar.51

Ridiculing Piso Like Clodius, Piso had long been a target for attacks by Cicero because he had held office (the consulship) when Cicero was exiled, in 58 bce. Now that Piso was absent from the city and struggling to keep control of his province, Cicero made his move for retribution. In De Provinciis Consularibus in 56 bce, Cicero expressed special delight in the debate over assigning consular provinces, because he saw an opportunity to humiliate his enemy Piso by taking away his command of Macedonia. He acknowledges in that speech that his hostility to Piso is extreme and rather irrational, but he evidently expects his fellow senators to allow him to hold this grudge (Prov. Cons. 1). Even better, other senators – including P. Servilius, once again – share and validate his low opinion of Piso, “so that my resentment does not conflict with the common good” (ibid.). Nevertheless, he promises, “I will not obey my hatred I will not be a slave to anger. Whatever mindset each one of you ought to have toward those men, I will have as well; the feeling that is particular and personal to my hatred even though you thought it was always shared with you as well, I will remove from my speech, and reserve for the time of my revenge” (2). He wants the senate to know that he still feels grief and rage over his exile and that he holds Piso responsible for it, but he 50 51

Corbeill 1996: 5–6; cf. Powell 2007: 9–16. Against that perception, it is worth noting that Clodius and Vatinius had attacked Cicero in a contio and in a prosecution respectively, while Caesar had not, and so had not provoked Cicero in the same way.

Ridiculing Piso

41

also wants them to know that he is capable of setting his passions aside in a political debate. Enmity and vengeance are acceptable motives in Roman politics, so long as they are controlled. In De Provinciis Consularibus, however, Cicero’s attacks on Piso soon give way to a very different line of argument – praise and support of Piso’s son-in-law Caesar – as he explains why Piso’s command should be terminated and Caesar’s command extended, having already lasted for five years. Caesar’s power was seen as a threat to the senate’s authority, and so that second line of argument is a greater political risk for Cicero in a senatorial oration (more on this in Chapter 5). We will return to his arguments in Chapter 2 on friendship, but it is worth noting here of Prov. Cons. that Cicero starts his speech from a position of attack (i.e., a position of strength) to build up his authority and power before taking on a potentially weak and politically compromised argument in support of Caesar, his former enemy.52 All of his rhetorical force, his show of aggressive strength and rhetorical virtuosity, his role as the master and defender of the normative, shores up his authority in preparation for that less palatable argument later. We could compare this to his strategy in Pro Caelio, in which his persona as attacker, including condescending mockery of the prosecutor and his moralizing invective against Clodia – partially channeled through the censorious old Appius Claudius – acts as a sort of counterweight within the speech to his less moral, pragmatic argument that the jury should indulge Caelius’ youthful foibles. In other circumstances (in the Philippics, as I discuss later, for example), his persona as attacker likely compensated for weakness in his position external to the speech, but it is more difficult to prove this without more historical evidence. Some scholars have also read Cicero’s invective In Pisonem in the following year as an attack on a proxy for Caesar, to help Cicero to portray himself as a dangerous and powerful enemy. Or, as MacKendrick puts it (less charitably), “an attack on [Piso] would relieve Cicero’s inferiority complex and make him feel dangerous”53 – or rather appear dangerous. It is worth noting that Vatinius had well-known political associations with 52

53

In Steel’s view, “Cicero’s presentation of the case in effect makes Caesar’s success depend on the public humiliation of his father-in-law” (2001: 185); see also Steel 2001: 181–5; Craig 2017: 103–4. Wiseman goes so far as to propose that Cicero was allowed to attack Piso as a form of repayment for his cooperation with the “first triumvirate”; Wiseman 1966: 115. MacKendrick 1995: 292; cf. Nisbet 1961: xvi. MacKendrick also notes the near-constant flow of metaphorical language in Pis. used not only in the service of the invective against Piso and Gabinius but to elevate Cicero’s turn toward Caesar; 299–300.

42

The Orator as Attacker

Caesar as well.54 Cicero, then, may have delivered his invective against Vatinius – or published it – in order to prove that he was not afraid to attack the powerful man’s friends, lending a hint of danger and subversiveness to that invective as well.55 Even if Caesar himself was too powerful to attack, not least because he had advocates like Vatinius to defend him (a topic we will return to in Chapter 8), Cicero could have made some headway against him by using his attack to eliminate one of those advocates and to designate Vatinius as unworthy of cautious handling and respect, despite his connection to Caesar. On this reading, his enmity toward Piso is only the false pretext for his invective In Pisonem. However, while it is true that invective may be deployed to counterbalance the appearance of sycophancy, it is worth noting that Cicero also tries to deny that Caesar actually supports Piso or Vatinius, so that he does not frame his invectives as attacks on Caesar by any stretch. In the speech In Pisonem, Cicero tries to create the impression that if Caesar were there in the senate, he would be attacking Piso as well, or at least silently agreeing with Cicero, so that he shies away from framing the speech as directly antiCaesarian. He imagines a conversation in which Piso attempts to use crude philosophical reasoning to convince his son-in-law Caesar to give up on the whole project of worldly glory, jeering: “I have no doubt that with this speech you’ll be able to call him back when he’s already climbing into the triumphal chariot” (61). Cicero thus uses humor again to make the invective more varied and more pointed, particularly in a long caricature of Piso’s Epicurean philosophical leanings, in which he contrasts the lifestyle and mores of Piso with those of his son-in-law Caesar to create distance between the two (59–63). Unfortunately, the exordium of In Pisonem is fragmentary, so we cannot see how Cicero established his persona at the outset of this speech. However, if the peroration is any indication, his tone was similar to that of the In Vatinium or De Haruspicum Responsis, including boasting about depriving his target of a voice: Numquam ego sanguinem expetivi tuum, numquam illud extremum quod posset esse improbis et probis commune supplicium legis ac iudici, sed abiectum, contemptum, despectum a ceteris, a te ipso desperatum et 54

55

In his oration In Vatinium, Cicero describes his target as expelling the consul Bibulus from the political arena “in the name of C. Caesar, a very merciful and good man, but with wickedness and shamelessness all your own” (Vat. 22). On the implications for Caesar of In Vatinium, see Pocock 1926: 27; Albini 1959; Mitchell 1969: 308–12; MacKendrick 1995: 242. Cicero’s attack on Chrysogonus in Pro Roscio Amerino had a similar effect, toeing the line of an attack on Sulla but ultimately stopping well short; May 1988: 29.

Ridiculing Piso

43

relictum, circumspectantem omnia, quicquid increpuisset pertimescentem, diffidentem tuis rebus, sine voce, sine libertate, sine auctoritate, sine ulla specie consulari, horrentem, trementem, adulantem omnis videre te volui; vidi. I never hunted for your blood, I never sought that extreme punishment, which can happen to the dishonest or honest alike, from the law and the court. But I did want to see you cast down, scorned, looked down upon by others, hopeless and abandoned by yourself, looking around at everything and fearing that something had crept up on you, insecure in your affairs, without a voice, without freedom, without authority, without any appearance of having been a consul, shivering, trembling, fawning on everyone; now I’ve seen it. (Pis. 99)

Cicero distinguishes between extreme hatred, a hypothetical “thirst for blood” that would drive him to prosecute Piso in order to seek an extreme punishment, and the kind of enmity he is actually demonstrating, a kind of Schadenfreude that revels in his opponent’s disgrace but (allegedly) observes some boundaries. Even while he openly admits that he “feeds on, delights in, enjoys to the fullest” Piso’s (and Gabinius’) disgrace (45) and revels in heightened language here (asyndeton, anaphora, homoeoteleuton), he claims that he only wants to behold Piso’s loss of dignitas, not to go to extremes to cause it. As against Clodius and Vatinius, Cicero is careful to remind his audience in his speech In Pisonem that he is not undertaking an attack on Piso spontaneously, but in reaction to being attacked himself. An orator’s attack is easier to justify when it is undertaken in self-defense, to avenge an injury done in a public forum. Cicero wanted to portray himself not as unleashing vitriol of his own accord, but as retaliating against unjust treatment.56 He frames his attack as a response to Piso’s slanders about Cicero’s consulship in an earlier speech, to which Cicero refers sarcastically as “that glorious contio of yours” (17).57 He then uses his own invective In Pisonem as an opportunity to praise himself as Piso’s opposite, and again uses the techniques we have seen so far to mitigate and offset his aggression. “How wretched I am! Now I’m comparing myself with this pest, this disgrace! But I will say nothing for the sake of making a comparison – still, I will 56

57

Of Gabinius, a victim of similar invectives whom Caesar and Pompey also prevailed on Cicero to defend in 54 bce, Cicero explained: “I should not attack him now that he is cast down. If Pompey’s authority had not already restored my friendship with him, now his own misfortune would do so” (Rab. Post. 19; cf. Quint. Inst. 6.3.28). Cicero’s stated aim is to punish audacia when it is demonstrated, not to preempt it or to pursue attacks mindlessly; cf. De Orat. 2.229, 237–8. On Cicero and Gabinius see Williams 1978. Cf. Asc. Pis. 2C.

44

The Orator as Attacker

address things together that are extremely far apart” (3). Again, as against Vatinius, Cicero performs an internal struggle between his desire not to legitimize his opponent with a response and his desire to defend his values, and in this case his own actions. After comparing – or rather, contrasting – his own consulship with Piso’s, he concludes: “great is the title, great is the spectacle, great is the dignity, great is the majesty of a consul; the narrowness of your heart doesn’t grasp that, your spinelessness doesn’t affirm it, nor does your poverty of spirit; neither the weakness of your mind nor your lack of familiarity with success can support such a great, dignified, severe persona” (Pis. 24, cf. 19). His attack on Piso thus gives him an opportunity to demonstrate his own superior understanding of what makes a consul, and to remind his audience of the value of his own experience (and success) in that office, while he hurls insults at his opponent.58 In reality, Cicero’s consulship had been subjected to at least as much criticism as Piso’s, if not more, which made Cicero all the more eager to depict them as polar opposites here. In the peroration, Cicero addresses the looming question: if Piso’s actions had been criminal, why was Cicero attacking him in the senate rather than prosecuting him?59 First, he says, “I have to think about how much anxiety and how much of a burden I, such a close friend (homo amicissimus), would be imposing on a man who is busy with so much of the republic’s business and such an important war” – that is, he is sparing Piso for the sake of Caesar, so that he actually construes attacking Piso in the senate as a benefit to Caesar (82).60 He also gives the explanation that prosecutions are a young man’s game and not appropriate for a former consul, adding: “I still haven’t lost hope that, although the youth today are lazy and not as engaged in the desire for praise and glory as they should be, there will be some who are not unwilling to strip this cadaver of consular spoils” (82).61 The proper place for invective was in the courts, he implies, but he does not belong in that role. Cicero’s remark that prosecution punishes ”dishonest and honest alike” (see above) also reveals cynicism about the legal process, however. Gildenhard theorizes that “[Cicero] 58

59 60 61

“By so radically configuring Piso as Other, and by casting suspicion on all of those qualities that Cicero presents as absolutely Other than his own qualities, by implication Cicero validates his own self”; Dugan 2001: 62. Christian 2009: 163–4 offers a similar analysis of Phil. 5.4. Cicero takes a similar tactic in Pro Scauro by comparing his own diligence in traveling to Sicily to collect material for his prosecution of Verres to the negligence of Scaurus’ prosecutor; Scaur. 22–9. Nisbet 1961: 175–80. This follows immediately after his panegyric to Caesar, discussed in Chapter 2. Dugan points out that this conceals the possibility that Cicero is avoiding prosecution out of fear of Caesar; Dugan 2001: 65–6; cf. Narducci 1997: 146–7; Dugan 2005: 58–66.

Ridiculing Piso

45

witnessed the failure of the Roman legal system in the case of Clodius and presented himself as a victim of its perversion. The In Pisonem, apart from being a stirring piece of invective, is also a desperate attempt to reassert justice in the universe.”62 By taking on the role of attacker through this senatorial invective, Cicero can take on a role as enforcer of values without relying on an unpredictable legal system. To successfully inhabit the persona of the attacker, Cicero needs his audience to be on his side, and so taking on this persona is a calculated risk. If Piso were acquitted and Cicero lost a legal case against him, Cicero’s invectives might then seem to have been impotent or even illegitimate, and he would seem no better than the slandering, dishonest rabula figure he often criticizes. In Pisonem, then, gives Cicero the chance to effect (or add to) his opponent’s humiliation and to flex his vituperative muscles, without relying on a jury or a vote for validation. Batstone characterizes the epideictic quality of the First Catilinarian as an attempt to turn his audience from deliberating senators into spectators evaluating Catiline’s morality, and In Pisonem takes the same approach.63 Cicero was far from the only orator to take advantage of such an opportunity in the senate. It was not uncommon for judicial attacks to spill over into contiones and senate meetings leading up to a trial, especially in the mid-50s, when show trials became a regular means of political action, and contiones leading up to the trial were used to prime the jury to vote a certain way.64 At a contio in February of 56, for example, Cicero describes how a tribune, C. Cato, “attacked Pompey energetically and prosecuted him with a continuous oration, as if he were on trial (tamquam reum)” (Q. fr. 2.3.3). This assault on Pompey came as a part of a campaign to prevent Pompey from taking up an extraordinary command to restore Ptolemy Auletes in Alexandria and not before a trial, although several clients and friends of Pompey faced trial in this year as well. Cicero’s attack may be a part of this trend of prosecutorial politics outside the courts, an escalation of the usual tensions of republican politics.65 He, too, had been known to

62 63

64 65

Gildenhard 2007b: 166. See Balbo 2009 on the breakdown of the courts at the time of the civil war. Batstone 1994. See especially p. 218: “What Cicero needed was a performance that dramatized the crisis while assuring the Senate that he had everything under control. He needed to construct an image of his passion and his concern, of his selflessness and his providence.” Cf. Mouritsen 2017: 85–90. See also pamphets and undelivered speeches like Brutus’ Pro Milone (Asc. Mil. 36) and De Dictatura Pompei (Quint. Inst. 9.3.95), or perhaps his Pro Deiotaro (Cic. Brut. 21); or the eulogies of Cato circulated by Cicero and Brutus, with “Anticatones” by Hirtius and Caesar (Att. 12.4.2, 12.21.1, 12.40, 12.41, 12.44.1, 12.45.2).

46

The Orator as Attacker

attack Clodius not only in the courts but in the senate “as if he were on trial” (Q. fr. 2.1.3). In the year after his attack on Piso, Cicero wrote to his brother on campaign in Britain: “the other thing [you wrote to me about] was about the speech of Calventius Marius [i.e., Piso]66 – I am surprised at what you write, that you would be pleased if I wrote a response, especially because no one is going to read his speech if I don’t respond, while all the schoolboys are learning my speech against him like a textbook” (Q. fr. 3.1.11). This shows not only that Cicero’s attack had been effective (and effective enough to be used as a technical exemplar), but that there were limits on Cicero’s appetite for his persona as attacker, and he was not looking for more opportunities to dress down Piso after a successful confrontation. Cicero did not want to add further to his record of attacks on Piso, nor did he want to be perceived as dignifying Piso’s attacks on him with a response, more than was necessary. His mode as attacker thus seems to have been a last resort, and he did not publish more invectives in the 50s. A decade later, however, in the Philippics, Cicero revived his invective mode against another would-be proxy of Caesar.

Resisting Antony In May’s estimation of the Philippics, which he calls Cicero’s “finest hour,” “the difference between the treatment of ethos in the Philippics and in other Ciceronian speeches is one of scale, one of intensity, one of sincerity . . . The ethos of Cicero as patriot is not a new portrait, but rather one retouched with new intensity, sincerity, and purpose.”67 This perception of sincerity and patriotism is a testament to the success of Cicero’s persona as attacker, especially in the Philippics. Antony had also taken on the persona of an attacker in two speeches vilifying Cicero in the senate (in Cicero’s absence) and threatening him with physical violence (Phil. 1.11–12),68 and Cicero chose to fight fire with fire. He had tried initially to preserve some semblance of a friendly relationship with Antony in 44, including in the conciliatory First Philippic (more on this in chapter 2), but ultimately decided to treat Antony as the latest in his line of enemies. In the other Philippics,69 Cicero seems to inhabit the persona of the attacker with greater license than ever before, and with less concern over mitigating his 66 68 69

For this identification see fr. 11a = Asc. Pis. 5.3; Shackleton Bailey 1980: 208. 67 May 1988: 161. On Antony as an orator, see Kennedy 1968b; Mahy 2013; Van der Blom 2016: 248–79. Besides the Ninth, which is a eulogy for Sulpicius.

Resisting Antony

47

aggression. Part of what gives the Philippics their force (and makes them less interesting rhetorically) is the lack of Cicero’s usual apologetic breaks from invective, and the relatively limited use of humor; in these short, comparatively monotonous speeches, Cicero’s aggression is more straightforward. The Second Philippic features Cicero at his most scathing, and while it was probably never delivered, it was written for political effect, to reassert Cicero’s authority in response to Antony’s attacks (Phil. 2.1–7).70 “Are you waiting for us to stick you with goads now? This oration should sting you, if you have any sensation anywhere, and should make you bleed” (2.86). Cicero appears here as a sort of political gadfly, the scourge of the wicked, and especially of wicked or inept orators. In taking on this role himself, he thus marks Antony out for treatment as a target who is unworthy of the kind of respect or caution Cicero might have shown to someone he considered his equal. In the Fourth Philippic he describes Antony to a contio as a beast caught in a trap, irrational and mindless, without any authority or even political will (4.11–12). With the severity of these attacks, Cicero passes the point of no return and rhetorically stakes everything – including his own political status and the life of the state as he defends it – on Antony’s defeat. This explicitly duplicates the situation of the Catilinarians, as we will see in Chapter 3, but of course the outcome was very different. Adopting a role as the policer of norms again, Cicero maintains that outrage is the only justifiable response to Antony for his colleagues in the senate: in the eighth Philippic, he notes that two ambassadors, Piso (the same Piso he had attacked in 55 bce, although the two had reconciled since, to some degree) and Philippus, have returned from Antony “not excessively angry, by means of some philosophy,” which he says that he could not have done himself (8.28). Piso, as an Epicurean, 70

It is not clear when the Second Philippic was published, or rather who read it, during Cicero’s lifetime. In Att. 15.13.1, he makes a note that he is sending a text that must be the Second Philippic to Atticus, for him to “guard” (custodiendae) and to share (proferendae) according to his own judgment. This suggests to me that Cicero wanted Atticus to share it (i.e., publish) selectively and cautiously, among like-minded supporters. Cicero makes it clear that he expects Atticus (ever cautious) to advise against publishing it (edendae) at the present, and to recommend the course of action Cicero himself prefers, which is silence (ἀναντιφωνησία), which may or may not preclude the publication of a written text (15.13.2). In the following letter, Cicero writes that it should not be published until the republic has “been recovered” (quae non sit foras proditura nisi re publica recuperata, 15.13a.2). Cicero asked Atticus to share it with at least one friend soon after he received it (16.11.1). We do not know the outcome of this conversation, but Mitchell (1991: 302), and Fuhrmann (1992: 181) assume the text was not published until after Cicero’s death. Frisch (1976: 143), Wooten (1983: 155), and Hall (2002: 275 n. 6) suggest that it would have been safe for Cicero to circulate the text in December, after Antony’s departure for Gaul. Cerutti (1994) argues not only that Cicero published the text immediately as usual, but that he actually delivered it as well.

48

The Orator as Attacker

would have viewed dolor and negative emotion as the philosophical summum malum, the greatest impediment to virtue (Fin. 1.30–2, Tusc. 2.14–16, Off. 1.5, 3.117), but Cicero frames them here as a failure to respond adequately to Antony’s crimes. Especially in the Second Philippic, Cicero takes aim particularly at his opponent’s abilities as an orator, mocking him mercilessly. He is particularly gleeful in taking every opportunity to joke derisively about Antony vomiting in the porticus Minucia, claiming that Antony also “vomits” out his orations (2.84). He mocks Antony for practicing declamation in an effort to improve his eloquence, and for the failure of his rhetoric teacher: “you gave your rhetor two iugera; what would you have given him if he’d been able to make you articulate?” (2.101, cf. 2.8, 2.84). He accuses Antony of “not only inhumanity but also insanity” and claims that his speech was not only inappropriate “for an orator, but for a human” (2.9). But again, he justifies his own aggression as a defensive reaction to a speech of Antony’s attacking Cicero, and criticizing his poetry: “and then there’s one place where you tried to be witty. How inappropriate for you, good gods! That’s not your fault, for you could have gotten some salt from your girlfriend the mime actress. . . . I won’t give you more answers about poetry, I’ll just say this briefly: you don’t know those verses or any other letters at all” (Phil. 2.19–20, cf. 13.45).71 Cicero gives the impression that Antony had tried and failed to beat Cicero at his own game of mockery, so that Antony’s attempt at an attack ends up only confirming Cicero’s intellectual supremacy.72 Cicero still addresses his fictive audience to showcase his self-restraint in the Second Philippic, but only superficially, even ironically: “I beg you all the same: if you have become familiar with my moderation and modesty, in oratory as well as my whole life in general, do not think today that I, when I respond to him after he has provoked me, have forgotten my character” (2.10).73 Later, he insists that he is observing some moderation even in this invective, although he sideswipes Antony while he defends himself: “I will not pour out everything, so that, if I have to face him often (as I will), I will always arrive fresh: the multitude of the man’s crimes and sins will endow me with that ability” (2.43). The wit of transforming an apology into a joke at his target’s expense is evident again as he claims: “now I will leave out his sexual escapades and debauchery; there are some things that cannot be said virtuously – but you’ll be that much freer 71 72 73

Piso had also mocked Cicero’s poetry, and Cicero responded similarly at Pis. 73. “Something not completely appreciated is that [the Philippics] are designed simultaneously to depict Cicero as Antony’s polar opposite.” Stevenson 2009: 110; cf. Batstone 1994. On this type of apology, see Allen 1954: 128–30.

Resisting Antony

49

because you’ve admitted things about yourself that you would not be able to hear from a modest enemy” (2.47, cf. 112). These are hardly apologies, and do little to mitigate Cicero’s aggression. Their inclusion seems to be almost obligatory, a reflection of the orator’s habit of constantly reaffirming his own êthos in the course of an invective to make sure that his speech does not reflect badly on himself. Perhaps Cicero is even toying with his readers’ expectations of such apologies by twisting them into attacks. After the Second Philippic, while Cicero’s wit is generally less prominent,74 he also omits even these claims of self-control and checks to his invective. This is surely not because he hates Antony more than his earlier targets, or merely because he wants Antony to be declared a hostis, because it does not follow that the most aggressive stance will be the most effective or persuasive.75 Perhaps Cicero did not feel the need to remind his audience of the congenial aspects of his character, because the Philippics are interspersed with such exuberant praise for Octavian, Decimus Brutus, the legions who had abandoned Antony, and other allies. Praise may counteract blame, in other words, in that positivity balances out negativity and gratitude balances out anger in terms of self-fashioning. His age may also allow him to take on a certain irascible or gruff demeanor more comfortably, like the senex of comic poetry.76 However, these omissions may also reflect the weakness of Cicero’s political position. Because he finds himself isolated and almost alone in his extreme position against Antony, he would only be further weakening his position if he acknowledged the criticisms of others. He does not directly attack those who disagree with him in the Philippics, but rather treats them as friends with whom he must express his disagreement more cautiously, as I discuss in Chapter 2. The overall impression given by the Philippics is that Cicero embraces the role of the scourge wholeheartedly, without much apology. He exerts less effort in performing moderation or self-control, allowing his aggression dangerously free rein. Antony, meanwhile, used letters and messages delivered by his supporters in the senate (see especially Phil. 13) to contest Cicero’s political narrative that Antony had been alienated from the senate and driven out of the city in disgrace, running away in terror as Clodius or Vatinius had. Most of the senators seem to have been hesitant to commit themselves either way, insufficiently inspired by Cicero’s stance as fearless attacker and 74 75 76

Although there are certainly examples of jokes at Antony’s expense; see especially Phil. 3.21, 13.43. Cf. Kurczyk 2006: 286–93. See Keane’s discussion of the persona of the senex in Juvenal, especially as it harmonizes with Cicero’s own depiction of Cato in De Senectute; Keane 2015: 178–86.

50

The Orator as Attacker

defender of the republic (more on this in Chapter 5). Cicero’s hard line later provided Antony with a ready pretext for his proscription, and led even Livy, an admirer of Cicero, to conclude that Cicero would have done the same to Antony if given the chance (Sen. Rhet. Suas. 6.22).

Conclusion One often gets the sense from Cicero’s invectives that he is enjoying himself, flexing his muscles as a rhetorician, especially when his wrath turns into cutting mockery and brilliant caricature. These speeches must have been entertaining to watch (or to read, in the case of the Second Philippic), and Cicero counted on the irresistible appeal of drama and aggression in using invective to gain momentum, even (or especially) in speeches in which invective was not the sole or ultimate goal. All-out verbal assaults had the potential to rattle or even completely paralyze his opponents, if they were not secure in their own authority. Vituperation of this sort marked Cicero out as an effective enforcer of sociopolitical norms. If his targets had powerful friends, Cicero’s role as enforcer seemed all the more dangerous and heroic. When his attacks take a more humorous turn, they are more entertaining but also function as demonstrations of Cicero’s ability to keep his head even under fire, communicating confidence and poise. His characteristic use of satire, sarcasm, and mockery conveys the sense that he is fully in control of his material and of his own tongue: he can let loose without compromising his own dignity. At their most extreme, these sarcastic attacks deny that their target is capable of oratory, or even worthy of any response at all, even as Cicero goes on to give a response. This highlights Cicero’s own mastery all the more and conveys his confidence, while making it more difficult for his audience – and for us – to take his targets seriously as politicians, once he has established a narrative of an easy romp to victory over his tongue-tied opponents. When it came to choosing targets, it was never a question of who most deserved this treatment, but of when Cicero thought he could seize the advantage by putting on a show of force to win a political battle. He could attack old enemies like Vatinius, Clodius, or Piso, or use invective in the senate when prosecution was not an option, as against Piso. He attacked Clodius, Vatinius, Piso, and Antony, who were all allies of and perhaps even proxies for Caesar himself, but he did not attack Caesar, which would be too great a political risk. Attacking these proxies allowed some display of authority as the scourge of the wicked in Roman politics, but was always circumspect. In the case of the Philippics, he may not have chosen wisely in

Conclusion

51

treating Antony like a Clodius or a Piso rather than a Pompey or a Caesar; he reserved greater respect and expressions of friendship and admiration for those “greater” men, as we will see in other chapters, and no doubt Antony thought he merited the same treatment. Then again, Cicero’s belittling treatment might well have succeeded in depriving Antony of power, had military affairs not brought events to a different conclusion. The posture of the attacker is always a choice, and Cicero often chose to pursue other options rather than invective. If an invective failed to move an audience, the tour-de-force performance would have been transformed into a display of impotence and foolishness, and his aggression would have become ridiculous or grotesque. Typically, Cicero used invective in an attempt to destroy the credibility of an opponent who had already attacked him first. More important for our study of his persona as an attacker, however, are the limits he set on this persona. Even in his most vicious published attacks on Clodius, Vatinius, and Piso, Cicero interspersed his invectives with claims of restraint and contempt in order to demonstrate his own disciplined virtue. Typically, he breaks from his invectives to promise not to go any further, or to say all that is on his mind, in order to demonstrate to his audience that he is exerting control and reason. Through invective, Cicero portrayed himself in the role of the community’s protector, expelling and erasing the wicked, with moralistic and sometimes religious or almost exorcistic authority. These attacks on individuals formed the necessary precursor to his attacks on their (mis)characterizations of himself, and on their political views and methods as populares, a topic to which we will return in Chapters 5–8. The continuing popularity of speeches like Cicero’s Catilinarians and Second Philippic testify to how memorable and compelling Cicero’s mode as attacker was, even after his lifetime. The freedom to attack leading men is offered by Maternus in Tacitus’ Dialogus as one of the major distinctions between Republican and Imperial oratory, and as the heart of Republican libertas: Iam vero contiones assiduae et datum ius potentissimum quemque vexandi atque ipsa inimicitiarum gloria, cum se plurimi disertorum ne a Publio quidem Scipione aut Sulla aut Cn. Pompeio abstinerent, et ad incessendos principes viros, ut est natura invidiae, populi quoque †et histriones auribus uterentur, quantum ardorem ingeniis, quas oratoribus faces admovebant. [During the Republican period], incessant contiones and the right to attack any powerful man and the very glory of political feuds (the majority of good

52

The Orator as Attacker speakers did not even hold back from P. Scipio or L. Sulla or Cn. Pompey, and even stage actors filled people’s ears with attacks on leading men, as is the nature of resentment) what passion these brought to men of genius, what fire to orators! (Tac. Dial. 40.1)

By contrast, he says, Imperial orators found themselves restricted to uninspiring cases, smaller physical spaces, and deprived of the incendiary force of attacks on great men.77 Pushing boundaries had a certain cultural cachet. Maternus is right that Republican orators claimed the right of ad hominem invective against the most powerful men of their age, although they did not do so without ethical and social boundaries. 77

I mention this as a plausible characterization of the late republic, but whether Tacitus or Maternus sincerely believes that it is the case is a more complicated question; cf. van den Berg 2014: 52–97.

chapter 2

The Orator as Friend

Introduction Friendship is a key rhetorical trope in Cicero’s political oratory, and he invoked gratitude to his friends as one of his strongest motivations. Despite the effectiveness of many of his invectives, he often noted in his speeches that attack was not his usual modus operandi. Rather, he portrayed himself as a naturally congenial person, quick to offer friendship and quick to forgive possible breaches of it, more inclined to smooth over tension through conciliation, compromise, and humor.1 This was a key part of his character, one that he often cited as determining his affective responses, trumping possible reactions of anger or resentment. After his time in exile, he emphasized how humbled he was by his recall, and to express his appreciation he showered his friends with public praise in his post reditum speeches. However, Cicero’s “friendships” with Pompey and Caesar increasingly demanded an uncomfortable level of praise, from De Provinciis Consularibus and Pro Balbo in 56 bce to Pro Marcello in 46. Readers have looked down on his panegyrics for these two dynasts as obviously insincere and undignified, but in this chapter I consider his handling of Pompey and Caesar as a variation on traditional norms in republican rhetoric, which we can see at work in the post reditum speeches and Pro Sestio. In addition, I show that Cicero also tried to use praise and claims of friendship to exert pressure on the objects of his panegyric, in the role of an older advisor or mentor, in Pro Rabirio Postumo, the Caesarian orations, and the Philippics. Friendship, for Cicero, implied two individuals bound together (at minimum) by a mutual sense of admiration and gratitude, and a strong desire to help each other or repay each other’s favors.2 Ideally, friends could 1

2

Cf. Dobesch 1985: 153–6; Craig 2014. Cicero characterizes himself in this way in Pro Murena 6, in response to criticism of his departure from the severity he showed in dealing with the Catilinarian conspirators. See also Off. 1.98–9 praising this kind of forbearance. This is a practical definition, as opposed to the idealized version he offers through Laelius at Amic. 20–3. Baraz discusses how Cicero framed his written works as beneficia in this sort of reciprocal relationship; 2012: 152–73. See also Sansen 1975; Fiore 1997.

53

54

The Orator as Friend

look past each other’s vices or mistakes, and one could hardly criticize a faithful friend for being a bit too soft or affectionate without seeming callous and censorious oneself. In the event of conflict, friends aimed to smooth things over, to reach a mutually satisfactory compromise, to let bygones be bygones, to give their friend the benefit of the doubt. The relationship took precedence over any transitory political disagreements; if friends disagreed or had to oppose each other in court, they did so in such a way as to protect the friendship.3 Friends protected each other’s reputations and offered help when a friend was threatened, including with prosecution. They explained to the jury why their friend deserved the benefit of the doubt, lauding the many admirable qualities that made their friendship worthwhile, in the hopes that the jury would feel more friendly and benevolent toward the defendant as well. To play the role of the faithful friend, to show the audience why the bond of friendship was so strong in any individual instance, the orator praised his friend’s character and past favors or support he had received, which might outweigh whatever wrongs they had done. Hyperbole and stretching the truth in the course of such praise only testified to the overwhelming strength of the friend’s affection.4 In reality, the Roman concept of friendship covered a spectrum of relationships, ranging between the emotional connection with a “second self” described by Cicero in De Amicitia (80)5 and merely pragmatic political partnerships or alliances. Laelius spends a great deal of De Amicitia arguing against a common, pragmatic view of friendship (26–32, 51).6 The flexibility of the concept comes as a result of the Roman convention of extending the name of “friend” to individuals who might not seem quite worthy of the label, including clients,7 casual acquaintances, and even peers with whom the author or speaker was on distinctly bad terms. Thus, as Brunt concludes, “the range of amicitia is vast. From the constant intimacy and goodwill of virtuous or at least of like-minded men to the courtesy that etiquette normally enjoined on gentlemen, it covers every degree of genuinely or overtly amicable relation.”8 The label of 3 4

5 6 7 8

As Cicero tries to do in Pro Murena and Pro Plancio, for example; cf. Craig 1990; van der Wal 2007. Cicero has Laelius argue that friends should not go so far as to act without virtue to aid their friends at Amic. 36–7, but he later claims that we go to great lengths and sometimes too far for our friends at 57, and Cicero’s own practice (as explored in this chapter and as stated, e.g., at Off. 2.51) bears this out. On the possible Greek roots of this idea, see Kroll 1933: 55–7. Taylor 1949: 7–8; Konstan 1997: 122–4. Saller 1989; Konstan 1995; Konstan 1997: 135–45; Konstan 2005; Hall 2009b: 13; Winterling 2009: 34–57; Ganter 2017. Brunt 1965: 20; cf. Hellegouarc’h 1963: 41–90; Fraisse 1974.

Introduction

55

“friends” was a matter of politeness, or sometimes even of wishful thinking, as we will see.9 There is a difference here between the ideal norm, something like the close bond between Cicero and Atticus,10 and the real practice of forming cooperative partnerships in Roman politics; claims of friendship help an orator to dress up the latter to appear as the former. In effect, friendship is thus a rhetorical trope rather than a straightforward description of social reality, and it is more productive to discuss it as such than to try to determine how sincere it is or not. Gelzer and Münzer studied friendship and patronage networks among the Roman elites because political motivations were often anchored in these networks11 but not dictated by them; such relationships provide potential rhetorical justifications for actions but do not entirely determine them. Praise served an essential function in these public claims of friendship. The exuberance of panegyric gave the orator an opportunity to demonstrate his wit and creativity through amplifying tropes,12 as well as his generosity and gratitude. As competitive and ruthless a game as Roman republican politics could be, it was also pluralistic and not necessarily a zero-sum game. No leader could always be the one to author the proposal or sententia that carried the day, throughout his entire career. Instead, power was fluid, shared among networks of allies and friends who spoke in support of each other, publicly performing their gratitude and admiration for each other. Praise bound the eulogized and the eulogist together through gratitude and the expectation of reciprocity, a phenomenon Kaster has labeled “the economy of praise.” “In this economy, praise was a commodity, a thing of value traded back and forth. Like a piece of currency put into circulation, it became fungible, and the recipient was free to spend it as he thought best suited his needs.”13 Praise generated political capital, and Cicero repaid political favors, including praise, by generating such capital for his friends. Thanking an individual for his support also enacted the kind of political reciprocity expected in Roman culture, even in a nonhierarchical relationship.14 9

10 12 13 14

“This process is best understood as the cultivation of a socially acceptable ‘polite fiction.’ . . . A modest form of this polite fiction is evident in the tactful aristocratic deployment of the term amicus”; Hall 2009b: 66–7; cf. Gómez Santamaría 2007: 389–90. See also Inv. 2.55 on friendship in rhetoric. Vielberg 2017. 11 Gelzer 1912; Münzer 1920. See De Oratore 3.103–7, 201–2 on amplification and panegyric as techniques for displaying virtuosity and moving the audience’s passions. Kaster 2006: 30. Michel 1962: 532; Verboven 2002: 37–9. See also Rees 2011: “laudatio was an opportunity for formal demonstration of the ties of amicitia-patronage on which Roman social-political life depended” (96). On the importance of gratia in politics, see also Commentariolum Petitionis 35.

56

The Orator as Friend

While Cicero was undoubtedly stretching the truth sometimes with these claims, the persona of the friend, like all of Cicero’s personae, is not only or always a false façade. Like any persona, it is an option that could have been chosen or rejected, based on calculations that may have been conscious or instinctive, when it served his purposes. For example, Cicero’s congenial demeanor was probably a result, in part, of his status as a new man.15 He could not afford to alienate others unnecessarily or to sacrifice the possibility of cooperation by appearing to be irascible or difficult, and so he was comparatively quick to give up old grudges, with a few notable exceptions, as we saw in Chapter 1. Friendliness also suited his role as a forensic advocate. It allowed him to praise his client plausibly with less reserve16 since praise and approval were (he claimed) his default setting. In his speeches, Cicero cites friendship with his clients, supporters, and even his opponents as the basis for arguments for indulgence, forgiveness, or commiseration, and he corroborates his statements of friendship with effusive praise for the friend. By performing friendship, Cicero also creates the appearance of a network of orators and statesmen, joined by shared values. They are all stronger politically by virtue of their inclusion in this network. Friendship and mutual praise thus promoted concordia, which Cicero valued highly.17 Especially when it came to Pompey and Caesar, Cicero’s rhetoric of friendship often provided the justification for the surrendering of a previously held position. This should not be mistaken for the total surrendering of a moral stance or the absence of a persona; in fact, arguing for compromise is often more difficult to do persuasively than maintaining consistency with a hard-line stance, because a shift of position is so easily criticized as a reflection of insincerity or cynical horse-trading. Cicero’s claims of friendship with Pompey and Caesar may seem even less sincere to 15

16 17

On Cicero’s self-fashioning strategies for overcoming his status as a novus homo, see especially Earl 1967: 44–59; Wiseman 1971: 107–13; Dugan 2005; Kurczyk 2006: 121–211; Samponaro 2007: 22–88; Van der Blom 2010; Hölkeskamp 2011b. Epstein notes that Cicero was often criticized for giving up inimicitiae so easily (Epstein 1987: 8), but perhaps he thought that pursuing them would have damaged his status even more; Epstein also later notes that Cicero’s barbed jokes at others’ expense made him many enemies (37). A speaker for the defense in a Roman court might be asked to speak specifically as a laudator (“praiser”) or character witness (see, e.g., Cluent. 110); Kennedy 1968a: 427–8. Habinek also diagnoses Cicero’s proclivity toward friendliness partially as a response to political turmoil: “the insistence that amici must share the same values and hold one another to them is an attempt to enhance the solidarity of the ruling elite. The values of the boni take precedence over the standards of the community at large, and differences of opinion can be resolved within the dominant group without reliance upon external sources of power”; Habinek 1990: 182; cf. Gotoff 2002: 222–3 on Cicero and Caesar.

Gratitude and Praise

57

modern readers because we know the history of the civil war yet to come, but they likely seemed more plausible and more routine to listeners at the time. The typical function of praise and gratitude in Roman politics is illustrated clearly in Cicero’s post reditum speeches, as Cicero thanks and praises the senators (the higher-ranking, the better) who spoke in favor of his restoration.18 These speeches establish Cicero’s post-recall persona as the most grateful of friends, eager to do anything to help those who helped him.

Gratitude and Praise Cicero’s return from exile was the result of months of effort on the part of a large network of friends and supporters.19 Cicero’s expressions of gratitude after his return are almost ritualistic, as he attempts to render everyone the thanks they are due, even though he insists that it is impossible to express gratitude that matches the magnitude of the services they have rendered to him (e.g., Red. Sen. 1, Red. Pop. 5). He even went so far as to deliver his oration Post Reditum in Senatu from a prepared script, a departure from his usual practice of writing out an oration only after he had delivered it, probably in order to ensure that he did not accidentally omit anyone and thus default on his obligation (Planc. 74).20 “He fully elaborates his thanks . . . to strengthen his ties of amicitia with them and thus to galvanize his political constituency. Through public recognition and praise, he repays his debt of gratia and simultaneously consolidates the mutual political allegiances and interests which he shared with his backers.”21 He rewards his friends’ support by lauding each of them in turn, enhancing their dignitas in return for their efforts to restore his. Each time they achieve a goal – Cicero’s restoration, the restoration of his Palatine house, or the acquittal of Sestius – the collective power of Cicero’s network increases. “In the courts we are what we used to be; my house is as crowded as it has ever been,” Cicero reports to his brother after Sestius’ acquittal (Q. fr. 2.4.6), linking persuasive power with patronage and amicitia.

18 19 20 21

In MacKendrick’s outline of Post Reditum in Senatu, he labels alternating sections as “laudationes” and “refutationes” MacKendrick 1995: 124–6. For a prosopography of this network, see Nicholson 1992: 45–89. I think this explanation is more likely; Dyck and Lintott suggest that Cicero was rusty after his time in exile and needed a memory aid (Dyck 2004a: 301; Lintott 2008: 9). Nicholson 1992: 23.

58

The Orator as Friend

While orators and politicians asserted their own auctoritas in various ways, their auctoritas was also augmented by praise from “friends.” The higher the friend’s status, the more significant his public expressions of friendship and approval became. When Cicero expresses gratitude for praise by the likes of Cato the Younger (Fam. 15.4.11–12, 16) or Appius Claudius Pulcher (Fam. 3.13.2), he notes that he is particularly grateful because those two individuals have such impressive reputations themselves, and the contribution they make to his auctoritas through praise is thus all the more considerable.22 These may be polite fictions or exaggerations, but they build up a friendly rapport nonetheless, and few politicians praised in this way would look a gift horse in the mouth by taking issue with the truthfulness of the encomium. Kaster notes that basking in others’ support served a political purpose for Cicero: “viewed in terms of Republican ideology, the acts of praise he records were no more or less than the patriot’s just reward, the good opinion that good men spread abroad about him (bona fama bonorum): by recalling that praise, Cicero was merely wearing the public character he was entitled to wear.”23 In other words, when Cicero thanked others for praising him, it gave him a chance to remind his audience of what he had done himself to earn their praise, but from a stance of humble gratitude rather than arrogant selfaggrandizement.24 The act of thanking a supporter happened to provide a helpful reminder of that support to the audience, a sort of circumlocutory and polite method of self-praise. Cicero reserves special praise for the speeches his friends deliver for him, and the eloquence that he thought his cause had inspired. Who would be a better judge of eloquence and copia than the master himself? As we saw in Chapter 1, Cicero derides the bad oratory of bad politicians with particular venom in his invectives; his eulogies show the same principle at work, in reverse. His friends’ sententiae on his behalf in the senate are described as “the most beautiful,” “each one spoke more gravely and ornately than the last,” no speech could be “more true, more firm, more useful for the republic” (Dom. 68–9, Sest. 74, Mil. 39). Not only the content of these sententiae but their artistic aspects, their aesthetic characteristics, are praised by Cicero. Just as he sought to portray his enemies as incapable of rational discourse or logical argumentation, here he signals his 22 23 24

Cicero often quotes a line from Naevius, spoken by Hector: “I rejoice that I am praised by you, father, a praised man” (Fam. 5.12.7, 15.6.1, Tusc. Disp. 4.67). Kaster 2006: 29. In Chapters 5 and 6, I return to Cicero’s emphasis on the support he enjoys among the senate and people respectively, as collective entities, in more detail.

Gratitude and Praise

59

friendship and gratitude by eulogizing his friends and extolling them particularly for their eloquence. Again, even if his praise of his friends’ eloquence is not quite taken literally, it may be read as a sign of Cicero’s profound gratitude, the rose-colored glasses through which he evaluates his friends. In his analysis of epideictic oratory Pernot writes: “hyperbole is a lie, but not a lie intended to deceive. . . . It is legitimately applied to an object which exceeds the ordinary and whose grandeur would not be sufficiently expressed in accurate words.”25 Hyperbole thus implies that Cicero is overwhelmed by gratitude, and illustrates the magnitude of his feelings. For their support for his recall, Cicero repays his friends in the form of praise to help advance their careers and empower his entire network: the more accomplished and dignified each of its members, the more powerful the group becomes as a whole, and the more impressive it is that all such distinguished and right-thinking characters rallied to Cicero’s cause. Two beneficiaries of this treatment are Sestius and Milo, who used their office as tribunes in 57 bce to speak out in Cicero’s favor.26 Cicero lavishes praise on Milo in 57 and 56 bce to show his gratitude, lauding Milo’s virtus, auctoritas, and bravery with panegyric treatment (Red. Sen. 19, Red. Pop. 15, Sest. 86–7, 144, Har. Resp. 6), even when he is only tangentially related to the case at hand. Sestius benefited from the same rhetoric of friendship and the same encomiastic treatment, beginning with Post Reditum in Senatu (20, Red. Pop. 15). Cicero’s gratitude for Sestius and Milo in Post Reditum in Senatu later flows easily into his defense speeches for those “friends” and strengthens his position as an advocate in each case by making him appear devoted to and genuinely protective of his client.27 His gratitude to Milo and Sestius is expressed through panegyric tropes associated with epideictic rhetoric and eulogies.28 However, in Sestius’ case, Cicero’s praise was not entirely sincere, and so Cicero’s expressions of gratitude and admiration are all the more telling as a self-fashioning strategy. After he defended Sestius in 56 bce, he referred privately to Sestius as “an ill-tempered man” who was hard to like (and hard to get a jury to like)29 but reassured Quintus that he had done his laudatory utmost nevertheless: “as for what I know was always a source of anxiety for you, that we might leave ourselves open to criticism by some detractor who would call us ungrateful unless we reacted extremely 25 28 29

Pernot 2015: 60. 26 Lintott 1974. 27 Plancius benefits from the same sort of relationship. On epideictic and praise see Pernot 1993; Pernot 2015. Against an idea of Cicero’s praise as purely epideictic, see Albrecht 2003: 164–71. Kaster 2006: 20.

60

The Orator as Friend

compassionately to his perversity in certain affairs – know that at the trial we brought it about that we were judged to be the most grateful of men” (Q. fr. 2.4.1). Even though Sestius is ill-tempered, it would reflect badly not just on him but on Cicero if the advocate seemed lukewarm; a friend’s gratitude should trump all else. In Pro Sestio, he laments that “I am compelled now to use my voice, with which I’ve always thought an effort should be made to give thanks and commemorate the support of those who have helped me, to repel danger from them instead” (Sest. 2). Friendship and praise were crucial to Cicero’s self-fashioning as an advocate, and he had to make them seem credible or risk undermining his own case. When Cicero lavishes praise on these junior magistrates as his protégés, it shows his generosity and recognition of less powerful men, putting him in a role as their mentor or advisor if not their patron. However, his eulogizing is not limited to them. He had also praised senators of consular status in his speeches after his recall,30 including his most powerful friend, Pompey. In the economy of praise, Pompey and Cicero’s other supporters had made an enormous contribution to Cicero’s standing by insisting on his value to the state, and Cicero was in their debt. Pompey was singled out for special praise in the post reditum speeches, especially Post Reditum ad Populum. In Cicero’s narration of his recall there, he pays enthusiastic tribute to Pompey as “a man who excels all who are, who were, and who will be in virtue, wisdom, and glory” (16). Cicero’s restoration becomes one of Pompey’s res gestae: Pompey is said to have given to Cicero “all the same things that he gave to the republic as a whole: restoration, peace, honor” (Red. Pop. 16), so that Cicero’s very presence and eloquence become a sort of living monument to Pompey’s authority. Notably, he claims that Pompey delivered an oration “with the greatest dignity and fluency (copia) in speaking” (Sest. 107, cf. Red. Sen. 29, Red. Pop. 16 on the same speech). He thus assigns characteristics strongly associated with his own style to Pompey, who was not in the same class as an orator.31 Pompey, in speaking about Cicero, seems almost to have become Cicero in some fashion, inspired with the rhetorical trait of copia for which Cicero was especially well known. Cicero then summarizes Pompey’s speech to the senate in support of his restoration, and concludes: “to this man, Quirites, I owe a debt as great as it is scarcely right for one man to owe to another” (Red. Pop. 17; cf. Planc. 93). 30 31

Servilius in Red. Sen. 25, Red. Pop. 17; also Cotta and Bibulus at Dom. 68–9; and Lentulus Spinther, one of the consuls of 57, at Red. Sen. 8–9, Red. Pop. 15, Dom. 30, Sest. 107, Pis. 34. Anderson 1963: 1–27; Van der Blom 2011; Van der Blom 2016: 113–45.

Gratitude and Praise

61

This political debt that Cicero owed to Pompey is one way of telling the story of their relationship in the mid-50s; it is the story that Cicero chose to tell, and it is crucial to Cicero’s self-fashioning after exile. He was well aware that he could have told a very different story about his relationship with Pompey.32 He could have censured Pompey publicly (as others did33) for allowing him to be driven out of the city in the first place, or for betraying their friendship, or he even could have launched a full political attack. Instead, not least to strengthen Pompey as a counterweight to Clodius, he chose to omit that chapter in their relationship and to emphasize the continuity with his earlier support of Pompey in 66 bce in De Imperio Cn. Pompei (a.k.a. Pro Lege Manilia). Cicero’s gratitude to Pompey is one of the most consistent themes in his selffashioning throughout his career; he later attributed his decision to fight with Pompey in the civil war to the fact that “the loyal memory of a grateful mind had so much sway with me” (Marc. 14). He thus spoke only of his gratitude for his recall, and used his gratitude to explain policy choices, like his support for Pompey’s command of the grain supply in 57:34 “if Pompey’s status, increased by my sententia, was coupled with public benefit, I would certainly be praiseworthy, if I were thought to have voted for the prestige of a man who had given aid and assistance to my restoration” (Dom. 27). While his free-flowing panegyrics may seem hyperbolic to us, they perform the same function as Cicero’s praise of Milo or Sestius or any of his other supporters in the economy of praise, but calibrated to Pompey’s unique stature. Cicero offers this rhetoric up as a carefully calculated remuneration for Pompey’s help.35 If his eulogizing was grandiose, it was because of the grand scale of the debt he thought he owed to Pompey for his restoration, as well as the grand scale of Pompey’s achievements. If he had abridged or understated what Pompey had done, or seemed less than enthusiastic about it, he would have seemed ungrateful or even resentful of the great man (as so many of his contemporaries were) by his calculations. The emotion of gratitude colors Cicero’s assessment and leads him to use hyperbole to express it.36 Using rhetorical techniques associated with panegyric – balanced correlative clauses 32 33 34 35

36

He acknowledges as much in Q. fr. 1.3.9, 1.4.4; Att. 3.8.4, 3.13.1, 3.14.1–2, 3.15.1–4, 3.18.1, 8.3.2–3, 9.5.2, 9.13.6. Dom. 27–30, Sest. 41–2, Prov. Cons. 18, Pis. 75–7, 79; Q. fr. 2.3.3; Att. 1.14.2–4. Cf. Nicholson 1992: 52. For more discussion of this command, see Chapter 7. On effusive expressions of affection Hall writes: “certainly the influence of invidia and gossip in aristocratic circles exerted pressure toward this form of exaggeration. Reserve and understatement could easily be misconstrued and lead to accusations of jealousy and ingratitude”; Hall 2009b: 77. Aristotle, in the Rhetoric, states that “hyperboles are for young men to use; they show vehemence of character; and this is why angry people use them more than other people” (Ar. Rhet. 3.11.15–16, tr. Kennedy). Cf. Quintilian Inst. 8.6.75–6.

62

The Orator as Friend

and comparisons, long periods, grandiose metaphors, concinnity in language – was the only way to properly express admiration for Pompey’s achievements. Pompey might not have praised Cicero as extravagantly in return, but then, Pompey’s greater dignitas would have made less effusive praise from him count for more as political capital. In 56 bce, however, Cicero took his praise of Pompey even further and stretched his rhetoric of gratitude so far that he seems to have transgressed the boundaries of decorum.

Panegyric in Pro Balbo Cicero’s standing with respect to the “first triumvirate” after the Conference of Luca has been one of the defining aspects of his biography for modern scholars, and not in a positive way.37 To take a few extreme examples, Stockton writes that “Cicero’s letters are redolent of abject capitulation, not of a ‘deal’”;38 Tempest’s chapters on Cicero’s career immediately after his consulship describe an era of “shattered dreams” and humiliation.39 Mommsen wrote that Cicero was and ought to have been “ashamed to transmit even to intimate friends that attestation of his resumed allegiance,” the document that Cicero called his palinode in which he seems to have agreed to back the “first triumvirate”;40 Fuhrmann describes his putative loss of independence as a tragedy of which Cicero was also tragically unaware.41 In many such assessments, it is not clear what is supposed to be more tragic: Cicero’s earlier decision not to join the first triumvirate,42 and so his rejection of a position of greater power and prominence in the 50s; his recruitment as an advocate for Pompey and Caesar in 56; or his subsequent defense of several clients of the first triumvirate in 54, men whom he had previously attacked for moral turpitude and political ineptitude.43 These defense speeches (not extant) 37 38 39 40

41 43

On the conference of Luca and its consequences for Cicero, see Cary 1923; Balsdon 1957; Mitchell 1969; Gruen 1969: 94; Luibheid 1970; Brunt 1988: 486–7. Stockton 1971: 212 n. 37. Dobesch and Brunt describe “humiliation”; Dobesch 1985: 157; Brunt 1988: 486–7. Tempest 2011: 101. “Man kann es nur billigen, dass Cicero, wie er selbst gesteht (ad Att. 4, 5, 1), sogar vertrauten Freunden jenes Dokument seines wiedergekehrten Gehorsams zu übersenden sich schämte.” Mommsen 1856: Band iii Buch v.8 323–4 n. 2, translated by Dickson 1996 ed. 130 n.1. Steel calls this a “political U-turn”; Steel 2001: 109. Fuhrmann 1992: 78. 42 Att. 4.6.2; Prov. Cons. 17, 41. Gabinius (Fam. 1.9.20) and Vatinius (Fam. 1.9.4, 19); see Fantham 1975; Lintott 2008: 242–9; Fulkerson 2013: 255–7. It is worth noting that Cicero very nearly acted as prosecutor against Gabinius shortly before taking on a role as his advocate (Q. fr. 3.1.15, 3.4.1–2, 3.6.5, 3.9.1). Thus,

Panegyric in Pro Balbo

63

are often taken as signs that Cicero had swallowed his pride and agreed to do whatever Pompey and Caesar wished him to do, putting his eloquence at the service of tyrants. This sort of narrative, however, is an oversimplification and obscures Cicero’s negotiations of the power dynamics at play. Besides, whatever the reality, this was not a story that Cicero could tell about his own political status if he expected to have any authority whatsoever, and so he needed to generate a plausible alternative. Within the parameters of “supporting” Pompey and Caesar, he developed and tested a complex set of strategies in his speeches to bolster his own authority, particularly centering around a role as the dynasts’ friend.44 Friendship and gratitude for past favors, in this context, became the basis for his support of their honors and policies, and arguments in favor of compromise. His speeches after the Conference of Luca presume that he will be met with opposition and criticism by his fellow conservative senators, who will accuse him of going too far to accommodate Pompey’s ambitions. To answer their concerns, he suggests that he has no choice but to continue prioritizing his friendship with Pompey over other political concerns, and uses hyperbolic praise to show how genuine that friendship is.45 In other words, he chooses consistency in his relationship to Pompey over consistency with his perceived political outlook, citing his characteristic gratitude as his motive. His rhetoric of friendship defers and deflects the question of responsibility for elevating Pompey to such great heights: he is only showing proper gratia, whatever the consequences (Fam. 1.9.11).46 In Cicero’s account of this policy in a letter to Lentulus Spinther, he argued that his course of action had been dictated not by Pompey himself but by his friendship and gratitude to Pompey,47 and this rhetorical distinction is important.

44 45

46

47

while it is often assumed that he had no choice but to obey Pompey’s instructions to defend these two men, he apparently thought he did have the freedom to do as he pleased but ultimately chose not to test it and to strain his relationship with Pompey. It is worth noting, for instance, that Cicero does not treat the three “triumvirs” in the same way; Crassus is barely mentioned at all in these speeches. I return to the call for compromise that Cicero issues at the end of Pro Balbo in Chapter 8. Valerius Maximus supports this characterization, describing Cicero’s defense of Gabinius and Vatinius as evidence not of Cicero’s inconsistency but of praiseworthy and exceptional humanitas (4.2.4; cf. Quint. Inst. 11.1.73). By contrast, in In Pisonem, he says explicitly that a “desire for consistency” led him to refuse an alliance with Caesar in the 60s, so that he “would not have traded a sententia even for his support” (79). “I conform to the wishes of a man with whom I cannot honorably disagree, nor am I doing it as a pretense, as perhaps it seems to some. You see, inner resolve and (by Hercules) love (amor) of Pompey have such sway with me that what is useful to him and what he wants seem to be to be

64

The Orator as Friend

In 56 bce, Cicero acted as an advocate for Cornelius Balbus, a client of both Pompey and Caesar. Balbus was born in Spain and had been granted citizenship by Pompey for serving with a Roman army there, and was now being prosecuted for claiming that citizenship illegally.48 Cicero begins by characterizing his defense of Balbus as a form of repayment to those who have supported him, an attempt to reciprocate in some small part (1). Cicero does not make as conspicuous a demonstration of gratitude here as he did in the post reditum speeches, nor had he included Balbus in his list of supporters by name in those speeches, which is one reason why his sincerity in this speech has been questioned.49 Most of the speech has less to do with Cicero’s relationship with Balbus (4, 58–9), however, and more to do with Balbus’ patron, Pompey. Cicero claims that Pompey asked him to be Balbus’ advocate as well as a “spokesman (praedicator)50 and advocate (actor) . . . for his own deed, his judgment, his patronage” (4). The implication is that Pompey made a request that Cicero could not refuse, to take part in the trial. As usual, in Balbus’ trial Cicero was part of a team of advocates and was given pride of place, speaking last after his fellow advocates Pompey and Crassus to wrap up the defense. However, in this case, he professed worry about falling short and letting the team down after Pompey’s stellar defense speech: “I’ve never heard anything that seemed more precise on legal matters, anything with greater knowledge of historical exempla, anything with greater expertise about treaties, anything with more splendid authority on wars, anything more serious about politics, anything more modest about oneself, anything more beautiful about a case or a crime” (Balb. 2).51 Cicero had praised Pompey’s eloquence in his post reditum orations as well, as we have seen. Here, however, his praise does not reflect gratitude for a favor, but a strange feeling of intimidation next to a fellow advocate, a peer

48 49

50 51

entirely virtuous and true. . . . I will immediately [return to my study of literature, the thing which would please me most,] if my friendship for him will allow it” (Fam. 1.8.2–3, italics mine). Masciantonio 1967; Brunt 1982; Steel 2001: 98–112; Barber 2004. “If there is no personal reason for Cicero to get involved in the case, then his presence becomes that of the first triumvirate’s hired eloquence. It is very tempting to read the beginning of the speech, in which Cicero praises Pompeius’ eloquence and deprecates his own, as a slyly ironic allusion to this” Steel 2001: 110. For an ironic reading of Cicero’s treatment of Pompey here, see Kenty (2021). This word is more or less neutral in Cicero’s usage but seems odd here, and may have negative connotations because of its etymological cousin praeco, “herald” or “auctioneer”; Lowe 2018: 150–3. Cicero’s hyperbolic claim that Pompey spoke as well as the great orator L. Crassus (the interlocutor of De Oratore) could only have enraged P. Crassus the “triumvir,” who had also spoken in Balbus’ defense before Cicero (he “explained the whole case to you in accordance with his ability and with his good faith,” Cicero says rather parsimoniously [Balb. 17]); this may be designed to sow discord among the triumvirs.

Panegyric in Pro Balbo

65

(ostensibly). We would naturally expect Cicero to outperform Pompey, since he is the more experienced and acclaimed orator, but in Cicero’s own eyes (as he reports his view here), no one could be a better orator than Pompey. The tint of his rose-colored glasses seems to have gotten stronger. Cicero’s admiration of Pompey soon escalates further into ornate panegyric and artful antitheses to overwhelm his opponent’s legalistic arguments. Cicero portrays Pompey as even more powerful than the republic and the laws:52 Quid enim abest huic homini quod, si adesset, iure haec ei tribui et concedi putaremus? Ususne rerum? Qui pueritiae tempus extremum principium habuit bellorum atque imperiorum maximorum, cuius plerique aequales minus saepe castra viderunt quam hic triumphavit, qui tot habet triumphos quot orae sunt partesque terrarum, tot victorias bellicas quot sunt in rerum natura genera bellorum. . . . Cui senatus populusque Romanus amplissimae dignitatis praemia dedit non postulanti, imperia vero etiam recusanti, huius de facto, iudices, ita quaeri ut id agatur, licueritne ei facere quod fecit, an vero non dicam non licuerit, sed nefas fuerit – contra foedus enim, id est contra populi Romani religionem et fidem fecisse dicitur – non turpe rei publicae, nonne vobis? For what is lacking in this man that we think would lawfully give and allow this privilege to him, if it were present? Experience? His childhood ended with the beginning of the greatest wars and commands. Most of his peers saw military camps less often than he celebrated triumphs. He had as many triumphs as there are shores and regions of the world, as many military victories as there are types of wars in the universe. . . . The senate and Roman people gave him rewards of the greatest prestige, not because he asked for command, but when he had actually refused it. Asking about something done by such a man, jurors, in such a way as to argue about whether he was allowed to do what he did – or even, I will say, not whether it was allowed, but whether it was unjust, for he is said to have acted against a treaty, which is to say against the faith and honor of the Roman people – is that not disgraceful for the republic, and for you? (Balb. 8–10)

After putting on a show of overcoming his hesitation, Cicero launches into a hyperbolic series of panegyric tropes about Pompey’s military exploits. Pro Balbo thus repeats the tactics of another panegyric to Pompey in Cicero’s corpus, the Pro Lege Manilia of 66 bce, which Manuwald describes as “the first extant example of an obvious tactical use of panegyric in a clear political context.”53 These tropes are not mere flourishes or epideictic in purpose but contribute to the argument in the case at hand: 52

On encomium in Pro Balbo see Hanchey 2013: 181–3.

53

Manuwald 2011: 101.

66

The Orator as Friend

Cicero argues that Pompey acted legally in giving citizenship to Balbus because anything Pompey does is legal and just. In fact, what is illegal and unjust, he argues, is the prosecution of Balbus, which is “disgraceful for the republic, and for you.” If Pompey is the state’s savior (helped by Cicero, of course), then the prosecution is committing an act of treason by questioning the validity of his grant of citizenship to Balbus. Moreover, Cicero claims that his own arguments on Balbus’ behalf are consistent with the decrees of the senate and Roman people in the past, so that Cicero represents the republic’s voice. Cicero’s praise of Pompey is aimed not (only) at pleasing the great man but also at winning the case, and Balbus was indeed acquitted.54 However, Cicero detracted from his own auctoritas. His subsequent letters deploring his own lack of integrity and consistency in continuing to do Pompey’s bidding show his frustration: “my grief is that much sharper because I can’t even grieve without seeming ungrateful” (Att. 4.6.2), he writes, demonstrating the importance of gratitude for his self-fashioning even at the expense of consistency.55 For Cicero, “friendship” required vocal support and admiration, extraordinary deeds demanded extraordinary praise, and he chose to preserve rather than undermine the friendship.56 Meanwhile, in praising Pompey this way, Cicero was contributing to the alreadyexorbitant auctoritas of Pompey and normalizing that sort of praise. In the economy of praise, Pompey appears to have had something of a monopoly, although it must be noted that we do not know if or how he praised Cicero in return. Cicero also exacerbated others’ resentment of the great man’s extraordinary status, contributing to the very invidia he decries here and at the conclusion of Pro Balbo (58), a passage to which we will return in Chapter 8. Things grew more uncomfortable still when other senators praised Cicero to the skies while blaming Caesar and Pompey for his exile, much to Cicero’s embarrassment (Q. fr. 2.3.3, cf. Att. 1.14.2–4).57 In reflecting later on his relationship with Pompey in a letter to Atticus, Cicero gives an interesting analysis of his policy over the previous decade: “what you write, that I was made to seem to owe such a great debt to him more because of my own pronouncements than because of what he really deserved – it’s true. I always lavished praise on it, and actually all the more, so that he wouldn’t think I remembered what came before,” i.e., Pompey’s failure to prevent Cicero’s exile, “but he was a friend after that, really very 54 55 57

On the argumentation and structure of the speech, see Barber 2004: 69–84. On the chronology of the letters from this period, see Taylor 1949b. 56 Cf. Marchetti 1999. Allen 1954: 135.

Friendship with Caesar

67

much so” (Att. 9.13.3). It was Cicero’s own persona as a grateful friend – and his choice to emphasize the benefits rather than the harm Pompey had done him – that constrained his choices thereafter. Meanwhile, the difficulties of retaining his own dignity while praising a great man – and of maintaining his friendship with senators who opposed the great man – were perhaps even greater as Cicero tried to extend these same claims of friendship and gratitude to Caesar as well, at Pompey’s insistence.58 One wonders if Cicero’s efforts to praise Caesar then contributed to Pompey’s feelings of rivalry toward Caesar and the break between the powerful “friends”; perhaps Pompey had not counted on how enthusiastically Cicero would fulfill his request.59

Friendship with Caesar While he could plausibly claim to be friends with Pompey, Cicero’s claims of “friendship” with Caesar in his oration De Provinciis Consularibus, delivered shortly before Pro Balbo, strained credulity.60 In a debate in mid-56 bce over which provinces should be reassigned to the consuls of that year and which should be left in the hands of their current governors, Cicero made a surprising argument, a departure from his previous political positions: that Caesar’s command in Gaul should be extended. To legitimize his arguments, he argued that his praise and support of Caesar was based on a long-standing friendship, despite their political differences.61 In De Provinciis Consularibus, he acknowledges that he is “often either interrupted by some or criticized by the silent judgment of others” (Prov. Cons. 40, cf. 18, 22, Planc. 91–4) for this act of crossing party lines.62 He then explains that his disagreements with Caesar over political matters had not 58

59 60

61 62

Grillo 2015: 10. The message was conveyed from Pompey through Quintus (Fam. 1.9.9); see also Att. 2.3.4, 4.5.1, 4.6.2. Quintus pressured Cicero to cultivate friendship with Caesar, with whom he (Quintus) was serving in Gaul: Q. fr. 2.10.5, 2.11.1, 2.12.1, 2.13.1–2, 4, 2.15.1; 3.5.3; 3.8.1; cf. Wiseman 1966. Cf. Batstone 2010: 194–5. During Sestius’ trial early in 56 bce only months earlier, Vatinius apparently criticized Cicero: “when Vatinius had said in his testimony that I had begun to be Caesar’s friend because I was motivated by that man’s good fortune and success,” Cicero shot back that he would rather emulate Bibulus, Caesar’s co-consul, than all of Caesar’s triumphs and victories (Fam. 1.9.7). On Cicero’s dealings with Caesar, see Gelzer 1968; Riemer 2001. As they pertain to this speech, Grillo 2015: 262–4; Craig 2017: 101–4. Lintott 2008: 208 takes this to be Cicero’s “palinode.” In Chapter 1 I discussed the view of some scholars that Cicero’s vituperative attacks on Piso would have been seen as attacks on Caesar by proxy, since Caesar was Piso’s son-in-law. However, in the midst of his attacks on Piso in De Provinciis Consularibus and In Pisonem, Cicero is careful to explicitly assert that he is Caesar’s friend and that his speeches should by no means be interpreted as undermining Caesar’s dignity.

68

The Orator as Friend

actually constituted inimicitia and had not even disturbed their friendship in the private sphere (Prov. Cons. 40–1).63 He had now renewed his friendship with Caesar in the public sphere for the good of the state (and not only for financial gain64), he insisted, but if some were still suspicious of his motives, “then I’ll say this, which won’t do as much for gaining praise as it will for avoiding vituperation: I am a grateful man, moved not only by grand good deeds, but even by a little goodwill from people” (Prov. Cons. 44). He thus attributed his advocacy for Caesar to his own proclivity for forgiveness and gratitude for even the smallest sign of goodwill. Perhaps he was too quick to seize any pretext for friendship, he acknowledged, but he connected that to his claims of characteristic humanity and leniency, his default persona, in order to make himself seem more sincere. Cicero also argued that even without a personal friendship bond between him and Caesar, Caesar’s command was good for the republic, and this simple fact required Cicero to treat him as a friend. He made this argument in De Provinciis Consularibus (35),65 and even more forcefully in the following year in his speech In Pisonem, resorting again to panegyric figures (hendiadys, rhyming effects, antithesis, and metaphors in particular) to prove his point: Equidem dicam ex animo, patres conscripti, quod sentio, et quod vobis audientibus saepe iam dixi. Si mihi numquam amicus C. Caesar fuisset, si semper iratus, si semper aspernaretur amicitiam meam seque mihi implacabilem inexpiabilemque praeberet, tamen ei, cum tantas res gessisset gereretque cotidie, non amicus esse non possem; cuius ego imperium, non Alpium vallum contra ascensum transgressionemque Gallorum, non Rheni fossam gurgitibus illis redundantem Germanorum immanissimis gentibus obicio et oppono; perfecit ille ut, si montes resedissent, amnes exaruissent, non naturae praesidio sed victoria sua rebusque gestis Italiam munitam haberemus. Even so, I will speak from my heart, senators, what I feel, and what I’ve said in your hearing many times now. If Caesar had never been my friend, if he’d always been angry with me, always scorned my friendship and presented himself as implacable and unappeasable to me, I still wouldn’t have been able to resist being his friend, since he had done and was still doing such great things. It’s his command, not the Alps that I point to and throw up 63

64 65

Cicero later used the same argument for private officium without public allegiance to excuse his decision to side with Pompey during the civil war, at Marc. 14, while his friend Matius used the same logic to defend fighting with Caesar (Fam. 11.28.2). This tension informs much of the discussion of De Amicitia, in Lintott’s reading; Lintott 2008: 359–66. He certainly did establish a financial relationship with Caesar; Q. fr. 2.10.5, 2.13.1–4, 2.14.3; Fam. 1.9.21; Att. 5.1.2, 5.4.3, 5.5.2, 5.6.2, 5.10.4, 5.13.3. Grillo 2015: 238–9.

Friendship with Caesar

69

against the ascent or traverse of the Gauls, nor the depths of the Rhine, overflowing its rapids, against the monstrous nations of Germans; Caesar has made it so that if the mountains sank into the earth and the rivers dried up, we would not have the defenses of nature but Caesar’s victory and achievements to fortify Italy. (Pis. 81–2, cf. Planc. 94)

At the start of the passage he calls his audience’s attention to his own repetition (and their memory) of his statements of friendship with Caesar (“what I’ve said many times now”), showing that he is still defensive about that friendship.66 This gives his affect a ring of defiance, which implies a spirit of independence and willfulness rather than subjugation. He promises to “speak from my heart” as if some unspoken fear is threatening to prevent him from speaking freely. Perhaps some members of the audience would have pricked up their ears, hoping for a denunciation of the tyrant, only to be disappointed by Cicero’s flirting with the counterfactual. For critics of Caesar in the audience who might think that Cicero is only being pragmatic and putting on a false front as Caesar’s friend, Cicero provides this momentary indulgence.67 Once again, however, he then employs panegyric tropes and grandiose, ornate sententiae and metaphors amplifying the great man’s achievements.68 These figures seem intended to corroborate his feelings of friendship: would an enemy, even if he were trying to conceal his enmity, go so far? Paradoxically, then, untruthful hyperbole provides a rhetorical strategy for proving how real one’s emotions are – at least, to members of the audience who accept the praise as sincere. Caesar’s friends in the senate would have approved of Cicero’s arguments and may have been convinced that Cicero was really one of them. However, Cicero’s claims of friendship did little to convince his critics of his sincerity, including his contemporaries as well as later scholars.69 Still, even Cicero’s frustration with the “first triumvirate” should not distract us from the rhetorical utility of this strategy. At its core, such a panegyric 66 67

68 69

Kurczyk 2006: 252–3. Fotheringham 2007 calls this “having his cake and eating it too.” He does the same at the end of De Provinciis Consularibus, arguing that Caesar’s term ought to be extended even if Caesar were unwilling to continue his labors in a barbaric land – but, happily, Caesar is eager and willing to do so (35). He knows Caesar’s opponents are reluctant to give the great man what he wants, so he momentarily removes that obstacle for the sake of argument: what if that weren’t what Caesar wanted? On heroic themes in Caesar’s own self-fashioning in this period, see Gerrish 2018. Usher writes admiringly of the rhetorical tightrope Cicero walks, but describes the “muzzling of Cicero” rather matter-of-factly: Usher 2008: 97–102, 152–3. Cf. Connolly 2011: 169. In Epstein’s analysis, “his ultimate justification for his action was opportunism, the virtue and necessity of sailing with the prevailing political wind – the attitude that cost Cicero so much respect among his contemporaries and in succeeding generations”; Epstein 1987: 9.

70

The Orator as Friend

obliged Caesar to him and offered an opportunity for Cicero to show off his artistic virtuosity. As for character and authority, submission to others’ influence was not honorable, but gratitude and friendship were, and could help to rationalize or defend compromise and crossing party lines. Even if political amicitia was usually a practical alliance, it had to be transformed rhetorically into an emotional bond.70 Cicero’s rhetoric of friendship provides necessary justification for his arguments in Caesar’s favor. Cicero’s “gratitude” imposed an obligation on his “friend” to return the favor in some way. One striking example of this reasoning occurs in Pro Plancio, when Cicero applies such pressure not to Pompey or Caesar but to the republic herself: Res vero ipsa publica, si loqui posset, ageret mecum ut, quoniam sibi servissem semper, numquam mihi, fructus autem ex sese non, ut oportuisset, laetos et uberes, sed magna acerbitate permixtos tulissem, ut iam mihi servirem, consulerem meis; se non modo satis habere a me sed etiam vereri ne parum mihi pro eo quantum a me haberet reddidisset. If the republic herself could speak, she would argue to me that since I had always protected her and never myself, and never enjoyed sweet and prosperous fruits of my labor for her (as I ought to have) but ones mixed with great bitterness, I should now protect myself, and consult my own interests; she would say that she had not only been well treated by me, but actually worried that she would repay me too little for what she had received from me. (Planc. 92)

Here the republic participates in the economy of praise and worries that she will default on her obligation to Cicero, since he has sacrificed his own interests for hers. Like Cicero, the republic acts on gratitude and is sensitive to the need to repay kindness with kindness, worried as Cicero is in his speeches after exile that she will not be able to do so. This argument comes in the midst of another defense of Cicero’s closeness to Pompey and Caesar after his return from exile (93), hence his allusion to “consulting his own interests.” His usual rule of gratitude and selflessness is thus made to compensate for an exceptional moment of comparative selfishness. Cicero’s use of praise as pressure, imposing an obligation to reciprocate, also extends to Pompey and Caesar. He seems to have thought that he would be better able to influence Pompey and Caesar to use their power responsibly if he took up this pose as a friend and mentor, as we see 70

On the exempla Cicero adduces for this principle, see Albrecht 2003: 105. Hall argues of the letters that “tension was resolved in part by the development of conventionalized expressions of regard and affection. These expressions provided a convenient and socially acceptable means of conveying affability toward acquaintances with whom one was not especially close”; Hall 2009b: 14.

Praise as Pressure

71

especially in Pro Rabirio Postumo and Pro Marcello, and later in the Philippics.

Praise as Pressure “When I praise one of your friends to you, I want them to learn from you that I’ve done it – for example, you know that I recently wrote to you about Varro’s favor to me, and you wrote back that it gave you great pleasure. But I wish you had written to him to tell him that he’d gratified me, not because he’d done so but so that he would do so” (Att. 2.25.1). In his frustration with Varro, Cicero hints at his use of gratitude and praise as tools to motivate others to act. While the detractors of the great men (and there were many) leveled criticism through denunciation, Cicero’s pose as an insider and ally enabled a different kind of persuasive leverage. Increasingly, after his “palinode” in 56 bce, Cicero tried to intertwine praise with protreptic advice and pressure, to make a statement about the kind of virtues that Cicero particularly wanted to encourage.71 This seems to be one way for Cicero to recuperate his authority, to counterbalance his use of panegyric tropes.72 He seems to be employing this strategy in several speeches directed at Caesar as well. In 54 bce, in his defense of Caesar’s client Rabirius Postumus, Cicero makes a show of passing over Caesar’s “great and incredible virtues,” which are “fit for larger theaters, so to speak, and popular with the masses” (Rab. Post. 42), in order to emphasize Caesar’s magnanimity and generosity in helping Rabirius out of a financial quagmire. He thus makes a pointed turn away from Caesar’s military virtues toward the civic realm, which also offers a judgment of what kind of virtues are most worthy of praise. He marvels: “the splendor of his own name does not blind his vision, nor does the altitude of his fortune and glory obscure his mind’s eye, so to speak,” so that he can still help his less powerful friends (43). Cicero portrays both himself and Caesar as driven by a basic impulse to use their position to help others, even those of lesser political rank.73 71 72

73

Cf. Steel 2001: 185–8; Fulkerson 2013; Craig 2017: 112. Manuwald observes: “Cicero frequently used praise of individuals for political and tactical purposes, in order to support the policy he approved of and to contribute to what he regarded as the welfare of the republic by influencing political developments, occasionally including egotistical elements”; Manuwald 2011: 95. This happens to echo Caesar’s own self-fashioning in his commentarii. Cicero echoes what Dobesch calls Caesar’s siren-song of a “hochgeschätzen, ebenbürtigen, einflußreichen Freund und als überragenden Mann des Geistes”; Dobesch 1985: 157. Caesar’s clementia followed naturally on this persona; Ruch 1965: 10–13. Gagliardi points out that Caesar’s position in 46 was tenuous enough

72

The Orator as Friend

Before the civil war, Cicero’s efforts to prove his friendship to Caesar in De Provinciis Consularibus and Pro Rabirio Postumo drove him to praise the dynast in the style of a panegyric, elevating him above the level of ordinary men in a way that anticipates the rhetoric of the principate.74 After the civil war, Cicero makes the same rhetorical move in Pro Marcello, his most extravagant panegyric and the one that has most alarmed (and even disgusted) modern readers.75 The speech was delivered in September of 46 bce, before Caesar as dictator, to thank Caesar for allowing the senate to debate whether the Pompeian M. Marcellus should be allowed to return from exile. The result of Cicero’s decision to praise Caesar so effusively in this oration is that he seems to some readers less like a friend of the great man than like a sycophantic courtier. However, Cicero does not praise Caesar in a wholly conventional, expected way but is selective in identifying the specific material for his panegyric, identifying traits that he wants to emphasize and encourage while ignoring the activities that he sees as less admirable (and indeed as dangerous). In Pro Marcello, as in Pro Rabirio Postumo, Cicero does not content himself with the usual conventions of panegyric in a Roman context, which tended to focus on military affairs and heroic exploits on the battlefield. Instead, he generates his own framework for understanding virtue in a new way and then applies that interpretive framework to his praise of Caesar.76 Cicero praises Caesar’s superhuman military exploits but then puts special emphasis on his civic virtues and clementia: “whenever you think about those of us whom you have wanted to have with you in politics, you will have occasion to think of your own greatest good deeds, your incredible generosity, your unique wisdom; I would dare to say that these are not only the greatest virtues but the only ones” (Marc. 19, cf. 8–10). He turns his praise of his great friend to his own ideological purposes, minimizing military glory without causing offense, while elevating the work of restoring the constitution to greater prestige.77 As Tempest writes, “none of this should be taken to suggest that

74 75

76

77

that he needed to reaffirm this persona, when Cicero created opportunities for him to do so in the Caesarian orations; Gagliardi 1997: 42–3, 66–9. Braund 1998: 68–71; Manuwald 2011. Craig 2008; Dugan 2013: 211–15. Cipriani and Tedeschi note that Pro Marcello coincides with the high point of Cicero’s optimism about his relationship with Caesar and about the trajectory of Caesar’s dictatorship; Cipriani 1977: 121; Tedeschi 2005: 8–10; cf. Ruch 1965: 32–4; Dyer 1990: 30. On the use of syntax and diction to achieve this, see Gildenhard 2011: 223–33. Grillo proposes that the same principle is at work in Prov. Cons.: “part of Cicero’s purpose in praising Caesar is to educate him and give him advice, as was typical of epideictic oratory” (Grillo 2015: 30). Gelzer 1968: 280; Rambaud 1984: 43; Dyer 1990: 23–6; Gotoff 2002: 219–20, 228–30; Gómez Santamaría 2007. Fertik also points out that Cicero praises Caesar’s self-restraint in particular, in the same vein (Fertik 2017: 69).

Praise as Pressure

73

Cicero is sincere, or that he viewed Caesar as the kind of enlightened statesman he had recommended as his ideal in the De republica. But it does explain how he could appear to be sincere, and how he could exhort Caesar to restore the res publica in words that the dictator would understand to be truly Ciceronian.”78 The appearance of sincerity is also enhanced by continuity with Cicero’s persona as Caesar’s friend in the past. The best way to get Caesar to restore the republic, Cicero seems to have thought, was not by criticizing or lecturing the dictator on ethics but by taking up a pose as the dictator’s friend and supporter,79 who only wanted to ensure the success of his politics and the luster of his reputation. In that capacity, his praise exerts subtle pressure on Caesar to live up to Cicero’s grandiose vision for him as the restorer of the republic. He warns Caesar that while Caesar may have accomplished great things, they will not have the kind of lasting legacy or exceptional magnitude that Caesar deserves, and so more is left to do (25–8). “Your achievements have encompassed the welfare of all the citizens and the whole state, but you are so far from the completion of your greatest labors that you have not yet laid the foundations of what you plan” (25–6).80 In praising Caesar so rapturously for something he has not really achieved yet, Cicero attempts to force his idealized vision into becoming reality. Cicero also adopts this strategy of pressuring praise in Pro Ligario (37) and in Pro Deiotaro, the last of his Caesarian orations, defending a king who had fought with Pompey in the civil war on a charge of conspiring to assassinate Caesar. As in Pro Marcello, Cicero’s “friendly” praise of Caesar’s extraordinary clementia in Pro Deiotaro points Caesar toward what he frames as the only acceptable course of action.81 Cicero notes that Caesar is accustomed to act as a friend even to his enemies, and so Cicero hardly has to do much work as Deiotarus’ advocate: Non debeo, Caesar, quod fieri solet in tantis periculis, temptare ecquonam modo dicendo misericordiam tuam commovere possim. Nihil opus est. Occurrere solet ipsa supplicibus et calamitosis, nullius oratione evocata. Propone tibi duos reges et id animo contemplare quod oculis non potes: dabis profecto id misericordiae quod iracundiae denegasti. Multa sunt 78 79

80

81

Tempest 2013: 279; Cf. Ruch 1965: 33. As the Laelius to his Scipio (Fam. 5.7.3). Kurczyk notes that Cicero later sought to exculpate himself for responsibility for the civil war by describing himself as an “unheeded advisor” to both Pompey and Caesar; Kurczyk 2006: 312. Rawson, Dobesch, Winterbottom, and Tempest see this as potentially genuine and sincere on Cicero’s part, since it is generally consistent with his earlier policies and beliefs regarding political morality; Rawson 1975: 219; Dobesch 1985: 158–61, 207; Winterbottom 2002; Tempest 2013. Cf. Gagliardi 1997: 255–7; Gotoff 2002: 259–60; Albrecht 2003: 177; Gildenhard 2011: 242.

74

The Orator as Friend monumenta clementiae tuae, sed maxime eorum incolumitates quibus salutem dedisti. I should not do what usually is done in such high-stakes cases, Caesar, and try to figure out how I can arouse your pity by speaking. There’s no need. Your pity usually comes to meet suppliants and the downtrodden, not called forth by anyone’s oratory. Look at the two kings before you and contemplate in your mind what you cannot with your eyes; you’ll immediately give the latitude to pity that you denied to anger. There are many monuments to your clemency, but most of all the wellbeing of those whom you restored. (Deiot. 40)

As after his return from exile, Cicero’s gratitude for a political restoration is given a central place in his self-fashioning. One can imagine Cicero pointing to himself in this last clause, including himself as a “monument” to Caesar’s clemency and generosity in friendship. Caesar knows as well as Cicero does that the orator’s usual commiseratio belongs at this point in the speech, especially when the orator in question is Cicero, who was famous for this technique. With a wink and a nod,82 Cicero makes a show of foregoing that usual stirring of pathos and leaves it to Caesar himself to don the role of friend – or of merciful ruler, as he likes – toward Deiotarus. He thus “put[s] Caesar’s own character on trial”83 and pressures him to acquiesce to Cicero’s arguments. If Caesar wants to show consistency with his own character as clemens, he must indulge Cicero. In Mackendrick’s estimation, “what this speech does is force JC, in the name of consistency, to adhere to his policy of clementia. This is not naïve, and Cicero’s aim is not flattery, but encouragement of concordia.”84 Friendship and gratitude lend themselves to policies of cooperation and compromise, reconciliation and concessions. Cicero also plays on Caesar’s formal ties of friendship and hospitality with Deiotarus from before the war, reminding him that even after Pharsalus, “you never accused him of being your enemy, but of being a friend delinquent in his duty, because he had been closer in friendship to Gn. Pompey than to you” (Deiot. 9). It is worth noting that Cicero claims the opposite, that Caesar was overtly hostile to Deiotarus, in the Second Philippic (2.93–5), showing that Cicero’s earlier claim of friendship was calculated, if not a complete fabrication. When Cicero later published this speech, it may well have cast Caesar’s power in a negative light as a call to action, as Botermann and 82 83 84

Another wink occurs earlier in Deiot. 31, when Cicero quotes his own “O tempora, O mores!” Peer 2008: 191. Peer interprets the speech as subversive and threatening, exposing Caesar’s selffashioning as propaganda, rather than pressuring him to act in a certain way. MacKendrick 1995: 425; cf. Gagliardi 1997: 194–200 and 37–8 on the speech for Ligarius.

Cicero’s “Friends” in 44–43 bce

75

Monteleone suggest. However, at the time it was delivered the speech also had an intended effect on its audience, Caesar, which should not be overlooked: Deiotarus was acquitted, his “friendship” with Caesar reaffirmed.85 Cicero found ways to try to turn expressions of admiration to his own political purposes. Yet even during Caesar’s dictatorship, his praise had limits. He wrote to Atticus in 45 that he had tried to write a letter of advice on ruling to Caesar, in the style of Aristotle’s or Theopompus’ letters (συμβουλευτικὸν) to Alexander, but while those two authors wrote what was “honorable for them and welcome to Alexander,” Cicero saw no way to do the same (Att. 12.40.2, cf. 13.28.1–3).86 He had expected to meet with disapproval from his colleagues in the senate for his advocacy for Pompey and Caesar before the war, but after the war he may have anticipated that such advocacy was becoming increasingly unacceptable. However, after Caesar’s assassination, Cicero tried again to apply his technique of using praise as a form of pressure, brought to bear on the consuls of 44 and 43 and on the senators he addresses in his Philippics.

Cicero’s “Friends” in 44–43 bce After the civil war, Cicero began to find new ways of making his influence felt on successive generations and used overtures of friendship to cast himself in the role of a benevolent but authoritative mentor to prominent young politicians.87 Later, this asymmetrical relationship exerted pressure on his young “friends” to conform to Cicero’s policy and earn his selective praise, with mixed results. These friendships started, however, as a way for Cicero to protect himself. He thought that friendship with well-placed individuals like Hirtius and Dolabella would protect him and that his contribution to their oratorical skills would gratify his “friend” Caesar as well.88 Cicero apparently thought that his relationship with his son-in-law 85 86 87 88

Botermann 1992; Monteleone 2003: 268–90. Hall 2009a: 99; Monteleone 2003: 171–7; Rosillo-López 2010. Richlin 2011. Griffin, Gildenhard and Baraz also stress the didactic purpose of his written works, especially in this same period; Griffin 1997: 10–12; Gildenhard 2007a: 32, 75–88; Baraz 2012: 95. In July of 46 he writes cheerfully to Papirius Paetus that “as Dionysius the tyrant, when he was expelled from Syracuse, is said to have opened a school at Corinth, I began to give lessons of some sort, since the courts have been removed and my reign in the forum has ended” (Fam. 9.18.1), and so he was teaching the young politicians (and Caesarian partisans) Hirtius and Dolabella rhetoric (9.16.4, cf. 9.16.2). According to Suetonius’ De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus, Cicero called Hirtius and Dolabella, both prominent Caesarian partisans who had already held political office and who would serve as consuls in the following years, his “unusually tall schoolboys (grandis praetextatos)” (25.3).

76

The Orator as Friend

Dolabella had borne fruit in 44 bce, when Dolabella, who had replaced the assassinated Caesar in the consulship of 44 bce, removed a memorial column to Caesar from the forum (cf. Phil. 1.5).89 Cicero wrote to him to express how proud he was of his former student and how pleased he was “that common public opinion credits me as a partner in your triumphs” (Fam. 9.14.1), an expression reminiscent of his earlier treatment of Milo. “You see, I’m really quite eager for glory, beyond what is sufficient. But still, it does not subtract from your status that you enjoy what helped Agamemnon himself, king of kings: to have some Nestor to help him form plans. Likewise you, a celebrated young man, a consul, adorned with praise, are an alumnus (so to speak) of my teaching (quasi alumnum disciplinae meae)” (9.14.2). Cicero makes light of his own eagerness for fame and glory as a teacher but is quick to palliate Dolabella by claiming that praise for Cicero is really praise for Dolabella, and vice versa, because the two are so closely linked not only as father- and son-in-law but as teacher and student. This provided the foundation for a new phase of sorts in Cicero’s self-fashioning, as an elder statesman, a Nestor figure, who could provide advice and guidance by virtue of his experience.90 Once again, he seems to have felt that he had more to gain by expressions of friendship and admiration toward those with whom he disagreed. In these letters, Cicero treats his praise as a reward to be meted out and as an incentive to further glory, as if his young protégés will become addicted to his approval and continue to seek it. His flattering comparison of Dolabella to Agamemnon sets up the rest of the letter, in which he pressures Dolabella to continue acting in the “interests of the republic,” which is to say, as Cicero would want him to act: proponam tibi claros viros, quod facere solent qui hortantur? neminem habeo clariorem quam te ipsum; te imitere oportet, tecum ipse certes; ne licet quidem tibi iam tantis rebus gestis non tui similem esse. quod cum ita sit, hortatio non est necessaria, gratulatione magis utendum est; . . . legi enim contionem tuam; nihil illa sapientius . . . Should I suggest famous men to you, as people often do in exhortations? I hold none more famous than you yourself. You have to imitate yourself, vie with yourself; for now that you’ve done such great things, you certainly can’t be unlike yourself. Since that is so, exhortation is not necessary, and 89 90

It is probably not a coincidence that Cicero’s De Amicitia dates to this period in which he was dispensing “friendly advice” so profusely; cf. Habinek 1990. Although this is not dissimilar to Cicero’s claim to be the Laelius to Pompey’s Scipio in 62 bce (Fam. 5.7.3).

Cicero’s “Friends” in 44–43 bce

77

I should instead use the mode of congratulations. . . . I read your contio: nothing is wiser than that speech. (Fam. 9.14.7)

Cicero’s play on the conventions of an exhortation seems especially playful addressed to his own student in rhetoric, to whom he might have taught those conventions. His praise of Dolabella’s contional speech, similarly, seems especially significant, coming not only from a master orator but from Dolabella’s own mentor, but it also implicitly pressures Dolabella to keep emulating his mentor. Once again, Cicero seems to mete out praise for eloquence on the basis of agreement with the speaker’s policies and friendship between them. His praise also makes his rather pedantic and controlling instructions for Dolabella’s behavior more palatable. Cicero treats his former students Hirtius and Plancus similarly (Fam. 10.1, 10.3),91 praising them when they act in ways that he thinks merit “true” glory. It is telling, in terms of what kinds of pressure a friend could exert, that both Cicero and Antony made claims on each other on the basis of their “friendship”92 before attacking each other and becoming enemies in September of 44. For his part, Antony clearly wanted to be able to count on Cicero as a “friend,” hence his demand that Cicero be present in the senate for a vote on honors for Caesar before the fateful break;93 his anger at Cicero’s absence shows how badly he had wanted (the appearance of) the senior statesman’s support. Cicero, too, had wanted to be “friends” with Antony, but as equals and on his own terms, and so used their “friendship” as the basis for pressure. In the First Philippic, he insists that he is a friend and not an enemy to Antony and to Dolabella, now suffect consul.94 He advises each to remember what supreme glory he had achieved earlier in the year by following Cicero’s lead and expresses concern rather ominously that they might stray from the path of such “true” glory and even suffer the same fate Caesar had (1.29),95 but veils this threat by maintaining an explicit role as a friendly mentor. Cicero’s treatment of Antony in the First Philippic is not unlike his treatment of Caesar in Pro Marcello, in some important respects. In both situations he couched criticism in a framework of wanting to help the 91 92 93 95

Hall 2009b: 278–89. Habinek 1990: 182–3. Cf. Hall 2009b: 87–99 on the unconvincingly “friendly” correspondence between Cicero and Antony during the civil war. Phil. 1.11–15. 94 Stevenson and Wilson 2008a: 6–7; Usher 2008: 126; Manuwald 2008. Harries notes the “apparent moderation” of the First Philippic as the first stage in the “narrative” of opposition to Antony; Harries 2006: 204–8. Scatolin compares the praise of Antony in Phil. 1 to the praise of Caesar in Marc.; Scatolin 2018: 142–4.

78

The Orator as Friend

powerful man succeed, predicated on the assumption that they share the same understanding of “success” as a lasting reputation for justice and serving the republic well. He praises Antony for “restoring the republic” by abolishing the dictatorship (3–4), just as he had praised Caesar for “conquering victory” (Marc. 12) and restoring the senate (see Chapter 5), to create the bond of mutual gratitude and to set out a roadmap for continuing friendship and approval. In both Pro Marcello (21–2) and the First Philippic (35), in his persona as a friend, he goes so far as to raise the possibility that his addressee might even be assassinated if he does not follow Cicero’s “friendly” advice, considerably raising the stakes of the pressure he exerts. In Pro Marcello, however, he had minimized the civil war and thus the conflict with Caesar as a tragic mistake or misunderstanding, which had now been resolved (30). In the First Philippic the conflict with Antony is much more fresh, and Cicero is more direct in instructing Antony on how to effect a reconciliation while still claiming to want such a reconciliation (1.33–5). If that proves impossible, Cicero implies that he will not be the one whose reputation is damaged: “the life I have lived is almost enough, whether in terms of age or in terms of glory” (38). This is nearly a quotation of Caesar himself, at least as Cicero represented his words in Pro Marcello (25), which itself may have been a quotation of Epaminondas’ dying words.96 The effect may be to reclaim Caesar’s legacy for Cicero instead of Antony, or to cast Cicero in the role of the martyr, another important persona in the Philippics to which we will return in Chapter 3. This speech stretches the rhetoric of friendship to its limits,97 especially because, as events unfolded, Antony and Dolabella both chose to aim beyond what Cicero found acceptable, for rewards greater than the praise of Cicero. Perhaps the former claims of friendship between Antony and Cicero helped to drive Cicero to extremes in his condemnation of Antony after this break, as a way of justifying the extraordinary rupturing of amicitia,98 or to prove that Cicero’s newfound hatred for Antony was not opportunistic but sincere. In a bit of revisionist history in the 96

97 98

Caesar is quoted in Pro Marcello as saying often that “I have lived long enough, whether for nature or for glory.” Epaminondas, according to Cornelius Nepos, cries satis vixi at the moment of his death (9.3), and this account is probably based on historians known to Cicero, Ephorus and/or Callisthenes; Bradley 1991: 89–108. Stevenson emphasizes the hostility to Antony and Antony’s anger in response to the First Philippic: Stevenson 2009. In 52 bce, Cicero wrote that he hated the Clodian tribune Munatius Plancus Bursa even more than he hated Clodius, because Cicero had defended Bursa in court and then had been betrayed by him, so that inimicitia was fiercer when it took the place of amicitia (Fam. 7.2.2–3); Epstein 1987: 42.

Cicero’s “Friends” in 44–43 bce

79

undelivered Second Philippic,99 his most extreme expression of that hatred, Cicero claimed that his professions of friendship had merely been calculated to keep him safe from an “imprudent,” tyrannical individual, and that the only beneficium from Antony for which he was grateful was Antony’s forbearance in not assassinating him (2.5–6).100 After Antony and Dolabella broke off their friendships with him, Cicero continued to insist that the rest of his network was intact, portraying himself as the node linking others through their amicitia with him. He was at his most pedantic in the eleventh Philippic, instructing the consul Gaius Pansa explicitly to “imitate me, whom you always praised” in giving up a province (11.23). In correspondence with Asinius Pollio and Munatius Plancus,101 too, Cicero continued to try to advise younger men and to rally them to the republican cause, until the friendship formed between Antony and Octavian doomed that cause. To the end, he continued to praise the “liberators” and “defenders” of the republican constitution, in an effort to reassign greater value to the kind of politics he championed. Throughout the Philippics, Cicero’s near-obsession with symbolic gestures, particularly formal thanksgivings and commemorative monuments, shows that he continued to deploy praise as a form of pressure.102 In the First Philippic his praise of Brutus and Cassius is intertwined with praise of Piso and Hirtius as well as the consuls, bringing Caesarians and republicans into the same network.103 He had promised in his philosophical works and in his letters to his young listeners that serving the republic would earn them true glory,104 and now he tried to mete out honors and praise to fulfill his promise, perhaps with too much enthusiasm. He proposed that the senate officially deem the actions of Octavian, Decimus Brutus, and Marcus Brutus legal and just (Phil. 3.37–9, 10.25–6), proposed official honors for Lepidus and Octavian (5.38–47), military exemptions and land grants for the soldiers who fought against Antony (5.53), rewards and later even a monument for soldiers who deserted Antony (8.33, 11.39, 99 100 101

102 103 104

This is revisionist in the sense that it corrects a previous narrative; which of the two (if either) better represents Cicero’s true motivation is, of course, an open question. Konstan 1997: 126–7. Fam. 10.31–4, 10.1–24, on which see Leach 2006, especially 261 on Plancus: “Cicero can conceive a complementary relationship with his self-styled protegee making gloria the carrot of compliance that his correspondence extends.” Pitcher connects this to the passage in De Republica that identifies praise and glory as incentives for political probity, and shame as a disincentive; Pitcher 2008: 132–3. Cf. Monteleone 2003: 364. The expressions of friendship and friendly concern Cicero received from prominent Caesarians in 49 bce anticipate this dynamic; Tatum 2017: 64–9. De Orat. 1.194, 2.342; Rep. 6.25; Fin. 2.44; Tusc. Disp. 1.110, 2.58, 3.3; Off. 2.43. On the letters, see Steel 2005: 103–6.

80

The Orator as Friend

14.31–8),105 and a supplication in honor of the consuls Hirtius and Pansa after both were killed (14.37–8). As Manuwald puts it, “Cicero’s letters make it clear that he used panegyric as a weapon in this political fight to influence people and to endow them with powers beyond the constitutional.”106 In the months after the last Philippic was delivered, Brutus even chastised him for proposing honors with excessive enthusiasm (ad Brut. 1.4 (11).3, cf. Phil. 11.36). Cicero responded that he was merely incentivizing good behavior (ad Brut. 1.15 (23).9).107 Brutus was concerned (rightly, as it turned out) about the loyalty of men like Lepidus108 or Octavian who received these signs of approval from the senate. Throughout the Philippics, we see Cicero clinging rhetorically to friendships, real or imagined or one-sided, in order to claim the power of a political network.

Conclusion Cicero’s gratitude, and his character as a grateful and generous person, became cornerstones of his self-fashioning after exile. He was lavish in praising his friends, including clients like Milo and Sestius, and the senators who supported his restoration in 57 bce. These friends had provided him a service in his hour of need, but the orator was not content to repay them behind the scenes or through gratitude expressed privately. Instead, he used his speeches as the vehicles for a highly public, amplified performance of his gratitude in order to enhance the reputations of his “friends.” Increasingly, as he developed his thinking about the proper place of glory and virtue in the republic through his philosophical works, he also found ways to argue for his values in the act of praising “friends.” Praise became a vehicle for social pressure, as in Pro Rabirio Postumo and Pro Marcello, and mentorship a newly prominent variation on friendship in his last speeches. This tactic does not seem to have been especially successful, but it does testify to the importance of personal relationships in Roman politics; it is unusual for modern politicians (and even more unusual for modern lawyers) to speak about their friendships with each other, especially as the basis for policy, but it seems to have been the norm in republican Rome. 105 106 107 108

This may have been the first monument of its kind proposed in Rome; Östenberg 2019. Manuwald 2011: 95. The idea of “true” gloria also occupies Cicero in De Officiis, and in the lost treatise De Gloria (Att. 16.2.6); Long 1995; Long 2006. On Lepidus’ politics in 44–43 bce, see Welch 1995a; Weigel 2002: 44–66.

Conclusion

81

Problems and complications arose when it came to claiming to enjoy a friendly relationship with Pompey and Caesar, as Cicero chose to do. Cicero, especially in times of political vulnerability, chose to err on the side of friendliness in order to preserve his relationships with powerful men. He argued explicitly that he was a friend to Pompey and Caesar not because he expected to benefit from that relationship (although he certainly did, as he describes in his letters) but because they served the republic, as he did. Moreover, he explained his panegyric-style praise of each man as simply giving him his due. Their extraordinary achievements called for equally extraordinary praise, in the economic calculations of Roman friendship, but such extraordinary praise was indecorous coming from Cicero; in speaking about them, he was forced to choose between appearing to be either ungrateful or sycophantic, and he chose the latter. Their reputations needed no enhancing, and in the eyes of many it was irresponsible to add to their already disproportionate status. Cicero’s attempts to expand the rhetoric of friendship to account for his relationships with these men, and with Antony and other Caesarians in the Philippics, therefore tend to come across as unsuccessful, pandering accommodations rather than genuine expressions of camaraderie. Ultimately, Cicero may have proved himself right that no orator had sufficient words to praise a man like Pompey or Caesar; at least, no common praise was sufficient for dynasts who competed for greater and greater glory. As a result, Cicero is often seen as sacrificing independence and sincerity to collaborate with the “triumvirs,” who are then seen to play a role as conspiratorial puppet masters.

chapter 3

The Orator as a Martyr

Introduction The tropes of martyrdom narratives turn the pathos of victimhood into strength. In his persona as a martyr, Cicero portrayed himself as embattled and resilient, suffering terribly for the common good, in a way designed to evoke feelings of protectiveness and even vengefulness from his audience. Cicero’s claims to have sacrificed himself for the good of the republic in 58 bce paint him as a martyr, one who bore the full brunt of a blow meant for others, and who chose to endure immense suffering in order to spare others.1 Cicero claimed that he had left Rome and gone into a sort of exile not because of any wrongdoing, but to defuse the conflict with Clodius and to avoid any further violence.2 The affect here is one of emotional anguish and suffering paired with defiance and determination, founded upon a morally upright character. This persona as a martyr helped Cicero to turn his exile from a liability into a potential advantage, rhetorically reframing what others called a cowardly flight from danger as a voluntary act of self-destruction for the sake of his community. Dyck, in his analysis of the trope of devotio and self-sacrifice in Cicero’s post reditum orations, points out that while Cicero could cite plenty of exempla of politicians unjustly exiled, he lacked particular models for resuming political activity after time in exile.3 However, a persona as a sort of living 1

2 3

May 1988: 97; cf. Kurczyk 2006: 230–40. He claims to have “piloted the ship of state through the greatest whirlwinds and waves and brought her safe to harbor” in his consulship, and then “saw other winds, foresaw other hurricanes, and when other storms were threatening, I did not retreat but offered myself twice as the sole sacrifice for the welfare of all” (Pis. 20–1). E.g., Red. Sen. 33–4; Red. Pop. 1; Dom. 63–4, 96–9; Sest. 45–6, Planc. 86–94. Dyck 2004a: 301–2; cf. Nicholson 1992: 37–9, 107–9. “War er zuvor Schützer und Repräsentant des Staatswesens und seiner Werte, setzt er sich und sein Schicksal nun mit dem Staat gleich, denn erst durch diese Identifikation wird es ihm möglich, seine Abwesenheit als Opfer zu interpretieren, sein Einzelschicksal auf eine übergeordnete Ebene von allgemeinem Interesse zu heben und sich selbst in einen größeren Kontext einzubinden”; Kurczyk 2006: 219, 212–27 on the self-sacrifice theme in general.

82

Introduction

83

martyr was also useful more generally, playing up a sense of imminent danger posed by some more powerful individual or group. Cicero had first employed this self-fashioning strategy in the Catilinarians,4 and after exile he returned to it many times, particularly in De Domo Sua, Pro Sestio, and Philippics 2 and 12. The Romans celebrated the stunning act of self-sacrifice known as devotio, a Roman general’s suicidal charge into enemy ranks to save the lives of his soldiers, such as the exemplary devotio of P. Decius Mus (Livy 10.28–30).5 Martyrdom, in this sense or in the more common Christian religious sense, is heroic even (or perhaps especially) in failure, an innately tragic role. This persona is defined not by political relationships but by a lack thereof, by isolation from the majority, who take a less extreme stance or otherwise fail to provide the support that would make martyrdom unnecessary. The martyr either disregards or outright scorns conformity and pandering. When we think of devotio or martyrdom in a political sense, we think of an individual facing almost certain failure or even ostracism, but who continues to pursue their chosen course of action courageously, regardless of the consequences. Politicians rarely take such risks. The martyr’s perseverance is rooted in deep-seated conviction of the righteousness of their actions and a sense of duty; their defiant attitude thus “bears witness” to what is morally right. Challenges to that view will only reinforce their defiance. Martyrs are also enticed by the expectation of future rewards. The martyr may hope to sacrifice themselves for some greater communal good, so that others may thrive and avoid the pain or destruction the martyr will suffer. They may hope to be rewarded themselves with glory and praise for their virtue and heroism, in this world or the next. The martyr’s self-sacrifice is therefore markedly performative, oriented toward others who must be trusted (or led) to feel the validating admiration and commiseration that will make the martyr’s suffering worthwhile. The martyr’s audience may also feel shame or guilt but must not have the power to prevent the martyr’s suffering; they may be a later generation, appreciating the martyr looking back in hindsight, or afraid that the martyr’s enemies may be too powerful to be resisted. The martyr does not seek out suffering but tolerates it when suffering is the only moral choice. 4 5

Cat. 1.15–6; 2.3, 15; 3.27–9, 4.1–2. Catherine Steel identifies the role of “heroic solitude” with Cicero’s persona before his exile: Steel 2005: 49. May emphasizes the importance of this theme in Pro Sestio and De Domo Sua; May 1988: 97–8. Cicero gives other examples of noble deaths at Scaur. 1b-5.

84

The Orator as a Martyr

Cicero was probably not the first orator of the late republic to take on this persona, nor was he the only one actually martyred in the end. The image of Cicero’s lifeless head and writing hand nailed to the rostra in 43 bce is a gruesome symbol of the death of the republic at the hands of the second triumvirate.6 Yet this was not the first time an orator had been thus treated. The Gracchi, both accomplished orators, had both been assassinated in public, and several orators of the generation before Cicero’s had been executed and had their heads fixed upon the same rostra as Cicero’s (De Orat. 3.10).7 Cicero’s status as a martyr for the republic has been followed by a qualifying asterisk, however, not only because he did not take his own life like Cato or Brutus8 but also because in his lifetime he did not always confront danger as boldly as some thought he should.9 When we think of martyr figures in the late republic, it is not Cicero but his contemporary Cato the Younger who fits the bill best. Cato showed the kind of uncompromising integrity, philosophical conviction, and absolute moral rigidity which we expect of a martyr’s character, a total selfmastery.10 Cicero confesses uncertainty, indecisiveness, and anxiety in both his speeches and his letters, which seem to make him all too human and undisciplined, unlike the exemplary Cato.11 Cicero did not so much fail to live up to his persona as a martyr, but rather intentionally generated an alternative vision of the role of the martyr 6

Richlin discusses the symbolism of Cicero’s decapitation in Richlin 2002. Marcus Antonius (cos. 99) and Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo, two of the interlocutors of Cicero’s own treatise De Oratore, had been executed by the regime of Marius and Cinna; Crassus, the third major interlocutor of Cicero’s dialogue, had died of natural causes shortly before the outbreak of civil war, “so that he, who did not see these things, seemed both to have lived as long as the republic, and to have died together with it” (ibid.). See Görler 1988: 229–31; Cf. Ledentu 2004: 171–96. 8 And there was some debate over how bravely he met his death; Sen. Rhet. Contr. 7.2, Suas. 6.17–24; Dio 47.8.3; Plut. Cic. 47.1–48.4. 9 Asinius Pollio apparently wrote in his history: “if only he had been able to tolerate good fortune with greater moderation, and bad fortune with more courage! . . . I would not even judge his end as wretched, if he had not thought death so wretched himself” (Sen. Rhet. Suas. 6.24). However, see also Quintilian’s defense of Cicero’s character at Inst. 12.1.14–7: “to some, he seems not to have been brave enough, and he made the best response to them himself: he was timid not in encountering danger, but in preparing for it. His death itself also proved that point, which he encountered with great spirit” (12.1.17). Stockton writes that “he had too little faith to be a martyr, too much to be an apostate”; Stockton 1971: 254. 10 Mommsen wrote that “This republican opposition derived from Cato its whole attitude – stately, transcendental in its rhetoric, pretentiously rigid, hopeless, and faithful to death; and accordingly it began even immediately after his death to revere as a saint the man who in his lifetime was not unfrequently its laughing-stock and its scandal”; tr. Dickson 1996: vol. v, 304. For a recent treatment of Cato’s political ethics, especially as they pertain to provincial government, see Chapters 3 and 8 of Morrell 2017. 11 He also contrasted his own lenitas with Cato’s severitas himself in Pro Murena 58–75; cf. Samponaro 2007: 118–20. 7

The Weeping Martyr in De Domo Sua

85

in the course of his speeches after his exile, founded upon values of humanity and emotional connection to the republic and to one’s fellow citizens. Dyck notes that many scholars have ridiculed Cicero’s revisionist use of the martyrdom trope, when he had so clearly succumbed to fear, excessive grief, and unheroic self-pity in 58.12 Such emotions were indecorous for a late republican leading figure. However, in Cicero’s persona, these traits are not mutually exclusive with self-sacrifice, but essential for it. The contrast between Cicero and Cato helps us to grasp how Cicero brought his inventiveness to bear on the old idea of devotio, to adapt it to his own circumstances. In De Domo Sua in particular, Cicero chooses to embrace excessive emotion and grief as informing his self-sacrifice, uniting unusual pathos with the act of devotio in his own idiosyncratic way. In Pro Sestio, Cicero also brought a didactic bent to his persona as a martyr, using that persona to promote his influence as a role model, especially and explicitly for the young men in his audiences, in an effort to ensure that posterity would validate his legacy. In the Philippics he takes a much more typical, Catonian approach to the role of the martyr, with less success.

The Weeping Martyr in De Domo Sua Cicero’s melodramatic, emotional side might not seem to fit with a typical martyr’s heroic fortitude, and it did not entirely fit with Roman norms of decorum and dignity.13 However, he argues that his narrative of selfsacrifice is enhanced rather than undermined by his expressions of grief and pain, especially in De Domo Sua, delivered shortly after his return from exile in 57. Cicero later wrote to Atticus that his profound dolor had given him “a kind of power (vim) in speaking” in De Domo Sua (4.2.2).14 Cicero’s moral force as an attacker is at full throttle in this speech, especially in the specifically partisan polemics later in the speech, which we will discuss in Chapter 7. However, when he narrates his departure into exile, he strikes a different note and takes a confessional tone, admitting that he did not endure his experience with nearly the fortitude his audience might expect: Accepi, pontifices, magnum atque incredibilem dolorem: non nego, neque istam mihi adscisco sapientiam quam non nulli in me requirebant, qui me animo nimis fracto esse atque adflicto loquebantur. An ego poteram, cum 12 13 14

Dyck 2004a: 300. On the letters in particular, see Garcea 2004. Although these norms were more complicated than they often seem; Gunderson 2000; Connolly 2007: 118–57; Dressler 2016. Cf. MacKendrick 1995: 220–1 on dolor in Pro Sestio.

86

The Orator as a Martyr a tot rerum tanta varietate divellerer, quas idcirco praetereo quod ne nunc quidem sine fletu commemorare possum, infitiari me esse hominem et communem naturae sensum repudiare? Tum vero neque illud meum factum laudabile nec beneficium ullum a me in rem publicam profectum dicerem, si quidem ea rei publicae causa reliquissem quibus aequo animo carerem, eamque animi duritiam, sicut corporis, quod cum uritur non sentit, stuporem potius quam virtutem putarem. I was struck by great and incredible sorrow, pontifices. I do not deny it, nor do I claim to have the “wisdom” which some demanded of me, when they said that my spirit was overly broken and prostrate. When I was being torn apart by such a range of so many things (which I pass over, since I cannot recall them without weeping even now), could I have denied that I was human and repudiated the sensibility nature has given to us all? Moreover, I would not say that that deed of mine was praiseworthy or that I had done any good for the Republic, if I had only left things behind which I could serenely go without, for the sake of the Republic. I would consider that to be hard-heartedness, like the numbness of a body which does not feel it when it is burned, rather than virtue. (Dom. 97–8)

Some of Cicero’s contemporaries apparently disapproved of the strong emotions that Cicero not only felt but demonstrated to the public, and they tried to undermine his moral authority by criticizing his lack of fortitude.15 Rather than deny that these claims are true, Cicero instead tries to prove that his emotions give him greater moral authority, not less, because they prove the strength of his commitment to the republic, even at his own expense.16 Great men are said to have the philosophical virtue of sapientia, which might enable them to remain calm in situations of adversity, but Cicero implies that such calmness is really an unnatural, inhuman suppression of normal emotions or a disturbing lack of care.17 Far from apologizing for his failings, Cicero openly admits them and even seeks to redefine their valence, to reframe the terms of martyrdom. In making this confession of susceptibility to strong emotions, Cicero was simply acknowledging what was already obvious and well known. His tale of martyrdom was a plausible version of events and a much more powerful political stance than the abject grief he expressed (and probably felt) while actually in exile.18 However, we should remember that displaying emotion was usually advantageous to him in general. It was his ability 15 16 18

Including Atticus (Att. 3.8.4, 3.10.2); Lintott 2008: 175–9. His friends also criticized his excessive emotions at his daughter’s death in 45 bce (Fam. 5.14.2, 4.5.2, 5–6). Gildenhard 2011: 38. 17 He articulates a similar idea through Laelius in Amic. 10. Already in 58 bce, he tells Atticus that “if I am restored, I will seem to have made less of a mistake” (Att. 3.15.4), recognizing already that the narrative framing of his exile would depend on its outcome.

The Weeping Martyr in De Domo Sua

87

to inspire emotion in his orations, particularly his perorations and concluding commiserationes, that had made him famous in the first place. In this period after his return, his speeches defending Sestius, Plancius, Scaurus, and Milo all end with elaborate, emotionally overwrought confessions of pity and distress on the behalf of the defendants, their families, and himself, their zealous friend and advocate. In a trial of 66 bce, he even criticized an opposing orator for lack of emotion, arguing that the orator must have fabricated the whole charge if he wasn’t visibly upset about it: “where is the grief, where is the mental burning that even from the minds of the speechless usually elicits vocalizations and complaints? There’s no perturbation, mental or bodily, no striking of forehead or thigh” (Brut. 278). For Cicero, there can be no such thing as caring too much about one’s client or one’s country, or getting too carried away with pity or gratitude.19 His proclivity for emotion in his orations also has other benefits. It gives him the appearance of openness and sincerity rather than dissimulation.20 It makes him a more sympathetic figure to his audiences, as his appeals to “human nature” suggest, and creates a rapport with them. It enables him to claim to look indulgently on the misdeeds of his friends (as we saw in Chapter 2), since he does not claim moral perfection or philosophical detachment, and also allows him to beg the same humanity and leniency of a jury that he has demonstrated himself.21 Likewise, when he does express anger, it is a righteous indignation, which he claims is the only appropriate and indeed the only moral reaction for a politician in certain situations.22 Even though he praises the Stoic fortitude and impassivity of Cato and of Milo (Sest. 60, Mil. 96–8), he does not claim to achieve it himself, preferring instead to employ the full range of pathos in persuasion.23 Thus, the grief that he says left him broken and downtrodden in exile was consistent with his self-fashioning more generally. 19 20

21 22

23

As we saw in Chapter 2; in Chapter 1, however, it is clear that it is possible (in Cicero’s eyes) to get too carried away by anger, outrage, or hatred, as implied by his rhetorical shows of self-control. “The civilized, urbane, cosmopolitan, virtuous use of otium is humanitas, a Ciceronian coinage – in his total oeuvre he uses it 600 times – with wide implications: it is what distinguishes men from the apes; it involves taste, and avoidance of conspicuous consumption. Its first duty is to the community: to induce it to assent to the rule of law and reason. . . . It is the ideal characteristic of the professional man and public servant: it enables him to show grace under pressure”; MacKendrick 1995: 208; cf. Nybakken 1939; Büchner 1957. Cf. Haury 1955: 238–40. What Narducci calls “un sentimento di rivolta morale inspirato dalla vista dell’ingiustizia, e perciò strettamente legato alla saggezza e alla ragione,” Narducci 1997: 79. See also Leon 1935; Hall 2014: 64–128. Although Melchior points out that Milo’s act is described as a valiant self-sacrifice, “twinning” Cicero’s self-description in the Catilinarians; Melchior 2008: 285–90. See Tzounakas 2009 on the characterization of Milo.

88

The Orator as a Martyr

In De Domo Sua, Cicero’s continuing anger and grief showed the jury that an injustice had been done and was yet unpunished, left to them. Meanwhile, his use of pathos gave him greater force because it helped him to evoke sympathy from his audience for his grief, both over his exile and over the loss of his house. His argument throughout the speech is that the house is not just a house but is a symbol of his political reputation, and particularly of its loss; by making his audience see how deeply he felt that loss and evoking their pity, he hopes to sway them into seeing the case as much more than a matter of property rights and religious technicalities. His exile was not only an injustice but a deep wound, a political death, symbolized by the destruction of his house. In addition, his persona as a martyr puts his audience in the position of owing him a great debt, since he sacrificed himself for them (or so he argues), and winning their sympathy and pity will help him to capitalize on that alleged debt. He does not exclude this sort of soft-hearted pathos from his persona as a martyr, as we might expect, but makes his failure to discipline his emotions an essential part of his self-sacrifice instead. Six months later, having won back his house, Cicero returned to the persona of the martyr again in his defense of Sestius. By then, his grief was less fresh and partly assuaged by his recent political victories, and so his emotions are less salient. Now we find him taking a calmer retrospective on his expulsion, but he is no less eager to persuade his audience to follow his example, or to impose his own narrative framework on his “sacrifice” and on that of his client Sestius. In Pro Sestio he offers himself up as an exemplum of noble, selfless leadership.

Martyrdom as Exemplum in Pro Sestio Sestius had rallied to Cicero’s cause in 58–57 bce, choosing the high road to virtue and what Cicero calls “true glory,” and even fighting on Cicero’s behalf in a violent clash with Clodian partisans, in which he had nearly been killed (Sest. 79–81).24 In his defense speech for Sestius on a charge of inciting that same outbreak of violence, Cicero not only emphasizes Sestius’ suffering (on Cicero’s behalf)25 but turns it into a moral lesson for his audience.26 Political righteousness is not always easy, he warns his 24

25

In fact, Cicero also makes a martyr out of Sestius based on this incident: “if you would have avenged his death, if you would be thinking about actually being free men and having a republic, what about his virtue now that he is alive? Do you think that what you should say or feel or think or decide ought to be in any doubt?” (81). May 1988: 93–9. 26 Kaster 2006: 312, 379.

Martyrdom as Exemplum in Pro Sestio

89

audience: “I confess that this class of men, as I said before, has many adversaries, enemies, and detractors. Many dangers are put before it, many injuries inflicted on it, many labors to be performed and undertaken by it” (Sest. 138). Yet the more Cicero warns his audience of the enemies and obstacles they will face, the more he hopes to fire their enthusiasm to embrace a role as fiery, outspoken, brave defenders of republican tradition. They, too, are urged to martyr themselves, sacrificing their own safety and comfort for the good of the republic. This represents a new phase in Cicero’s attempt to make his exile into a source of political capital rather than humiliation. Cicero thus takes on the authority of an exemplum himself.27 Orienting himself toward youthful listeners evaluating their elders in a search for role models, he frames himself as an exemplum to be emulated rather than a cautionary tale. “I warn you, young men, and I ask you to follow this rule of mine, if you have an eye toward dignity, the republic, and glory: if at some point some necessity calls you to defend the republic against bad citizens, do not be too slow and avoid the counsels of good men because of your recollection of my downfall” (Sest. 51). Yes, he was exiled and humiliated and had made many terrible sacrifices, but his downfall was not actually a result of any dishonorable behavior and has now ended in a glorious recall and the restoration of his house. If his audience – the adulescentes he addresses (51, 136), but also the jury, of course – want to attain what he calls “true” glory (137) as opposed to a cheap, fleeting counterfeit version of notoriety, they should embrace Cicero and his client Sestius as role models. Cicero thus frames conservative politics as an arduous high road of sacrificing oneself to preserve institutions, less celebrated but ultimately more rewarding than the “easy” path of populism.28 Accelerating into a grand peroration,29 Cicero repeats his call for exemplary behavior and promises that the martyr’s patient suffering will be rewarded with fame and glory: the optimates “must sweat for the common good, make enemies, sail through storms often on behalf of the republic, and do battle with many shameless, dishonest, and sometimes powerful men. We have heard such things about the ideas and deeds of the greatest men, we have been told such things, we have read such things” 27 28

29

For other examples, see Lowrie 2007. Prost argues that Cicero embodied the rhetorical strategy of commendatio as described in De Oratore, while he regarded Clodius in contrast as embodying inflammatory concitatio, the monster to Cicero’s hero; Prost 2003. On the authenticity of the passage as part of the oration as delivered, see Kaster 2006: 36–7; cf. Stroh 1975: 51 n. 89.

90

The Orator as a Martyr

(139).30 History will be a favorable judge, he promises. Implicitly, those great men of the past also include Cicero himself, specifically in his role as consul in 63. Cicero turns his humiliation into a narrative of vindication and glory, comparing himself ultimately to the great hero Hercules, a model of self-sacrifice and virtuous suffering who attained immortal glory through his arduous labors (143), and turns another self-defense into a rousing exhortation. In most of his speeches, including other portions of Pro Sestio, Cicero does not hesitate to name his enemies or to engage in the classic invective tropes of character assassination (see Chapter 1), but such ad hominem attacks also drag him down into the gutter as well.31 In the peroration from Pro Sestio, by contrast, his vagueness about the nature of the statesman’s enemies and his references to historical and mythological exempla allow him to keep his own persona clean of political mudslinging, to preserve the spotlessness of the virtuous occupant of moral high ground. Relying on metaphor and abstraction in this oration helps Cicero to elevate his rhetoric above petty partisanship and to portray himself as a martyr delivering his manifesto, rather than a political combatant.32 In fact, in the years following Sestius’ trial, Cicero took this call to “true” glory out of the political arena altogether and pursued it in his written works.33 Most notably, his representation of the ideal rector et gubernator rei publicae in De Republica culminates in the Dream of Scipio, which promises eternal rewards for the statesman who fulfills this highest duty to his country even if he finds himself persecuted in his lifetime by lesser minds, as the martyr does.34 There, as in Pro Sestio, Cicero describes the statesman’s enemies in a highly abstract way, part of an ongoing cosmic struggle between good and evil, and promises eventual vindication of virtue in this life or the next. In his speeches after Pro Sestio, however, Cicero increasingly chose a persona that foregrounded pragmatism, leniency, and compromise, eschewing the heroic, defiant stance of the dissident.35 However, his 30 31 32 33 34 35

On the process of generating exempla, see Roller 2004; Pina Polo 2004: 167–8; Roller 2009. On Cicero’s use of them, see especially David 1980: 81–4. Wray 2001: 142; Steel 2007. It also led to Balsdon’s characterization of the “political barrenness” of the speech (Balsdon 1960). Schmidt 1978: 117; Gildenhard 2007a: 75; Baraz 2012: 95; Steel 2017. For recent treatments, see especially Steel 2005: 70–8; Meyer 2006: 113–36; Atkins 2013: 73–9; Zarecki 2014: 5–11. See also Long 2006: 323–4 on De Officiis. See, e.g., De Provinciis Consularibus, Pro Balbo, and Pro Rabirio Postumo. Kurczyk notes that his selffashioning as the savior of the republic diminishes in intensity from 56 to 54 bce, resumed later in Pro Milone (Kurczyk 2006: 262, 268). Mitchell characterizes him in 56 as “obviously determined, whatever the cause, to avoid, when possible, involvements which were likely to cost him political friends,” a rule to which the targets in Chapter 1 were the exceptions; Mitchell 1969: 317.

Cato the Younger as the Ideal Martyr

91

colleague Cato the Younger embraced the character of the moral paragon instead and modeled the role of the martyr in a more straightforwardly traditional way.

Cato the Younger as the Ideal Martyr During Sestius’ trial in 56, Cicero cites Cato as committed to the same principles Cicero supports, but as more extreme in his actions. He recalls a demonstration of Cato’s “unique courage and incredible virtue”: “you remember the day when his colleague had occupied a temple, when we were all afraid for the life of that man and fellow citizen. He went with the utmost firmness of spirit into the temple, and calmed the clamor of men with his authority, calmed the rush of villains with his virtue” (Sest. 62, cf. Mil. 58).36 Incidents like these (see also Plut. Cat. Min. 43.1–3, 44.3–4) contributed to Cato’s overall reputation for outstanding auctoritas, at least among his fellow senators. While his lack of popularity cost him elections and other honors,37 his auctoritas was augmented or renewed by dramatic events like these and allowed him to command a surprising degree of influence in the senate. In fact, sacrificing those honors for the greater good and refusing to compromise his principles for electoral success itself made Cato something of a martyr during his lifetime, even before his death in 46 bce fully realized the narrative of the martyr.38 Cicero explains in De Officiis that Cato’s death followed on the sort of man he was: “because nature had given Cato incredible integrity, and because he had always fortified that integrity with unbroken consistency and always persisted once he had chosen and undertaken a course of action, Cato had to die, rather than look upon the face of a tyrant” (1.112). Cato’s philosophical idealism was also an essential part of his persona as a politician during his lifetime,39 and he often took on the role of the political martyr.

36

37 38

39

Cato established a reputation for exceptional gravity and outspokenness in his tribunate, following his famous oration in favor of executing the Catilinarian conspirators as tribune-elect, as reported in Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae. Van der Blom 2016: 219, 225–30. At least to some, depending on their views of suicide; Griffin 1986a; Griffin 1986b; Sorabji 2014: 159–67; Rauh 2018. Zadorojnyi also questions whether Plutarch’s account of Cato’s suicide should be interpreted as admiring or positive; Zadorojnyi 2007. Cato’s transformation was helped by Cicero’s eulogy, the Laus Catonis, on which see Jones 1970; Kumaniecki 1970; Kierdorf 1978; Zecchini 1980. “The force and fire of his personality weighed more heavily than familial connections. Cato represented for the aristocracy a nobility of purpose and principle that they liked to associate with their whole order. Therein perhaps lay the attractiveness of his policy”; Gruen 1974: 55.

92

The Orator as a Martyr

One good example is his use of filibustering tactics.40 A filibuster is by definition an obstructionist tactic with little lasting efficacy, but it puts the speaker on display as a voice of dissent, particularly as a defender of downtrodden citizens or abandoned values against legislative domination. In that sense, a filibusterer “bears witness” in much the same way as a martyr, likewise doomed to failure in the short term while hoping to prove a broader moral point. Cato used this obstructionist tactic to show his opposition to Caesar in 60 bce and against Pompey and Crassus in 55 bce (Cic. Leg. 3.40, Planc. 24, Plut. Cat. Min. 31.3, 43, 1–4).41 While other orators also made use of the filibuster (Att. 4.2.4 on Clodius, 4.3.3 on Metellus Nepos, Fam. 8.11.1–2 on Hirrus),42 Cato’s filibusters are taken as exemplary of his character. Plutarch narrates one such filibuster with special detail: οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι τὴν ἀντίπραξιν καὶ κώλυσιν ἀπεγνωκότες, ἐξέλιπον καὶ τὸ ἀντειπεῖν, Κάτωνι δ’ ἀναβάντι πρὸ τῆς ψηφοφορίας ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα καὶ βουλομένῳ λέγειν μόλις ὡρῶν δυεῖν λόγον ἔδωκαν. ὡς δὲ πολλὰ λέγων καὶ διδάσκων καὶ προθεσπίζων κατανάλωσε τὸν χρόνον, οὐκέτι λέγειν αὐτὸν εἴων, ἀλλ’ ἐπιμένοντα κατέσπασεν ὑπηρέτης προσελθών. ὡς δὲ καὶ κάτωθεν ἱστάμενος ἐβόα καὶ τοὺς ἀκούοντας καὶ συναγανακτοῦντας εἶχε, πάλιν ὁ ὑπηρέτης ἐπιλαβόμενος καὶ ἀγαγὼν αὐτὸν ἔξω τῆς ἀγορᾶς κατέστησε. καὶ οὐκ ἔφθη πρῶτον ἀφεθείς, καὶ πάλιν ἀναστρέψας ἵετο πρὸς τὸ βῆμα, μετὰ κραυγῆς ἐγκελευόμενος τοῖς πολίταις ἀμύνειν. The others, recognizing the resistance and obstruction, abandoned their dissent, and to Cato, when he climbed up on the rostra before the vote and wished to speak, they allotted a speaking time of barely two hours. When he, saying many things and lecturing and warning, used up his time, they did not let him speak any further, and when he persisted a lictor came and dragged him down. He stood and kept shouting even from ground level, and kept an audience and supporters, so the lictor seized him again, led him out of the forum, and ejected him. No sooner had he been taken out than he turned around and came back to the rostra, commanding the citizens with a shout to protect him. (Cat. Min. 43.2–3, cf. Sen. Ep. 14.13)

Cato stands alone for his republican cause here, abandoned even by his political allies (οἱ ἄλλοι) who had maintained their resistance up to this point. He also overcomes physical resistance (κατέσπασεν ὑπηρέτης προσελθών; ἐπιλαβόμενος καὶ ἀγαγὼν); the forceful repression of speech makes Cato’s act of resistance even more heroic in this narrative. Indeed, Dio, who recounts the same episode, presents this speech of Cato’s as 40 42

Gruen 1974: 95. 41 de Libero 1992: 20–2; Dyck 2004b: 540; Stem 2005: 46–7. Bonnefond-Coudry 1989: 636–8.

Cato the Younger as the Ideal Martyr

93

a staged filibuster, explaining that Cato intentionally used up his time in order to capitalize on the symbolism of being dragged from the rostra (39.34.1–4). Gruen suggests that “[Cato’s] firm opposition to Caesar and Pompey, it can be argued, was deliberately calculated to drive them to extreme positions and to undermine their own standing.”43 The martyr’s self-sacrifice may be performative, but it is a powerful tool in the orator’s self-fashioning and political strategy nonetheless. Plutarch’s account of Cato highlights the many occasions on which Cato gave defiant displays of moral rectitude and indifference to physical risk (both key qualities of the martyr) in order to give the sense that Cato’s death was the culmination of his exceptional career. Plutarch records an incident when Cato nearly sacrificed his own life as he waded into a violent mob to enforce order, even though the mob was taking Cato’s side against his enemies (Plut. Cat. min. 43.4–5). Cato thus performed a self-sacrificing ritual very much like the devotio, throwing himself into an enemy’s midst. In the elections of 52, Cato campaigned for the praetorship but “employed it as a showcase for proper electioneering,” as Gruen remarks, so that “the campaign seems to have been designed to win admiration rather than votes” (cf. Plut. Cat. min. 42.1–5).44 Plutarch and other later authors also glorify Cato as a voice of resistance against Caesar and the first triumvirate (Cat. min. 34.1–4; cf. Sen. Ep. 14.12–13).45 Rather than bowing to political correctness or pragmatism, Cato spoke freely.46 Later writers celebrated this freedom of speech as an exception to the corruption and self-interest of late Republican politicians, so that Valerius Maximus exclaims: “What? Discuss freedom (libertas) without mentioning Cato? No more than one can discuss Cato without mentioning freedom” (Val. Max. 6.2.5, cf. Sen. De Prov. 2.9–10, De Const. Sap. 2.1–2). Republicanism later became synonymous with Catonism under the principate of Augustus.47 This is a tribute

43 45 46

47

Gruen 1974: 54. 44 Gruen 1974: 156. Gambet 1970; Gruen 1974: 91–3; Bellemore 2005; Arena 2012: 189; Morrell 2015. Cicero reports that in a certain senate meeting “no one spoke freely (libere) [in the senate] except for Antius and Favonius, for Cato was sick” (Att. 4.17.4). In general, Cicero’s allusions to “speaking freely (libere dicere)” suggest that “speaking freely” has to do with testing or transgressing social boundaries rather than a political ideal of speaking truth to power, although Cicero was obviously familiar with Greek parrhesia as a political buzzword (e.g., Att. 1.16.8, June/Jul. 61). In his works, to speak libere in a forensic context means to speak “openly” in general, whether by revealing more information than others might think advantageous (e.g., Verr. 2.2.11, De Orat. 2.102, Rhet. Her. 4.48), or by observing the rules of decorum less carefully than usual (e.g., Verr. 2.2.176, Arch. 3, Sest. 3, Sest. 122, Cael. 7; cf. Caes. BC 1.19.3), or by daring to speak despite one’s lack of social status (e.g., Verr. 2.5.141, Leg. Man. 13, Planc. 33). Cf. Wirszubski 1950: 13. Taylor 1949a: 178–80; Goar 1987; George 1991; Möller 2004: 165.

94

The Orator as a Martyr

to the power of Cato’s own self-fashioning in his lifetime, and to Cicero’s fashioning of Cato after his death, in his Laus Catonis. The figure of the martyr is compelling because it is extraordinary, even inhuman, subordinating the natural instinct for survival to a higher calling. In The State of Speech Connolly theorizes that this self-destructive impulse is the ultimate act of the orator’s self-regulation: any orator must demonstrate an ability to control himself and his emotions by means of virtue, but sometimes, “self-mastery can lead to acts of sacrifice that violently exceed the natural order of things,” rendering the orator a martyr.48 Cato exemplifies this understanding of the martyr, but especially by contrast, it is clear that Cicero does not. Cicero’s rhetoric of self-sacrifice is full of unmastered pain and grief, a more natural and human version of martyrdom, and thus is more comprehensible to a broader audience, if less absolute as a positive exemplum. His self-mastery is presented as more of a struggle. While Cato is often presented as perfectly confident and assured in his absolutist course of action, Cicero does not present himself that way as an orator. Moreover, in Cicero’s avowed ethical system, provoking or escalating political conflict to prove a point was not an act of virtue but of arrogance, and true self-sacrifice sometimes required yielding one’s position. In Pro Balbo, in an explicit call for pragmatism and compromise between Pompey and the senate, particularly Cato,49 Cicero proclaims: “conflict is only wise as long as it does some good, or, if it does no good, if it does not harm the city. . . . I’m not criticizing anyone, but I don’t agree with everyone, and I do not think it reflects unsteadiness to modulate one’s opinion, like a ship’s path or course, during a political storm” (Balb. 62).50 While he had sacrificed himself in 58 bce (or retroactively claimed that he had), he hoped to avoid a second such experience if possible, not just for his own sake but to avoid causing general discord. In fact, the Pro Balbo argument reframes the sacrificing of one’s own previous policy as a kind of martyrdom in itself. This is not to say that Cicero did not admire Cato, which he certainly did. However, Cicero rejected Cato’s obstructionism or total moral rigidity, preferring to compromise and negotiate rather than stand on principle, 48 49 50

Connolly 2007: 189. Morrell interprets De Provinciis Consularibus 45 as directed at Cato, and I think the same argument can be applied to Pro Balbo; Morrell 2018a: 200–4. Cf. Planc. 93–4: “You see, we all ought to stand as if on a sort of sphere of the republic, and when it turns, we should choose to stand on the part where its own advantage and well-being direct us. . . . When I see a ship maintaining her course with favorable winds, if she is not aiming for the port I approved of earlier, but another one that is no less safe and quiet, am I going to struggle dangerously against the winds rather than obey and submit to them, when safety is at stake?”

Martyrdom in the Philippics

95

especially when it came to dealing with Caesar and Pompey.51 Rather than fearlessness and intransigence, he promotes humanity and strong emotions as moral responses. As Cato’s opposition to the first triumvirate escalated, Cicero’s diminished, along with his use of his persona as a martyr. Smethurst muses that Cato’s intransigence “possibly did more harm to the republican cause in his lifetime than he aided it by his death,”52 while Cicero attempted a different solution in the 50s.53 Cicero, unlike Cato, embraced a more humane, and perhaps more natural, politics of compromise (on which see Chapters 2, 5, and 8) – that is, until his break with Antony and his defiant Philippics.

Martyrdom in the Philippics Between 63 and 44 bce, Cicero had tried to avoid risky or extreme political positions.54 The Philippics were quite literally out of character for him. Cicero’s persona as a martyr, however, emerges again in the Philippics, not least because Cato the Younger’s death by suicide had provided a vivid new model of political martyrdom in the intervening years. Baraz, discussing the prominence Cato takes on after his death in Cicero’s philosophica, writes that it is tempting “to interpret the composition of the treatises, at a time when Cicero threw himself headlong into a posthumous campaign to glorify Cato, not only as an attempt to bring into existence a new generation that would embrace Cicero’s own views, but a generation of potential Catos, who would admit philosophy into every area of political life, just as he had done.”55 In the Philippics, we might say that Cicero himself becomes one of these potential Catos, as well as trying to lead others toward that same path. It has often been noted that the Philippics have quite a different tone than most Ciceronian orations, even other deliberative orations. Philippics 3–14 are more monotone in their invective and in their argumentation, more consistently grave and forceful, less

51 53

54 55

52 Cf. Dugan 2009: 187–9 on Cicero as Cato’s foil in Pro Murena. Smethurst 1958: 74. This reading of Cicero in contrast to Cato offers what Connolly calls in Roman rhetorical thought generally “a corrective to the image of the ideal Roman citizen predominant in contemporary studies of political thought – an image of dispassionate, even self-annihilating masculinity, a civic subjectivity that replaces humane sentiment with just rule, sensual experience with the erasure of desire.” Connolly 2007: 193. This is the theme of Chapter 8. Baraz 2012: 75. See also Gildenhard’s framing of the Tusculan Disputations as a negotiation “between a position of unconditional resistance, up to and including suicide (the path of Cato) and the possibility of accommodation (the choice of Cicero)”; Gildenhard 2007a: 41.

96

The Orator as a Martyr

artistically extravagant.56 This seems to bring them closer to the moral absolutism and rigidity of the Catonian moral paragon, and further away from Cicero’s values of humanity and concord.57 We should note again that Cicero’s treatment of Antony in the Philippics is a choice from several options available to him: the portrayal of Antony as a thuggish petty tyrant and a poor imitation of Caesar, with the power to kill Cicero but not the rhetorical resources to defeat his arguments, was not inevitable, and Cicero only arrived at this strategy when he had exhausted others. The corpus of Philippics seems to have been designed to commemorate the last days of a martyr, if it came to that, and to illustrate what Cicero thought was worth dying for and why. Steel reads the Philippics as oratory in a new world after the republic’s end, and thus “an acknowledgment of failure even before the test of fighting,”58 one of the defining elements of martyrdom. The title Philippics, after all, recalls Demosthenes’ own courageous stand against Philip as well as its ultimate failure. As in Pro Sestio, the role of the martyr in the Philippics is also geared toward lifting Cicero up out of the political muck of his antagonism toward Antony, up toward a higher purpose. Stephen Greenblatt’s characterization of Sir Walter Ralegh, in his letters immediately before his death, seems to apply to Cicero as well: Ralegh’s career generated constant pressure to create images of the self, but, conversely, there were moments when his whole experience of life seemed caught up in symbolic meanings that had their own generative power. Thus Ralegh’s polished performance at his execution was intended at once to create a heroic image of himself, countering the charges against him, and to transform the local and particular crisis in his life into the universal struggle of the individual against Time and Death.59

In Cicero’s case, the universal struggle represented in the Philippics was waged not so much against death as against tyranny and the sedition of evil citizens. As in his post reditum speeches, Cicero takes up the role of the martyr in the Philippics, claiming to prefer death before servitude (3.29, 8.29, 10.19– 20, 14.31–4).60 He is willing to sacrifice himself for the common good and 56 57

58

Stroh 1982; Wooten 1983; Hall 2002; Stevenson and Wilson 2008b. Of Cicero’s call to “amputate” Antony from the body politic, which Cicero himself calls “dura vox” (Phil. 8.16), Larsen notes: “this strongly worded response, well worthy of a Cato, displays Cicero in a different light” (Larsen 2008: 176). Samponaro points out that the style of the Philippics is oldfashioned, calling to mind an older Catonian or perhaps Scipionic model; Samponaro 2007: 211–3, 236–9. Steel 2005: 141. 59 Greenblatt 1973: 60. 60 May 1988: 155–60.

Martyrdom in the Philippics

97

has in fact encountered danger on the republic’s behalf, and exhorts others to do the same. Cicero’s persona as a martyr also unites past and present, specifically 63 bce and 44–43 bce, to give the impression that Cicero has been a lifelong crusader against political evils, often threatened but always defiant. At the conclusion of the Second Philippic, repeating a claim from its beginning (2.1), Cicero asserts: “I scorned Catiline’s swords; I shall not fear yours. But I would freely offer up my body, if the city’s freedom could be restored through my death . . . You see, if I said twenty years ago in this very temple that death could never be untimely for a consul, how much more truly will I say that now as an old man?” (2.118).61 Again at the conclusion of the Twelfth Philippic, in a speech delivered to the senate, he boasts: “For the twentieth year, all criminals aim at me alone. And they have paid the penalty, I will not say to me, but to the republic, while the republic has thus far preserved me for herself” (12.24). His persona as the patron or advocate of the republic itself echoes his use of the devotio trope in the 50s.62 Still, in the midst of his invective in the Second Philippic, he also highlights his feelings of depression and despair during the civil war in connection with his love of country, linked as they had been in De Domo Sua and Pro Sestio with pride in his own achievements: “I grieved, I grieved, senators, that the republic, once preserved by your judgments and mine, would soon perish” (2.37).63 His “twentieth year” trope makes him sound almost weary of these confrontations, and he is careful to add touches of humility to soften the self-aggrandizement somewhat: the republic has saved him “thus far,” and enemies have not paid a penalty to him personally, “but to the republic.” Cicero’s persona as a martyr in the Philippics also has the exemplary force identified earlier in Pro Sestio. The Second Philippic (2.1) virtually quotes Cicero’s fourth speech against Catiline, in which he promised that he would die (if necessary) “with a calm and prepared mind, for death can neither be dishonorable for a brave man, nor untimely for a consul, nor wretched for a wise man” (Cat. 4.3). He may well have expected some of the readers of the Second Philippic to be familiar with the published text of his Catilinarians and to be pleased to hear their textbook coming to life, as it were, to advise them on the course of 61

62 63

Stevenson 2008. Evans proposes that Antony may have invoked Catiline and Clodius as connections himself, in a positive light, provoking this response from Cicero; Evans 2008: 76. Of course, the Second Philippic was not delivered, in a temple or otherwise; the temple in which he imagines delivering this oration is a fiction, but a poignant addition to his attempt to render Antony into a second Catiline, doomed to the same end. May 1988: 93–5; Kurczyk 2006: 280–4. However, Kurczyk questions why Cicero seems to restrain himself and pass over the usual themes of his defense of his consulship (285). Kurczyk 2006: 289–90.

98

The Orator as a Martyr

current events.64 In both Phil. 2 and Cat. 4 he raises the possibility that he will be killed; and to prevent detractors from interpreting this as paranoid or fearful, he asserts his willingness to meet that end, particularly on the basis of “wisdom” or philosophy. Cicero’s comparisons of Catiline to Antony in the later Philippics (4.15, 8.15, 13.22, 14.14) are, he hopes, a selffulfilling prophecy. In 63 bce, Cicero was threatened with assassination, but he decided to endanger himself anyway by confronting Catiline in the senate, and he had driven Catiline out of the city and ultimately triumphed. In the Second Philippic he claims to be reliving that pattern and revives his “sublime rhetorical register” of crisis:65 he has gotten as far as driving Antony out of the city (arguably, at least) and just needs the senate and the military to follow through on the rest for the narrative arc to proceed to its conclusion. Either he has beaten Antony already by “forcing” him out, or he never will, because the ultimate military victory and punishment of the “conspirators” will not follow. The longer he gets trapped in between the steps of that earlier narrative, the more his “sacrifice” of adopting a dangerous political position loses its force, and the more his triumphalism seems to have been premature. In the later Philippics, the growing weakness in his position undermines Cicero’s persona as a martyr somewhat. An interesting moment occurs in the Seventh Philippic, when Cicero acknowledges the apparent inconsistency in his self-fashioning in 44–43 and the preceding decade. He had been known as a peacemaker for a long time, but he rejects the possibility of peace now, as he goes on to explain, because it was the wrong choice in these specific circumstances. He dramatizes his fear at seeming to contradict himself, and his anxiety that the senate will reject what he is saying as unacceptable or as un-Ciceronian: “I’ll say something dangerous. I tremble to think how you will receive it, but I ask and beg you, by my continual desire to protect and exalt your authority, that even if something bitter to hear or incredible coming from Marcus Cicero is said, you will receive what I say without offense, and will not repudiate it before I explain it” (Phil. 7.7). Here, when he is not explicitly threatened by Antony, his fear of the senate’s possible reaction helps to create the conditions of victimization and persecution necessary for the martyr.66 His fear and trembling make his resistance to Antony seem even more difficult, more of a risk, but his avowed desire to protect the senate motivates him to persist, even at the risk 64 65 66

Stroh 1975: 52–4; Dyck 2008: 14; Hall 2013: 224; LaBua 2019: 72, 89. On the publication and readership of the Second Philippic, see p. 47 n. 70. Dugan 2009: 185. Chapter 4 deals more with expressions of fear in the orations as a rhetorical device.

Martyrdom in the Philippics

99

of his own life, just as he claimed to be sacrificing his earlier policy for the good of the state in Pro Balbo.67 As before, his version of martyrdom may not be straightforwardly heroic but may help nonetheless to rationalize his decisions for his audience and to generate their sympathy. A conflict emerges in the Twelfth Philippic, when Cicero confronts the prospect of death for his chosen cause more directly. He had been asked to serve as an ambassador to Antony, and predicts that Antony will have him assassinated as soon as he leaves the city.68 At first he embraces that prospect: “in the embrace [of Decimus Brutus at Mutina], I could freely give up the last breath of my life, when all my arguments of these past months, all my speeches have attained the result that was set before me” (12.22). He compares this anticipated death with his exile in 58 bce and announces that he expects to earn equal glory from both (12.24), which is consistent with his repeated calls for death before servitude throughout the Philippics. However, in this speech, he then changes course, asking the senate to excuse him from this doomed embassy:69 “let my life be guarded for the republic, and as long as either honor or nature will allow, let it be preserved for my country” (12.30). He frames this as a practical argument: if he exposes himself to assassination by leaving the city, he’ll only be a victim of his own foolishness. The martyr ought not to encounter death unless it is the only moral option, after all. However, the unfortunate result is that Cicero seems to be begging for his life and shunning martyrdom. He does not quite have confidence that his legacy will be secure if he dies without achieving the goals he has set before himself; he does not count on his integrity and moral correctness (or even his published speeches) to enshrine him as an exemplary martyr unless his work is done; and ultimately, he seems unwilling to die. This implication of a survival instinct at work undermines his persona as a martyr, and a perception of dissonance makes his argument – a reasonable one – seem shameful and duplicitous. In fact, Cicero had questioned the logic of giving one’s life for one’s country before, in his defense of Plancius in 54 bce. In a clever rhetorical turn, he argues that the real sacrifice is staying alive, if that is what benefits the state: “you accuse me of fearing death. I, however, would not even accept immortality if it harmed the republic, and I wouldn’t want to die if it endangered the republic” (Planc. 90). In the Philippics, he stops 67 68

69

Cf. Manuwald 2004: 54–7. An embassy that he had argued earlier in the same speech should not be sent at all; this argument is a “tactical retreat” or “backpedaling,” as Hall points out, and gets Cicero into an awkward rhetorical situation. Hall 2008: 294–6. Hall 2008: 300; Usher 2008: 148.

100

The Orator as a Martyr

short of the role of the martyr in a Catonian sense, I would argue, because he does not seem to trust that his death will be a meaningful or effective sacrifice, and therefore does not believe that it will benefit the republic. In the Twelfth Philippic, he suggested that he was willing to die only under the condition that he had succeeded in his political aims and defeated Antony, but that could only be achieved through political action before death, not by death itself. Cato’s death had not stopped Caesar, after all. This suggests that Cicero’s way of bearing witness to his principles was not through self-sacrifice per se, but lay instead in his willingness to endure the consequences of political risk, to restore and reassert his position by forging through grief and suffering after setbacks. The Philippics themselves, as published documents, constitute an act of martyrdom in that sense, regardless of what happens to their author later.

Conclusion Cicero borrows from the ancient Roman idea of devotio to characterize his withdrawal from the city in 58 as an act of self-sacrifice, for the benefit of his community. He emphasizes the risks he faced in pursuing his chosen course of political action, and the choice he made to prioritize the common good over his own political status and happiness, and continues to embody that persona through his post-exile orations. In Pro Sestio, he urges others, especially the idealistic young, to take up the same heroic stance. In De Domo Sua, his confession that he suffered greater emotional trauma than was perhaps fitting for a leading statesman and devotee of philosophy casts him as a different sort of martyr, more humane and sympathetic. Even as he embraced the rigid selfrighteousness of the martyr, he did not pretend to do so with ease, but elaborated on the suffering and emotional toil that came along with this heroic role, adding an unusual element of pathos that harmonized well with Cicero’s characteristic approach to defense speeches. This adaptation of the role of the martyr emerges as more idiosyncratic and marked in contrast to the activity of Cato the Younger, who took on the persona of a political martyr as well. Cato’s death in Utica, and the eulogizing and mythologizing of Cato’s life that began almost immediately, memorialized his sacrifice for the republic. In the Philippics, when Cicero resumed his persona as a martyr, he seemed to show the influence of Cato. He treated himself again as drawing fire away from the rest of his community, in the latest of a series of heroic moments in his career, and exhorted others to sacrifice personal interest for the republic.

Conclusion

101

Promising to face destruction (physical or political) for one’s values is the ultimate statement of moral authority. Both Cato and Cicero embraced this possibility of self-sacrifice, but in markedly different ways. Cato filibustered and broke up riots to force his peers to listen to what he had to say, even if it was impossible to effect any real change, in order to demonstrate his complete integrity and absolute conviction in his own morality – and, of course, he ultimately sacrificed his life for his principles. Cicero, too, claimed to be protecting moral principles that were perpetually under siege, but in accounting for his departure into exile, he portrayed himself as motivated by gratitude, friendship, and concern for his community. The typical martyr might disregard or even fail to notice physical or mental pain, and Cato seems quite immune to it; Cicero feels it acutely, but persists anyway and eventually triumphs, or so he hopes. This is an idiosyncratic and innovative version of the role of the martyr, particularly useful in forensic cases, and helped Cicero to recuperate his authority after his restoration in 57 bce. However, it was Cato’s brand of obstructionism that was remembered as especially heroic after his suicide at Utica, and which best fits a modern understanding of martyrdom. Cicero’s earlier claims to martyrdom operate on a different model with its own logic, based in humanity and emotion. Part of the distinction is situational: in the Second Philippic and before the proscriptions, Cicero is not really under direct attack and so is not really in a position to sacrifice himself. Although he calls on everyone to encounter danger bravely and implies that he will do the same, he is not really leading by example by exposing himself to material danger. In terms of motivation, hatred of Antony is not a strong moral principle for which a martyr might die, and claims of “saving the republic” or “protecting the senate” gained little traction with Cicero’s colleagues. We are particularly likely today to valorize Cato, and Cicero to a lesser extent, because political martyrdom in the name of the freedom of speech is viewed as particularly exemplary in our political culture, and Cato’s rhetoric of defiance (and the legends of it that grew after his death) fits that trope. Jarratt writes: “our post-enlightenment rhetorical culture places a high value on the heroic act of speaking truth to power, often with disregard for effectiveness or consequences to the speaker.”70 A David standing against Goliath, a whistle-blower, or an imprisoned activist all invoke the same kind of symbolic value: they all imply a willingness to risk or sacrifice one’s own personal well-being for the good of a collective, and 70

Jarratt 2019: 11.

102

The Orator as a Martyr

bravery in the face of intimidation.71 Cato fits that bill; Cicero perhaps less so. It is no coincidence that Maternus, the interlocutor of the Dialogus who associates the republic with the freedom to attack great men (see end of Chapter 1), had recently written a tragedy called Cato that was rumored to have gotten him into trouble, as a perceived critique of authoritarianism (Tac. Dial. 2–3).72 As for Cicero, Hall makes the astute observation that “from a historical perspective, [the Philippics] constitute something of an oratorical watershed: the last extant examples of the frank, often rancorous style of debate that typified the Roman senate. Indeed, for many young students of oratory brought up during the more constrained political conditions of the principate, the direct, confrontational manner of these speeches must have held considerable allure.”73 They certainly appealed to the tastes of the declaimers commemorated by Seneca the Elder: when they spoke on the hypothetical question of whether or not Cicero should have recanted his Philippics to save his life, few ever dared to argue that he should, to avoid martyrdom (Suas. 6.12).74 Seneca the Younger described Cicero as a tragic figure holding tight to the sinking ship of the republic (Brev. Vit. 5.1). The perceived nobility of martyrs like Cato, Cicero, and Brutus may also have inspired the author of the treatise On the Sublime to complain that orators of his time lacked the “colossal natures” of their predecessors, and to wonder along with a “certain philosopher”: “must we believe that old line, that democracy is a fair nurse of great things (ἡ δημοκρατία τῶν μεγάλων ἀγαθὴ τιθηνὸς), together with which alone orators must thrive or die?” (44.1–2). 71

72

Vasily Rudich’s work on Tacitus and Ovid particularly exemplifies the ways in which twentiethcentury experiences of censorship and totalitarianism have heightened a tendency to valorize dissent: Rudich 1985; Rudich 1993; Rudich 2006. van den Berg 2014: 155–8. 73 Hall 2013: 227. 74 Wilson 2008; Keeline 2018: 83–90.

chapter 4

The Orator without Authority

Introduction Although we tend to think of authority and dignity as indispensable for the statesman, Cicero’s corpus shows a surprising range of less straightforward or direct approaches to persuasion, some of which even verge on indignity. He may use aggression, pragmatism, or noble principle to assert his mastery of a situation, as we have seen so far, but when the situation seems to demand it – particularly when a very powerful man is perceived to be angry with him – he is also prepared to embrace alternatives: fear, selfeffacing humor, and even a refusal to speak at all. In this chapter I examine these non-authoritative personae as they occur in Pro Milone, the Caesarian orations, the Brutus, and letters from the period of Caesar’s dictatorship. It is no coincidence that Cicero’s non-authoritative personae became especially useful during periods when single figures dominated republican politics: Pompey was given the unprecedented position of sole consul in 52 bce, and Caesar’s dictatorship during and after the civil war represented a similar seismic shift in the political arena. My departure point here is Connolly, who offers a reading of Pro Marcello as “visionary in its refusal to play at the old republican game of claiming sovereignty.”1 Ideally, the orator’s authority or auctoritas2 alone makes their speech persuasive. Their dignity, social standing, and reputation for wisdom or prudence have already earned the trust of the audience, so that little art is necessary to craft an effective appeal. In reality, however, this is not often (if ever) feasible. The orator might be facing an opponent of equal authority, or worse, might be at an obvious disadvantage. In such a scenario, it could be better simply to acknowledge what everyone was already thinking, and in fact to emphasize and exploit it. By confessing fear or self-doubt the orator could evoke pity or compassion from the audience and also generate 1 2

Connolly 2015: 198; an earlier version of this argument can be found in Connolly 2011. Cf. Hellegouarc’h 1963: 295–320; Goodwin 2001; Pina Polo 2011.

103

104

The Orator without Authority

invidia against their opponent as a bully or tyrant. By mocking themselves for the imprudence or ineptitude that had gotten them into this difficult situation or cracking a joke about the tension in the air, the orator might win the audience’s sympathy. These choices of affect can be effective precisely because they are unusual and unexpected, a moment of extemporaneous improvisation rather than following the usual script. Rather than blustering their way through the case, the orator can instead display self-awareness, humility, and good humor, and thus shift the balance of power. In addition, the surprising refusal to claim sovereignty or supremacy could work to lull the more powerful party into complacency, to see the orator as nonthreatening or even laughable. This is especially important at the outset of a speech, as Cicero writes in De Inventione (1.15–18): hostile or suspicious audiences must be conciliated and seduced from the start, if later arguments are to have any effect at all. But if the orator can do this successfully, they open up much greater latitude and flexibility for the rest of the speech by disarming critics and approaching their goal indirectly.3 It is important to appreciate the utility of these alternatives to auctoritas, because it has so often been assumed that Cicero was forced to resort to them when he lost the ability to project auctoritas in Pompey’s sole consulship and later, and that he had no choice in the matter.4 This is a period in which Cicero is thought to have had very little authority in reality, and he certainly expressed frustration with his inability to make other politicians listen to his counsel in the letters and the prefaces to his written works.5 There is an important distinction to be made between lacking authority in fact and describing oneself in published works as lacking authority. When Cicero does give (and publish) speeches in this period from May of 56 to 45 bce, his negation of his own authority is not only a result of the political reality he faced but also a product of conscious and voluntary selffashioning, a rhetorical trope that accounts for reality in a certain way. Too often, treatments of Cicero’s career depict him as simply switching careers, retiring from the forum to focus on the philosophica, perhaps even as being forced to do so. If we think instead about a voluntarily crafted Ciceronian rhetoric of withdrawal or disengagement in the philosophica and the letters, we can read it alongside various similar tactics in the Caesarian orations as a set of strategies of denying or dissimulating authority to circumvent the perceived hostility of powerful figures. 3 4

As the interlocutors suggest in De Oratore 1.119, 2.80–4, 317–24. See, e.g., the views quoted in the section on Pro Balbo in Chapter 2.

5

Cf. Baraz 2012: 86–95.

Introduction

105

We can also see continuity in this strategy with practices from earlier in his career. At the start of his career, in his defense of Roscius of Ameria in 80 bce, Cicero had even cited his lack of authority as an advantage: “if one of those men whom you see present here, in whom there is the greatest authority and stature, had spoken, . . . he would be thought to have said much more than he had said. However, if I say all that must be said without reserve, my speech still won’t have remotely the same ability to get out among the masses” (Rosc. Am. 2–3). Eventually, Cicero himself became one of those men with “authority and stature” whose words carried great weight and significance beyond their mere content, particularly because they were repeated and reported widely. Yet even then, he could dissimulate his auctoritas when he needed to establish goodwill in his audience by less direct means, by making a show of innocence or powerlessness. Cicero’s reputation as a wit or even a comic figure is also telling (Quint. Inst. 3.1–8). He was perfectly willing to put on a show for his audiences and even occasionally to make a fool of himself to some degree, if he thought it would result in the verdict he wanted. In Pro Murena, delivered during his consulship, he is all too happy to crack jokes about Stoicism and about the jurists at his friends’ expense, if it will lead his audience to look indulgently on his client Murena.6 The aesthetic enjoyment of rhetorical flourishes or the pleasure taken in a spectacle of scintillating wit or dramatic conflict can have just as powerful an effect as authority, as can emotional engagement and sympathy, even if they are not traditionally seen as authoritative.7 In De Oratore, when Antonius is asked to give a lecture on eloquence, he launches into a facetious and selfdeprecating introduction, promising ironically to explicate rhetoric as the art of defending falsehood; his interlocutor Catulus then responds that he is all the more eager to hear Antonius, now that he knows that the orator is going to tell the unvarnished truth about his craft, without pretense (nulla ostentatione) or self-aggrandizement (non gloriose . . . magis a veritate quam a nescio qua dignitate) (De Orat. 2.28–32). Thus, selfdeprecation, humor, and sarcasm actually create an impression of frankness, adding value to Antonius’ speech rather than subtracting from it. 6

7

He later chose to exclude this comic speech from the corpus of consular speeches he circulated, his own set of Demosthenic Philippics for posterity (Att. 2.1.3), which he seems to have wanted to have a more serious and authoritative tone. Yet he did publish the Pro Murena. See also the comedic elements of Pro Caelio (elucidated in Geffcken 1973; Stroh 1975: 289–90; May 1988: 115–6) or his reductio ad absurdum at the start of Pro Ligario, where he claims that Ligarius is being prosecuted for the novel crime of having been in Africa (1). Quintilian says as much at Inst. 6.3.1; cf. Riggsby 1997.

106

The Orator without Authority

Some thought that Cicero occasionally crossed a line in his use of humor from wit to buffoonery, as Plutarch and Macrobius attest.8 On other occasions Cicero’s arguments from pity, grief, or commiseration seemed to show a lack of self-control, or of the emotional self-mastery usually required of the orator.9 Cicero was widely acclaimed for his theatrical ability to evoke pity in a forensic context, especially in his perorations. To awaken the audience’s sympathies, he was prepared to make himself pathetic: “there is no way to either excite or soothe the mind of a listener that has not been tried by me” (Or. 132).10 This was clearly at odds with the politician’s usual desire to create an impression of grave authority, as I suggested of the “weeping martyr” in Chapter 3, but it was advantageous for the advocate in the circumstances of an individual trial, and Cicero usually prioritized immediate advantage. Thus, eloquence can be, but is not always, founded upon auctoritas. Non-authoritative self-fashioning strategies take on particular importance in Pro Milone, under the watchful (and perhaps hostile) eye of Pompey as sole consul, when Cicero uses fear and self-effacing humor to overcome the popular perception that Pompey was hostile to Milo. These tactics, including a trope of “shouting loudly enough to be heard,” which I read as comical, are repeated in the Caesarian orations. My focus here with respect to these orations is how the speeches operated to achieve their primary goal (i.e., the pardoning of clients) at the time when they were delivered, even though the date and import of their published versions has received more scholarly attention. I conclude by considering Cicero’s refusal to speak in public, from his proconsulship in Cilicia to the Pro Marcello and from Pro Deiotaro until the Ides of March, as a self-fashioning strategy in its own right.

Tiptoeing around Pompey in Pro Milone The late 50s were a time of political turmoil and chaos at Rome, and rioting and street violence had become so rampant that it was impossible even to hold regular elections.11 Pompey, with the support of his former opponent 8

Plut. Cic. 5.6, 27.1, 38.2; Macr. Sat. 2.1.8, 2.1.12, 2.3.14. Quintilian disputes this characterization at Inst. 6.3.3–4. 9 Gunderson 2000: 87–110; Connolly 2007: 10–4, 160–5. In her 2015 work, Connolly contrasts “abdication of self-mastery” with “the violent defense of self-sovereignty” as opposites; Connolly 2015: 190. 10 See also Or. 130–1, where he describes “filling the forum with wailing and lamentation” by holding a defendant’s baby aloft. 11 Nippel 1995: 47–84; Millar 1998: 124–66; Lintott 1999a: 215.

Tiptoeing around Pompey in Pro Milone

107

Cato the Younger and on the proposal of Marcus Bibulus (Asc. Mil. 31), was designated sole consul for 52 bce and passed a series of reforms, including a new law de vi, which established a new court and legal procedure for the crime of inciting violence.12 It was under this law that Milo was charged with assassinating Clodius on the Via Appia. Asconius’ commentary on Pro Milone gives us an unusually complete understanding of the context and lead-up to the trial of Milo. Pompey had marched his soldiers into the forum to surround the court for the duration of the trial and keep the peace (Asc. Mil. 35). It was commonly assumed that Pompey was hostile to Milo, not only because Milo had been charged under Pompey’s own law, but because a rumor that Milo was plotting to assassinate Pompey had driven Pompey into hiding for a time, Asconius explains (31–3). Cicero later argues that Pompey would not have wanted Milo to be tried at all if he had thought Milo was guilty, and that, contrary to popular opinion, Pompey actually must wish Milo to be acquitted (15). Asconius also tells us that Cicero lost his composure and did not deliver his defense speech as intended, while later authors (I suspect) embellish this detail, arguing that Cicero did not deliver a speech at all (Asc. Mil. 36, cf. Plut. Cic. 35.2–5, Dio 54.2).13 A copy of Cicero’s “failed” speech was apparently taken down at the trial (or fabricated) and circulated, which Cicero attempted to replace with his own published version (Asc. Mil. 36, Quint. Inst. 4.2.17). However, the published text of the Pro Milone does not deny or whitewash Cicero’s fear but includes Cicero’s own confession of it. One would think, after reading Asconius, that Cicero would not want us to see him as balking before the hostile audience, but apparently, that is exactly how Cicero wants us to see him in the published speech. Either Cicero claimed that he was afraid in the original speech, as the text suggests, or he intended but failed to do so at the actual trial, or he later wrote the exordium as we have it to rationalize and explain the fear that he had accidentally conveyed at the time.14 In any case, the text does not correct the impression of fear but rather preserves a record of fear; Cicero chose to take on the undignified character of a fearful man in the speech he published for posterity. May proposes that this exordium was modeled on that of Antonius’ Pro Norbano as described in De Oratore,15 of which Sulpicius remarks: “what a beginning, immortal gods! What fear! What 12 13 14 15

Syme 1939: 28–46; Taylor 1949a: 147–52; Lintott 1974; Ramsey 2016; Morrell 2018b. Fotheringham 2006. Steel suggests the latter: “but if a rumour had got around that Cicero had been terrified at Milo’s trial, then the opening is also a response”; Steel 2005: 121. May 2001: 128.

108

The Orator without Authority

vacillation, what hesitation and dragging out of words! . . . How quickly you paved the way to making yourself heard!” (De Orat. 2.202). Antonius, too, had used this conciliatory technique as preparation for a strong argument in favor of the legality of his client’s actions. In the same way, performances of a conspicuous lack of authority served Cicero’s purposes as an advocate under difficult political circumstances. As Quintilian remarks (Inst. 4.1.20), the exordium to Pro Milone resembles a disarming insinuatio, an exordium in which the orator takes an intentionally weak and self-deprecating approach, creeping indirectly into a hostile audience’s good graces.16 One trigger of Cicero’s avowed fear is the crowd of soldiers looming over the court, which may well have terrified his audience also.17 He begins by acknowledging that the sight of so many soldiers around a court is terrifying: “Even if I were afraid” to confess openly to feeling fear, he says, either because it would embarrass him before the brave Milo or because it would not be in keeping with his reputation as an orator, “still this novel form of a novel legal proceeding would terrify my eyes. Wherever they fall, they search in vain for the old familiarity of the forum and the past custom of the courts” (1). He heaps up a clumsy series of double negatives as he vaguely gestures at his fear of the soldiers: “even though we’re enclosed by helpful defenders and friends, we still can’t even not be afraid without some fear” (2).18 Cicero’s own style here might be the basis for Asconius’ impression that Cicero spoke without constantia;19 Quintilian describes it as “the exordium of an anxious man” (11.3.48). However, Cicero goes on to reassure himself and his audience: we’ll just have to remind ourselves that Pompey’s soldiers are only there to keep the peace and to protect Cicero, Milo, and the good people of the jury from the Clodian agitators who want to thwart legal process and incite violence (2–3). He performs

16

17 18

19

Rhet. Her. 1.8l; Cic. Inv. 1.22–5; Quint. Inst. 4.1.8–48. In De Oratore, Crassus expresses a preference for expressing fear in one’s exordium, because that fear reflects a lack of arrogance and a real appreciation for how difficult it is to give a successful oration (1.119–21). Even though a letter from Balbus to Cicero in 49 bce recalls that Cicero “asked for a guard from Pompey, with [Balbus’] blessing, at the time of Milo’s trial” (Att. 9.7b.2); Lintott 2008: 250. Fotheringham 2006: 66–8. On p. 77 she also examines a possible aposiopesis, which might have been interpreted by later, hostile readers as evidence that Cicero was actually silenced (instead of making a rhetorical pretense of being silenced). On the versions in Plutarch and Dio that have Cicero cowed into silence entirely, Fotheringham writes: “since neither Plutarch nor Dio claims to have read the pro Milone, seeing these remarks as a reading of the text is speculative, but the emphasis on sight is a strong connection with the speech itself. It is conceivable that both read the first sentence (including the words terret oculos) but not much further”; Fotheringham 2006: 73; cf. Fotheringham 2015.

Tiptoeing around Pompey in Pro Milone

109

his own self-reassurance, talking himself into proceeding courageously in order to assuage his audience’s fears at the same time.20 Cicero risked angering Pompey with his defense speech for Milo, as he acknowledged in a later letter: “with what ease, with what humanity did [Pompey] tolerate my effort for Milo even when it sometimes opposed his own actions!” (Fam. 3.10.10). This suggests that his speech Pro Milone had the potential to alienate Pompey, even if Pompey chose not to punish Cicero for it. Scholars have long debated the relationship between the published version and the “unauthorized” version of Pro Milone, or exactly how much Cicero managed to say at the trial.21 In the absence of any hard evidence for which passages were added, subtracted, or changed, we can only speculate about what parts of the surviving text are “original,” based on our impressions of what Cicero “could have” or “would have” said. Two-thirds of the way through the speech, Cicero turns to address Pompey directly and speaks to him in a way that Stone and Berry have read as critical and negative; they argue that Cicero would not have criticized Pompey directly at the time of the trial, lest he anger the sole consul and provoke some kind of reaction against Milo, and thus that Cicero must not have said this in the actual trial and added it later to the text for publication.22 However, I propose a different reading of this passage. Pompey was stationed in front of the aerarium, surrounded by his troops, according to Asconius (35–6).23 Cicero, however, speaks to him directly at one point: Non iam hoc Clodianum crimen timemus, sed tuas, Cn. Pompei – te enim appello et ea voce ut me exaudire possis – tuas, inquam, suspiciones perhorrescimus. Si Milonem times, . . . magna in hoc certe vis et incredibilis animus et non unius viri vires atque opes iudicantur, si quidem in hunc unum et praestantissimus dux electus et tota res publica armata est. Sed quis non intellegit omnis tibi rei publicae partis aegras et labantis, ut eas his armis sanares et confirmares, esse commissas? Now we are not afraid of this Clodian crime but shudder, Cn. Pompey – for I address you at such a volume that you will be able to make out my voice – at your suspicions, yes, yours. If you fear Milo, . . . there certainly must be a perception of great strength and incredible daring and power and resources beyond that of a single man, if our most preeminent, favored 20 21

22 23

“The paradoxical relationship between protection by and fear of the soldiers has resolved itself into a simple antithesis making a strong assertion”; Fotheringham 2013: 122. Cf. Opt. Gen. 10. Settle 1963; Crawford 1984: 210–18; Marshall 1987; Dyck 2002; Melchior 2008; Fotheringham 2013: 2, 6–7 argues for reading the speech as a cohesive whole, not least because Quintilian does, and I am inclined to agree. Stone 1980; Berry 1993; see also Steel 2005: 124–31; Craig 2008: 99. Cicero’s location in the forum is not clear; on the location of the courts, see Lintott 2004: 62–4.

110

The Orator without Authority general and the entire republic are armed against that single man. But who does not understand that all the sick and unsteady parts of the republic have been entrusted to you for healing and reinforcement by means of these arms? (Mil. 67–8)

The implication of shouting loudly enough to be heard is that Pompey is not supposed to be listening to Cicero’s speech at all, whether because he is too far away or because he is supposed to be keeping the peace and allowing the trial to proceed without any interference.24 The notion of Cicero shouting across the forum and breaching decorum by thus forcing Pompey into the audience could have been surprisingly funny, although it depends largely on Cicero’s delivery and their spatial relationship (was Pompey hidden from view behind the soldiers?). If his audience is hyperaware of and anxious about Pompey’s presence with these soldiers, as the exordium suggested, Cicero’s sudden turn to address Pompey at a shout would have been totally unexpected, even ludicrous.25 Rather than playing the grave, dignified statesman of auctoritas, whose words everyone nearby is hanging on,26 Cicero (if momentarily) adopts the character of a buffoon who speaks too loudly, and to the wrong person. In his treatment of humor in oratory, Quintilian argues that “what would not be witty to say about a man when he is absent can raise a laugh when he is made fun of openly” (6.3.94–5).27 He also relays a story about King Pyrrhus of Epirus in the 3rd c. bce. When some young men were accused of badmouthing the king at dinner and could not deny it or defend themselves, one resorted to a wildly inappropriate joke: “‘actually, if our wine hadn’t run out, we’d have assassinated you!’ And because of that urbanity, anger at their crime dissolved” (Quint. Inst. 6.3.10).28 Cicero’s “criticism” of Pompey (a subjective judgment of tone not agreed upon by all scholars) in Mil. 67–9 certainly does not rise to this level of daring, but could have been played for laughs to disarm a situation of serious political tension. Quintilian mentions a moment in Milo’s trial when the prosecutor repeated over and over, “what time was Clodius assassinated?” and 24 25 26 27 28

De Angelis suggests that a Roman “court” could be defined as the group of people who could hear the advocates; De Angelis 2010: 10–11; following David 1992: 408–9. The shift to second person address is glaring: Fotheringham 2013: 311–13. Dugan 2009: 178–80 makes much of this paradigmatic image. See also the conversation on the utility of humor in oratory in De Oratore 2, especially 216 and 236. See also Val. Max. 5.11.ext. 3, Plut. Pyrrhus 8.12 for this story. Quintilian adds that if one is going to joke this way about a man who is dangerous to provoke, one should do it “in such a way that neither serious enmities nor humiliating reparations follow” (6.3.34), and apparently Cicero managed to strike that balance; see also his approval for “simulation of folly (stulti simulatione)” as rather funny (6.3.99).

Tiptoeing around Pompey in Pro Milone

111

Cicero shot back “late!” as an example of an excellent use of humorous ambiguity (6.3.49), and the apostrophe to Pompey may be another example of Cicero’s use of humor as a rhetorical strategy in this case, depending on Cicero’s tone in delivery. As we will see, he uses a similar strategy in Pro Ligario as well. There is also something potentially defiant about Cicero’s claim that he will shout to be heard, paralleled in a self-defense he gives in Pro Sulla. He makes sure that Pompey will hear something that perhaps he would rather not acknowledge.29 He then immediately moves to praise Pompey as the healer of the republic, counteracting his own critical stance and moving back onto the safer ground of flattery and plausible deniability, but his audience’s interest has been piqued by the change of approach, and their level of attention heightened. The strangeness of this moment could have been interpreted in several different ways. Pompey alleged the fear that Milo was plotting to assassinate him (Asc. Mil. 31), and we could read Cicero’s apostrophe here as poking fun at Pompey, ridiculing the resources Pompey has marshalled against a single individual. The idea that Pompey is afraid of Milo is “preposterous” – isn’t it?30 Cicero’s playfulness can thus be read as a performance of condescension. His shift from buffoonery to irony may even give the impression that Pompey was not only paranoid but also so fragile and easily upset that he needs Cicero’s reassurance. His reassurance – and even his address to Pompey as Magne (68) – seems potentially sarcastic or figured,31 undermining the legitimacy of Pompey’s extraordinary sole consulship. This ironic reading of Cicero’s “praise” of Pompey is only one possible reading; Pompey, and others so inclined, need not have interpreted it this way, or at least could not have accused Cicero with any certainty of intending that interpretation. Ahl, in his analysis of figured speech, points out that the target of the covert criticism will be the last person to complain about it, lest he draw attention to criticism that others have not noticed, or seem to betray a guilty conscience.32 This 29

30

31

The Pro Sulla passage: “therefore listen, Torquatus, to how I run away from the authority I had as consul! In my loudest voice (maxima voce), so that everyone can hear, I say now and will always say this. Come to me, Quirites, whose great numbers bring me such happiness; focus your minds and ears and give me your attention, as I speak about hateful things (or so he thinks)!” (Sull. 33). This is followed by Cicero’s defiant, self-justifying narrative of his defeat of the Catilinarian conspiracy. Fotheringham 2013: 313. May reads Cicero’s praise of Pompey here as a genuine attempt to avoid “making Pompey’s actions look ridiculous” (1988:132), and presumably some in the audience will have interpreted the passage the same way, but others may have taken the ironic interpretation I suggest here. In De Domo Sua, adopting a similar stance of fearless autonomy, he makes a similar gesture, promising to tell the pontifices “what I felt then and now, no matter how [Pompey] will react to what he hears (quoquo animo auditurus est)” (Dom. 25). 32 Cf. Kenty (forthcoming) on figured speech. Ahl 1984: 198.

112

The Orator without Authority

element of plausible deniability removes much of the danger cited by Stone and Berry. By demonstrating fear from the very outset of his speech Pro Milone, and perhaps by introducing a note of self-effacing comedy later, Cicero confronts head-on the strangeness of the scene in which he finds himself. Rather than ignoring it and pretending to conduct business as usual, he acknowledges the constraints he faces, of which his audience is surely already hyperaware. No one could ignore the presence of Pompey’s troops, and he does not try to do so. Cicero’s audience in Pro Milone could not have come into the trial without some preconceived notions about Milo, or without some prejudice in the case. Some will have been angry at the outset at Milo for killing Clodius, whether they had supported Clodius or not, and angry at Cicero for defending him, especially if they expected Cicero to take the extreme line that Clodius’ death was good for the republic. They might have heard speeches from the three Clodian tribunes (discussed further in Chapter 8) leading up to the trial, inciting them to anger for these very reasons (Mil. 3), and Steel argues that they would have become even more angry when Milo resumed his campaign for the consulship after Clodius’ death.33 Others in the audience may have been legitimately terrified by the violence that had overtaken the city, or of the threat of violence posed by the extraordinary presence of soldiers in the forum; what if those soldiers seized any jurors who voted the wrong way? These were inescapable preconditions of Cicero’s oration. If his audience was afraid of the soldiers, it may have been advantageous for Cicero to admit the same fear in order to establish a rapport, in an unusual sort of captatio benevolentiae. The use of humor might have helped to dispel any invidia felt toward himself or Milo, as Quintilian’s Pyrrhus exemplum suggests. Cicero’s fear in the exordium and his argument that Milo only killed Clodius in self-defense build up his credibility and reduce the audience’s fear or resistance in the earlier parts of the oration, so that he can later take the risk of teasing Pompey and even come to the argument that Clodius’ death really was for the greater good. The order of operations, the sequence in which Cicero inhabits these personae, is crucial to the efficacy of the persuasive strategy of the oration. In addition, this exordium also allows Cicero to set up a contrast later between himself and Milo: in his peroration he builds up Milo’s dignity by diminishing his own. His own fear is juxtaposed with Milo’s preternatural calm, the very trait that gave Milo the courage to fend off Clodius’ ambush (in Cicero’s narrative) and rid the 33

Asc. Mil. 35; Steel 2005: 127.

Insecurity and Inappropriate Jokes

113

state of a terrible threat. Thus, “the advocate’s persona in the exordium and peroration is essentially a foil for Milo: the timid advocate of a brave client; the emotional advocate of an unflinching client.”34 Milo’s quasi-Stoic calm35 emerges in sharper relief as Cicero falls apart, or pretends to. In this central passage of the speech, however, Cicero takes the extraordinary step of speaking as his own client in a prosopopoeia which can also be read ironically. “There will be, there will someday be a time, the light of that day will eventually dawn when you . . . will need the goodwill of a close friend, the loyalty of a reliable man, the courage of the single bravest man in living memory” (69), Cicero tells Pompey in Milo’s voice, a vow of loyalty that could also be read as a thinly veiled threat. This ironic reading, the reading that Stone takes as the primary interpretation intended in the later, published oration,36 could also have been available (but deniable, not least because of Cicero’s ostensible fear of Pompey) in the speech as delivered. The strategies I have identified in Pro Milone – expressions of fear as a play for sympathy, the potential use of undignified comedy to break tension, and available ironic subtexts – all recur in the Caesarian orations. May writes of Caesar’s dictatorship: “the authority, dignity, and reputation of the patronus, no matter how great, had been eclipsed by the ethos of the dictator; as a result, the personal influence that the patronus could wield was greatly impaired. Praise of the client’s character and of one’s own character had to be tempered, set in proportion to, rather in the shadow of, the judge’s ethos.”37 Pompey, as sole consul, had represented the same sort of looming, overwhelming presence in Cicero’s Pro Milone. Under these conditions in both regimes, Cicero made a point not of contesting the powerful man’s authority, but of making a show of yielding or dissimulating his own, downplaying his influence and foregrounding fear instead in an effort to help his client. Any good heroic tale has a moment, before the climax, when the hero doubts that he can succeed or faces obstacles that seem insurmountable; how to triumph in the end, for Cicero, was a problem for another day.

Insecurity and Inappropriate Jokes in the Caesarian Orations In Pro Marcello, Cicero foregrounds gratitude and admiration, as we have seen in Chapter 2, but he affects fear when he takes his panegyric to new 34 35 36

Dyck 1998: 240; cf. May 2001: 132–4. On the philosophical resonances of the speech, see Clark and Ruebel 1985; Dyck 1998. Stone 1980: 101. 37 May 1988: 141.

114

The Orator without Authority

heights: “I’m worried that this thing I’ll say cannot be understood through listening as I understand it thinking to myself” (12).38 Connolly identifies this sort of anxiety over “panegyric incapacity” (“I cannot praise Caesar as he deserves”) as one of the crucial tropes of the oration (cf. Marc. 4, 6, 9): “by sharp contrast with his later Philippics, Cicero does not play at being sovereign in the pro Marcello. Instead, by repeatedly returning to the trope of panegyric incapacity, Cicero pursues an uncomfortable experiment in articulating his acknowledgment of the new limits on sovereignty.”39 In an earlier article, she suggests that Caesar has been allowed to displace Cicero in his usual role as the heroic defender of the republic in this speech.40 The speech also “underscores the necessity of preserving a space for politics, even when – perhaps especially when – the conditions for politics are unsettling and distasteful,”41 sacrificing personal consistency and comfort for the greater good, as Cicero often claims to do (see Chapters 2, 3). Connolly thus sees surprising creativity and imagination, and hence agency, in Cicero’s treatment of his own lack of authority, a move that represents a marked departure from the norm for Roman politicians. It does, however, represent a return to one of the tactics of the Pro Milone. Cicero’s fear here, and in the other Caesarian orations, serves two purposes simultaneously.42 In case any Caesarian partisans in his audience – or Caesar himself – thought Cicero would voice criticism of the regime, Cicero’s fearful affect makes him seem less threatening. He is not only praising the dictator but is deeply concerned about making himself understood in the proper way. From the other side, to anti-Caesarians, Cicero’s fear may help to distance him from the regime and allow him to disclaim any responsibility for the regime’s policies. For both sides, Cicero’s fear may decrease tension and overcome suspicions about Cicero’s position. When Cicero published his Caesarian orations, after they were delivered, they may have helped to build up invidia and odium against Caesar, 38

39 41

42

Following Gagliardi, however, we might read Cicero’s fear here as a strategic distraction from the anti-Caesarian interpretation of the foregoing passage, in which Cicero claims that Caesar’s conquests are really not glorious for Caesar himself but the results of good fortune shared with his entire army; Gagliardi 1997: 80–2 on Pro Ligario. On Pro Marcello, however, which she reads as a published pamphlet only loosely based on the speech as delivered, she theorizes that “nè a tanto poteva certo bastare il banale, prevedibilissimo consiglio (non richiesto) di un avversario privo di auctoritas,” and that Cicero includes the section on the threat of assassination in Pro Marcello as a threat to compensate; Gagliardi 1997: 111; 162–3 on this passage. 40 Connolly 2015: 180. Connolly 2011: 171. Connolly 2015: 199. Dugan also sees Pro Marcello as an example of Cicero’s being “an orator willing to use persuasive speech to salvage some essence of the Republic, while jettisoning the inessential”; Dugan 2009: 190. Cf. Kenty (forthcoming).

Insecurity and Inappropriate Jokes

115

in part by provoking pity and outrage over Cicero’s weakened status.43 Gagliardi has explored this argument, as well as pointing out that the tone of Pro Ligario a few months later seems quite different, featuring overt irony throughout the speech.44 In Pro Ligario, Cicero initially affects anxiety about how to argue his case, but turns this into a sarcastic jab at the ineptitude of the prosecution: he is afraid and unsure of how to proceed, since the prosecution seems only to be accusing Ligarius of being in Africa, which Cicero is “forced” to confess he was (1).45 Cicero praises Caesar’s clementia toward Cicero and other Pompeians, arguing that this clementia will be extended to Ligarius as well. While Ligarius’ prosecutor hopes to move Caesar to anger and resentment over Ligarius’ allegiance to Pompey during the civil war, Cicero dismisses this as a non-issue, trumpeting a self-incriminating confession: M. Cicero apud te defendit alium in ea voluntate non fuisse in qua se ipsum confitetur fuisse . . . Vide quam non reformidem; vide quanta lux liberalitatis et sapientiae tuae mihi apud te dicenti oboriatur: quantum potero voce contendam ut hoc populus Romanus exaudiat. Suscepto bello, Caesar, gesto etiam ex parte magna, nulla vi coactus, iudicio ac voluntate ad ea arma profectus sum quae erant sumpta contra te. Apud quem igitur hoc dico? Nempe apud eum qui, cum hoc sciret, tamen me, ante quam vidit, rei publicae reddidit. Marcus Cicero argues before you, [Caesar,] that someone else did not join the side that Cicero confesses he did join himself! . . . Look how not afraid I am, look how bright the light of your generosity and wisdom is that dawns upon me as I speak, how I will try as much as I can to speak loudly enough that the Roman people can hear. When war was declared, Caesar, and well under way, I, not compelled by force, by my own judgment and volition, set out to join the army fighting against you. And before whom do I say this? Before the very man who, although he knew all this, still restored me to the Republic before he laid eyes on me. (6–7)

Cicero thus repeats his gambit from Pro Milone of affecting that he must shout to be heard in the context of another potentially ironic encomium. As 43 44 45

Dyer 1990 argues that the Pro Marcello, published in the year following its delivery, was read this way. Gagliardi 1997: 9–10, 21–7, 95–108; cf. Dyer 1990. “Irresistibile, poi, la falsa ingenuità dell’oratore spaesato, incapace di fronteggiare la situazione imprevista e contrariarato all’idea di non poter sfruttare il discorso preparato.” Of the emotional passages elsewhere in the speech, however, Gagliardi writes: “Il pathos eccessivo di taluni punti ha funzione ironica e ‘ricattatoria’: un giudice tanto magnanimo da far prevalere la clemenza sulla vendetta, come tiene a dimostrare, non potrà mostrarsi insensibile ad argomenti patetici.” Gagliardi 1997: 62, 45.

116

The Orator without Authority

in Pro Milone, in a tense situation in which silence or dissimulation might be the prudent or expected choice, Cicero makes a surprising turn to the opposite.46 Cicero’s self-incrimination as a Pompeian is flamboyant, even playfully so, unlike his cautious approach to the earlier Pro Marcello.47 Cicero revels ostentatiously in the impunity supposedly granted to him by Caesar, praising the liberalitas and sapientia of the dictator while testing his patience. Here, as ever, Cicero’s goal is a victory for his client: he magnifies his own guilt for the very transgression of which Ligarius is guilty, the crime of fighting against Caesar (although this is not actually the crime for which Ligarius is on trial), and suggests that Caesar must acquit Ligarius in order to maintain consistency with his own precedents.48 The more he flaunts his own opposition to Caesar, the safer his client Ligarius is, because Cicero has been pardoned already, and Ligarius has not gone so far. Cicero’s shouting about his own offense against Caesar, like his shouting about Pompey’s fears about Milo, releases the tension inherent in the situation of the trial to some degree through humor, poking fun at the dynast, at himself, and at the situation while still preserving an air of camaraderie rather than dissent.49 This sudden boldness is intended to demonstrate that (limited) political opposition and differences of opinion are permitted under Caesar’s regime, and that hatred of former Pompeians will not sway Caesar’s judgments.50 Quintilian quotes this passage from Pro Ligario as an example of pretended freedom of speech: “for what could be less artificial than true liberty? But frequently, underneath this pretense lies flattery” (9.2.27). Yet he also notes its effectiveness in mollifying the dictator (see Chapter 2 on Cicero’s attempts to manipulate Caesar’s clementia).51 This

46 47

48

49

50

On this passage, see May 1988: 143–4. Castorina points out that Cicero depicts himself as innocent of wrongdoing in the civil wars in Pro Marcello, but makes less effort to exculpate himself in Pro Ligario, and that Lig. and Deiot. showcase Cicero’s talent for irony more than Marc. (Castorina 1975: 117–18, 145–7). There is some question of whether Caesar engineered this trial as a show of clemency from the start (as implied by Fam. 6.13–14 to Ligarius), or whether Cicero induced him to acquit Ligarius when he had planned to do the opposite (Plut. Cic. 39.5–6); Walser 1959; Craig 1984: 195–6; MacKendrick 1995: 424. Quintilian gives the question from the end of this passage as an example of the “not unappealing” effect of answering one’s own questions (9.2.14), and his idea of a “false defense” or “mock defense” in his discussion of humor may also apply here: “a Roman knight imitated a defense (defensionem imitatus est), when Augustus charged him with wasting his inheritance, by replying: ‘I thought it was mine’” (6.3.74). Loutsch 1984; Gotoff 2002: 240; Kurczyk 2006: 274. Cf. Kurczyk 277: “Die Rede für Ligarius ist ein glänzendes Beispiel für Ciceros Fähigkeit, sich in der Hoffnung auf bessere Zeiten an gegebene Umstände anzupassen und im Rahmen der Möglichkeiten Anteil am politischen Geschehen zu nehmen.” Kapust 2018: 42–6. 51 Caesar’s supporters even got Caesar a copy (Att. 13.19.2, 13.20.2).

Insecurity and Inappropriate Jokes

117

use of irony also offers a precedent for imperial oratory and the notorious “double-speak” of senatorial oratory under the emperors.52 Cicero had actually prostrated himself at Caesar’s feet at a salutatio on Ligarius’ behalf (Fam. 6.14.2), which was abnormal not only per se but because of who was conducting the performance, insofar as Cicero’s own role had been transformed from that of a patron to that of a lowly client.53 In Rome, one might say that the salutatio and other rituals of clientship normalized a courtly style of interaction with nobiles, and that Caesar’s regime represented a variation on that pattern. In fact, Cicero’s Caesarian orations often reproduce the tropes Robert Hariman associates with the courtly style of politics: a focus on pageantry and physical appearances, virtuosity in producing a pleasing, polite impression, and obsessive finesse in performing one’s status.54 Pro Ligario, like Pro Marcello, is also adorned with wordplay, alliteration, and other pleasing literary elements.55 This show of artistry gives Cicero an affect of pleasant affability and easy confidence in a trial riddled with hazards.56 The appearance of creating art for art’s sake makes the trial seem less serious and redirects attention from politics and legal arguments to aesthetic concerns. However, we can also read Cicero’s performances of fear and self-deprecating humor as intentional transgressions or ruptures of the courtly style. If the courtly style demands virtuosity and suave politesse, then Cicero’s decision to intersperse his Caesarian orations with demonstrations of the opposite – “failures” to maintain his composure or take his role seriously – subverts that courtly atmosphere, just for a moment, before restoring it with a return to panegyric. The third and last of the Caesarian orations, Pro Deiotaro, also recalls a strategy from Pro Milone directly, in an expression of anxiety at its opening. In 45 bce, Cicero delivered a speech in defense of King Deiotarus, tetrarch of Galatia, on a charge of attempting to assassinate Caesar, with Caesar himself acting as judge.57 Again, as in Pro Milone, Cicero addresses the elephant in the room, so to speak: the strangeness of this trial’s setting, which threatens Cicero’s ability to defend his client effectively and to obtain an acquittal. He thus begins again with a confession of insecurity. “In this case, so many things worry me that the more my loyalty to Deiotarus urges 52 53 54

55 56

Gagliardi 1997: 210; Hall 2009a; cf. Winterbottom 1981; Bartsch 1994; Strunk 2010. Loutsch 1984: 105; Gagliardi 1997: 27–8. Hariman 1995: 51–94; cf. Greenblatt 1973: 34–44. As Hariman also notes, the courtly style is not limited to the actual courts of monarchs, but can be reproduced in any steeply hierarchical, aestheticized subculture, as in high society garden parties or Hollywood celebrity culture. Montague 1992: 573; Gotoff 1993; Gagliardi 1997: 58–60. 57 Cf. Krostenko 2005; Kenty 2017 on the middle style. Bringmann 1986.

118

The Orator without Authority

me to defend his well-being, the more my fear subtracts from my ability” (1).58 His fear here is presented as proof of the strength of his attachment to Deiotarus, the anxiety of a solicitous advocate and friend. As he proceeds in Pro Deiotaro, he explains initially that he is disturbed at the accusation itself, but goes on to reveal a greater cause of perturbation in a way that mirrors the exordium of Pro Milone: Moveor etiam loci ipsius insolentia, quod tantam causam quanta nulla umquam in disceptatione versata est dico intra domesticos parietes, dico extra conventum et eam frequentiam in qua oratorum studia niti solent: . . . Hanc enim, C. Caesar, causam si in foro dicerem eodem audiente et disceptante te, quantam mihi alacritatem populi Romani concursus adferret! Quis enim civis ei regi non faveret cuius omnem aetatem in populi Romani bellis consumptam esse meminisset? Spectarem curiam, intuerer forum, caelum denique testarer ipsum. Sic, cum et deorum immortalium et populi Romani et senatus beneficia in regem Deiotarum recordarer, nullo modo mihi deesse posset oratio. Quae quoniam angustiora parietes faciunt actioque maximae causae debilitatur loco, tuum est, Caesar, qui pro multis saepe dixisti, quid mihi nunc animi sit ad te ipsum referre, quo facilius cum aequitas tua tum audiendi diligentia minuat hanc perturbationem meam. I’m also affected by the weirdness of the location itself, since I’m arguing a case as important as any that has ever been disputed, within domestic confines. I’m speaking apart from the assembly and crowds on which orators’ efforts usually depend. . . . For if I were arguing this case, Caesar, in the forum, even if you were still listening and judging, what great energy the Roman people’s presence would give me! For what citizen wouldn’t favor a king whose whole life he remembered has been spent in fighting the Roman people’s wars? I would be looking at the senate house, I would see the forum, then I would call the sky itself to witness. That way, when I had recalled the benefits given by the immortal gods and by the Roman people and by the senate to King Deiotarus, my speech couldn’t possibly fall short. But since walls constrict all these things and the delivery of an important defense is weakened by the place, it’s up to you, Caesar, who have often defended many others, to ask yourself how I must be feeling now, so that both your fairness and your diligence in listening lessen this agitation of mine more easily. (5–7)

Lest Caesar view Cicero as a hostile adversary, Cicero presents himself (and his client Deiotarus, fast friend of the Roman people) as abject and unthreatening. He also, as we saw in Chapter 2, puts pressure on his “friend” Caesar to mitigate the situation with his “fairness and diligence 58

Cicero describes the speech similarly after the fact, in a letter to Dolabella, Fam. 9.12.

Insecurity and Inappropriate Jokes

119

in listening” by putting himself in Cicero’s shoes (“ask yourself how I must be feeling now”), so to speak. However, Cicero’s fear also generates an opportunity for Cicero to remind Caesar and the prosecution of what a popular and successful orator he is (or was); his claims to the contrary now serve as a contrast to the status he held before and invite his audience to imagine a crowd going wild for the great orator.59 The most prominent themes in Cicero’s speech for Deiotarus are friendship and clementia, but Gagliardi draws attention to one passage in which Cicero seems to veer into an ironic treatment of Caesar, a barely veiled jab.60 Blesamius, a member of King Deiotarus’ inner circle, is cited by the prosecution as feeding anti-Caesarian propaganda to the king in order to spur the king into attempting to have Caesar assassinated. Cicero quotes the sort of criticisms Blesamius is supposed to have relayed (thus airing criticisms of the dictator himself) and then argues that these criticisms could not really have been made: “Blesamius . . . ad regem” inquit “scribere solebat te in invidia esse, tyrannum existimari, statua inter reges posita animos hominum vehementer offensos, plaudi tibi non solere.” Nonne intellegis, Caesar, ex urbanis malevolorum sermunculis haec ab istis esse conlecta? Blesamius tyrannum Caesarem scriberet? Multorum enim capita civium viderat, multos iussu Caesaris vexatos, verberatos, necatos, multas adflictas et eversas domos, armatis militibus refertum forum! Quae semper in civili victoria sensimus, ea te victore non vidimus. “Blesamius, . . . ” he says, “used to write to the king that you [Caesar] were hated, that you were considered a tyrant, that men’s minds were greatly offended that your statue was placed among those of the kings, that you didn’t usually get applause.” Don’t you realize, Caesar, that these statements were gathered from the clever gossip of your detractors by these men? Would Blesamius have written that Caesar was a tyrant? – for he’d seen the heads of many citizens, many abused, beaten, murdered at Caesar’s command, many homes ruined and overthrown, the forum filled with armed soldiers! Those things, which we always saw from victors in civil wars, we have not seen with you as victor. (Deiot. 33) 59

60

Gagliardi, too, reads Cicero’s fear in this way: “non si può fare aperta critica, se si teme di parlare, eppure la sfida è condotta seriamente, e dunque è la paura di parlare (più volte dichiarata) ad essere poco credibile, smentita peraltro dalla chiarezza delle accuse, secondo l’ormai nota tecnica ironica di tacita sconfessione di affermazioni appena fatte. . . . Il timore di parlare mi pare si atteggi a precisa denuncia della perdita di libertà di parola più volte adombrata nelle altre due orazioni, e la paura legata alla stranezza della causa, limitata in realtà all’iniziale ammissione d’inferiorità al tema (un tratto di falsa modestia topico nella tradizione oratoria)”; Gagliardi 1997: 192–3, cf. 223–8; see also Petrone 1978: 96–8. Gagliardi 1997: 241–7.

120

The Orator without Authority

The ostensible point here is that the very notion of anti-Caesarian propaganda is absurd because Caesar is so likeable, but until the final sentence, Cicero does not clarify that these claims about Caesar’s regime are, in fact, false. Until then, he seems to be describing horrors of civil war that are all too real. The framing is (in the end) clearly ironic, but the joke is not funny, which makes the supposed irony wear awfully thin as a plausible excuse for Cicero. The claim that the city is full of Caesar’s detractors and gossip about his unpopularity would hardly be reassuring to Caesar, and as Gotoff notes, Cicero’s subsequent answers to these criticisms of Caesar are not very effective, so that the criticisms are more or less left to stand.61 In this passage, the pretense of irony and sarcasm seems designed to allow Cicero to mock the dictator in relative safety,62 or perhaps to make Caesar feel vaguely but indirectly threatened. Cicero’s anxious exordium had set up a dynamic of submissiveness and courtliness from the outset of the speech, which makes it more likely that he will get away with this sort of gambit later on, while instigating conflict between Caesar and the prosecutors of Deiotarus. The three Caesarian orations thus feature a range of rhetorical strategies and approaches to self-fashioning that eschew traditional claims of authority in favor of fear, intimidation, irony, buffoonery, and ambiguity, depending on what Cicero thinks will help his client. However, Cicero also experimented with another alternative to authority under Caesar’s regime: the refusal to speak at all. Like the Caesarian orations, Cicero’s silence can be read as an experiment in eloquence without authority under changed political conditions.

Self-Fashioning in Silence In a letter to Plancius at the end of 46 bce or beginning of 45, between Pro Ligario and Pro Deiotaro, Cicero complained: “if dignitas is having the right ideas about government and to persuade good men of what you think, then I have recovered my dignitas; but if dignitas lies in being able to make your advice a reality or to defend it with a freely delivered speech, then not a single trace of dignitas remains for us” (Fam. 4.14.1).63 However, it is worth noting that to Plancius (ibid.) and to most Romans, Cicero’s first 61 62

63

Gotoff 1993: 255–9. That safety may be assured by the fact that Cicero has portrayed himself as being so timid and deferential elsewhere in the speech (see above) and has portrayed both himself and Deiotarus as grateful beneficiaries of Caesar’s clementia and friendship (see Chapter 3). Connolly 2007: 160.

Self-Fashioning in Silence

121

definition of dignitas – winning the approval of the right sort of people for one’s political views – was sufficient. That was fully within the orator’s control, whereas the decisions of voters or jurors – part of Cicero’s second definition (“to make your advice a reality”) – was not. Likewise, no politician is ever entirely “free” to say exactly what they want without consequences, as Cicero well knew. His nostalgia for his idealistic second definition is based on a selective memory. No Roman politician, including Cicero, had demonstrated a reliable, predictable ability to persuade effectively, sustained for years at a time, especially when not holding political office. Votes and verdicts were subject to too many variables to be easily controlled or predicted. Cicero had perhaps been more successful more often than his contemporaries, but in this letter he is selecting the moments of his greatest influence as the standard definition of dignitas.64 As a descriptive account of Roman republican politics, this letter’s value is questionable; as a reflection of Cicero’s character after the civil war as a discontented and uneasy outsider, however, its value is more clear. Cicero’s expressions of frustration to Plancius and to other correspondents constitute a rhetorical performance of disengagement, bitterness, and stubborn reticence under Caesar’s regime, in the absence of public statements to clarify what he was doing and why.65 After the war he calculated that dissent, however sincere or authoritative, would be perceived as base ingratitude toward the dictator who had pardoned him,66 and might well be perceived as petulant or churlish. It seems unlikely that Caesar would have lapsed from his trademark clementia to punish Cicero, but dissent would not have helped his political situation either. In 46 he wrote that “as I once thought that it was my duty to speak freely, since the city’s liberty required it, now that liberty has been lost, it is my duty to say nothing that will offend the wishes of the man or those who are promoted by him. . . . What remains for me is to avoid any foolishness, lest I say or do something rashly against the powerful. That, I think, is the role of a wise man” (Fam. 9.16.5). On the other hand, he also did not want to add to Caesar’s power by praising him or by participating in senatorial debates under Caesar’s leadership, as the

64 65 66

He also claims in the Third Philippic to have endured Caesar’s reign “not abjectly and not without some dignitas” (3.28). Steel also reads a justification of Cicero’s choices during the civil war into these letters, a reestablishing of his reputation among certain friends; Steel 2005: 98–103; cf. Bishop 2018: 246–56. As Brutus and Cassius’ plot to assassinate Caesar was by many historians; App. BC. 2.118, Plut. Caes. 69.2–8.

122

The Orator without Authority

dictator in fact requested (Att. 9.17.1, 9.18.1, 10.1.3).67 The result was what he calls his diuturnum silentium (Marc. 1). Perhaps paradoxically, Cicero’s auctoritas was now both too diminished and too great to allow him to speak. His words would have significant consequences, either sanctioning or undermining the dictator’s regime, because of his history of political prominence. He seems to have ruled out direct opposition, but a speech like the First Philippic with criticism couched in claims to friendship and affectionate concern68 might have been produced under these circumstances (with less condescension than pervades the First Philippic), yet one was not. On the other hand, Cicero could have attended the senate upon Caesar’s arrival in 48 and delivered something like the Pro Marcello, a panegyric in which he praised Caesar’s clementia and forecasted Caesar’s restoration of the republic, which seems to be more or less what Caesar was asking him to do (Att. 9.18), but he refused. He could have done the same earlier in the year in 46, after Caesar pardoned him but before Caesar returned from his campaigns, but he chose not to.69 He could also have decisively departed Rome to indicate that he was not going to deliver speeches in either scenario, but he chose not to do that either, making a point of standing on the periphery during his diuturnum silentium.70 It is possible, then, to read Cicero’s silence not as a sign that he cannot speak but as a sign that he will not. He uses written works (e.g., Laus Catonis, Brutus) and letters to put clear framing on his public silence and to suggest the proper interpretation of it. “Perhaps you can’t say what you think, but you can certainly be silent,” he told Marcellus, in encouraging him to return from exile (Fam. 4.9.2). It is Cicero’s past as a master orator that makes his own periods of silence potentially significant also, not as a manifestation of fear or powerlessness, but as an act of protest.71 Susan 67

68 69

70

71

In 57 bce, reluctant to vote either way on Pompey’s command over the grain supply (see Chapter 7), most consulars declined to attend the senate (Att. 4.1.6–7), as Cicero seems to have done in 48, so that this form of protest did have precedents; Balsdon 1957: 16. As discussed in Chapter 2. Dio describes honorific votes of the senate in 46 for Caesar’s victories in Africa at 43.14.2–6, and a speech delivered by Caesar to the senate upon his return at 43.15.2–18.6, suggesting that the senate was meeting in this period. Cicero’s absence did not stop Caesar’s party from issuing senatorial decrees with Cicero’s name as author; Cic. Fam. 9.15.4. In a letter to Sulpicius Rufus around this time, he describes himself as avoiding the senate in general; 13.77.1. It is worth noting that Cicero also elected to absent himself from Rome altogether for the remainder of Antony’s consulship, perhaps in solidarity with Brutus (Att. 14.10.1, 14.12.2), until he was forced by Antony to break his silence with the First Philippic (Phil. 1.3–15); cf. Marchese 2014: 83–90. At Marc. 1 he describes his diuturnum silentium as something he “used” (quo eram usus) or “practiced”; see also the letter to Sulpicius about the oration, Fam. 4.4.4. Gómez Santamaría 2007: 387–8; Gildenhard 2018: 216–27.

Self-Fashioning in Silence

123

Sontag, in “The aesthetics of silence,” writes of modern artists that “silence is the artist’s ultimate other-worldly gesture; by silence, he frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, audience, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of his work. Still, in this renunciation of ‘society,’ one cannot fail to perceive a highly social gesture.”72 Silence only carries this potential as an aesthetic or political act when the potential speaker (or artist, in her framework) has already attracted an audience’s attention by demonstrating his mastery or genius. Otherwise, his silence goes unnoticed. In his article “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome,” Ahl points to the taciturnity of Cassandra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, whose presence on stage creates an expectation that she will speak and generates tension when she does not.73 Cicero’s silence, like that of a tragic character, also conveys grief and foreboding. Cicero’s Brutus, written in this period in 46, is pervaded by the same tragic nostalgia and frustration as the letter to Plancius and invokes the death of eloquence in an implicit rebuke of Caesar’s regime.74 The Brutus has been called a funeral oration for Roman oratory,75 or even a suicide note.76 We can also see it, I suggest, as an attempt to define and articulate Cicero’s political silence in 46, before Pro Marcello, given the intention he expresses in the dialogue to pass over contemporary events in silence to spare himself further pain (Brut. 157, 251, 266). Schwindt analyzes what he calls the “rhetoric of silence” (eine Rhetorik des Schweigens) in the dialogue as culminating in the vacuum left at the end of Cicero’s history of oratory, a teleological history whose telos is missing.77 Lowrie argues that the Brutus “serves as a loud and vocal foil to his own silencing and in the process constructs Cicero as a self in crisis, caught between silence and expression, ability and inability.”78 Cicero claims in the dialogue that he could no longer make use of “the tools of wisdom, of genius, of auctoritas” (7): “just when our old age was giving way to you and entrusting the reins to you, suddenly, along with other things befalling the state, eloquence itself, of which we are about to give a history, went mute (obmutuit)” (24). Cicero also tells Brutus later that “both our exertions were most conspicuous a little while before this vocation of ours, Brutus, was terrified by arms 72 73 74 75 76 78

Sontag 1969: 6. Ahl 1984: 180–2. Aristophanes’ Euripides makes fun of Aeschylus for using silent characters at Frogs 911–24; on this technique see Taplin 1972. Narducci 1997: 99–103; Lowrie 2008; Jacotot 2014. Leach 1999: 148–50 includes a Lacanian analysis of Cicero’s psychology in this period. Narducci 1997: 97–8; Gowing 2000: 58–9; Steel 2002: 200; Dugan 2005: 173. Steel 2002: 207–11. 77 Schwindt 2000: 120. Lowrie 2008: 132. I disagree with her assessment (150–2) that Cicero is not self-aware here.

124

The Orator without Authority

and suddenly fell silent and was made mute (obmutuit)” (324), a development that he dates not to Caesar’s dictatorship but to Pompey’s judicial legislation in his sole consulship, when Pro Milone was delivered. The word obmutuit, as opposed to silentium or sileo, contains a suggestion of blame in its prefix, an acknowledgement that this silence is not organic or voluntary but has been imposed artificially. It turns out that the forum is not entirely mute but muted, and that it has been monopolized, first by Pompey’s soldiers and later by Caesar’s supporters and yes-men. Cicero’s tone is reproachful, if not seditious.79 His eulogy of Cato in the same period implied the same reproach,80 but in both cases Cicero’s silence or polite praeteritio (to borrow Hall’s characterization) also allows another, noncritical reading.81 The symbolism of silence in Cicero’s Brutus and in letters like the one to Plancius can be understood as an inversion of the trope of politicians with the authority to silence a crowd elsewhere in Cicero’s works. The best example of this trope in Cicero’s corpus occurs in Pro Sestio, as Cicero praises contiones held by Lentulus Spinther and Pompey to advocate for his recall from exile: Habuit de eodem me P. Lentulus consul contionem: concursus est populi Romani factus; omnes ordines, tota in illa contione Italia constitit. Egit causam summa cum gravitate copiaque dicendi tanto silentio, tanta adprobatione omnium, nihil ut umquam videretur tam populare ad populi Romani auris accidisse. Productus est ab eo Cn. Pompeius, qui se non solum auctorem meae salutis, sed etiam supplicem populo Romano . Huius oratio ut semper gravis et grata in contionibus fuit, sic contendo numquam neque sententiam eius auctoritate neque eloquentiam iucunditate fuisse maiore. Quo silentio sunt auditi de me ceteri principes civitatis! Publius Lentulus, as consul, held a contio about me also: a gathering of the Roman people was produced, all the orders, all of Italy stood together in that contio. He argued my case with the greatest dignity and fluency, in such great silence, with such universal approval, that nothing so popular ever seemed to have fallen on the ears of the Roman people. Gnaeus Pompeius was led up by him, and he offered himself not only as the champion of my restoration, but even pleaded as a suppliant with the Roman people. His oratory was always dignified and pleasing to contiones, but I contend that no sententia of 79

80 81

I am not fully convinced by the hypothesis that Cicero was attempting to incite tyrannicide either in the Brutus or the Caesarian orations, although his works could have incited Caesar’s assassination without his intending it. As Cicero recognized in writing it (Att. 12.4), and as the initial reaction to the eulogy suggests (Att. 13.27.1). Hall 2009a. On the eulogy, see Kumaniecki 1970; Jones 1970; Kierdorf 1978; Zecchini 1980.

Self-Fashioning in Silence

125

his has ever had greater authority, nor has his eloquence ever had more charm. How silently the other leaders of the city listened about me! (Sest. 108, italics added for emphasis)

“How silently they listened!” he exclaims, emphasizing the rapport between Pompey and his audience, matched by the consensus between Lentulus and the same audience listening “in such great silence.” He implies that the degree of silence corresponds simply to the audience’s approval: if they like what they hear, they listen more attentively and respectfully.82 This pertains both to content and to form, both to what the orators say and to the eloquence with which they say it. Lentulus and Pompey enjoyed this special silence because they showed special eloquence on the occasion (“with the greatest dignity and fluency”; “no sententia of his has ever had greater authority, nor has his eloquence ever had more charm”).83 Form and content mutually reinforce each other, in Cicero’s account. The power to silence a crowd, even a hostile one, was particularly celebrated in the age of chaotic contiones and political rioting in the 50s bce.84 Cicero celebrates Pompey’s auctoritas in a letter to his brother Quintus about a violent contio, around the same time as Pro Sestio: “in this scene he was quite strong, not frightened off, he spoke his whole oration, and occasionally even amid silence, when he had overpowered them with his authority” (Q. fr. 2.3.1). By contrast, when Cicero and his allies then gave Clodius the same treatment in return, Clodius “did not keep his composure in mind, speech, or expression” (ibid.). Pompey has held a consulship and attained unprecedented honors, in no small part because he has proven that he can be calm and resolute under stress, not only in battle but in violent contiones as well.85 He is able to bring all that authority and gravity in his persona to bear, according to Cicero, in silencing a crowd. Clodius, a senator of lower rank and (in Cicero’s mind) less dignified comportment, cannot do the same. In Pro Milone 82

83

84 85

The same logic underlies Q. fr. 2.1.1, referring to silence enjoyed by Rutilius Lupus, which an opponent characterizes instead as disapproving taciturnitas. The opposite of reverent silence is clamor; on clamor as historiographical trope see O’Gorman 2019. On Pompey as an orator, see Van der Blom 2011; Van der Blom 2016: 113–45. Lentulus is described in the Brutus as compensating for “sluggishness of thought and speech” with the physical impression he gave of dignity and grace (235). On contiones see Pina Polo 1989; Mouritsen 2001; Tan 2008; Mouritsen 2013; Tiersch 2018: 37–8; Pina Polo 2018. Valerius Maximus picks up on this portrayal of Pompey’s authority: “the venerable authority of Pompey was assailed many times with freedom, but not without great praise, because Pompey bore his role as the plaything of the license of every sort of man with a calm expression” (6.2.4), and thus “it was simultaneously very courageous and very safe to impugn Pompey” (6.2.8). Cf. Steel 2013.

126

The Orator without Authority

Cicero recalls another riotous contio that ultimately could not be quelled by the orator who was speaking. In this case, his protégé Caelius, “firm in the cause he was arguing, dedicated to the wishes of good men and the authority of the senate, with unique, divine, incredible loyalty amidst this hatred or misfortune of Milo, was being listened to in silence” until a riot broke out (Mil. 91). The young Caelius’ auctoritas falls short of the ideal. The silence a speaker can command provides an index of their authority, in Cicero’s framing. Cicero did not try to command that silence or exercise his authority in this basic way in 46, but was silent himself instead, and wrote in letters and dialogues about his motivations for that silence in order to lead others toward the right interpretation of his mysterious policy. Cicero thus took on the role of the orator deprived of his rightful power, silenced himself, an inversion of the idealizing trope. If, as Connolly suggests, the Pro Marcello teaches Cicero’s fellow Pompeians “to learn to be subjects, in the sense of selves as well as subordinates,” under Caesar’s dictatorship,86 Cicero’s silence before and after his Caesarian orations might constitute a refusal to learn to be a subject. The letter to Plancius above, with its tendentious definition of dignitas, offers one vehicle through which Cicero may be able to criticize Caesar’s regime effectively by expressing his frustration, stirring up discontent within a safer, more limited circle of friends.87 In the letter, as in the Brutus, Cicero’s apparently abject lamentations for his own silence and his own loss of auctoritas are not to be taken at face value, but represent (as ever) a conscious choice of narrative framing, a self-fashioning strategy to account for his behavior. His sometimes nihilistic sense of humor about the same situation expressed in the letters to Papirius Paetus is another (Fam. 9.15–26). Because of the contrast with his former position, his claims of impotence contain a protest, an implicit argument that the circumstances under Caesar’s regime (or under Pompey’s sole consulship before the war) are outrageous and unjust.88 Because these arguments are implicit, and because of Cicero’s strategic silence, we are left to fill in the gaps and read between the lines, imputing to Cicero as much criticism against 86 87 88

Connolly 2015: 190. On the letters of this period see Leach 1999; Grillo 2016; Correa 2017. On the audience for the letters, Steel 2005: 43–7, 88–106. He makes these arguments explicitly and publicly in the post reditum period: “can that year be counted as a part of the republican era, when the senate fell mute (obmutuit), the courts were silent (conticuissent), good men were grieving, the violence of your brigands flew throughout the city, and there was no citizen left in the state, when the whole state had yielded to [Piso’s] and Gabinius’ wickedness and furor?” (Pis. 26). A similar argument is made retrospectively about Caesar’s dictatorship at Phil. 3.6.

Conclusion

127

Caesar as we are predisposed to see. It may be tempting to read his grief over losing dignitas in the letter to Plancius against Caesar’s claims that he crossed the Rubicon to defend his dignitas; Cicero, the contrast suggests, was unwilling to go to the same drastic, unconstitutional lengths to reclaim his. The Caesarian orations themselves also allow for an ironic reading critical of Caesar, including Cicero’s treatment of his silence.89 In Pro Marcello, he describes himself as having “engaged in a long silence, not out of fear, but partly out of grief, and partly humility” (1). Fear is acknowledged as a possible motivation for silence under Caesar’s regime, even if it is then dismissed. Leach draws the conclusion that this speech “celebrates the dissolution of silence enforced by sorrow and embarrassment (verecundia) rather than fear and announces the beginning of a return to a pristinus mos dicendi – but yet within a context that in itself evidences how impossible such a return is.”90 Likewise, when Cicero claimed that Caesar had “restored me to myself” (2–3, 13), he was quoting his own post reditum rhetoric (Red. Sen. 8). This self-quotation could imply that he had been “exiled” by Caesar’s dictatorship in some sense, just as he had been driven out of the city in 58 bce. Just like Piso, Gabinius, and Clodius, who had “silenced” the forum in 58 bce (e.g., Pis. 26, 32), Caesar had silenced key voices in the forum as dictator, from Cicero’s perspective.91 “Since the artist can’t embrace silence literally and remain an artist, what the rhetoric of silence indicates is a determination to pursue his activity more deviously than ever before.”92

Conclusion The silencing authority of Lentulus and Pompey in 57 represents perhaps the pinnacle of the orator’s dignity. Yet Cicero also generates persuasive force from rejecting or inverting that authority, from abdicating sovereignty or sacrificing dignity or even from refusing to speak at all, when he finds himself at a grave disadvantage. For the orator who wanted to become a political figure, auctoritas seems indispensable. How else could he get others to take his opinion seriously? How could he be useful as a patron to 89 90 91

92

Rambaud 1984; Dyer 1990; Gómez Santamaría 2007; Craig 2008; Dugan 2013. Leach 1999: 164. Connolly 2015: 191. Indeed, Cicero’s audience might well have been reminded that Caesar himself was seen in some quarters as responsible for Clodius’ transitio ad plebem and tribunate, and thus for Cicero’s exile. Sontag 1969: 12.

128

The Orator without Authority

his clients, if not through the prestige of his position? Yet in the last decade or so of his career, Cicero seems surprisingly willing to give up straightforward auctoritas in favor of self-deprecation or abjection. Fear can be as great a rhetorical tool as courage, and humor can disarm a force too strong to attack directly. He embraces these non-authoritative stances in Pro Milone and in the Caesarian orations to make himself appear nonthreatening and perhaps even pitiable, drawing his audience in despite their preexisting hostility or contempt. To some extent he was constrained by the overwhelming authority of Pompey and then Caesar, but not entirely; the Caesarian orations during Caesar’s reign, his oration on the amnesty for Caesar’s assassins,93 and the Philippics after the Ides show that he was not permanently sidelined, but continued experimenting with different oratorical roles in and out of the forum. When none of those roles provided leverage, he turned to the paradoxical role of the silent orator. The very setting of each of these orations demonstrated the power wielded by Pompey and Caesar, so that Cicero’s authority was dislodged from its foundations, but Cicero found a way to exploit that setting. In these challenging situations, Cicero might have chosen to simply pretend that he was arguing a case as usual, or tried to put on a show of rhetorical force with the tools of invective or self-praise, as he does elsewhere. Cicero and Caesar had long been fellow competitors in the struggle for authority, which was not a zero-sum game in the Roman republic, although it was starting to resemble one more closely in the era of the “great men” and dynasts. It seems unlikely to me that Cicero was in immediate danger from a dictator celebrated for his clemency. Cicero instead chooses on several occasions to abnegate his own authority, seeking a victory for his client rather than sovereignty for himself. Even his stubborn silence after Pharsalus, as portrayed in the Brutus, can be seen as an inversion of traditional claims of authority, symbolized by the ability to silence a crowd. To remain silent instead, to refuse to engage, and to tacitly accuse others of silencing the silencer is a political act itself. 93

Plut. Cic. 42.3, Caes. 67.8, Ant. 14.3, Brut. 19.1; Dio 44.34.1; App. BC. 2.142. Ramsey 2003: 86; Morstein-Marx 2004: 151–8; Welch 2012: 121–5.

chapter 5

The Champion of the Senate

Introduction Cicero may have a reputation for vanity and self-promotion, but a major part of his self-fashioning and political outlook rests on his membership in a collective. Using his persona as a senator, he emphasizes his place in a network rather than his individuality and adopts an affect of gratitude and piety. His status in the senate enabled him to find safety in numbers, but increasingly, it also became a tool with which to differentiate himself from others who (in his view) abused power and threatened the constitutional order that the senate represented, namely Piso, Gabinius, Clodius, and Antony. After this chapter, we turn to other ways in which Cicero sought to distinguish himself from such opponents, and his senatorial persona is the necessary foundation on which to build those other claims. It is the basis for a relativistic ideological framework, in which the senate’s consensus or retroactive approval determines the morality of a political action. While obedience to the senate occupies one end of a moral spectrum, the opposite end is tyranny, which Cicero defines largely as defiance of the senate’s will. I will focus on the rhetorical role of the senate in Cicero’s descriptions of his consulship and recall, primarily in De Haruspicum Responsis and In Pisonem. I demonstrate that his treatment of Caesar as pro-senate in De Provinciis Consularibus represents an extension of this same self-fashioning technique, before turning to his attempted revival of the senate in the Philippics, especially 2, 5, and 7. Over time, however, the more Cicero insisted on the senate’s authority as the greatest power in the state, the less that rhetoric seemed to correspond to reality. A newly minted senator might enjoy greater prestige walking around the city of Rome with the new wide stripes on his toga, but once he entered a meeting of the senate, he was usually seen and not heard.1 The right to 1

Hölkeskamp 2010: 26–30. Ryan argues that the pedarii did have the right to speak (even if they did not always exercise it), and explores the history of the hierarchical order in which senators were asked

129

130

The Champion of the Senate

deliver an opinion was tightly restricted under the republic and corresponded to status: a consul presided, consuls-elect were invited to give their opinions first, then former consuls, then praetors elect and former praetors, and so on down the hierarchy, to a point.2 Each time a young senator did get to speak, he hoped to win approbation from his fellow senators both for the correctness of his views and for the style in which he expressed them. If he earned that approbation, the next time he spoke, a more friendly audience would be there to greet him. He would also have the protection of safety in numbers if anyone attacked him, for other senators would be more likely to rush to his defense.3 If he sounded inept or offended other senators, he might find himself shut off from further advancement. If he showed disrespect for other senators or contempt for the institution or his colleagues, he could be punished with invidia and starved of supporters or allies. If all went well, he could look forward to a long, respectable career in the senate after his bid at magistracies had ended, giving opinions to demonstrate his wisdom, renew his authority, and model good senatorial behavior for younger men. The name of the game in the senate was moderation and conformity, not exceptionalism, and fidelity to a tradition bigger than oneself. In Cicero’s conservative rhetoric, the senate’s votes determined legitimacy at Rome – for all intents and purposes, they determined political right from wrong. If they approved of a measure, or even if they failed to repeal it, then it was just. Their opinions and decrees traditionally held tremendous authority over political actions, even without much formal constitutional power.4 Cicero quotes the opinion of “the senate” as such, citing occasions when the Senate had confirmed the validity of his policies as irrefutable evidence that he was in the right (his invocations of “the people” for the same effect are the subject of Chapter 6). Of course, as his senatorial audiences well knew, those opinions and decrees were only the final product of what might have been a long, bitterly contested debate. Out of so many meetings of the senate and so many speeches and opinions delivered at those meetings, Cicero’s surviving senatorial orations are only the tip of the iceberg. His (and other) quotations of the opinion of “the senate” after the fact reduce a polyphonous, complex, often discordant process of deliberation into a single monolithic truth that is supposed to

2 3

for their opinions; Ryan 1998. Changes in the makeup and status of the senate under Sulla in 81 bce have been the subject of reevaluation in Santangelo 2006; Steel 2014a; Steel 2014b. Lintott 1999b: 67–9. Gruen 1974: 162–3; at 209 he suggests that the hierarchy grew more rigid, if anything, in the late republic. Connolly 2007: 24–5. 4 Lintott 1999b: 86–9; Steel 2015.

Introduction

131

transcend individual actors.5 Even in the senate where those debates had unfolded, the opinions of the senate, once formed, are enshrined in institutional memory as a part of an exemplary tradition that exerts a normative force on its present members.6 The past senate’s wisdom, in Cicero’s logic, is responsible for the success of Rome thus far, and so constitutes the standard that each generation must try to match. Today’s senators are obligated to maintain continuity and consistency with those senators of the past, just as an individual orator maintains his own consistency, as if the group itself has its own collective ethos to protect. In his metaphors of the “ship of state” sailing through the storms and tempests of the 50s bce, Cicero often places the senate in the tutelary role of the pilot, with the populus as the ship’s dependent passengers (Dom. 24, Sest. 46). He writes: “in a polity, one must bear in mind what was written in the works of our divine friend Plato: whatever the leading citizens of a republic are like, that is usually what the rest of the citizens are like” (Fam. 1.9.12).7 Rome’s senators are her role models as well as her leaders.8 Cicero also used the senate’s influence as a canary in the coal mine for the stability of the res publica as a whole: if the populus was prepared to respect and revere the auctoritas of the senate, then the republic was stable; if someone refused to respect the senate, the entire social hierarchy, the foundation of civic life, was shaken.9 When Cicero deploys his persona as a senator explicitly, it is based upon a foundation of actual votes, senatorial opinions that had gone his way, but amplified with an ideological superstructure and given great conceptual significance. Cicero identified the senate as the keystone of the republic, the institution most essential for the stability of the system as a whole, which was under serious threat in this period.10 In his first speech against 5

6 7

8 9

Flaig 2003: 181–212. On the (relatively rare) term voluntas senatus as an abstract concept, see Bonnefond-Coudry 1989: 683–6. Connolly suggests that occasions when the senate yields to the demands of the people transform antagonism, a political ill, into agonism, a contest for validation that can be judged and resolved (Connolly 2015: 46–59). We can also apply this to senatorial debates: disagreements are natural to the process of deliberation, but the senatorial decree reflects resolution and consensus on the majority opinion, which has “won.” The senate’s decrees typically took the form of a collective statement that implied unanimity (“the senate believes that . . . ”), as we can see e.g. in the decrees Cicero proposes at the end of the third Philippic (37–9), a formula that elided earlier debate and potentially unresolved conflicts of opinion. Cf. Manuwald 2018. Aided by documentary records; Culham 1984; Culham 1989. See also De Legibus 3.31: “it is possible to see, if you want to reread the record of history, that whatever the leading citizens of a city are like, such is the city; whatever change of morals happens in the leading citizens follows likewise in the people,” and he specifies that the few leading citizens “honored with offices and glory (honore et gloria amplificati)” are the most influential (3.32). Connolly 2007: 23–76 deconstructs senators’ paternalistic authority and processes of legitimization. Steel 2015: 3. 10 Cf. Hölkeskamp 2010: 89.

132

The Champion of the Senate

Verres, early in his career, he acknowledged that the senate was regarded with resentment and odium after Sulla’s reforms (Verr. 1.1–3). The senate’s standing as the most authoritative branch of Rome’s government was in jeopardy.11 Cicero’s portrayal of its authority and his performance of his fidelity to it were a part of a continuous struggle to guide republican politics back to “traditional” norms. There was a right way and a wrong way to do politics, in his view, and the right way consisted of deference to the senate. Conformity to a sense of what the senate “was supposed to be” or what the senate “wanted” dictated political norms and regulated political life – at least for most senators, with a few notable exceptions who did not accept these norms as having any real power, to Cicero’s surprise.12 In fact, he seems to have overestimated the power the senate could wield over some of his peers and colleagues. The more the political scene came to be dominated by individuals who clashed with their fellow senators, the more Cicero emphasized his commitment to the senate as a symbol of tradition and legitimacy, seeking to distinguish himself and his ideal politician ideologically from those other, problematic individuals. The result is an impression of Cicero as a devoted conservative and traditionalist, set up in contrast to the sort of leader, increasingly common in the late Republic, who would flout constitutional norms for personal political advantage. In this way, Cicero’s persona as a senator provides the positive statement of his ideological commitments; this complements the negative statements about what kind of ideology he rejects to distinguish himself from the populares and dynasts of the late republic, to which we will turn in the following chapters. Cicero’s membership in the senate became an especially prominent part of his self-fashioning as he sought to reclaim his political position after exile – sometimes as a way of deferring or disavowing his own individual control over his policies, including the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators.13 I focus here on intrasenatorial relationships and discourse rather than views of the senate from outside. When Cicero calls his audience’s attention to his identity as a senator, he does so with self-abnegating reverence, even to the 11 12

13

L. Crassus, one of the main characters of De Oratore, made a similar argument in his last speech in 91; De Orat. 3.3–6. Hölkeskamp 2010: 48–52. According to Mouritsen, “when observance of this unwritten code of conduct began to weaken, the flaws in the constitution became all too apparent”; Mouritsen 2017: 166. Clodius even mocked him for stressing this point so strongly, as we can tell from Dom. 4. Steel writes that in contrast to the “heroic solitude” he claimed before his exile, “after his return from exile he is rather one among many, a devoted servant of the state whose position gains in authority and credibility precisely because it is shared by so many others”; Steel 2005: 49.

Defending His Consulship

133

point of deferring responsibility for his own actions to their collective will, seeming to contradict his own triumphalist self-justifications elsewhere. After his recall, he sometimes describes his restoration as merely a symbolic statement of senatorial authority, in order to legitimize his continuing political activity as a sort of vessel. Surprisingly, when he argues for an extension of Caesar’s command in Gaul in De Provinciis Consularibus, as we will see, he defends Caesar by labeling him a champion of the senate’s authority. Cicero emphasizes this persona especially in his arguments against the magistrates who had presided over his exile in 58 bce – Piso and Gabinius, the consuls of that year, and of course the tribune Clodius, who had introduced the actual legislation against Cicero. To prove his own righteousness and good faith, and to disprove theirs, he insisted that as consul he had not acted tyrannically, because he had followed the senate’s will faithfully.

Defending His Consulship Two narratives of Cicero’s consulship were competing for political dominance in the aftermath of Cicero’s exile. In 63, after he carried out the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators, an act that he saw as the ultimate vindication of republicanism and the product of vigorous collective deliberation, Cicero was shocked to find himself accused of tyrannical behavior.14 He comments ironically on how his “much-lauded consulship” had been the cause of his downfall (Q. fr. 1.3.1). In 58 bce, Clodius had succeeded in propagating a narrative of Cicero as a tyrant and had used it to drive Cicero into exile.15 Clodius’ law had undermined, even inverted, the political import of Cicero’s triumph over Catiline, turning it from a glorious victory into a tyrannical abuse of power for which Cicero’s exile represented a just punishment, the disastrous downfall of the hubristic villain.16 When Cicero returned, he was all the more eager to revise this narrative and to prove that he had used his whole consulship to defend the state, and especially the senate, as its humble servant. He represents this defense of the senate as the polar opposite of tyranny. Cicero recruits the senate’s votes as evidence for what is ultimately an argument in self-defense against accusations of tyrannical behavior, and uses the senate’s decrees to 14

15

See, e.g., Dom. 95: “What, pontifices, should I say? That I fled because I was conscious of my own wrongdoing? But the act that is attributed to me as a crime not only was not wrong, but was the most glorious achievement in human history.” His critics included Metellus Nepos, tribune of 62 bce (Fam. 5.2.1, 6–7; Plut. Cic. 23.1–6), and Torquatus, his opponent in Faustus Sulla’s trial in 62 (Sull. 21) as well as Clodius, Piso, and Gabinius. Cicero anticipates this already in Cat. 1.29–30. Dom. 75, 94, 110; Sest. 109. 16 On which see Tatum 1999: 153–7; Fezzi 2001; Moreau 2012.

134

The Champion of the Senate

redirect that accusation at his own accusers instead.17 In these passages, he does not frame his arguments as contributions to senatorial deliberation, but assumes the debate’s outcome in his favor as a foregone conclusion, already litigated in the past. In his consulship, Cicero had yoked his own political status to the authority of the senate,18 and the two were inextricable, fated to live or die together, in his rhetoric after exile as well. His submissive attitude to the judgment of his peers was calculated to demonstrate that he was not solely responsible for the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators, but in fact had only been carrying out the instructions of his colleagues, who had all supported this course of action. This abnegation of his own autonomy defers and disarms invidia, the resentment and envy of Cicero’s exceptional status that had helped Clodius to drive him into exile in the first place. In contrasting his consulship with that of his enemy Piso Caesoninus, he claimed to have “liberated” the senate and all good men from fear through his repulse of Rullus’ land laws; to have “upheld and defended the senate’s authority against envy” in Rabirius’ trial de perduellione; and, in the culmination of this policy, to have protected the senate from Catiline’s intended massacre (Pis. 4–5). In sum, he boasted, “the consulship was transacted by me in such a way that I did nothing without the senate’s advice,” or, just as importantly, without the praise of its leading members (7). From his point of view, as he had argued in the Fourth Catilinarian (4–6, 24),19 he had not been acting of his own accord in executing the conspirators but had only been doing what the senate had collectively decided he should do as the presiding consul. Likewise, he argued that his recall and restoration symbolized the restoration of the senate’s authority, and thus of the republic as a whole. In Cicero’s version of events, the senate chose to recall him not so much because they needed his help to correct political ills (although he does not rule out that possibility), but because they appreciated what he had done for them, and because he had become an exemplum of deference to the senate’s authority through his actions as consul. The senate’s vote for Cicero’s recall is thus interpreted as a validation of Cicero’s narrative of his consulship. His friend Lentulus Spinther took office as consul in 57 bce and immediately began to lay the groundwork for Cicero’s return, which Cicero frames as a symbolic restoration of the senate by proxy: “what did he do at all, other than affirm your dignity and authority for posterity 17 18

Koster 1980: 232–3; Corbeill 2002: 198; Kurczyk 2006: 246–55. See especially Cat. 1.7–11, 15–16; 3.13–15, 4.1–3, 18–20, 24. 19 Cf. Cape 1995.

Defending His Consulship

135

through my restoration?” (Red. Sen. 8; cf. Fam. 1.8.3–4). He also attributes the decision to recall him to the senate as a whole: “the greatest council of the Roman people and of all peoples and nations and kings is the senate: it decreed that all who wish the republic to be safe should come to defend me alone” (Dom. 73, cf. Pis. 34, Planc. 90). The senate’s interpretation of right and wrong established the dominant political narrative, for Cicero’s purposes, and his own career is just a vessel for the senate’s will, a metonym or representative for the collective. Even their retroactive approval, as a formal expression of their will, is enough to legitimize what he did, no matter how long it took them to take that position. In Cicero’s senatorial rhetoric, the senate is usually treated not as a faceless institution but as the collective of its human members: respecting “the senate” means respecting the consensus of its members, not the institution per se. The legal contest over Cicero’s Palatine property as a symbol exemplifies this duel of political narratives. Clodius had torn down Cicero’s house on the Palatine, a traditional punishment for aspirants to tyrannical power,20 and replaced it with a shrine to Libertas to show that he had “liberated” the republic from Cicero’s tyranny. The house was restored to Cicero by a decision of the pontifices (mostly senators) in September of 57 bce. Cicero described the restoration of his property specifically as a decision of “a very well-attended meeting of the senate” (Har. Resp. 15), declaring: “the senate thought that [my house] alone, since the city’s founding, should be built at public expense, liberated (liberandam) by the pontifices, defended by the magistrates, and avenged by the courts” (16, cf. Pis. 52). He trumpets the restoration of his house as evidence of the senate’s favor and as proof of the validity of his narrative of his consulship.21 In De Haruspicum Responsis, Cicero also claimed that this made him more like the beloved consul of the early republic, Valerius Publicola, in the senate’s judgment – or even better than Publicola, in fact, for while the senate had only given Publicola land to build on, it had subsidized the (re)construction of Cicero’s house itself (Har. Resp. 16). Publicola had once been accused of aspiring to tyranny during his consulship as well, but had successfully

20

21

Livy narrates the destruction of the houses of Spurius Cassius (2.41.11), of Spurius Maelius (4.16.1), and of Manlius Capitolinus (6.20.13), after each was executed for aspiring to tyranny. In De Domo Sua 101, responding to Clodius’ characterization, Cicero brought up the classic exempla – Cassius, Maelius, and Manlius – to differentiate himself from those would-be tyrants. On this argument, see Chassignet 2001; Pina Polo 2006; Roller 2010; Roller 2018: 233–64. At Fam. 1.9.15, he refers to his restored house as a monument to the senate – somewhat of an exaggeration, as shown by Lintott 2008: 185–9.

136

The Champion of the Senate

demonstrated his humility and fidelity to republican government,22 as Cicero now hoped he had. In De Haruspicum Responsis, after comparing himself to Publicola, Cicero adds emphatically: Quae quidem ego si aut per me aut ab aliis haberem, non praedicarem apud vos, ne nimis gloriari viderer; sed cum sint mihi data a vobis, cum ea attemptentur eius lingua cuius ante manu eversa vos mihi et liberis meis manibus vestris reddidistis, non ego de meis sed de vestris factis loquor, nec vereor ne haec mea vestrorum beneficiorum praedicatio non grata potius quam adrogans videatur. What I possess, whether by my own means or from others, I wouldn’t declare before you, lest I seem to boast too much; but since it was given to me by you, and since it is the target of the tongue of the man from whose hand you snatched it before and gave it back to me and to my children with your own hands, I am not describing my own deeds but yours, and I am not afraid that my declaration of the benefits you gave to me will seem not grateful but arrogant. (Har. Resp. 16)

Attacked by Clodius, Cicero retreats into the safe shelter of the senate’s approval and abdicates responsibility for the removal of the temple of Libertas. He claims that his persona here is that of a grateful public servant, not of an arrogant tyrant, and reassures himself that the friendly senate could not possibly mistake one for the other. The senators’ beneficia make them into a sort of collective patron for Cicero, setting up some expectation of continued support and favor. Likewise, he frames his celebration of his own successes as a celebration instead of the senate, to whom he attributes responsibility for his own victories. Cicero downplays his own individual identity as a property owner and public figure, merging his identity with the benevolent senate, and stressing his relationship with them as a group. His house, like his political status, is construed as a gift received from the senate, and in a sense still belongs to them and commemorates their beneficence – and their approval of Cicero, of course (cf. Fam. 1.9.15). MacKendrick tracks the frequency of what he calls the “‘l’etat c’est moi’ syndrome,” Cicero’s identification of his own standing with the integrity of the republic, through Cicero’s speeches, cataloguing examples in the 22

At least according to Livy’s account: Valerius, Brutus’ co-consul in the first year of the republic, had begun to construct a house on the Velia. Livy explains that while the house was under construction, the populus began to fear that this would not be a private house but a citadel, a base of operations for a would-be warlord. Valerius was forced to address the populus in a contio to disavow any desire for greater power, and moved the site of his house to the bottom of the hill instead, promising to live in a vulnerable and obscure location to prove his good intentions (Livy 2.7.5–8.1).

Defending His Consulship

137

speeches after Cicero’s return (both speeches post reditum, De Domo Sua, Pro Sestio, In Vatinium).23 The “‘l’etat c’est moi’ syndrome” might seem painfully self-aggrandizing, not only to us but to Cicero’s contemporaries, but that is precisely why Cicero carefully attempts to maintain an affect of deference to the senate after his return to counterbalance his self-praise, wondering aloud how he could ever repay the senate and the republic for the enormous favor they had bestowed on him (Red. Sen. 1–3, 24). His posture as a servant of the republic, laboring to repay an unpayable debt, also offers some protection for his political actions, since he claims not to be acting on his own behalf or in his own interest but for the senate. Smethurst characterizes Cicero as “a romantic who felt himself carried along on that broad stream of Roman history, and who had dreams of restoring the Senate to that position of authority it had once enjoyed” in the Middle Republic.24 Kaster likewise takes note of an “ideology of senatorial supremacy that animates the speech [Pro Sestio] and informs Cicero’s political position more generally.”25 Both descriptions attest to the continuing prominence of this element of Cicero’s self-fashioning through relationships. It is worth noting that Cicero’s persona as a senator is made to rest upon very real, observable, calculable votes of the senate, even if he embellishes the importance of these votes. This distinguishes his persona as senator from his persona as leader of an optimate faction or conservative bloc (the subject of Chapter 7): the latter does not deliberate or take votes per se, and in fact does not even seem to exist in any sort of tangible form through much of this period.26 The optimates’ numbers (despite Cicero’s characterization of their faction as universal in Pro Sestio 96–143) are small and they are supposed to exist only to pursue certain narrow ends, whether ideological or economic, whereas the senate is a permanent core component of the republican government, and large enough that its consensus carries greater weight. Valuing the judgment of one’s peers is, in Cicero’s view, not a sign of weakness but the only ethical and legitimate way of conducting a political career. The senators all belong to this community and value each other’s judgment because of their shared virtue, affirmed by (notionally) fair and free popular elections. In Pro Sestio, Cicero proclaims that the only path to true dignitas is “to be praised and loved by good men who are wise and well equipped (bene constitutis) by nature; and to recognize the structure of the state 23 25 26

MacKendrick 1995: 129, 139, 159, 211, 245; cf. Nicholson 1992: 35–7. 24 Smethurst 1958: 76. Kaster 2006: 13. Although there is obviously some overlap in the individuals Cicero places in these two categories; on senators as optimi see Stone 2005; Clemente 2018.

138

The Champion of the Senate

so wisely equipped (sapientissime constitutam) by our ancestors” (Sest. 137).27 The virtue of the political system as a whole is linked with the virtue of the individuals who compose it, as the repetition of constituo here suggests. On an individual level, in reality, Cicero did not always get along with every one of his fellow senators.28 In his letters, especially those to Lentulus in 54 bce (Fam. 1.8–9), it is clear that the senate’s voice is by no means as strong and consistent in reality as he makes it seem in his orations. He denied or glossed over this when he could, but when he clashed openly with a fellow senator, he explained it away by claiming that his target lacked virtue, for if a man were worthy of his respect and demonstrated the proper moral character and motives of a senator, he could not possibly be Cicero’s enemy. Cicero represents his invectives against senatorial misfits and outcasts like Piso Caesoninus (cos. 58) as part of a perpetual battle to protect the integrity and dignity of the senate itself from the usurpations of tyrants. In his oration In Pisonem, he lectured Piso: “it often transpires that brave men, even if they previously fought against each other hand to hand in arms, put aside the hatred of combat along with the battle itself and their weapons. . . . Virtue (which you don’t even recognize when it’s in front of you) has this characteristic: its appearance and beauty, even in an enemy, delight brave men” (Pis. 81; cf. Amic. 98–101). This, he explains, is why he, Cicero, can claim Caesar and Pompey as his friends despite their past disagreements (80; more on this below, and in Chapter 2). By contrast, he argues that Piso’s failure to grasp this relationship betrays Piso’s own lack of virtue, his exclusion from the category of “brave men,” his inability to join this fraternity of men who know and appreciate virtue when they see it. That fraternity encompasses the entire senate, in Cicero’s portrayal of the institution, while individual enemies are singled out in his scheme as exceptions who prove the rule. The counterpart of Cicero’s pro-senatorial stance, the other side of the coin, is a series of attacks on opponents, in which Cicero seeks to portray them as alienated from the senate’s good graces. Those individuals are also senators, of course, and many of his fiercest invectives against them occur in senatorial speeches.29 His persona as a champion of the united senate 27

28

29

Cicero thus marks himself as a typical optimate: while populares allegedly sought to undermine the senate, “an ‘optimate’ (optimas), by contrast, was one upholding the special custodial and leadership role of the Senate, implicitly against the efforts of some popularis or other”; Morstein-Marx 2004: 204. Connolly notes that Cicero is “usually understood as a more or less straightforward champion of the senatorial elite” (34) but resists this simple characterization by focusing on the role of conflict and disagreement in Cicero’s vision of politics, arguing that “the drive to achieve concordia or consensus thrives only within a framing of politics as antagonism”; Connolly 2015: 35. Corbeill 2002: 210.

The Senate’s Oppressors in 58 bce

139

counterbalances those attacks and affirms his allegiance to the other senators besides his target.

The Senate’s Oppressors in 58 bce Cicero’s persona as a senator emerges particularly strongly and frequently in orations he delivered to the senate itself, as a way of establishing a rapport with his audience, as opposed to cloaking himself in the senate’s authority before other audiences.30 Calling attention to his relationship with his fellow members gives him a potential advantage, if he primes them to feel sympathy with him based on that relationship. An additional advantage lay in arguing that his opponent did not value that relationship or deserve the same sympathy. Cicero often claimed that his opponents had failed to live up to the senate’s standards and in so doing alienated themselves from their more competent and dutiful colleagues. He sometimes also accused opponents of actually challenging the senate’s authority, a much more dangerous act. Throughout Rome’s history (at least as told by our surviving sources, especially Livy), the senate had served as a check on the power of individuals, including kings, magistrates, and others who threatened the equilibrium of Rome’s constitution. Men who aspired to power beyond what that equilibrium could sustain typically also defied or scorned the senate’s authority, and so contempt for the senate offered a warning sign of tyrannical behavior to come. Tarquinius Superbus, the decemviri, Spurius Maelius, and Manlius Capitolinus were said to have manifested their tyrannical arrogance by demonstrating contempt for their senatorial colleagues.31 Following this logic, Cicero treats relationships with the senate as a litmus test: those who submit to the senate’s authority (as he does) are ethical politicians, while those who do not – Piso, Gabinius, and Clodius, most notably, but (also notably) not Pompey or Caesar – are nascent tyrants. If the senate supported Cicero’s recall and acquitted him on the charge of tyranny, why had they allowed him to be driven into exile in the first place? Cicero argues that they had, in fact, indicated their disapproval of Clodius’ law. Every time he narrates his flight from the city, Cicero tells his audience that the senate clamored for the consuls to take action for his recall, but that the consuls, Piso and Gabinius, wickedly refused, and even 30 31

Post Reditum in Senatu, De Haruspicum Responsis, De Provinciis Consularibus, In Pisonem, Pro Marcello, and the senatorial Philippics. Tarquinius: Cic. Phil. 3.8–10, Livy 1.49.7; Decemviri: Cic. Rep. 2.61–3, Livy 3.36.1–41.6; Spurius Maelius: Livy 4.13.3–9; Manlius: Livy 6.11.6–19.7.

140

The Champion of the Senate

mocked the senators openly (e.g., Sest. 25, Dom. 26, 55–6). In Cicero’s depiction, Piso and Gabinius’ opposition to the will of the senate constitutes a tyrannical abuse of power, driven by cowardice and cruelty. The senate voted to adopt mourning dress (initially following Cicero’s own example) to demonstrate their position, but Piso and Gabinius countermanded that decree. Cicero demands: “what consul ever prohibited the senate from obeying its own decrees? What tyrant has forbidden miserable people to mourn?” (Sest. 32, cf. Red. Sen. 12, 16). Likewise, in In Pisonem, he asks: “What tyrant ever did this in any Scythian land, not allowing people to mourn, when he inflicted grief upon them?” (Pis. 18). Here, as elsewhere, Cicero stresses the clash between the consuls and the rest of the senate: while the entire senate felt one way, the consuls not only disagreed but attempted to suppress any views divergent from their own, or even discussion of Cicero’s case (Att. 3.15.5; Dom. 55, 69; Pis. 21). This defiance and contempt of the senate’s authority, or even of their right to make decisions about their own conduct, constituted an act of barbaric tyranny so foreign to Rome’s republican system that Cicero locates it in the mythologized land of the Scythians rather than any kingdom more familiar to the Romans. Cicero is not bringing up tyrannical cruelty spontaneously here, but in response to allegations that he had acted with tyrannical cruelty himself. In lamenting Piso’s abuse of consular power, Cicero finds opportunities again to assert that he, by contrast, had supported senatorial authority at every turn in his own consulship. As Kurczyk points out, Cicero typically deploys self-praise as a tool to take down opponents, setting up a contrast between himself and them.32 When Piso accuses him of having acted cruelly in executing the Catilinarian conspirators, Cicero’s response is not only to disown this trait in himself, but to turn the accusation around. He attempts to prove that if anyone matches the description of sadism, it is actually Piso (and Gabinius). He ridicules Piso for trying to play the “compassionate” part of “a man whom cruelty displeases” (Pis. 18) – in other words, he is trying to undo Piso’s own self-fashioning as a compassionate friend to his fellow senators. How could I be labeled cruel, Cicero implies, when the senate mourned as a unanimous body for me with such a highly visible, symbolic decree? And, moreover, while we’re on the subject of cruelty, how could the unprecedented suppression of the senate’s grief be labeled anything but cruel? 32

Kurczyk 2006: 254; cf. Steel 2001: 183.

The Senate’s Oppressors in 58 bce

141

The manner of Cicero’s attack on Piso reaffirms his own relationship of like-mindedness with his fellow senators, while simultaneously alienating Piso from them. Cicero’s self-fashioning as the senate’s champion may have been more noteworthy than we suppose. He describes Gabinius as delivering a contio “such as Catiline never would have given if he had been victorious, and he said that men were mistaken if they thought the senate now had any power in the republic” (Sest. 28). Cicero sounds as if he is quoting Gabinius here, and while it is hard for us now to imagine Gabinius (or any consul or senator) advocating the stripping away of power from the senate, perhaps that is a testament to the degree to which we have taken Cicero’s rhetoric as the norm in the late Republic. Cicero is describing a contio with an audience of many witnesses to what Gabinius had said, to serve as a check if Cicero was fabricating a false statement about Gabinius’ political rhetoric. Populares like Gabinius may have opposed the senate openly (if not in orations to the senate itself then in contiones), so that Cicero’s institutionalist stance seemed more polemical in its wider context. The contrast between Cicero’s consulship and that of Piso and Gabinius also helps to retroactively justify the actions Cicero took against the Catilinarian conspirators. He conflates his opponents with Catiline, arguing that they sought to finish what Catiline had started, which is to say destroy the senate’s authority. He thus rebukes his opponents while at the same time reinforcing the underlying depiction of Catiline as an antisenatorial exemplum, and reinforcing his own standing as the senate’s champion. He describes with a show of gratitude how a full senate, 417 members, approved of his recall, with a single member dissenting: “he who thought that the [Catilinarian] conspirators should actually be resurrected from the Underworld by his law” (i.e., Clodius; Red. Sen. 26, cf. 33, Dom. 14, Pis. 14–16), taking it as read that this is an evil intention rather than an appeal to Catiline as any sort of martyr, for instance. When he brings up Catiline as a model for Clodius, Piso, and Gabinius, he portrays himself not only as the senate’s defender, but as twice victorious already in that noble cause. Cicero conflates his defeat of Catiline with his recall, “two acts in the same drama,”33 duplicating his triumphant celebration: in both moments, in his narrative, the senate had rescued its own authority by acting through him and by showing their approval of his actions. There is a strong element of cliquishness in Cicero’s treatment of Piso, Gabinius, and Clodius as excluded from the senatorial in-group. While Cicero enjoyed the senate’s approval post-consulship, Piso and Gabinius 33

Grillo 2015: 197.

142

The Champion of the Senate

were now (in Cicero’s view) pariahs, justly left out in the cold without senatorial support. Piso and Gabinius had shown such scorn toward the authority of the senate that they had “permanently shut themselves out of the curia” (Pis. 40), irreparably damaging their own political defenses and prospects. To Piso, he says bluntly: “come, the senate hates you – you acknowledge it yourself, rightly – because you were the tormentor and destroyer, not only of the order’s dignity and authority, but of its very existence and name” (Pis. 64). When the two consuls headed off to their provinces, Cicero later claims, they had already given up any hope of earning glory or renown from the senate no matter what they did, because the senate would not reward them or even acknowledge them (Prov. Cons. 14).34 In Cicero’s account, Gabinius and other would-be Catilines are now shunned by the senate, deprived of any political power or honors, and barely worthy of Cicero’s recognition.35 Their opinions, particularly Piso’s ongoing criticisms of Cicero, should be seen as weightless and ineffective because of this loss of standing in the senate, while the senate’s approval for Cicero shelters him from such attacks.36 This contributes to his persona as the senate’s darling by contrast, and allows him to adopt a dismissive attitude toward the very real threat that these and other politicians still posed to him. Depicting Clodius, Piso, and Gabinius as outcasts and enemies of the senate offered potential political benefits to Cicero, but it was a treatment he reserved only for a few of his opponents, and did not necessarily have much to do with their real relationship with the senate. In 56 bce, Cicero found himself in the awkward position of needing to recant his earlier position against Caesar and argue for an extension of Caesar’s proconsulship in Gaul.37 Cicero did not deploy the same rhetorical strategies against Julius Caesar as he had against his “Catilines,” even though Caesar was rumored to have been a co-conspirator with Catiline,38 and arguably posed a much greater threat to the senate’s authority. Instead, in De Provinciis Consularibus, Cicero extended his own self-fashioning techniques as the senate’s champion to Caesar. He casts Caesar in his own mold as a pro-senatorial politician and draws on this 34

35 36 37

38

However, Cicero later found himself in the awkward position of having to defend Gabinius in 54 bce, on Pompey’s instruction (Rab. Post. 19, Fam. 1.9.17); arguably, neither Cicero nor Gabinius was actually high enough in the senate’s esteem to be safe without Pompey’s protection. This is also how he described Catiline himself at Cat. 1.16, 2.12. Cf. Steel 2005: 64–7 on De Haruspicum Responsis. Caesar was perceived by others as one of the driving forces behind Cicero’s exile, and so it was assumed that Cicero ought to be hostile to him. On the context of the debate over the consular provinces, see Grillo 2015: 18–23. Sall. BC 49.1–4; Suet. Iul. 9; Plut. Caes. 7.5–8.5.

Caesar as the Senate’s Champion

143

supposed shared sense of community to explain his position. Perhaps his attacks on Clodius and Piso allowed him to raise constitutional issues and existential questions about the state of the republic, even as he declined to raise those questions himself as they pertained to the “first triumvirate.”

Caesar as the Senate’s Champion In 56 bce, after the Conference of Luca,39 Cicero found himself pressed to show public support not only for Pompey but for Caesar as well, as we saw in Chapter 2. Cicero’s well-established persona as a senator laid the groundwork for him to act as a sort of guarantor on their behalf, and is likely one reason why they sought him out as a sort of spokesman in the first place. In De Provinciis Consularibus (19–23, 44–6), as in Pro Balbo and his letters in the following year, he addresses his crossing of party lines to help the “first triumvirate” and claims to have taken up a policy of pragmatism. Obstructing Caesar and Pompey (as Cato and others did) would have been a futile gesture, he argues, the political equivalent of sailing one’s ship straight into a storm to take the most direct route to port. By contrast, he is trimming his sails to sail around the storm, that is, conceding some ground to Caesar and Pompey to palliate the masses who support them and to build up a cooperative relationship, and stands a better chance of piloting the ship of state into a safe harbor that way (Balb. 61, Fam. 1.9.21, cf. Att. 1.16.2). If Cicero had not previously laid the foundation of his political reputation by calling attention to his identity as a senator and to his attachment to the institution, this pragmatic line of argument would have seemed merely cynical or opportunistic (or even more so). His established senatorial persona makes his nautical analogy more plausible, and his change of political tactics less undignified. In taking Caesar’s side, Cicero found himself associated with tyranny once more, not this time as the tyrant himself, but as the servant or mouthpiece of the arguably tyrannical “three-headed monster.”40 In defending himself, then, as we might expect, he insisted strongly again on his fidelity to the senate and his obedience to the will of the group, as the 39 40

The timing of this speech is unclear, but it occurs between the Conference of Luca in April and Pro Balbo later in the year, probably around May; Grillo 2015: 9–18. As Varro apparently titled his political satire on the “first triumvirate” (App. BC 2.9). Cicero defends himself against this charge in 54 in Fam. 1.9 and Planc. 91–4, and to critics in Prov. Cons., as discussed in Chapter 2. Given the resistance (led particularly by Cato, as we saw in Chapter 3) to Caesar during his consulship, I think it is reasonable to assume that this critique of Cicero as propping up a tyrant began as soon as he took Caesar’s side in 56.

144

The Champion of the Senate

antithesis of tyranny. He points out that the senate has recently voted extraordinary honors to Caesar, and demands: “Why, then, should I wait for any man to restore my friendship with him? This highest order has restored it” (Prov. Cons. 25) by proclaiming the official opinion of Caesar. It is assumed that the entire senate felt the same way and now continues to act in perfect harmony, despite the obvious discord in this period, and that Cicero has merely chosen to follow the group’s lead. In taking this line of argument, Cicero puts his own senatorial credentials on the line and runs the risk of alienating fellow senators, who may not share his optimism about Caesar’s political style.41 For that reason, to reestablish his sympathy with them, Cicero again dons the character of the senate’s faithful servant. He argues that he is not agreeing with Caesar, but with the senate: “I agree with you, the same men I agreed with before” (23). He depicts his approval of Caesar not as spontaneous, but as conformist, following “the order that is both author and leader to public opinion and also to all of my opinions. I follow you, senators, I obey you, I concur with you” (25). If speaking on Caesar’s behalf is blameworthy, Cicero argues, then the blame belongs not with him but with the others who adopted that position first, whom he now follows. It is you I follow, it is you I obey, it is you with whom I agree, he emphasizes.42 By his own logic, Cicero cannot possibly be defending tyranny (as his opponents say he is), because no one can be both obedient to the senate and obedient to a tyrant. Cicero’s past inhabiting of a senatorial persona makes him an ideal spokesman for this argument on Caesar’s behalf, which is why the “first triumvirate” sought out his eloquence in the mid-50s to advocate for them and their proxies. There may not have been any way for Cicero to advocate for Caesar while retaining his dignity, but affirming his senatorial persona and commitment to a traditional politics of legitimacy was his best chance to do so.43 In a more surprising rhetorical move, Cicero also argues that Caesar shares his respect for the senate, and that extending his command in Gaul would not lead to abuses of power. While Caesar may have contravened the senate’s wishes in the style of a popularis as consul in 59, Cicero concedes, he has now been brought back into the fold as a supporter of the senate, and “this order has never embraced anyone with its honors and support who thought he could attain more lasting prestige outside it” (38).44 By setting up a contrast here between popularis rebels and beneficiaries of the senate’s support, Cicero downplays the risk posed by Caesar’s extraordinary command in Gaul, 41

Grillo 2015: 74.

42

Grillo 2015: 206.

43

Cf. Brunt 1988: 486–7.

44

Grillo 2015: 257–9.

Caesar as the Senate’s Champion

145

arguing that because Caesar’s political intentions and outlook are good, he is not a threat. The senate itself has corrected Caesar’s political course through its “wise and divine” decision to grant him honors.45 Again, the (circular) logic here dictates that support of the senate is mutually exclusive with aspirations to tyranny, so that a politician’s attitude toward the senate becomes a litmus test. Like himself, he claims, Caesar now realizes that the only true way to glory is through the senate’s approval, which is coveted by all right-thinking men, in Cicero’s logic. He thus applies his own self-fashioning techniques to Caesar. Just as the senate’s decrees in Cicero’s favor became tangible proof of his high standing with them in his own narratives of his return from exile, Cicero used the honors awarded to Caesar as evidence of the senate’s esteem, not for the man’s actions, but for the man’s character. And Caesar surely would not jeopardize that, he reassures his audience, nor would he give up a chance to earn further honors by testing that goodwill. He concludes this argument by reminding his audience of the identity they all share, in a rather threatening way: “as a senator I ought to make sure, as much as I can, that no distinguished or powerful man seems to have a reason to be angry with this order” (39). The desire for harmony here drives Cicero to legitimize extraordinary commands as a way for the senate to harness ambition, to give ambitious men what they want so that they are not provoked into operating in even more unconstitutional ways. The senate’s self-policing mechanisms and norms are no longer enough to bring Rome’s most accomplished generals to heel, apparently. In Rose’s assessment, “this de facto acknowledgment of the death of the senate as an independent political force emerges paradoxically with greater clarity from Cicero’s passionate denial of the reality.”46 This strategy in De Provinciis Consularibus anticipates the line of argument Cicero took a decade later, in Pro Marcello, when Caesar had become dictator. He tried again to counterbalance his praise of Caesar with praise of the senate and expressions of piety toward the institution, promising to maintain his traditionalist character even as he accommodated himself to the new regime. Marcus Marcellus had fought with Pompey against Caesar in the civil war, and had gone into self-imposed exile on Mytilene as a sign of continuing resistance to Caesar’s rule. When Caesar allowed the senate to debate his recall nevertheless, Cicero declared gratefully to Caesar: “it was clear to me that . . . you valued the authority of this order and the 45 46

On the description of the senate as sapientes ac divini, see Craig 2017: 108–10. Rose 1995: 394.

146

The Champion of the Senate

dignity of the republic above your own grievances or suspicions” (Marc. 3). Turning to the senators themselves, he assured them: “when he preserved M. Marcellus for the republic at your request, he returned . . . the rest of the most elite men (whose number and dignity you see in this very gathering) to themselves and to the republic” (13).47 He calls the senators’ attention to their own presence, their own numbers, their own appearance, as if this offered proof of Caesar’s respect for the prestige of the senate.48 This is clearly premature, and a case of wishful thinking (or praise as pressure, as we saw in Chapter 2), but follows an old pattern in Ciceronian selffashioning. As he had before the civil war, Cicero treats the senate’s authority as the linchpin of the republic. He rejoices that the senate’s will can now become a governing force again, restoring the republic to its former self. This may be read either as a correction of Caesar’s own characterization of the senate as weak and tyrannized by a few individuals in his Commentarii,49 or as a validation of that indictment with a proposed solution. Once again, when Cicero’s role in politics seemed to have been erased by his diuturnum silentium (see Chapter 4), he explained the suspension of his authority as a suspension of republican politics as a whole, and a suspension particularly of the senate’s functioning. He also looked again for a restoration of the senate as a precondition for his own restoration to power. Once again, he reemerged by rooting his character in his fidelity to the senate and sought security in his relationship with the institution. Although Cicero’s appeal to the dignity of the senate is fundamentally nostalgic and traditional, consistent with his rhetoric before the war, it is essential to remember that the personnel in the senate had changed drastically. In fact, the number of senators, which Cicero quotes as validation of Caesar’s policy, was quite literally Caesar’s doing, because he had filled the curia with his own newly promoted partisans.50 Those newcomers now found themselves in the sea of striped togas that had been Cicero’s natural habitat for decades, and which had symbolized the bulwark of old republican tradition in his earlier orations. In Pro Marcello, he seems to summon these new senators to look around and appreciate the dignity of the institution that they now represent, and to uphold the values of the fraternity to which they now belong. Effectively, Cicero is trying to 47 48 49 50

Cf. Bringmann 1971: 76; Gagliardi 1997: 20–1. Gagliardi also reads appeals to the will or authority of the senate in the Caesarian orations as implicit criticisms of Caesar’s riding roughshod over the senate; Gagliardi 1997: 80–9. On which see Batstone and Damon 2006: 73; Raaflaub 2010a; Peer 2015: 14–16, 46–7. Syme 1938: 12–18; Syme 1939: 77–96; Taylor 1942.

Reviving the Senate in the Philippics

147

transform or refashion them into the pre–civil war senate, a senate in which his voice had had appreciable influence. However, for Brutus and others who saw Caesar’s regime as anti-republican, these same appeals to institutional identity and tradition may have helped to crystallize the assassination plot, which was later framed as the work of representatives of the senate as an institution (and in a meeting of the senate), acting to restore freedom to the republic.51

Reviving the Senate in the Philippics Cicero’s manipulation of a rhetoric of senatorial authority should be kept in mind as we construct narratives of late republican politics. If we say simply that “the senate” personified resisted Pompey and Caesar’s extraordinary commands, or that “the senate” sided with Pompey against Caesar or with Cicero against Antony,52 we are replicating Cicero’s fiction of “the senate” as a monolithic, harmonious entity symbolizing the traditional republic, as well as his narrative of what “the senate” wanted. The reality was much more complicated than Cicero would like the audiences of his speeches to think, both within the senate and among its supposed champions leading Rome’s armies. In a civil war, it is inevitable that legitimacy is contested, and in practice the leaders of various armies could not always have waited for the senate’s instructions, but had to make their own decisions. Cicero’s prosenate republicanism offered them a framework within which to make (or rationalize) those decisions. His proposals of senatorial honors to legitimize certain actors in 43, which I discussed in Chapter 2, show that legitimacy and legal authority were lacking in the first place and needed to be assigned after the fact. In fact, we could say on the basis of these proposals that the civil war in 44–43 was really a fight between Antony and Cicero, or perhaps a group for whom Cicero was the spokesman, if not the leader. This group included the assassins of Caesar (chiefly Decimus Brutus, Marcus Brutus, and Cassius) as well as Octavian and correspondents like Asinius Pollio (Fam. 10.31–4) and Munatius Plancus (Fam. 10.1–24), whom Cicero defended in the senate as supporters of the “republican” cause, and whom he continuously exhorted in letters to keep defending that cause. As the representative of this group who was present in the senate, he developed his rhetoric of republicanism, particularly focused on promotion of the senate’s authority, 51 52

Dyer argues that this was the effect of the published Pro Marcello, which he dates to 45; Dyer 1990. Cf. Monteleone 2003: 109–11. See Syme 1939: 39, 162–4; Taylor 1949a: 129–40, 162–4. Syme also takes issue with this characterization at 48–51.

148

The Champion of the Senate

as a rallying cry in support of the group to legitimize and validate its (extralegal) actions against Antony. In Chapter 8, I ask whether Cicero can be labeled a “dynast” of the late republic, in the company of Pompey and Caesar; his rhetoric of republicanism and his persona as a senator tend to hide his agency or downplay the leadership he actually tried to exert. In hindsight, Cicero recognized that the debate over Marcellus’ recall had not, in fact, ushered in the restoration of the senate’s authority, and he later claimed in the senate that he had merely been maintaining “a sort of consular and senatorial vigil” in the hopes that “the republic would be called back someday to your council and authority” (Phil. 1.1, cf. 1.8).53 His initial admonitory appeal to Antony in the First Philippic (discussed in Chapter 2) ends on an ominous note, as he thanks the senate for their support (implicitly against Antony) and promises to continue to use his power of addressing them, if he can “without danger to myself or to you” (1.38). By the time of the Philippics, however, Cicero’s senatorial persona stands alone. He exhorts others to live up to an anachronistic model, as he had lost his connection to his fellow senators, and the institution had all but lost what power it had had to guide political events. As he returns to his senatorial persona to defend his consulship again, after Antony had renewed old angles of attack, his championing of the senate seems increasingly desperate and tendentious. In the Philippics, Cicero resumed his efforts to force the senate to live up to his traditionalist expectations through sheer force of will; if he spoke of the senate as he had before the civil war, perhaps it would begin to behave as it had before. In his letters, he writes: “as soon as the senate could be convened after Antony’s disgusting departure, I returned to that old spirit of mine. . . . I argued most vociferously and recalled the senate, now languid and worn out, to its old virtue and custom” (Fam. 10.28.2). Mouritsen writes that the end of the republic saw “a ruling elite that appears to lose its collective sense of purpose and instinct of survival, becoming seemingly oblivious to the fundamentals on which its ascendancy depended.”54 Perhaps as a result, Cicero deploys his senatorial persona more forcefully than ever in the Philippics, trading on his old reputation in that body for auctoritas in a new world. In Cicero’s persona as a senator, we can see the notion of “the senator” in a republican sense becoming an anachronism, as the senate’s authority erodes. Cicero’s role as the senate’s champion had become the cornerstone of his identity as a public figure by this point,55 all the more so in his supremely confident invective in the Second Philippic, circulated as a pamphlet to 53

Cf. Bonnefond-Coudry 1989: 649–51.

54

Mouritsen 2017: 168.

55

Kurczyk 2006: 281–2.

Reviving the Senate in the Philippics

149

mark a glorious return to form (without potential challenges from a live audience): the old Cicero is back.56 Like Piso, Antony is framed as the lone opponent standing defiantly against not just Cicero but the entire senate (Phil. 2.52, cf. 13.23). He abuses the institution in tyrannical fashion: “even kings convened the senate – and armed barbarians did not (as when Antony convenes it) stand among the king’s council” (Phil. 3.9). It is revealing that he imagines the Second Philippic as a senatorial oration so that he can emphasize his comfort and confidence in that setting, fueling his invective. He even mocks Antony for initiating an oratorical contest with Cicero on what is effectively Cicero’s home turf: “did he think it would be easy to attack me in the senate, an order that has given its testimony that many great citizens have served the republic well, but that I alone saved it?” (2.2). Likewise, Cicero recalled the senate’s use of the senatus consultum ultimum in 49 bce when the civil war began: “against you, Antony, the senate (while it was still intact, before so many lights were extinguished) made that decree that it usually makes against an enemy of the state, by ancestral custom. And you dared to speak against me before the senators, when I am this order’s savior, and you have been judged an enemy in a toga?” (2.51). However, Cicero actually faced considerable suspicion and antipathy in the senate, which clearly undermined his claims to be their champion and servant.57 He uses his senatorial persona to browbeat his audience, acting as the sole arbiter of what it means to be a “senator,” but that political role seems to have changed or vanished. There is no longer a sense of “the will of the senate” for individuals to obey. Cicero here is trying to single-handedly force a “will of the senate” into existence, and to pressure his fellow senators to conform to it. He is playing the role of the defender of an institution that no longer exists. Of Cicero’s list at Phil. 2.12–14 of leading citizens, now mostly deceased, who had supported him, Steel writes: “Cicero is here drawing on the sense of a Senate bereft of wisdom and tradition while in fact using a list of older names – whose absence also indicates Cicero’s seniority.”58 Cicero continues to treat the senate almost as if it includes the spirits of his fallen colleagues, as if their will and their political opinions still hold sway over the new personnel who actually fill the new senate’s benches. There is a kind of romantic, Catonian heroism in this stance, which distracts from the real weakness of Cicero’s position. In the Seventh Philippic he is forced to address this uncomfortable reality: “alas, how 56 57

On the publication of the Second Philippic see n. 70 in Chapter 1. 58 He almost admits this at Fam. 10.28.3. Steel 2005: 144.

150

The Champion of the Senate

wretched I am! Why am I forced to rebuke the senate, which I have always praised?” (7.14). He takes the view that it is the senate that has changed, and not for the better, while he has remained the same, consistent champion of the senate’s authority, even if the senators of 43 bce fail to live up to his example. “Your old severity must be restored, if the authority of the senate is going to have any virtue, honor, praise, or prestige, which this order has lacked for too long now,” he admonishes them, and exhorts them to liberate themselves or die in the attempt, “what is worthy of a senator and of a Roman man” (ibid., cf. 13.6). Cicero attempts to sway his colleagues with a grand, dramatic exhortation to emulate “your old severity,” but the “you” he addresses are not the same individuals who (supposedly) demonstrated that severity. Nevertheless, Cicero also continues to try to shame his opponents when they, too, fail to garner the senate’s approval. Most notably, he adds Antony to his list of latter-day Catilines (2.1, 2.118, 4.15, 8.15, 14.14). In addition, in a rhetorical move reminiscent of his attacks on Piso, he asks Fufius Calenus, probably the princeps senatus at this point,59 “what idea has made it so that since the Kalends of January, you’ve never had the same opinion as the man who has asked you for your opinion first, and there’s never been a senate meeting full enough for a single other person to follow your opinion?” (10.3, cf. Prov. Cons. 14, Pis. 26 on Piso). Cicero promises that the same disgrace is about to befall Calenus again in the present debate (10.6), trading on Calenus’ past failures to try to produce another. Cicero initiates this rebuttal to Calenus in order to lay the groundwork for his defense of the actions of Brutus and Cassius, whom he calls “a senate unto themselves” (Phil. 11.27).60 Those who subscribe to Cicero’s construct of “the senate” are heroes in his narrative, while those who obstruct or argue against it are villains. Cicero also revived his earlier strategy of assimilating others into his position as defender of the senate, and even sought to establish the optimate credentials of Octavian. “If only Caesar (I mean the father) had found that he was beloved by the senate and every good man, as has happened to the young Caesar! Because this didn’t happen, he wasted all the power of his talent (which was of the utmost) on popularis pandering (levitate)61” (Phil. 5.49). Cicero argues that Octavian had abandoned the negative aspect of Caesar’s party, and embodied instead its positive 59 60

Bonnefond-Coudry 1989: 706–7; Ryan 1998: 329–39; Tansey 2000: nn. 64–5; Manuwald 2007: vol. ii, 538. Dawes 2014. 61 On this word, see Chapter 7.

Conclusion

151

qualities (Phil. 5.49), just as Cicero had once portrayed Caesar as the senate’s defender in De Provinciis Consularibus (see above). This portrayal of Octavian molds him into a symbolic unifying figure, the heir of Caesar as well as the champion of the republic. This helped Cicero to pass his unprecedented proposal that Octavian should be made a senator and granted praetorian status (Phil. 5.46), in order to incorporate the young man into his idealized community of virtue, and in the hopes that Octavian would learn to crave the senate’s approval.62 This replicates the strategy he had employed in De Provinciis Consularibus to make Caesar’s extraordinary command seem less dangerous or threatening. By the time of the Philippics, Cicero’s grand exaltations of the senate’s authority and gravity seem out of touch with reality, as his fellow senators cede what authority they might have had in order to avoid endangering themselves at the hands of whatever dynast would come to rule the state. If they had already accepted the notion that the senate could not rule, they could not exert the kind of normative influence to which Cicero tried (and failed) to exhort them.

Conclusion Cicero’s identity as a senator and his devotion to the senate gained new importance after his return to the city in 57, as he responded to charges of tyranny. He used his own fidelity to the senate to defend the validity of his political choices and demonstrate his humility and deference to the common good, while he accused his opponents – Clodius, Piso, Gabinius, and later Antony – of aspiring to tyranny over the senate and trying to destroy its authority. Loyalty to the senate represented faith in a pluralistic republican system and was used as an index of political morality by Cicero; those who upheld the senate’s authority were on the side of good, and those who fought against it or alienated its members were bad. The senate’s stamp of approval conferred legitimacy, a logic Cicero even tries to extend to Caesar in De Provinciis Consularibus: since the senate has honored him, Caesar is pro-senate and therefore worthy of further honors. Meanwhile, his own championing of the senate lies at the heart of his character as a republican traditionalist, the antidote or counterbalance to radicals and dynasts. After the civil war, Cicero insisted even more energetically on the senate as the ultimate arbiter of legitimacy, despite the senate’s actual lack of cohesion or political will. 62

See also Fam. 11.8, Ep. ad Brut. 1.3(7).1, 1.10(17).3.

152

The Champion of the Senate

The “will of the senate” is by no means a simple fact to track over time. It is a symbol, and often entirely an invention of political rhetoric.63 However, this rhetorical fiction was useful to Cicero and to other politicians at the time as well, especially to the optimates or to Pompey and his supporters in the war against Caesar, who sought to confer legitimacy on their partisan affiliations by claiming to represent “the will of the senate.” Meanwhile, Cicero’s attacks on individual senators are the exceptions that prove the rule. Cicero describes the senate as unanimous and harmonious in the mid-50s in his orations, even though his letters tell a different story. He describes it that way in order to create a compelling backdrop for his own persona as the faithful defender of the senate’s authority, or rather as the faithful defender of a nostalgic idea of what the senate ought to represent in republican politics. This traditionalist character sometimes allows him to deflect responsibility for his own actions, including the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators and his support of Julius Caesar in De Provinciis Consularibus, and more generally to portray himself as a reliable team player, an anti-tyrant. Those who act as his allies share the same persona, while those who oppose him are opponents to the senate’s authority, tyrannical Catilines who want to overthrow the old order. Increasingly, we also see his senatorial persona used prescriptively, in an (ultimately futile) effort to restore the good old days of republican politics, in Pro Marcello and the Philippics. Cicero’s rhetoric in 43 bce frames the contest as being fought between Antony and the senate: either Antony and his partisans would submit to the senate’s authority and the republic would be restored (cf. Phil. 12.4), or Antony would rule. In fact, the real war was being waged among military commanders, each with his own political agenda. The question (as Cicero had seen in the earlier civil war64) was not whether one man would rule Rome, but which one man. Perhaps partly as a consequence of Cicero’s (and others’) senatorial rhetoric, the second triumvirate punished the senate in particular, proscribing hundreds of senators upon coming to power (App. BC 4.5), leading Syme to conclude that “it was not Caesar but 63

64

Cf. Edelman 1977: 50–1: “‘public opinion’ is a symbol whether or not it is a fact. It is often nonexistent, even respecting important questions. . . . ‘Public opinion,’ then, is an evocative concept through which authorities and pressure groups categorize beliefs in a way that marshals support or opposition to their interests, usually unselfconsciously. Public opinion is not an independent entity, though the assumption that opinions spring autonomously into people’s minds legitimizes the actions of all who can spread their own definitions of problematic events to a wider public.” Recently, Rosillo-López has made efforts to reconstruct aspects of popular opinion in the late republic; Rosillo-López 2017a; Rosillo-López 2017b; Rosillo López 2018. Cic. Att. 7.5.4.

Conclusion

153

the Triumvirate that depressed beyond recovery the dignity of magistracies and of Senate.”65 Augustus, by contrast, made a point of “restoring” the senate, culling the order and exalting its authority, to show his republican bona fides.66 The way the senate is treated continued to be a sort of litmus test for the justice of the ruler. The trope of “the will of the senate,” including the treatment of its views as monolithic and a focus on final outcomes rather than debate and disagreement, also continued to be an important source of political capital for the principate. Cicero’s conceptual framework – the senate as bastion against the tyrannical usurpations of dynasts – persisted, playing into imperial authors’ framing of the senate as a perceived locus of resistance to the rule of the emperors, so that it became a normative expectation even for the emperors to respect the senate’s authority.67 65 67

Syme 1938: 25. 66 Sattler 1960; Brunt 1984; Talbert 1984a; Schulz 2009. Talbert 1984b: 163–84; Steel 2015.

chapter 6

The Popular Orator

Introduction Cicero claimed that he was not a popularis, but that he was popular. He was not a popularis in the usual, partisan sense of the word; for example, he did not propose agrarian or grain laws promoting the people’s welfare or use demagogic strategies to achieve political ends. However, he did claim to be popular in a literal sense – that is, he claimed that his political actions actually met with the approval of the populus, the masses of non-elite citizens, even though he claimed not to pander to them.1 Cicero’s rhetoric as popular is always framed as a response to popularis rhetoric, an ironic twist or redefinition, fighting against the mainstream or default interpretation of the populares as genuinely popular. In his consulship, he claimed to be a popular consul despite his opposition to so-called populares (Agr. 1.23–5, 2.6–10), and continued to position himself this way in the post reditum speeches, De Domo Sua, Pro Sestio, In Pisonem, and Pro Plancio. Cicero particularly emphasizes the popular support he enjoyed for his glorious return from “exile” as a way to cancel out the potential disgrace of having been driven out of the city in the first place. He invests the real, observable votes and attendance of crowds – like the real votes of the senate, as we saw in Chapter 5 – with great symbolic significance. In contrast to his senatorial persona of the 50s, here his affect is triumphant and righteous, even arrogant and derisive, lavish with rhetorical figures, without the note of humility. He casts his opponents as false or counterfeit champions of the people, followers of a problematic and morally compromised career path, characterized not by the statesman’s gravitas but instead by levitas. He also argues that their masses of apparent supporters are just 1

Morstein-Marx 2004: 204–20. The distinction between popularis and popular may be compared to the distinction in modern American politics between “Democratic” and “democratic,” or “big-D” and “small-d democrat,” distinguishing the political party from the more general philosophical or ideological principle.

154

Introduction

155

paid agents, and that those crowds are not representative of the “real” populus. He takes up these strategies again in Philippics 1, 6, and 7. These tropes have long been recognized as part of Cicero’s polemics against populares,2 but here I focus on how Cicero uses them in pursuit of selffashioning as popular himself (but emphatically not popularis). Cicero’s treatment of populares is a large and complex topic, and my intention is to focus in this chapter on appeals to the masses and public opinion as political capital, and to turn in Chapter 7 to some ideological aspects of Cicero’s antipopularis rhetoric and his appeals to a narrative of populares through history. To be politically popular, to bask in the vocal approval of masses of fellow citizens (and to be seen doing so) when one speaks in public, confers tremendous political capital. The war hero, the star advocate, or the visionary legislator can be rewarded with popularity and adoration, if their successes seem to have benefited the Roman plebs. The people’s love can insulate them from prosecution or criticism, earning them the benefit of the doubt in a variety of situations. However, to be popular is one thing; to crave and chase after popularity is another. Ideally, popularity is a happy byproduct of success and noteworthiness, the rightful reward earned for serving the state in a republic. Popularity should not be sought for its own sake, but earned. Yet some degree of consideration for the people’s interests is always necessary for political leaders. In a republic, a system with popular elections, campaigning and currying favor with the people are obviously necessary, even if they are not entirely dignified. Communication and persuasion through mass oratory are essential to building consensus and stimulating action in such a system, and so even the most powerful Roman patrician routinely found himself courting the humble populus for their favor and support. A little pandering is inevitable, and acceptable, so long as it is kept within notional boundaries. The populus itself, meanwhile, is treated by this logic as a good judge of affairs who might be misled briefly by a manipulative flatterer but who eventually and usually bestow their favor on the most deserving statesmen. What dark matter is to the universe, the populus is to the scholarship of Roman politics. We know it is there because of the evidence we can see, and our sources tell us that it was important, but its influence is difficult to assess or quantify.3 In his landmark 1986 article, Fergus Millar redirected attention to this unseen force and proposed that its power to shape events 2 3

See especially Morstein-Marx 2004; Arena 2012; Tiersch 2018. Cf. Tatum 1999: 28–80; Mouritsen 2001; Jehne 2006: 221–5; Harrison 2008: 103–10; Mouritsen 2013: 863–82.

156

The Popular Orator

was much greater than had been appreciated by previous generations of scholars.4 The power held by the populus seems to have grown substantially in the second century bce,5 especially after the Gracchi found a new path to political prominence through popularity and advocacy for the masses. This created what Yakobson memorably calls a “structural incentive for aristocratic radicalism,” mostly in the form of legislation conferring benefits on the plebs.6 Mouritsen comments that the increase in evidence of stage-managing contiones, along with the increased frequency with which contional orations were published, also points to an increase in the importance of popular politics in this period.7 Eloquence moved to a grander stage as a public spectacle (De Orat. 2.338), and the art of persuasion at Rome now prioritized persuading the masses to a much greater extent. Following this development, Cicero claims to consider the “common sense” of the illiterate, uneducated vulgus8 as the most important judge of eloquence, or so he has Crassus remark in De Oratore (3.195–8; cf. Orat. 160, 237; Brut. 184–9). The political importance of the masses seemed to leave politicians with two options for winning “popularity”: they could do what was “right” (i.e., traditional and normative in elite political culture) and trust that they would be rewarded with popular approval after the fact, or they could figure out what the people wanted most immediately and try to give it to them.9 In Cicero’s rhetoric, the two approaches to popularity are distinct and associated with two distinct types of politicians, optimates and populares. In practice, however, these approaches are not mutually exclusive, nor are they easily distinguishable from the other.10 Even an opponent of popularis politics like Crassus,11 the interlocutor of Cicero’s De Oratore, had to appeal to the people and bow to their authority. His friend Antonius quotes an extraordinary line from Crassus, delivered in a large contio – “do 4

Millar 1984; cf. Millar 1986; Jehne 1995; Laser 1997; Millar 1998; Eder 1991; Morstein-Marx 2004: 4–10; Tiersch 2009; Yakobson 2010; Rosillo-López 2017a: 12–27; Livadiotti 2017. 5 Millar suggests that the dissensions among the governing class reached a critical point in the second half of the second century, and that they turned to the populus to arbitrate their disagreements, and thus increasingly used mass oratory as a tool in political debates; Millar 1986: 3–4; cf. Botsford 1909: 476. In his recent book, Mouritsen describes how contiones seem to have been increasingly stagemanaged and less meaningful, even as they became more turbulent; Mouritsen 2017: 85–90. 6 Yakobson 2006: 387. 7 Mouritsen 2013: 78; cf. Pina Polo 1989; Moreau 2003; Tan 2008; Tiersch 2009; Russell 2013. 8 On vocabulary and concepts relating to the populus and populares, see Hellegouarc’h 1963: 506–65. 9 Cf. Fertik 2017: 66. 10 “How can we distinguish between a senator who proposed popular measures for their own sake, and a senator who proposed them for the benefit of the Senate, unless we have specific testimony to that effect, as is the case for the younger Livius Drusus (Asc. 69C)?” Alexander 1992. 11 See De Orat. 3.225 for Crassus’ criticism of Gaius Gracchus.

Introduction

157

not allow us to be slaves to anyone except you all, whose slaves we can and should be” (De Orat. 1.225) – and acknowledges that while this sentiment would hardly be worthy of a senator in private, it was a necessity in public life (1.226).12 Perhaps more importantly, neither principle nor pandering is a failsafe method of ensuring political success, or even of winning real mass approval.13 Cicero’s own role with regard to the populus shifted over the course of his career. Early in his career,14 he used quasi-populist methods of seeking popularity by acting as the people’s champion. In Pro Lege Manilia, he claimed to be defending the people’s sovereignty, in the form of their right to confer whatever extraordinary commands they liked.15 He marked his entry into office (and thus a new political rank) twice by expressing his thanks to the populus who had put him there, and whom he duly promised to serve as magistrate, in Pro Lege Manilia (2) and later in De Lege Agraria (2.3).16 However, his claims to be a popularis consul (Agr. 2.6, 2.9, 2.102; cf. Phil. 7.4) are best understood not as literal but as intentionally paradoxical, reclaiming a term from popularis opponents and using it in an unexpected way to challenge their rhetoric.17 After his consulship, Cicero’s days of currying favor with the people in contiones as a novus homo were more or less over.18 However, the people’s support was still meaningful to him (although sometimes it seems to have been wishful thinking or embellishment).19 His role as a popular orator continued to offer a way of claiming validation and righteousness for his career as a statesman. Depicting himself as riding a wave of true popular approval was one way of asserting that he was engaging in politics the right way, playing the part 12

13 14 15 16 17

18

19

See also Brutus 164, where Cicero describes Crassus’ speech against Caepio: “in it the authority of the senate is praised, the order on whose behalf he was speaking, and resentment was stirred up against the faction of jurors and prosecutors, against whose domination he had to speak in a popular manner (populariter tum dicendum fuit).” Cf. Yakobson 2006: 395 on “playing the ‘popular’ card.” For an innovative interpretation of the young Cicero’s populist political leanings and education, see Bloomer 2011: 37–46. Steel 2001: 175–8. Cf. Tracy 2008. On the statesman as a representative of the Roman people in Cicero’s philosophica, see Remer 2017: 136–66. On popular sovereignty as a concept in the philosophica, see Arena 2016. Keeline describes Cicero here as “playing fast and loose with definitions here” in a tendentious and implausible way; Keeline 2018: 88. In the Commentariolum Petitionis, Quintus advises Cicero on how to disavow any perception that he was a popularis based on his advocacy for Pompey; 14, 51. As Cicero implies himself in Att. 2.1.3. On Cicero’s choice to publish some contional orations but not others, Manuwald notes: “contio speeches have only been included when the situation was critical and there was the need and opportunity to explain one’s views and political activities and to continue to promote them by this means.”Manuwald 2012: 173. Hölkeskamp 2013.

158

The Popular Orator

of the ideal republican statesman with humility and conviction. Popular support arises directly from moral value, in Cicero’s rhetoric.20 The adoring gaze of large groups of people offered a boost to the reputation of any Roman politician, but Cicero seems to place special emphasis on scenes like this when he is in difficult political straits, and especially when he is faced with an opponent who claims the support of the masses for himself. Cicero calls attention to his own popularity especially in his orations after his return from exile, as he tries to undo the damage to his reputation done by Clodius’ tribunate. Cicero’s exile had exposed a serious political weakness and a lack of support among the elite. In his orations after his return, we see him attempting to use mass support to fill that void and dispel the perception of vulnerability by calling attention over and over to moments when “the people” had shown their love for him. He continued to accuse his popularis opponents of levitas, of manipulating the people and using them without any basis in solid political values. They engaged in the sort of political actions that were intended and assumed to be popular; he, by contrast, claimed to be promoting measures that actually had the people’s approval. In 44 and 43, he resumed this type of rhetoric in opposing Antony. In several of the Philippics, bereft of senatorial support himself, he highlighted his role as voice of the people ever more strongly. This time, his rhetoric of popularity features the significant inclusion of soldiers and veterans in the community of cives he claimed to represent, revealing the increasing prominence of the military in political matters.

The Triumphant Return When Cicero returned from the exile imposed on him by Clodius, he apparently enjoyed a moment of unprecedented and unique degree of popularity across many constituencies in Rome. He commemorates this honeymoon period over and over in speeches from 57 to 55, in speeches not only to the people but to the senate and in the courts, showing it off as concrete, irrefutable testimony to widespread positive regard among the masses. Cicero stressed four aspects of the celebration: the unanimity, diversity, spontaneity, and exuberant joy of the crowds who thronged to 20

In his study of Cicero’s sociological frameworks, Gildenhard argues that Cicero substitutes political procedures and popular support for Platonic dialectic as a way of finding truth: “experience of societal approval in Cicero is exactly analogous to insight into the Good in Plato. . . . In essence, then, Cicero here offers a reworking of Plato, which substitutes Roman political procedures for Socratic paideia, and links ethics and epistemology (insight into truth and goodness) to social practices, rather than philosophical reflection.” Gildenhard 2011: 166.

The Triumphant Return

159

meet him in the country and in the city. The repetition of these narratives is fundamentally defensive and revisionist, invalidating and replacing the “will of the people” as it had been expressed in the assembly’s vote for Clodius’ law in 58, even after Cicero appealed to them for support (Att. 3.15.5).21 By calling attention to his popularity upon his restoration, Cicero hoped to regain control of the narrative. In addition, these “proofs” of his popularity offered a way for him to claim mass support as political capital without seeming to be overly greedy for popular approval. His enthusiastic proclamations of gratitude to the populus in Post Reditum ad Populum act as a reminder of the mass support for his return and imply that he enjoyed a mandate to act as he saw fit politically as a result.22 There were several stages of Cicero’s restoration, beginning in 57 bce when the consuls summoned people from all over Italy to come and show their support for the exiled orator. “What place is there in Italy in which desire for my well-being and testimony to my dignity were not recorded on public monuments?” Cicero later boasted (Sest. 130), declaring his popularity but also citing these material objects as proof of consensus. When he then proceeded back to Rome in September of 57, he enjoyed what he describes as a spectacular homecoming: “we were not brought back into our country like some very famous citizens, but carried back by adorned horses and golden chariot” (Red. Sen. 28).23 As Kaster points out, it is difficult to imagine how Cicero could have gotten away with lying about this scene, if it (or something very like it) had not actually happened.24 Cicero could (and did) bend the truth to suit his rhetorical needs, but fabrications about observable events that would have been witnessed by some members of his audience, like what kind of crowd accompanied his homecoming, would have damaged his credibility and made him an object of ridicule. This procession to his home was the closest thing to a triumph that Cicero would ever get – it did, after all, cross the pomerium and 21

22

23 24

Cf. Seager 1972. As Tan points out, it was the concilium plebis that had passed Clodius’ law, while Cicero’s recall had to be passed through the “loaded voting structure of the comitia centuriata”; Tan 2008: 165. “The speech [Post Reditum ad Populum] is even more formal and elaborate than its predecessor, its opening period (Quod . . . laetor (1)) being even longer than its earlier counterpart, and bristling with amplifications. It is also more emotionally charged, as Cicero, testing the limits of decorum, luxuriates in the people’s goodwill;” Usher 2008: 72. On the practice of greeting returning dynasts and emperors, see Meister 2013; Luke 2014. “Viewed in terms of Republican ideology, the acts of praise he records were no more or less than the patriot’s just reward, the good opinion that good men spread abroad about him (bona fama bonorum): by recalling that praise, Cicero was merely wearing the public character he was entitled to wear;” Kaster 2006: 29.

160

The Popular Orator

culminate on the Capitoline (Att. 4.1.4–5; see also the quasi-triumph Cicero enjoyed in 43, discussed below). Cicero narrated his return over and over (Att. 4.1.4–6, Dom. 75–6, Sest. 130–2), usually in reaction to his opponents, who brought up the humiliating subject of his “exile” over and over.25 Clodius mockingly called him exul, portraying him as an outcast or pariah (Dom. 72, cf. 83). He taunted Clodius in return: “that one day, the day when the Roman people honored me . . . gave me so much joy that your wicked attack on me did not only seem to me not to be worth resisting, but actually seemed worth provoking” (Dom. 76). When Piso mocked him in the same fashion, Cicero embellished his narrative of his return, his quasi-triumph, with perhaps his grandest rhetorical ornamentation: Ac meus [reditus] quidem is fuit ut a Brundisio usque Romam agmen perpetuum totius Italiae viderit. Neque enim regio ulla fuit nec municipium neque praefectura aut colonia ex qua non ad me publice venerint gratulatum. Quid dicam adventus meos, quid effusiones hominum ex oppidis, quid concursus ex agris patrum familias cum coniugibus ac liberis, quid eos dies qui quasi deorum immortalium festi atque sollemnes apud omnis sunt adventu meo redituque celebrati? Unus ille dies mihi quidem immortalitatis instar fuit quo in patriam redii, cum senatum egressum vidi populumque Romanum universum, cum mihi ipsa Roma prope convolsa sedibus suis ad complectendum conservatorem suum progredi visa est. Quae me ita accepit ut non modo omnium generum, aetatum, ordinum omnes viri ac mulieres omnis fortunae ac loci, sed etiam moenia ipsa viderentur et tecta urbis ac templa laetari. Well, my return was such that it saw a continuous line of everyone in Italy from Brundisium all the way to Rome. There was no region or municipium or prefecture or colony from which they did not come to me to congratulate me in public. Why should I mention my travels, or the pouring of men from towns, or the patriarchs running from the fields with their wives and children, or those days that were celebrated by all like proper holidays for the immortal gods because of my arrival and return? That one day for me was like immortality, when I returned to my homeland, when I saw the senate and the entire Roman populus come out of the city, when Rome herself, nearly toppled from her seat, seemed to come out to me to embrace her protector. She received me in such a way that not only all the men and women of every family, age, and class, of every fortune and place, but even 25

May claims that “the prosecution played right into his hands” by bringing up Cicero’s exile and giving him another opportunity to glorify his return in Planc. (1988: 126), but it seems to me that the reverse could also be true: that Cicero had to reiterate his positive interpretation of his exile and return so often because prosecutors and opponents forced his hand by mentioning it. On this repetition see also Dugan 2014; Pieper 2014.

Unpopular Populares

161

the walls themselves and the buildings and temples of the city seemed to rejoice. (Pis. 51)

In each version of this narrative, but especially with his grandiloquent description of a personified Rome’s embrace of her savior here, he claimed that these crowds were living proof that his actions as consul had been praiseworthy, that most people agreed with him and not with Clodius or Piso.26 The diversity of the crowds “proved” that he had succeeded in promoting concordia ordinum. This scene, he argued, erased the effects of his exile on his dignitas and actually left him stronger than he had been, because now he had proven conclusively the depth of the populus’ devotion to him as a leader. This was his best weapon in combating the negative political effects of his exile, a political message targeted not at the people themselves (who seemed to be more or less on his side) but at his peers and colleagues. Cicero’s opponents had a ready answer to Cicero’s self-fashioning as popular: it was a popular vote that had exiled him in the first place. Cicero sought to delegitimize that vote, and the apparent popularity of his opponents, by ridiculing what he calls the popularis ratio, which is actually (ironically) unpopular.27 He describes the populares as morally corrupt and self-sabotaging.

Unpopular Populares It was undeniably true that Clodius could command huge audiences of supporters, and that he had passed the law that had driven Cicero out of the city by means of a popular vote. To subvert Clodius’ popularity, Cicero often claims that Clodius’ audiences are not what they seem, and therefore do not really represent mass consensus or the will of the people. After all, a crowd at any given contio was only a sliver of the Roman populus, and whether it was a representative or genuine sample was difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain.28 Typically, therefore, as Morstein-Marx writes, “orators speak to whatever contional audience has assembled before them as if it were identical to the populus Romanus, and thus rhetorically transform their continually changing, proportionally negligible, and, as we shall see, self-selected audiences into the citizen body of the Republic.”29 Cicero 26 27 28 29

Kurczyk 2006: 251–2. This phrase is also used to describe campaigning among the masses (without a pejorative sense) at Comm. Pet. 41. See especially Mouritsen 2001; Jehne 2006; Mouritsen 2017: 55–79; Rosillo-López 2017c: 155–229; Rosillo-López 2018: 69–70. Morstein-Marx 2004: 120–1, see also 128–49. Cf. Favory 1976: 193: “L’‘embellissement’ moral et politique procède d’une autre démarche qui tient à la réalité diverse et complexe de la catégorie

162

The Popular Orator

engaged in this tactic of defining or redefining “the people” to legitimize his own arguments, and he reversed the argument to vitiate Clodius’ audiences, who (he argued) represented the very antithesis of the populus Romanus. In doing so, he attempts to render Clodius’ masses of supporters politically irrelevant. Robb summarizes Cicero’s argument: “‘true popularity’ comes from the ‘true’ people,” and the “true” people side with Cicero.30 This idea of the “true” populus, Kaster notes, “is among the more conspicuous recurrent gestures in the ‘post-return’ speeches more generally . . . : that the important distinction lay not between optimates and populares but between ‘true’ and ‘false’ populares – those who really had the people’s interests at heart (oneself and one’s allies) and those who claimed to do so out of self-seeking motives (the other side).”31 This sort of polemic had the potential to inspire greater confidence and self-righteousness in the honorable citizens in Cicero’s audience, now seeing themselves arrayed against low-lifes and degenerates, but it also had the potential to spread doubt and uncertainty among Clodius’ supporters, who might lose confidence in their leader and enthusiasm for their cause if they were persuaded that they had been tricked into supporting a fake demagogue. Cicero often also argues that the populares of his own day have strayed far from the original sense of the word.32 By emphasizing the ironic distance between the name and the reality, he undermines his opponents’ selffashioning as champions and defenders of the people’s interests, and as the beneficiaries of popular support. Clodius claimed to be protecting the masses and acting in their interests; in De Haruspicum Responsis, Cicero claims that Clodius committed electoral bribery, “so that a popularis criminally cheated the people” of their political rights (42). Clodius dedicated a temple to Libertas on the site of Cicero’s house; in De Domo Sua, Cicero inverts Clodius’ propaganda by accusing him of promoting the cult not of popular Libertas, but of anarchic Licentia (Dom. 131).33 In Pro Sestio, Cicero satirizes three lower-level Clodians for promoting themselves with the label of populares in a cheap attempt to win votes which did not even succeed (Sest. 110, 114). So much for popularity, Cicero remarks mercilessly. He

30 31 32 33

sémantique de populus – populus Romanus et à sa polysémie. L’idéologie cicéronienne joue de cette polysémie, dont la fonction est multiple.” Robb 2010: 59. Kaster 2006: 34. This phenomenon is also described by Achard 1981: 51; Riggsby 2002; MorsteinMarx 2004: 213; Gildenhard 2011: 160–4. On the historical legacy of populares, see Chapter 7. Perhaps a reference to L. Crassus’ “swansong” in 91 bce, in which he proclaimed that Philippus “will have to cut out this tongue – but even if it is torn out, my freedom (libertas) will check your lust for power (libidinem) with its very breath” (De Orat. 3.4).

Unpopular Populares

163

depicts them as pandering hypocrites without any real political savvy, so that these so-called populares failed to win popular elections. “While you were flitting around the middle of the forum, flourishing and powerful, the people’s whore, those friends of yours who were so protected and blessed by you, their only friend, and who had entrusted themselves to the people, were so unsuccessful that they even lost your Palatine tribe” (Dom. 49), he mocks Clodius. Through all of this name-calling and censure, Cicero generates a portrait of a popularis persona, a stereotyped straw man with no real concern for the people, adopting a thin veneer of populism to serve ulterior motives. He depicts the popularis ratio (falsely, Mouritsen shows34) as a last resort for politicians who have been denied the support of the optimates, blocked from ascent up the cursus honorum by their own bad reputations. They lack the merit (or background) to be elected by traditional means, so they resort to the popularis ratio.35 He also routinely accuses populares of seeking office only as a means to satisfy their monstrous greed (e.g., Sest. 1–2, 85; Vat. 38), comparing them to Charybdis (e.g., Har. Resp. 59, Sest. 111, cf. Dom. 49, 60–1) or to prostitutes (Dom. 49; Har. Resp. 1, 28).36 This set of tropes describing a popularis ratio exists because it allows Cicero to typologize his enemies as all participating in the same wrong-headed political methodology, all following the wrong path to political authority, and for the wrong reasons.37 It also feeds directly into Cicero’s own self-fashioning as authentically popular, as he seeks to redefine the term: ironically, he is more popular than the populares, in that the real Roman populus actually approves of his policies and agrees with his opinions.38 The populares referred to the optimates as the “corrupt few,” and Cicero attempted to counter that description in part by describing great multitudes (often silent majorities) of optimates, not the few but the many, while downplaying the numbers of populares’ supporters.39 This suggests that the political messaging of the populares and their ability to appeal to the urban plebs – or to crowds who came to their contiones, whoever composed them – were 34 35

36 37

38

Mouritsen 2017: 156–8. He alleges that Clodius turned popularis because of the damage to his reputation after the Bona Dea scandal (Har. resp. 43–4), and that Caesar was a recovered popularis who would not betray the senate now that he had earned his way back into their good graces (Prov. Cons. 38–9; see Chapter 5 for discussion). See Wirszubski (1961: 17–18) on the trope linking egestas with audacia; and Tatum 1999: 3. Meier 1966: 144–6. Lintott also notes that the histories of earlier “populares” was likely modified to resonate with and anticipate the crisis of the late republic; Lintott 2008: 54–8. More on this in Chapter 7. Tiersch 2018: 67. 39 Gildenhard 2011: 147–8.

164

The Popular Orator

effective enough to warrant serious countermeasures from Cicero to undermine their rhetoric. Pro Sestio shows a particularly high concentration of polemics against allegedly unpopular populares. Cicero states: “I must show that the men people think are populares are not all really popular. I will very easily achieve that, if I show the true and uncorrupted judgment of the entire populus and the deepest sensibilities of the city” (Sest. 119), a judgment to which he claims to have privileged access himself. In addition to lining Italian and Roman roads to welcome Cicero home, the people had apparently demonstrated their support for him in the theater, as he describes in great detail in Pro Sestio. This was a crucial venue for gauging the people’s opinions, he explains (Sest. 115), and they had all applauded eagerly for him (119) and for his friend and client, Sestius, who he says “showed himself to the people” to engineer exactly this sort of show of popularity (124). He taunts his opponents: “where were the moderators of your contiones then, your masters of laws, your expellers of citizens? Or is there some other populus just for dishonest citizens, to which we are offensive and hateful?” (125). The problem is that by citing this event, and by referring to the theater at all, Cicero is starting to sound like a popularis himself, the sort of man who will resort to anything to gain the people’s approval, and who thinks that popularity is all there is to politics. Cicero walks a dangerous line with his rhetoric of popularity, courting charges of pandering himself, and shows that he is aware of this risk. It is vital to Cicero’s persona as popular that he maintain the moral high ground. To avoid this charge, Cicero apologizes for the indignity of his discussion of the theater and begs the jury: “do not think I’ve been led by some levitas to lapse into an abnormal way of speaking. . . . I know what your gravitas, this case, this gathering, the dignity of P. Sestius, the magnitude of the danger to him, the age we live in, and my own honor demand” (119). Levitas is a trait of populares in Cicero’s rhetoric, men who are not held back or restrained by the gravitas of the boni, the weight of tradition that ought to dictate what is politically acceptable.40 The word denotes a lack of integrity, the opposite of the gravitas of the boni, a chronic lack of seriousness, sincerity, and consistency;41 it is sometimes associated with the stereotypically deceitful and flighty Greeks (Flacc. 24, 57, 61, 71, Sest. 141, Rep. 1.5, 2.80). In 60 bce, in 40

41

See Sest. 20, 36–8, 115, 119, 141; Vat. 3, 40; Pis. 24, 57; Mil. 22; Phil. 5.49, 7.4; Fam. 1.7.7. Cicero does not use the word to describe Catiline, perhaps because trivializing Catiline’s politics would have been self-defeating. Macrobius notes that Cicero was criticized for levitas in supporting first Pompey and then Caesar; Sat. 2.5.10.

The Will of the People

165

a letter to Atticus, for example, Cicero criticized Pompey for levitas. He wrote that Pompey yielded entirely to what he thought would be popular, and that Cicero had gently corrected him through praise (see Chapter 2). “If I’d had to do that with any lack of integrity (aliqua levitate), I wouldn’t have thought anything was worth such a price; but in fact, everything was managed by me in such a way that I did not seem to have less integrity (levior) in agreeing with him, but so that he seemed to have more integrity (gravior videretur) in showing his approval of me” (Att. 1.20.2). Here, Cicero assesses movement across a spectrum between the two poles of gravitas and levitas. In lending his auctoritas to support a man whom he did not respect and who was advocating populist measures, Cicero worried that he was behaving with levitas himself (ego levior). The key to Cicero’s self-fashioning as popular is to disprove charges of levitas preemptively. Levitas reflects a personal lack of the kind of firmness that strengthens an individual’s consistency, as well as a political lack of firmness in one’s own beliefs, which drives subjugation and submission to public opinion.42 Levitas was thus a character trait that Cicero tried strenuously to avoid; and since conformity to popular opinion automatically introduced a note of levitas, or at least the potential for it, it is especially important to Cicero to demonstrate his gravitas when he is citing popularity as a source of political capital. While Cicero describes optimates in the 50s as earning popularity incidentally, as a byproduct of their sound policies and gravitas, he describes populares as courting popularity for its own sake, divorced from the actual interests or needs of the masses, and thus reflecting levitas. He is careful to describe himself in ways that deflect or nullify the charge of levitas for himself, by explaining the moral underpinnings of his actions.43

The Will of the People In Pro Sestio, Cicero apologizes for his own apparent levitas in appealing to cheers in a theater as evidence, in order to distinguish himself from the populares who crave such trivial signs of popular favor. He is acting like a popularis himself, but seeks to distinguish himself from his competitors 42

43

Yavetz proposes that populares like Caesar actually demonstrated levitas intentionally: “César se rendit sympathique à la foule justement parce qu’il sut de départir de cette gravitas qui était exigée d’un haute personnage, et c’est pourquoi les boni qualifièrent sa conduite, dans laquelle ils ne voyaient que basse flatterie, de levitas popularis. Si nous définissons la gravitas comme une qualité personelle qui permet à une chef politique d’adopter une position intransigeante afin d’atteindre un but impopulaire, nous pouvons dire, par opposition, que la levitas caractérise une homme qui incommodo rei publicae gratiam sibi conciliet (Ep. ad Caes., ii, 6, 2)”; Yavetz 1965: 105. On the conceptual overlap between demagogues and populares, see Vanderbroeck 1987: 185–92.

166

The Popular Orator

by portraying this as a temporary break with his usual methods, a momentary lapse that he knows is problematic. Using this trope of levitas, Cicero thus plays the character of the shrewd, mature political sage who can perceive the difference between real popularity and a counterfeit version. He generally portrays himself not as the voice of the people, the vehicle through which the people communicate their desires and interests, but as a paternalistic figure who gives the masses what he knows they really need, and who enjoys popularity – and has won elections and verdicts – as a result. He is grateful for popular favor, but in the way that one is grateful for any uncontrollable windfall. This paternalistic view of popular representation is particularly clear in Pro Plancio. In 54 bce, his client Plancius had been accused by a rival candidate of bribing his way into office,44 but Cicero gently admonished the prosecutor that electoral upsets can happen: Non est enim consilium in volgo, non ratio, non discrimen, non diligentia, semperque sapientes ea quae populus fecisset ferenda, non semper laudanda dixerunt. . . . Est enim haec condicio liberorum populorum praecipueque huius principis populi et omnium gentium domini atque victoris, posse suffragiis vel dare vel detrahere quod velit cuique; nostrum est autem, nostrum qui in hac tempestate populi iactemur et fluctibus ferre modice populi voluntates, adlicere alienas, retinere partas, placare turbatas; honores si magni non putemus, non servire populo; sin eos expetamus, non defetigari supplicando. You see, the mob has no wisdom, no reason, no discernment, no consistency. Wise men have said that we must always tolerate whatever the people have done, not that we must always praise it. . . . This, you see, is the condition of free peoples, especially of this foremost people, master and conqueror of all nations: to be able to give or deny anything they want to anyone with their votes. Our part, then, we who struggle to voyage through the wind and waves of the people, is to tolerate the people’s desires calmly, to win over those opposed to us, to retain those who are well-disposed, and to placate those who are agitated; not to be slaves to the people, if we think honors are not of great value; but if we do want honors, never to tire of appealing for them. (Planc. 9–11)

The populus appears to be equal parts cruel mistress and capricious deity in Cicero’s rendering, a variation on his typical metaphor comparing popular politics to a stormy sea.45 His use of anaphora and metaphor, along with his grand characterization of “the condition of all free peoples,” adds rhetorical embellishment in a virtuosic display: this is not a blunt declaration of an 44

See Karataş 2019 on Plancius’ case.

45

Kaster 2006: 127, 177, 220–1.

The Will of the People

167

unsavory reality, but a seductive placation of the sore loser prosecuting Plancius. He modifies Crassus’ extraordinary statement that the senate should be “slaves” to the people (quoted above): we should not be slaves to the people, he remarks, but only if we esteem honores as inconsequential or cheap – only if we aren’t politicians, in other words. The populus has a monopoly on honores, and if we want a share, our only choice is humbly currying their favor – becoming slaves to them (he implies).46 Politicians of the late Republic must be slaves before they can be masters. In the prosopopoeia that follows this passage, when Cicero actually takes on the voice of the embodied populus (as he also had in Cat. 1.18, 1.27), “the people” criticize Plancius’ opponent for not campaigning enthusiastically enough, not asking humbly enough for their favor (12–13).47 Cicero may not seem here to be claiming popularity, as he dons the calm, sensible demeanor of a senior statesman, lecturing young men on how politics really works. He does not embrace popular politics but only grudgingly accepts the necessity of appealing to the people, playing the opposite of a popularis. He engages in “soliciting” the people’s favor with the greatest reluctance, and without admiration for the “master of all nations.” While he is pleased by popular approval, he gives the impression that he can take it or leave it. As a former consul, he is (to his relief) less dependent on popular favor than younger men still ascending the cursus honorum. He maintains a dignified distance from the vulgus, in contrast to those who crave popularity. By depicting the populus as a violent force of nature, Cicero makes it seem as if it is impossible to manipulate or bribe one’s way to electoral victory; how could anyone predict or control such a force? By most modern accounts, in reality, electoral bribery was practically the rule and not the exception in the mid-50s bce, but Cicero, to defuse the charges against Plancius, glosses over that reality. Mass movements often have the appearance of spontaneity even when they are meticulously planned and organized, and Cicero capitalizes on that misperception. Lurking behind this notion of surrendering to the capricious whims of the vulgus, however, is a conviction that the people generally proves to be a good judge of merit, and that elections proceed justly. As he continues his defense of Plancius, Cicero subtly shifts his approach to argue that, in fact, Plancius was the better candidate and the better campaigner, so that the 46

47

Tatum 2013: 133–4; Yakobson 2018; Harries writes that “the emphasis on the verdict of the populus as a collective extended Cicero’s challenge to the whole Roman political culture of individualism”; Harries 2004: 201. See May 1988: 118–19 on this passage.

168

The Popular Orator

mob, which he had said possessed “no wisdom, no reason, no discernment, no attentiveness,” actually turns out to have made a correct judgment (12–15, 24–30, 46–50). In fact, Plancius’ surprising success as a new man turns out to be a sort of sequel to Cicero’s own success: Plancius, like Cicero, earned special support from the people because of his own merits, Cicero argues (59–64). Submission to the will of the people may be frustrating, but in this speech, it is ultimately justified by a deep-seated belief in the validity of democratic processes.48 This confirmation of the justice of popular elections is consistent with his statements across his speeches and dialogues about the role of the statesman in a republic,49 and demonstrates the importance of the populus in the public life of anyone who wants to be a leading citizen. It evokes the very notion of the term res publica, calling public figures to acknowledge that they are managing the “property” of the people as stewards.50 This is why Cicero so strenuously distinguishes between a “true” populus and a “false” one, a stage-managed counterfeit of the real thing (more on this in Chapter 7). The whole edifice of Roman politics rests on an axiomatic faith in popular elections as a just system. By designating a given group as “false,” Cicero can attack the appearance of popularity in some individual instances without undermining the whole edifice, from which he derives his own legitimacy. In general, Cicero’s persona as popular is most salient in this period in the orations against Clodius and Piso. Although Pompey enjoyed great popularity in the course of his career, and although Caesar advanced popularis policies during his consulship, Cicero’s support for the two dynasts in 56–54 bce does not feature his rhetoric of popularity. In advocating for them, Cicero was not facing popularis opponents, but optimates in the senate; he had no need to engage in polemics over who the people really supported. In fact, citing the people’s approval for the two dynasts only would have inflamed resentment and anxiety in the senate further. When Pompey joined forces with Cato and the majority of the senators in the civil war, the masses eventually seem to have sided with Caesar instead.51 Even Caesar was less a popularis than some of his supporters: Caelius and Milo split from Caesar to pursue an even more populist agenda than Caesar did, before they were killed by their own former allies (Dio 48 49 50 51

Steel discusses the logic of electoral politics in this speech in Steel 2011. Cf. Schofield 1995: 76; Grilli 2005; Atkins 2013: 128–52; Remer 2017: 82. Cicero was, in fact, working on De Republica in 54, the year in which he delivered the Pro Plancio; Q. fr. 3.5.1. Syme 1938.

Popularity in the Philippics

169

42.22–5).52 Later, when Cicero broke with Antony, the heir to Caesar’s political legacy, he returned to his persona as a popular politician to deny Antony that source of legitimacy. He no longer had the luxury of maintaining this distance from the vulgus, because his position in the senate was too weak to mount an effective resistance against Antony.

Popularity in the Philippics In 44–43 bce, Cicero turned again to contional orations (and published them) with the Fourth and Sixth Philippics, but his persona as the people’s chosen leader also resurfaces in Philippics 1 and 7. He also returned to his anti-Clodian strategy of mocking misguided or ineffective attempts to solicit popular favor, with the trope of the unpopular populist.53 In the First Philippic, Cicero attacks Antony’s rationale for passing Caesar’s acta: “‘But the idea was popular (popularis).’ I wish something you wanted was popular! For all the citizens agree about the welfare of the republic, with a single mind and a single voice. What, then, is this eagerness to pass this law that has everything bad and nothing appealing?” (Phil. 1.21). Cicero attempts here to undermine Antony’s claims of popularity and, once again, to claim that the silent majority of good, virtuous citizens is actually on his own side. He mocks Antony for pretending to follow proper republican legal procedures: “I suppose you’ll have those legitimate words engraved in bronze: THE CONSULS CONSULTED THE PEOPLE BY LAW (is this the law of consultation we received from our ancestors?) AND THE PEOPLE BY LAW DECREED – what people? The ones who were kept out? By what law? The one entirely suspended by violence and force?” (Phil. 1.25–6). He interrupts and annotates the language of (imagined) Roman law in order to portray it as a farce, a parody of itself. By contrast with Antony’s levitas and misguided notion of popularity, Cicero describes himself again as the recipient of true popularity: “I’m the sort of person who has always looked down on those rounds of applause when they’re given to popularis citizens; but when this same treatment comes from the

52 53

Epstein 1987: 67. On Antony’s levitas see Lacey 1986: 203; Sussman 1994. Even at the outset of Caesar’s dictatorship, Antony, Caelius, Dolabella, and other supposed supporters of Caesar had curried favor with the people, with sometimes disastrous effects; in Welch’s assessment, “Caesar had to face the fact that his representatives had chosen to spend their year in extending their own standing with the plebs urbana in Rome by every possible method rather than in carrying out his orders to maintain peace and stability;” Welch 1995a: 194.

170

The Popular Orator

highest, the middle, the lowest, and from everyone, . . . I don’t regard that as a round of applause, but as a verdict” (Phil. 1.37). In his orations of 57 and 56 against Clodius, as we have seen, Cicero drew attention to the huge crowds that had turned out to demonstrate their fervent, unanimous support for Cicero’s restoration as proof of his popularity, and of the righteousness of his cause. In the Fourth Philippic, he uses the same technique. He remarks on the “incredible attendance” at a contio in December of 44 and praises the crowd for restoring his own energy, “because you also declared that Antony is an enemy of the state, with great unanimity and great shouts of approval” (Phil. 4.1–2, cf. Fam. 12.7 to Cassius on the same contio).54 Not only the number of people gathered but their outpouring of noisy approbation is vital for Cicero here, on an occasion when the senate has just rejected Cicero’s proposal to label Antony an official enemy of the state.55 While the senate can be misled or manipulated by political maneuvering, in Cicero’s logic, the “entire” “true” Roman populus provides a corrective. Likewise, in the Sixth Philippic, he treats the populus as outweighing the senate – conveniently, since the senate has just declined to support Cicero’s proposal to declare Antony an enemy of the state:56 Etenim quis est civis, praesertim hoc gradu quo me vos esse voluistis, tam oblitus benefici vestri, tam immemor patriae, tam inimicus dignitati suae quem non excitet, non inflammet tantus vester iste consensus? Multas magnasque habui consul contiones, multis interfui: nullam umquam vidi tantam quanta nunc vestrum est. Unum sentitis omnes, unum studetis, M. Antoni conatus avertere a re publica, furorem exstinguere, opprimere audaciam. Idem volunt omnes ordines; eodem incumbunt municipia, coloniae, cuncta Italia. Itaque senatum bene sua sponte firmum firmiorem vestra auctoritate fecistis. For what citizen is there, especially one of the rank that you wished me to have, who is so forgetful of your favor, so mindless of his country, such an enemy to his own dignity that such great consensus among you would not inspire and excite him? I had many large contiones as consul, I was involved in many, but I have never seen one as large as yours is now. You all think just one thing, you all want one thing: to resist Marcus Antonius’ attempts on the republic, to extinguish his rage, to check his shamelessness. All the orders want the same thing, all the municipia and colonies, all of Italy is inclined

54

55

Cf. Morstein-Marx 2004: 140–3 on the demagogic techniques of these two contional Philippics; Mouritsen 2013: 81–2 describes these contiones as framed as dialogues between Cicero and the unanimous people. Cf. Manuwald 2004: 59–62. 56 Steel 2008.

Popularity in the Philippics

171

toward the same opinion. Therefore, you have made the senate, firm enough on its own, even firmer with your authority. (Phil. 6.17–18)

Again, as in Pro Plancio, electoral success is offered up as the ultimate evidence of popularity (voluistis), and so Cicero connects the moment of his speech in 43 bce to the feeling he had two decades earlier, when the people rewarded him with their approbation and the consulship. And their consensus then, by his account, pales in comparison to their “total unanimity” in this later instance. In the face of such unanimity, the senate (Cicero claims) cannot resist the object of that unanimity: Cicero, and whatever proposals or views he represents. He then uses these contiones to browbeat his fellow senators directly in the Seventh Philippic. When the entire Roman people believed so fervently in the cause of freedom, he argued, any equivocation must mean that the senate was at fault (Phil. 7.19–20). He continued, describing the contiones that he had addressed in the Fourth and Sixth Philippics: “Why should I tell you about the ‘entire Roman people,’ when, in a full and packed forum, twice, with one mind and one voice, they have called me into a contio and declared the utmost desire for the restoration of their liberty? Thus, it was desirable before to have the Roman people as our ally, but now we have them as our leader (dux)” (7.22). His suggestion that the populus has become the dux of the senate is pointedly jarring, a dig at the passivity and paralysis of the senate in the face of an illegal assault by Antony.57 The greater the consensus of the populus, the greater the pressure exerted on the elite who were, in some sense, their representatives. Cicero also continued to attack Antony and his associates for claiming false popularity and for demonstrating levitas. With the charge of levitas, Cicero discredits arguments for reconciliation as disingenuous and dishonest, while he makes the familiar claim that he supports the real “popular” cause himself, in the sense that the majority of the populus sides with him.58 Atque haec ii loquuntur, qui quondam propter levitatem populares habebantur. Ex quo intellegi potest animo illos abhorruisse semper ab optimo civitatis statu, non voluntate fuisse populares. Qui enim evenit, ut, qui in rebus improbis populares fuerint, idem in re una maxime populari, quod eadem salutaris rei publicae sit, improbos se quam popularis esse malint? Me 57 58

This complements Cicero’s tactics in calling attention to his identity of a senator, the focus of the last section of Chapter 5. Cf. Tracy 2008; Yakobson 2010: 297. He also labels Fufius Calenus a failed popularis in Phil. 8.19, on which see Manuwald 2007: vol. ii, 841–3; Robb 2010: 76–7.

172

The Popular Orator quidem semper, uti scitis, adversarium multitudinis temeritati haec fecit praeclarissima causa popularem. The people saying these things [in favor of peace with Antony] are those who were once called “populares” because of their levitas. From this, one can understand that in their hearts they shuddered at proper order in the city, and not that they were men of the people by loyalty. For how does it happen that men who were “popular” for disreputable causes prefer to be disreputable and not popular when it comes to the most popular cause of all, the one that is good for the republic? For my part, at least, as you know, this glorious cause has made me, a perpetual obstacle to the rashness of the mob, a popularis. (Phil. 7.4)

This ironic treatment of the double meaning of the term populares, and Cicero’s ironic appropriation of that label for himself, recall his tactics from earlier in his career.59 His designation of the term populares as a relic of the past (quondam) suggests that this ideological division had fallen out of political rhetoric in general since Clodius’ death. The supporters of Antony are, he suggests, no more than an anachronism, the same Clodians and Catilinarians whom Cicero had defeated years ago.60 In April, after news of Antony’s defeat arrived from Mutina, Cicero once again enjoyed a quasi-triumphal procession with a large crowd that mirrored his triumphant return from exile in 57 bce, as he described to Brutus: quo quidem die magnorum meorum laborum multarumque vigiliarum fructum cepi maximum, si modo est aliquis fructus ex solida veraque gloria. nam tantae multitudinis quantam capit urbs nostra concursus est ad me factus. a qua usque in Capitolium deductus, maximo clamore atque plausu in rostris collocatus sum. nihil est in me inane, neque enim debet; sed tamen omnium ordinum consensus, gratiarum actio gratulatioque me commovet propterea quod popularem esse in populi salute praeclarum est. sed haec te malo ab aliis. On that day, I reaped the greatest benefit from my great labors and many vigils – at least, if there is any benefit from solid and true glory. For a huge multitude, the contents of our whole city, gathered to me. They led me to the Capitoline, and with great shouts and applause I was placed on the rostra. There is nothing superficial in me, nor should there be, but the consensus of all classes, the thanksgiving and congratulations still moved me, because it is glorious to be popular for supporting the people’s welfare. But I prefer that you hear this from others. (ad Brut. 1.3.2) 59 60

Rab. Perd. 12–16; Agr. 2.6–9, 102. Tracy 2008; cf. Yakobson 2010: 297. Cf. the nostalgia and irony in Cicero’s accusation that Lucullus is acting like a seditiosus tribunus or a popularis in a philosophical treatise also written in 45 bce, the Lucullus (144).

Popularity in the Philippics

173

To the philosophical Brutus, in a private letter, Cicero felt pressured to excuse himself for seeming to place any value on the whims of the mob, to defend himself preemptively against charges of levitas. His was solida veraque gloria, not mere popularity, and glorious rather than superficial. Brutus, he feared, criticized him for the weakness of character that a desire for popularity usually reflects; Cicero’s appeal to “true glory” offers a refutation. The similarity between this moment and Cicero’s return from exile in 57 seems to indicate more than déjà vu or literary borrowing from Cicero by Cicero. It suggests that Cicero’s position in 44 and 43 had been weakened, because of a sort of lingering political miasma after Caesar’s dictatorship that was tantamount to political exile. He could not operate politically without dispelling that appearance of powerlessness, and so he turned again to populist rhetoric and cited popular consensus – tangible demonstrations of it – as a secure, observable, impressive basis for his authority. In the Philippics, it is also worth noting, Cicero reckons with soldiers and veterans as a major political entity in their own right,61 and he vies with the supporters of Antony to claim the military’s support for his own cause.62 Taylor thus remarks that after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, “party conflict was mainly in the hands of trained soldiers.”63 As early as the Third Philippic, Cicero devotes special praise to the Martian and the fourth legions for deserting Antony: “what individual has ever been braver, more of a friend to the republic than the whole Martian legion together?” (3.6). These legions are an important part of Cicero’s general narrative of the siege of Mutina, in which he describes the two sides as a party of Antonian hostes on one side and an opposing party of the defenders of the republic on the other, with himself as their spokesman. He depicts these two legions, like his other allies, as choosing to fight for the senate based on ideology and a sense of justice, rather than an assessment of who was likely to win, in order to create an impression of consensus for his arguments.64 Thus, he treats the legions as he treated the masses: as a source of validation. That the legions had really mutinied and deserted Antony in favor of Octavian, not of the senate, is conveniently suppressed.65 Antony, to 61

62 64 65

Although the real difference between the “bodyguards” of Sestius and Milo and the armies of Octavian and Brutus is questionable, in terms of backing up the orator’s threats. On the army’s role in the fall of the republic, see, e.g., Schmitthenner 1960; Botermann 1968: vol. 46; Brunt 1988: 240–80; Marrone 2005; Blösel 2011. Zecchini 2009: 117. 63 Taylor 1949a: 162. On “party conflict” see Chapter 7. Phil. 3.39, 4.5, 5.4, 5.23, 5.28, 5.46, 5.53, 10.21, 12.8, 12.12, 12.29, 13.18–22, 14.26–7, 14.31–2. Manuwald 2007: vol. ii, 343.

174

The Popular Orator

counter this narrative, accused Cicero and Octavian of tricking the two legions by promising them that they would be avenging Caesar’s death and seducing them with “poisoned gifts” before sending them to fight against their fellow Caesarians (13.33–5). He thus accused Cicero of manipulating and using the people for selfish ends, the same accusation Cicero typically deployed against popular politicians. The veterans, as a group, offer the same kind of legitimizing consensus and political capital as the masses in the city. In this case, however, their desires will not be indicated by a vote in the comitia but by mutiny or loyalty, fighting for one side or the other. This substitution of army for populus reflects a major challenge of government during civil war, and demonstrates why it was so important for Cicero to create a compelling rallying cry for a “republican” party: the desertion of the Martian and fourth legions had to be interpreted as service to the republic rather than a simple act of betrayal, and their stance against Antony needed confirmation and legitimization in order to make it seem less arbitrary and thus less reversible.66 Others in the senate were reluctant to attack Antony, fearing that soldiers or veterans would turn against the senate as a result, to Cicero’s frustration: “what is this method of constantly opposing the word ‘veterans’ to good causes? Even if I embrace their virtue, as I do, I still could not tolerate their arrogance if they were too demanding. Is someone going to stop our efforts to break the chains of slavery if he says the veterans disagree?” (10.18, cf. 11.37). This outburst is a response to attempts by other senators – perhaps Antony’s supporters, but perhaps just cautious nonpartisans – to claim to be representing the desires of the veterans as well. Cicero claims that the soldiers want to defend the traditional republic, and so commit themselves to the senate’s (i.e., to Cicero’s) leadership. The mutiny of the Martian and fourth legions becomes a demonstration of the popularity, and therefore the justice, of the republican cause, in Cicero’s interpretation. He had relocated demonstrations of the “people’s will” from the theater, the games, and the forum to the military camps. Now, popularity was demonstrated not in peaceful gatherings, but by soldiers’ decisions of where to place their allegiance, and Cicero publicly affirmed their freedom to make that choice, and even proposed a monument for those who fell in battle (14.31–3). However, events soon proved that the legions were not so much loyal to the republic as they were to leaders like 66

See Manuwald 2007: vol. ii, 339 on the soldiers’ real motives, including money offered by Octavian and vengeance on Caesar’s assassins.

Conclusion

175

Lepidus, Plancus, and Octavian, and when those leaders agreed to ally with Antony instead of Cicero, their soldiers followed suit.

Conclusion Cicero’s descriptions of quasi-triumphal processions through adoring crowds upon his return to the city in 57 and after a defeat of Antony in April of 43 are an important component of his strategies in claiming popularity. In these descriptions, the people saw the rightness of his actions and rewarded him with these massive demonstrations, a huge honor for him that could not be ignored, and which he attempted to turn into further political capital by describing these triumphal scenes repeatedly. However, he was also careful to disavow the levitas associated with men who sought popularity directly and for its own sake, deriding others for following the popularis ratio and thus flying in the face of what the Roman populus really valued. He, unlike them, is not desperate for popular approval and does not pander to the masses, which makes the populus value him all the more, by his description. He claims to understand the people and their needs, and yet to have the gravity and authority to resist the whims of the vulgus, to understand the difference between campaigning for popular election and prostituting oneself. He thus portrays himself as popular in fact, while not popularis in outlook or methodology; a republican, but not a demagogue. This has been read as tendentious and ultimately unconvincing, but it may well be that Cicero really did have a popular following too. The Roman populus was a hotly contested source of political capital, and the fact that masses of supporters seem to have showed up for orators on both sides only seems to have escalated the popularity contest. In his political speeches in the year or so after he returned from exile, and again in the year following Caesar’s assassination, Cicero increasingly cited his “popularity” as political capital, reminding his audiences of moments when large groups of citizens had turned up to show their approval for his actions. His self-fashioning as “popular” is based on these concrete demonstrations. When large groups demonstrate their support for his enemies, however, he is quick to dismiss those groups as the “wrong” sort of people, or as paid impersonators of autonomous citizens, as we will see in Chapter 7. He also claims that his opponents’ motives are shallow and corrupt. His opponents cannot be allowed to claim popularity, as he does, because he uses popularity as the ultimate proof of legitimacy, an outside validation of his political actions. He portrays himself as the humble servant or grateful beneficiary of the people, too dignified and

176

The Popular Orator

too confident to resort to tampering with the populus or pandering to them. He argues that his opponents, in their desperation to win popular favor, try to provide immediate gratification of the masses, and manufacture counterfeit demonstrations of public opinion. In contrast, he claims himself to be acting in accordance with his own sense of virtue, which just happens to make him popular. This, he implies, acquits him of any charge of levitas or demagoguery himself.

chapter 7

The Voice of a Faction

Introduction Cicero’s smear campaign against the populares extended to the realm of ideology as well, as he depicted them as the degenerate heirs of a tradition of demagogues destroying the republic. In this chapter, I turn to Cicero’s attempts to develop a character as a party leader, a commander in a political crusade for the republic’s institutions. I treat the political “parties” of optimates and populares not as political entities or agents but as a rhetorical trope, and consider this theme not from the point of view of law, lexicography, or history but through the eyes of the orators who exploited it for their own benefit. Partisan rhetoric often involves invective, and so shares many of the tropes we examined in Chapter 1, especially bitter mockery. What makes it distinct is the introduction of broad, generalizing ideological categories to separate us from them, the heroes from the villains, and to situate the heroes in a long historical arc of epic import, which brings out a certain philosophical quality in Cicero’s character. Cicero’s invectives against Clodius (I focus here on De Domo Sua and Pro Sestio, as well as an incident reported in a letter to Quintus) deal not only with Clodius as an individual, but with Clodius as a leader of a faction, following in some ways in the footsteps of earlier populares.1 Partisan rhetoric is particularly conspicuous when used to differentiate similar actions, especially uses of violence, by members of opposing factions. Because of the ideological failings of Clodius’ faction, Cicero argues 1

Achard notes that Cicero’s persona as an optimate is salient only in certain speeches: “Pour retrouver à travers la rhétorique cicéronienne une ‘rhétorique conservatrice’ nous avons borné notre travail aux discours où l’orateur apparaît sans conteste comme un défenseur de la res publica sénatoriale. C’est que toutes les orationes de Cicéron ne méritent pas la qualification d’optimates, car l’orateur n’a pas toujours pu s’affirmer comme un partisan de la res publica dominée par le Sénat. . . . Cette idéologie n’apparaît pas clairement dans les discours d’avant le consulat. . . . De la même façon il nous est impossible de tenir compte des discours consécutifs à la palinodie . . . Et dans la Milonienne c’est bien un optimate qui parle.” Achard 1981: 16–17.

177

178

The Voice of a Faction

in several works, their actions are inherently seditious and destructive, while the same actions are legitimate and praiseworthy in his eyes when performed by those he calls the boni or “good men.”2 Finally, as we can see in Philippics 5 and 13, both Cicero and Antony revived the terms of this partisan discourse a decade later in 43 bce, in order to try to divide Roman politicians once more into factions for their own political advantage. Strongly partisan orators do not describe themselves as such. “Partisan” implies the existence of two or more parties or factions, each with their own adherents, on more or less equal footing. The partisans who speak for those groups in extremely polarized cultures, however, tend to portray themselves as speaking for all right-minded people, the vast (if silent) majority, the norm, against an illegitimate minority of deviants and villains. The partisan, in their most extreme form, thus casts the members of opposing factions as a fundamentally different species of politicians with fundamentally different goals. The orator’s own partisans are framed as constructive or conservative, while their opponents are purely obstructionist or destructive; they defend the laws, their opponents subvert them. They might represent themselves as a host repelling a virus; if they could only isolate and eliminate the invasive threat, it would lose its ability to spread and replicate. In such a defensive struggle, the ends seem to justify the means, even when the host and the virus adopt the same means. The righteousness of the host and the need for survival are made to legitimize their actions, while any actions the virus takes are framed as inherently unjust. The stakes of this crusade are the survival or annihilation of the whole polity. This involves describing individuals who are nominally one’s own colleagues and peers as enemies of the state, which makes compromise or collaboration not only immoral but treasonous. Partisan rhetoric subsumes any right-thinking individuals and any right action under its own ideological banner, positing group unity and alliances where the reality may be more complicated. In reality, Roman political parties (in the sense of interest groups of members loyal to each other and to a common cause for a significant period of time) seem to have broken apart as quickly as they formed – or not to have existed at all in the 50s.3 However, two ideologies associated with those groups really do seem to have existed, in the sense of an ideology as an 2 3

Achard 1981: 361–72; Stone 2005: 60. On the use of “factio” and “pars” in Cicero and Sallust, see Taylor 1949a: 10–11. Meier 1960: 174–90; Brunt 1988: 36–45. See Cic. Fam. 1.9.17–20 for an instructive account, and the discussion in Morrell 2018a. Epstein argues that such factions as there were existed on the basis not of cooperation but of common enemies; 1987: 88.

Introduction

179

interpretive filter or lens, determining right and wrong within certain rhetorical frames.4 These two rival ideologies have sometimes been taken as representative of the views of the groups we know as optimates and populares, first juxtaposed in the Commentariolum Petitionis (5) in extant literature.5 Clashes between these two groups dominate accounts of the late Republic by Cicero and Sallust, leading to Syme’s terse assessment: “without a party a statesman is nothing.”6 In recent scholarship, however, labeling these groups political “parties” is usually dismissed as anachronistic. Meier’s explanation, that individuals act more or less separately while drawing on a common method or approach to politics, has become the orthodox view.7 Exhaustive studies of terminology by Achard (for the optimates), Robb (for the populares), and other treatments have offered a new wave of analysis on the subject,8 but as Mouritsen observes, “the more closely one looks at the categories the more they seem to dissolve.”9 Their rival ideologies, however, permeated political discourse for at least the last century of the Republic, endowing individual political actions with a more meaningful context historically as well as intellectually. Mackie, Ferrary, Wiseman, and Arena (to name a few) have argued that these ideologies are not irrelevant to or a distraction from political reality, as has often been suggested, but essential to understanding it.10 Even when factions coalesced, they were not so different from each other as Cicero would have us believe. In reality, we see that partisans of both factions engaged in street violence,11 invective, character assassination, and claims of popularity (as we saw in Chapter 6). Because of this fundamental similarity, both used ideological frames to attempt to create difference, to legitimize their own actions and to delegitimize those of their opponents. Cicero and his fellow boni claimed to be promoting the freedom and common good of the Roman people with their policies, and to have the real, lasting welfare of the republic at heart – as did the populares, as represented by Sallust and later historians.12 Defenders of the boni claimed 4

On the relationship between rhetoric and ideology, see Billig 1991: 3, 101. On which see Balsdon 1963; Nardo 1970; Richardson 1971; David, Demougin, and Deniaux 1973. 6 Syme 1939: 60. 7 Meier 1966: 116–50. Useful summaries of the debate can be found in Pina Polo 1994; Morstein-Marx 2004: 204–5; Hölkeskamp 2010: 7–9; Robb 2010: 11–33; Steel, Gray, and Van der Blom 2018: 3–4. 8 Seager 1972; Achard 1981; Burckhardt 1988; Gruen 1974: 47–82; Stone 2005; Thommen 2008; Robb 2010; Mouritsen 2017: 112–35; on Sallust, see Paananen 1972; Mouritsen 2017: 123–6. 9 Mouritsen 2017: 115. 10 Mackie 1992; Pina Polo 1994; Ferrary 1997; Wiseman 2008; Arena 2012; Russell 2013; Steel, Gray, and Blom 2018; Tiersch 2018. 11 12 Lintott 1999a; Gruen 1974: 442–8. Tiersch 2018. 5

180

The Voice of a Faction

that the populares were forcing shortsighted or destructive policies through corrupted political processes, abusing power they had acquired by illegitimate means – as did the populares, when they criticized the optimates.13 In his 2004 study of contional rhetoric, Robert Morstein-Marx thus noted that politicians of both factions all seemed to invoke the same ideals: freedom, imperial expansion and glory, republican virtus, and so on. He described this as “ideological monotony” in the rhetoric of Roman politicians addressing the people.14 However, this ideological monotony did not result in total homogeneity of political rhetoric, any more than it resulted in homogeneity of political beliefs. Rather, these ill-defined, ideologically laden terms, emotionally compelling as they are, offered a challenge to orators advocating diverse policies and positions: how best to connect particular legislation or actions back to generic ideological concepts? And, in reverse, how best to sever that connection in undermining an opponent’s rhetoric? Ideological monotony is the starting point, not the endpoint, of rhetoric in this period.15 As we saw in Chapters 2 and 5 on Cicero’s personae as a friend and as a senator, Cicero routinely used his connections to individual elite statesmen, and to the governing elite as a group, as the basis for claims of authority. His arguments, whether in defense of himself or of his clients in the courts, were stronger within the context of this group than outside it.16 Consensus conferred legitimacy and confidence, and the support of a large group (even if not on the larger scale we considered in Chapter 6) offered a sanction all on its own. Cicero’s partisan rhetoric, and his adoption of a role as the spokesman of a political party, reinforced his political positions. As Duplá points out in a recent chapter, partisanship added fuel to the fire of Ciceronian invective and his rhetoric of crisis, to sweep audiences up in the fervor.17 Meanwhile, as we saw in Chapter 6, Cicero vilified populares with inverse strategies: they are presented as monsters and madmen, alienated both from the people and from the 13

14 15

16

Following the popularis argument, Favory concludes, “La polysémie . . . jouant le rôle de masque idéologique, destiné à opaciser la réalité du fonctionnement oligarchique et ploutocratique des institutions, pour mieux convaincre le peuple, au delà des couches fortunées, de s’allier avec l’élite, donc d’obéir aux optimates.” Favory 1976: 196. Morstein-Marx 2004: 276; Morstein-Marx 2013: 42–3; Mouritsen 2017: 161–4. Russell, in dealing with scholarly controversy over the chronology and ideology of several tribunes associated with Saturninus, concludes: “none of these men hewed to a consistent popularis line, because no such defined ideology existed. Rather, they each proposed a different interpretation of how a truly popular tribune should behave, defined in contrast and competition with each other”; Russell 2013: 113. The ideology as Cicero responds to it coalesced out of many such individual efforts to define true “popularity,” I would suggest. Cf. Steel 2005: 49, 65. 17 Duplá Ansuategui 2017.

Partisan Invective in De Domo Sua

181

elite, supported only by criminals and a fake populus, a trope I consider further here. This sometimes takes the form of a historical argument, as Cicero contrasts the original populares like the Gracchi with their inferior successors.18 At least the Gracchi really cared about the people, were really popular, and had real political clout, he claims. By contrast, by his account, later populares just wanted to win political office in any way they could. I begin with Cicero’s return to Rome in 57 bce, when he made particular use of partisan invective and tropes to reassert his authority. In De Domo Sua, I argue, Cicero used partisan rhetoric not only to bolster his own arguments, but specifically as a diversionary tactic to distract from his ties with Pompey and more fleeting political conflicts to refocus attention on what he saw as larger political problems.

Partisan Invective in De Domo Sua De Domo Sua was not a case about confrontations between populares and boni – until Cicero framed it in those terms, posing himself as the champion of the boni and the scourge of the populares. He argues that his house will inevitably be used as propaganda either for one party or for the other. He forces the judges, the pontifices, to decide between two options of great historic significance for the future: “it is up to you today to decide whether you prefer to strip insane and degenerate magistrates of the protection of immoral and criminal citizens, or to arm them with the sanction even of the immortal gods” (Dom. 2), he warns them in his exordium. As he describes the events leading up to his flight from Rome later in the speech, Cicero accuses Clodius of assembling forces inside the city, recruiting even slaves, in order to incite violence and to terrorize Cicero in particular, to “strip me of the company of good men” (55). Battle lines are thus drawn not only between the two men but between two factions. Clodius does not threaten the republic by his own power, Cicero argues, but because he is protected by his faction of “immoral and criminal citizens.” The pontifices are asked to choose which faction – Clodius’ or Cicero’s – they will arm with religious sanction.19 This is a powerful way of introducing moral clarity into a murky political and religious dispute.20

18 19 20

Yakobson 2010: 292. On improbi as a designation of Cicero’s opponents, see Achard 1981: 110–40, 221–358. Of Pro Milone, Fotheringham makes a comment about Cicero’s partisan rhetoric that is also relevant here: “Its constant use is itself probably designed to be persuasive: if the audience is to keep following Cicero’s line of argument at all, they must play along with this view, even to the

182

The Voice of a Faction

Meanwhile, Cicero’s comparisons of Clodius to Catiline (61, 72, 75) bring Clodius’ faction into the specific historical tradition of populares.21 This strongly partisan rhetoric occurs as a response to Clodius’ own speech De Domo Ciceronis, and potentially as a diversion from issues that Clodius had raised.22 Cicero begins De Domo Sua with a long digression to discuss violent food riots that had taken place weeks before, for which he blames Clodius.23 Thus, MacKendrick writes of De Domo Sua, “it must be conceded that Cicero uses rhetorical exuberance (a) to conceal the fact that two-thirds of the speech is off the point, and (b) to overwhelm the auditory into granting him what he asks.”24 Shortly after his return from exile, Cicero had proposed that Pompey take charge of the grain supply in order to address a growing food crisis. Remarkably, Clodius began his own speech by criticizing Cicero for “going over to the people” with this proposal, accusing Cicero of the same pandering and levitas with which Cicero routinely tarred populares, with the same objective of alienating his target from the boni.25 This is a charge that Cicero is eager to refute at the start of his speech: Ac primum illud a te, homine vesano ac furioso, requiro, quae te tanta poena tuorum scelerum flagitiorumque vexet ut hos talis viros . . . quod ego in sententia dicenda salutem civium cum honore Cn. Pompei coniunxerim mihi esse iratos, et aliud de summa religione hoc tempore sensuros ac me absente senserint arbitrere? “Fuisti,” inquit, “tum apud pontifices superior, sed iam, quoniam te ad populum contulisti, sis inferior necesse est.” Itane vero? The first thing I have to ask you, crazed and possessed as you are, is what great penalty for your crimes and sins incites you to think that these good men . . . are angry with me because I, in a sententia, linked the welfare of the citizens with the promotion of Cn. Pompey, and that they’re going to have a different opinion about a serious question of religion now than they did when I was absent? “You were,” he says, “of high repute among the pontifices

21 22 23 25

point of accepting the implication that it is not only his view, but their one.” Fotheringham 2013: 2–3. See also Chapters 3 and 5 on references to Catiline. For an expanded treatment of this subject, see Kenty 2018. Tatum 1999: 182–7. On food riots, see Nippel 1995: 49–50. 24 MacKendrick 1995: 176. Stroh suggests that Clodius was calling attention to the insincerity of Cicero’s own post reditum speeches as he “contrasted the (oh! so hot) yearning of the Optimates for their Cicero with the latter’s despicable change of attitude.” Stroh 2004: 333. Gruen’s characterization of the situation is that the “cascade of prosecutions in early 56” all arose from opposition to Pompey and Cicero, and “the senatorial aristocracy found itself caught in the middle, endeavoring to keep Clodius under control and at the same time diminish Pompey’s stature and weaken his ties with fellow triumvirs”; Gruen 1974: 305.

Partisan Invective in De Domo Sua

183

then, but now, since you’ve gone over to the people, you must have been downgraded.” Oh really? (Dom. 3)

Cicero brazens his way through the accusation, treating it as contemptible sophistry from a man driven mad by guilt, a petty, manufactured dispute over an insignificant moment, in contrast to the wider view Cicero takes. He calls attention to the approval and favor the senate has shown him in promoting his restoration (“when I was absent”) in a way that presumes that they will obviously show the same approval in the present case, a strategy we observed in Chapter 5. He argues that the senate’s favor for his restoration was not limited to that one issue but extends to his political activity in general, as the “right” kind of politician. Clodius’ reported argument reveals that at this particular moment in 57, association with Pompey was a serious liability for which Cicero needed to compensate with his partisan rhetoric. Pompey had (by Cicero’s descriptions at Red. Sen. 5, 29; Red. Pop. 16–17) taken a leading role in the coalition advocating for Cicero’s recall, but he was a controversial and polarizing figure in the 50s whom the senatorial elite alternately supported or vilified, depending on the political issue du jour. Gruen writes: “late Republican politics did not fall neatly into two hostile camps. The dynamics of the process is best seen through the nobiles’ initial cooperation and then growing disenchantment with Pompey.”26 Here, when Cicero is accused of cozying up to Pompey, he retreats into his rhetoric of us-against-them, black-and-white ideological dualities in order to reassert his integrity.27 In what Kurczyk calls his “Umdeuten statt Negieren” tactic, to deflect Clodius’ accusation, Cicero accuses Clodius in turn of trying to drive a wedge into Cicero and Pompey’s friendship for his own political gain (Dom. 27–8).28 He also frames his own arguments as the only possible solution to a state of emergency, and portrays Pompey (and thus himself) as playing a long game in fighting for the republic’s welfare (11, 16–18). The senatorial elite’s envy and resentment of Pompey were a problem for Cicero, since his jury in this case was the pontifices, who were mostly elite senators.29At the outset of the case, if the pontifices were as bitterly hostile to Pompey as Clodius seems to have thought they were, they might have hesitated to side with Cicero, lest their verdict be interpreted as approval for Pompey’s command. Cicero needed to distinguish his 26 27 28

Gruen 1969: 73. Neel, focusing on the Catilinarians, describes this disjunctive or “Manichean” rhetoric as typical also of American presidential rhetoric in the “war on terror”; Neel 2017. Kurczyk 2006: 222. 29 Nisbet 1939: 65.

184

The Voice of a Faction

interests from Pompey’s, demonstrate his independence, and reframe the controversy over his house in De Domo Sua. Partisan invective allows him to achieve all of those goals. As the voice of the optimates, a wielder of partisan rhetoric and eloquent ideologue, Cicero asserts his authority as an independent actor. His division of the Roman populus into two parts in this speech is strategically and intentionally reductive, glossing over the fragmentation of the elite as well as the reality of a third part: the “first triumvirate,” represented here by Pompey. Invective, as we saw in Chapter 1, performs a show of strength and force, motivated by Cicero’s own personal vendetta against Clodius, which does not directly concern Pompey. However, the pontifices had no particular stake in this vendetta either. Cicero thus also escalates his invective against Clodius to represent the fight of legitimate statesmen against criminal gang leaders and instigators of violence. In Cicero’s interpretation, the pontifices’ verdict can mark a victory against popularis immorality, transcending petty political feuds to take part in a battle for Rome’s very soul. Cicero thereby gives the pontifices an appealingly grand role to play by invoking a partisan framework and long-term historical trends. These tactics apparently persuaded the pontifices to restore Cicero’s house, and they even allotted public money for its reconstruction (Har. resp. 13–16). Having redirected attention away from Pompey, as in other orations, Cicero accuses Clodius of creating a state of crisis intentionally, out of sheer madness and desire for upheaval. Insofar as Cicero allows Clodius and the populares an ideology, this is it. Likewise, his labeling of populares as tumors, plagues, and furies30 casts them as monstrous villains, not political opponents or a party comparable to the group Cicero leads. By contrast, Cicero claims that he himself and his allies are the right sort, and men like the pontifices will always have greater sympathy with the right sort than they do with Clodius, whom he portrays as irredeemably evil. He accuses Clodius of using the unrest in the city as an opportunity to incite violence: “it was clear that your slaves, prepared for the slaughter of good men by you long before, had gone to the Capitoline with that gang of criminals and ruined men of yours, with you. When I was told this, know that I stayed at home and did not give you and your gladiators the opportunity to begin the slaughter” (Dom. 5–6).31 Cicero’s language evokes slave revolts and the 30

31

“Tumor” (inguen) Dom. 11; (struma) Sest. 136; “plague” (pestis) Har. Resp. 4, 46; “furies” Har. Resp. 11, 39; Sest. 33, 109; cf. Lévy 1998; Prost 2003; Cuny-le Callet 2003; Berno 2005; Kaster 2006: 192–3; Berno 2007. Nippel takes a Ciceronian perspective: Clodius “was surely neither the first nor the only person to mobilize parts of the urban populace, but by employing every available means in so concentrated and

A “True” and a “False” Populus

185

Spartacist gladiator revolt in particular, always an imminent threat, and recasts Clodius’ followers as invading outsiders rather than a political faction.32 Yet Stroh points out that Cicero’s proposal of a command for Pompey was met with immediate popular acclaim, and Cicero probably would have been quite safe in any crowd at this historical moment; his partisan rhetoric here invents a threat for him to resist bravely (and/or avoid shrewdly).33 Cicero designates his own supporters (or any people he can plausibly claim support him) as the “true” populus, while denying that his popularis rivals have any legitimate supporters at all. This distinction between true and false populus allows Cicero to criticize individual populares without ever speaking ill of the populus itself, a delicate but crucial line to negotiate, given his self-fashioning as popular (the subject of Chapter 6).34 Siding with the senate at the people’s expense will not serve his political goals, and so he claims the people’s support as well.

A “True” and a “False” Populus Cicero made use of the trope of the “true” and “false” populus to legitimize his own positions as popular and to demean his opponents. He habitually denies the existence of a real party of supporters on their side, and constitutes his own body of supporters as a united, virtuous party. In making this argument, Cicero takes on a persona himself as the representative of an ideological tradition, the “true” Rome. He even bestows some limited praise on earlier populares like the Gracchi and Saturninus,35 appropriating the populares’ role models for his own arguments in order to show that he does not condemn all populares as such, and in order to heighten the contrast between those populares and their supposed equivalents in the mid-50s (Sest. 104–5). They betrayed their senatorial colleagues out of a misguided sympathy for the masses, he argues: “all of these, even if they didn’t have a just reason (for there can be no just reason for a man who serves the republic badly), they at least had a weighty reason, joined with distress befitting a manly spirit” (Har. resp. 44). As opposed to earlier populares, who (implicitly) said “what they think people at a contio want to hear” (Sest. 104), the Clodian populares pay people to produce the false

32 35

unscrupulous a way over a considerable period of time he opened up new dimensions of politics” (Nippel 1995: 70). Neel 2017: 444. 33 Stroh 2004: 333. 34 Robb 2010: 67. This is a good example of what Riggsby calls Cicero’s strategy of “appropriating and reversing” an enemy’s argument (Riggsby 1995).

186

The Voice of a Faction

pretense of approval.36 Not only is their faction inferior and problematic, it is also counterfeit, a falsified imitation of popular support. They might use the methods of earlier populares, he claims, but ironically, they do so in such a way that they are no longer actually popular, an argument we explored in Chapter 6. In making this claim, Cicero portrays himself as an authority on historical memory, able to explain the origins of current disputes and take a broader perspective. His party is the norm, Clodius’ a newer aberration, if it even exists at all. He claims to be following a tradition faithfully, while his opponents deviate from and even corrupt the tradition they purport to follow. In strategically redirecting his audience’s attention to this longer time scale, he also portrays the populares as an imminent threat that has grown over time. Cicero’s description of the mercenaries, slaves, and gladiators attached to Clodius raises the specter of violence, but also discredits Clodius as the leader of a faction in his own right. He claims that Clodius has bought and paid for his “party,” while he himself speaks with the loyalty of the worthy masses behind him: An tu populum Romanum esse illum putas qui constat ex iis qui mercede conducuntur, qui impelluntur ut vim adferant magistratibus, ut obsideant senatum, optent cotidie caedem, incendia, rapinas? . . . O speciem dignitatemque populi Romani, quam reges, quam nationes exterae, quam gentes ultimae pertimescant, multitudinem hominum ex servis, ex conductis, ex facinerosis, ex egentibus congregatam! Illa fuit pulchritudo populi Romani, illa forma quam in campo vidisti tum cum etiam tibi contra senatus totiusque Italiae auctoritatem et studium dicendi potestas fuit. Ille populus est dominus regum, victor atque imperator omnium gentium, quem illo clarissimo die, scelerate, vidisti tum cum omnes principes civitatis, omnes ordinum atque aetatum omnium suffragium se non de civis sed de civitatis salute ferre censebant, cum denique homines in campum non tabernis sed municipiis clausis venerant. Is it that you think the Roman people is the people who are paid to assemble, who are sent to attack the magistrates by force, to besiege the senate, to wish every day for slaughter, arson, plunder? . . . O beauty and pride of the Roman people, feared by kings, foreign nations, and the most distant tribes, great congregation of slaves, mercenaries, criminals, and beggars! The real beauty of the Roman people, its real form, was what you saw on the Campus Martius when you had the opportunity to speak against the authority and will of the senate and all of Italy [for my recall]. That populus is the master of kings, the conqueror and ruler of all peoples, which 36

Mouritsen 2017: 153–7.

A “True” and a “False” Populus

187

you saw on that glorious day, you criminal, when all the leading men of the city, all the men of all orders and ages declaring that they were voting not on a citizen’s welfare but on the welfare of the city – and those men came to the campus not from closed shops but from closed towns. (Dom. 89–90)

The right sort of men – those who live in towns, those who prize the city’s welfare – rally to Cicero as a party leader. Unlike Clodius’ gang, Cicero’s decorous, beautiful crowd counts – and is feared as masters and conquerors – because it is “real,” which is to say not composed of slaves or mercenaries, but citizens demonstrating sincere political beliefs. They have not lost their standing through moral failings, as he claims Clodius’ supporters have, and so will not sell their support to the highest bidder. They do not attack the senate or the magistrates, but defend them, and help Cicero to do so as well. Perhaps ironically, partisan rhetoric thus denies that two parties exist; Cicero claims to be a representative of the legitimate state, while his opponent is a representative of an anti-republican insurgency.37 The distinction between true and false assemblies underlies one of Cicero’s letters to Quintus, as he narrates an occasion when rival contiones escalated into a riot.38 Violence is one of the key characteristics and strategies of Clodius’ “party,” labeled as a gang, in Cicero’s account, but his letter to Quintus suggests that the boni gave as good as they got. In February of 56 bce, Cicero sent a letter to his brother in Sardinia describing a recent scuffle in the forum. Pompey was delivering a contional oration in defense of Milo, who was facing a trial for inciting violence (de vi),39 and was interrupted: Dixit Pompeius, sive voluit. nam ut surrexit, operae Clodianae clamorem sustulerunt, idque ei perpetua oratione contigit, non modo ut acclamatione sed ut convicio et maledictis impediretur. Qui ut peroravit (nam in eo sane fortis fuit, non est deterritus, dixit omnia atque interdum etiam silentio, cum auctoritate pervicerat) – sed ut peroravit, surrexit Clodius. Ei tantus clamor a nostris (placuerat enim referre gratiam) ut neque mente nec lingua neque ore consisteret. Ea res acta est, cum hora sexta vix Pompeius perorasset, usque ad horam octavam, cum omnia maledicta, versus denique obscenissimi in Clodium et Clodiam dicerentur. Ille furens et exsanguis interrogabat suos in clamore ipso quis esset qui plebem fame necaret: respondebant operae “Pompeius”. . . . hora fere nona quasi signo dato Clodiani nostros consputare coeperunt. Exarsit dolor. Urgere illi ut loco 37 38 39

Bernett 1995: 95–100. Raaflaub 2010a identifies a similar rhetorical strategy at work in Caesar’s commentaries. The letters, especially those to Quintus, contain more of what Achard calls “descriptions dualistes”; Achard 1981: 48–9. The trial never actually took place; Gruen 1974: 299; Crawford 1994: 141.

188

The Voice of a Faction nos moverent. Factus est a nostris impetus. Fuga operarum, eiectus de rostris Clodius. Ac nos quoque tum fugimus, ne quid in turba. Pompey gave a speech, or wanted to – for as soon as he got up, the Clodian gangs raised a clamor. That happened throughout his whole speech, so that he was impeded not by acclamation but by abuse and insults. When he concluded (for he was really strong throughout, he wasn’t put off, he delivered the whole thing and occasionally in silence, when he overcame them with his authority) – when he concluded, Clodius got up. Such a great clamor was raised by our friends (it felt good to return the favor) that he didn’t stand firm in mind, speech, or expression. The scene went on, when Pompeius had scarcely concluded at the sixth hour, all the way until the eighth hour, even though all the insults and even obscene verses were spoken against Clodius and Clodia. [Clodius], raving and bloodless, asked his men in the midst of the clamor who it was who was murdering the plebs with hunger: his gangs answered, “Pompey!” . . . At almost the ninth hour, as if a signal had been given, the Clodians started spitting on our side. Grievances flared. They tried to push us from our place. A rush was made by our side. A retreat of the gangs, Clodius thrown from the rostra. Then we also fled, to avoid incident in the crowd. (Q. fr. 2.3.2)

Two distinct factions form within the audience of a single contio, and the faction opposed to the speaker nearly succeeds in silencing him, in Pompey’s case.40 When Clodius speaks, he is nearly silenced as well (according to Cicero), and resorts to a call-and-response dialogue with his faction of the audience. Cicero contrasts the behavior of Pompey, who was “really strong” and used his auctoritas to cow even this crowd a few times, with Clodius, who “didn’t stand firm in mind, speech, or expression” and was “raving and bloodless.” Verbal assaults on the speakers and their family members escalate into physical assaults: spitting, shoving, and almost a full-scale battle, in which Cicero fears for his physical safety, if only because he seems to have participated gleefully in the melee at first, “raising a clamor” and “making a rush” at the Clodians, and perhaps even throwing his nemesis from the rostra. Elsewhere, Cicero makes much of his use of the tools of eloquence and diplomacy as opposed to violence (cedant arma togae), and so it is difficult to imagine the great orator spitting on gang members in the forum or engaging at all in this sort of rioting. Yet here he is, in the midst of a riot, linked with and perhaps joining in with the men he identifies simply as “ours (nostri),” screaming “abuse and obscene verses” about Clodius and Clodia. In an oration to the public rather than a letter to his brother, 40

Prevented only by Pompey’s powerful auctoritas; see Chapter 4 on this passage also.

Legitimate Force vs. Wanton Violence

189

Cicero might have obfuscated his participation in this scene. The one difference between the two factions, in Cicero’s framing, is the disparity in the dignity of the leaders who speak to and for them. By affirming (or fabricating) this disparity, Cicero endows his faction with legitimacy, giving them the moral high ground, in order to cast them as playing the role of defensive victim to Clodius’ offensive operae.41 The more similar the behavior of Clodius’ and Cicero’s factions becomes, the more urgently Cicero and his allies insist on this distinction. Gruen, for example, comments on Milo’s prosecution of Clodius on a charge de vi in 57 bce: “it was, of course, the pot calling the kettle black, but in politics that detail bothered no one.”42 In Pro Sestio, this polemical slant is used to defend Sestius’ involvement in an earlier riot.

Legitimate Force vs. Wanton Violence in Pro Sestio Cicero’s defense of Sestius culminates in his most explicit description of the workings of partisanship in the late republic. In the midst of violent rioting over Cicero’s recall, P. Sestius, a tribune, had joined the fray with his bodyguards, and now stood accused of inciting violence (de vi). While Cicero argued that Sestius had only resorted to violence in self-defense and for a just cause, the fact remained that both Sestius and his enemies had used violence as a means of political action. The only real distinction between Sestius and his opponents seems to be their relationship to Cicero. Cicero’s defense of Sestius is designed to refute that basic similarity, as he instead creates a black-and-white moral and ideological division between the two parties.43 He interweaves a defense of his own career with an obviously skewed account of the long crusade of the “good men,” including Sestius, to eliminate their monstrous opponents for the sake of the republic. From the very start of the speech, as Gildenhard has shown, Cicero draws his audience’s attention to what “good men” think and how they go about politics, in order to prepare his audience for his partisan manifesto exhorting “all good men” to protect the republic from enemies within.44 41 43 44

Rundell 1979: 325. 42 Gruen 1974: 294. Bernett 1995: 100–2; Craig 2001: 114–16; Alexander 2002: 214–16; Kaster 2006: 33–6. Gildenhard 2011: 153–5. This manifesto is one of the most important sources for modern studies of optimates and populares, and has sometimes been regarded as a digression or an interpolation, a distraction from the case for the defense. Kaster rejects this possibility, but even in a commentary that largely redeems the speech as a rhetorically sophisticated and effective production, he acknowledges that this section is “far from lucid in its explanatory moves,” and overall “a tendentious and

190

The Voice of a Faction

As a defendant, Sestius elicited little sympathy,45 and his participation in the riot was undeniable. This is probably why, in the course of the oration, Sestius and his alleged act of violence are hardly mentioned at all. Cicero “uses exactly 125 words to describe a single act of Sestius as tribune (79) – and that happens to concern an episode in which Sestius himself was the victim, not the perpetrator, of a violent attack.”46 What gives Cicero’s speech whatever persuasive force it has is the grand, stirring rhetoric of partisan ideology, which takes over much of the end of the speech. By the partisan logic of Pro Sestio, it is categorically impossible that Sestius, or any other “good man,” would perpetrate a violent attack. Sestius does not follow the pattern of the popularis ratio as described in this and other speeches by Cicero, and so Sestius cannot be guilty of vis. Vis, in Cicero’s account, is a distinctively popularis crime, because it must be motivated by antipathy toward or contempt of republican institutions.47 “Is it plausible that a Roman citizen or any free man would go to the forum with his sword before dawn . . . except those men who have already previously been fed with the blood of the republic by that pestilential, ruined citizen?” (Sest. 77–8). Sestius is not the sort of person who stereotypically engages in crimes of vis, and so he could not have committed the crime of which he is accused.48 Likewise, moments later, Cicero asks why Sestius would have done such a thing: “to besiege the senate? to expel citizens without a legal conviction? To take away property? To burn houses? To overthrow buildings? To set fire to temples of the immortal gods? To push tribunes of the plebs off the rostra with weapons?” (Sest. 84). The implication is only a seditious popularis would seek any of these ends, and that Sestius therefore could not have committed a crime as a means to those ends, because he is not a popularis. Cicero extends his portrayal of the victimization of good men beyond Sestius as an individual (and beyond his own tale of woe, which takes up a large portion of the long oration) to the boni in general. Because such men are good and just, they are slower to engage in violence than their enemies, and so operate at a disadvantage. “Greater armies and forces are attacking the republic than are defending her, because rash and ruined men are spurred by the smallest gesture and even stir themselves up of their own accord against the republic; good men, somehow, are slower and are only

45 47 48

deceptive part of a tendentious and deceptive speech, aiming to achieve a practical goal,” i.e., the acquittal of Sestius; Kaster 2006: 33–5; cf. Craig 2010: 278–9. See Chapter 2 in the section “Gratitude and Praise.” 46 Kaster 2006: 17. Cf. Harries 2006: 193–6. A good example of the so-called “no true Scotsman” logical fallacy.

Legitimate Force vs. Wanton Violence

191

moved by dire necessity” (Sest. 100), he warns, exhorting all good men and especially the vigorous young men in his audience to come to the defense of the republic. The implication is that Sestius’ use of violence was not only legitimate but necessary to ensure peace and order, an active implementation of what Cicero characterizes as the people’s desire for peace.49 As an additional role model for this attitude, he offers Milo, praised extravagantly as “the only one of all the citizens who seems to me to have taught us, through action rather than words, how leading men in the republic ought to act and what is necessary” (Sest. 86), that is, how to fight fire with fire, and violence with violence. The language of necessity reinforces Cicero’s claim that Sestius and Milo only use violence in self-defense. Cicero describes Milo’s conflict with Clodius as a war between virtus and audacia, between virtue and shamelessness, a war that Milo intended to win by any means, as did Sestius (92).50 The argument here, as Lintott notes, is “that once the conventions of a law-abiding society are disregarded by one party it is natural and inevitable that they should be disregarded by the other.”51 Thus, Cicero’s “digression” into optimate ideology does indeed offer an indirect but relevant defense of Sestius and his use of violence. It also frames Cicero’s own travails in a heroic light and shows off his eloquence as a republican ideologue. This search for ideological distinctions to separate one faction from another helps to explain why Cicero does not often use the term optimates, or indeed any label, to describe his own allies and supporters in his orations, because it would imply an equivalence between his faction and that of his enemies.52 Optimates also was not a neutral term, but was itself used by Cicero’s opponents in invectives against the governing elite, the counterpart to Cicero’s partisan rhetoric (Sest. 96–7, 132).53 Cicero claims simply that “all good men” are on his side, again erasing the equivalency between his own faction and their rivals, as Stone explains:

49

50 51 52

53

Not unlike the main argument of Antonius’ speech Pro Norbano in a trial that Cicero has Antonius describe in De Oratore 2.199, written in the year after Pro Sestio (cf. Nippel 1995: 57); the precedent may well have been on Cicero’s mind already in 56. Craig 2001. Lintott 1999a: 61–2. Cf. Gildenhard 2011: 219 on “civilization and its discontents” in Pro Sestio, and the way Cicero makes civilization seem more fragile in order to raise the stakes of Sestius’ trial. In his letters to Atticus before his exile and after the outbreak of civil war, he uses the term fairly freely. The haruspices also issued a warning about “discord of the optimates” in 56, which Cicero quotes in De Haruspicum Responsis. Achard 1981: 61–2; Alexander 2002: 206–17. Indeed, Morstein-Marx points out that Cicero never identifies himself explicitly as an optimas in a contio and rarely does so in other speeches, perhaps because the populares’ invective had given the term a primarily pejorative connotation; MorsteinMarx 2004: 217.

192

The Voice of a Faction The label populares has vacated the mainstream and moved to the fringes inhabited by criminals, debtors, and madmen, taking Vatinius and Clodius with it. And so its pair-term optimates must respond to the rhetorical imperative imposed on it by the retreat of populares from the central ground. All classes in society, it is contended, can unite with government in fact and in language. Once optimates has served this talismanic role, it can vanish, since normal requirements can be met by the armoury of Ciceronian vocabulary. Why not co-opt optimates alongside these? Because, we will see, the term is not inclusive, its charisma is too alienating and the pressure of giving it a democratic face is altogether too great. It is as though one were to argue that conservative Catholics are true liberals or that Socialists are the truest conservatives: the paradox is the point.54

Optimates and populares form a balanced pair, as opposed to “true populus” and “gangs,” which are not equivalent. Achard points out that both Cicero and Sallust designate one faction as pauci, the few who were trying to tyrannize over the majority, but referring to different factions: “les pauci des De lege agraria sont les quelques populaires qui veulent détruire le status, chez Salluste ce sont le plus nobles des nobles.”55 From either perspective, there are not really two parties, but only the republic and its enemies, the many and the deviant few, the “true” populus and those who conspire against it. Cicero adopts similar strategies in defending Milo on a charge de vi four years later, claiming that Clodius’ death was a public good.56 In Cicero’s partisan rhetoric, actions are not moral or immoral per se, but become so in the context of the actor’s ideological bent. If Clodius or one of his degenerate entourage is the actor, the action – especially if it is a violent one – is an insult to law and order, to senate and magistrates and institutions. Boni have always acted to protect those things, in the common interest of the “real” people, and may legitimately exercise force on behalf of the state because of their political intentions. The result is extreme, despite its conservative framing: Dugan notes that in the Philippics and the Catilinarians, Cicero “shows himself willing to jettison essential aspects of the Republican constitution in order to save the state as a whole” from perceived threats, clinging to some principles (and individuals) at the expense of others.57 This sort of rhetoric exerts pressure on individuals to 54 56

57

Stone 2005: 63; cf. Gildenhard 2011: 150; Tiersch 2018: 61–2. 55 Achard 1981: 18. And that Milo would have been right to kill him, if he had set out to do so and not been ambushed and killed Clodius in self-defense instead, as Cicero maintains he was and did; Büchner 1962; Clark and Ruebel 1985; Dyck 1998; Lintott 1999a: 60–5; Fotheringham 2007; Fotheringham 2013: 3–4, 333–51. Dugan 2009: 182.

Pompeians and Populares in 43 bce

193

declare whose side they are on, to take up an explicitly optimate or popularis stance, and erases the possibility of remaining neutral – a pressure exerted more directly by the outbreak of actual civil war. In a letter to Atticus in 50 bce, Cicero wrote that the boni could no longer be considered a political party, and, playing on the double meaning of boni, that there was no longer a political party that could be described as “good”: “I don’t know who you’re calling ‘good men,’ if we’re talking about classes of ‘good men’ (for there are individual good men). But in political battles, we need classes and tribes of good men” (Att. 7.7.5). However, after Caesar’s assassination, similarities Cicero saw (or chose to see) between Clodius and Antony drove the orator to revive not only the techniques of character assassination he had used against Clodius, but also his partisan rhetoric. Only two months after Caesar’s assassination, Cicero was predicting to Atticus that “this party of degenerates (haec pars perditorum)” was going to come after anyone whom they perceived to have rejoiced at Caesar’s death (Att. 14.13.2). Harries comments that “the events of 44 and 43 revealed the fragility of Roman concepts of law and lawfulness in times of crisis” and thus gave Cicero a new opportunity to legitimize and delegitimize political action based on his own interpretation of what was just and virtuous.58 Once again, partisan rhetoric helped him to achieve this effect.

Pompeians and Populares in 43 bce Antony and Cicero tried in 44–43 bce to assert historical continuity with factions that arguably died with Caesar and Pompey, to legitimize the use of military force to “save the republic.” Just as Cicero had accused Clodius of instigating violence for its own sake or to serve his own ambition, so he characterized Antony and his followers in the same way, also labeling them gladiators.59 Antony now accused Cicero of the same – fairly, perhaps, given the use of violence by Sestius, Milo, and other optimates praised by Cicero, and now Octavian. Disjunctive rhetoric artificially distinguished the justified (in Cicero’s eyes) violence perpetrated by Octavian from the violence perpetrated (arguably legally) by Antony, just as Cicero had once touted the “selfdefense” of Sestius and Milo against the “wanton violence” of Clodius. Manuwald writes that Cicero, in the Philippics, “(unlike Antonius) denies 58 59

Harries 2006: 224. Phil. 2.63, 3.18, 5.10, 5.32, 6.3, 7.17, 13.16, 13.20, 13.25. Antony’s brother Lucius actually fought as a myrmillo in Asia, as Cicero reminds his audience at 3.31, 5.20, 6.10, 7.17, 12.20.

194

The Voice of a Faction

the existence of parties in the present conflict”;60 instead, he claims that all Rome is united against Antony and his supporters, borrowing from the optimate ideology of his earlier speeches to give this imagined alliance firmer moral standing. However, as we have seen, this is the very essence of partisan rhetoric: one portrays one’s own party as the only legitimate party worthy of the name, while one’s opponents are relegated to a hostile, subpolitical rabble. “There are impious citizens – too many, for my love for the republic, but against the multitude of the right-thinking they are few enough – and the immortal gods have given the republic incredible power and good fortune to stop them” (Phil. 3.36). Cicero’s partisan rhetoric again acts as a diversion from a less advantageous possibility: that his republican “faction” is clinging together by a thread, reliant on some who still feel loyalty to Caesar’s memory and who could decide at any time to come together behind Antony instead. This was a view Antony promulgated to suit his own purposes, to try to disarm his detractors. He and Cicero engaged in a rhetorical battle to draw and redraw party lines: nam nunc quidem partium contentionem esse dictitat. Quarum partium? Alteri victi sunt, alteri sunt e mediis C. Caesaris partibus; nisi forte Caesaris partis a Pansa et Hirtio consulibus et a filio C. Caesaris oppugnari putamus. Hoc vero bellum non ex dissensione partium, sed ex nefaria spe perditissimorum civium excitatum, quibus bona fortunaeque nostrae notatae sunt et iam ad cuiusque optionem distributae. For now he keeps on saying that this is only a contest of parties. Of what parties? One side was conquered, the others were central to Gaius Caesar’s party – unless perhaps we think Caesar’s party is the one being opposed by the consuls Pansa and Hirtius and the son of Gaius Caesar. But this war is not the result of disagreement among parties; it has been incited by the nefarious hope of degenerate citizens, who have surveyed our goods and fortunes and already handed them out upon request. (Phil. 5.32)

An element of ideological monotony arises, as leaders in both parties try to claim that they, and not their enemies, are continuing Caesar’s legacy. While Cicero uses partisan rhetoric to give his own arguments ideological footing and a grand sense of purpose, he denies that Antony has any right to use partisan rhetoric himself, because what Antony represents is not a party but an invading force.61 In the Thirteenth Philippic, Cicero quotes extensively from a letter sent by Antony to the senate, providing rare 60 61

Manuwald 2007: vol. ii, 842 with a full catalogue of relevant passages in the Philippics. Habicht 1990: 95–7; Bernett 1995: 225.

Pompeians and Populares in 43 bce

195

evidence of his opponents’ rhetoric.62 He rails against Antony that parties by definition are groups inside the city’s political spaces, not outside on the battlefield, and so Antony’s actions outside the city cannot be defined as partisan: “are you really going to call that a party, rather than a defection from the Roman people?” (13.39). Similarly, he demands: “what parties are these, really, when the senate’s authority, the liberty of the Roman people, and the welfare of the republic are the goals of one, and the slaughter of good men and the partition of the city and of Italy are the goals of the other?” (13.47). However, as Cicero’s quotations reveal, Antony developed his own partisan rhetoric, using many of the same strategies Cicero used. In Antony’s framework, this was a fight between arrogant Pompeians, who had already been conquered and were now seeking further violent upheavals for their own gain, and the Caesarian majority, whom the people were supposed to support (as seen in Chapter 6). Antony’s self-fashioning as a Caesarian populist was aided by his marriage to Fulvia, wife first of Clodius and then of the Caesarian orator Scribonius Curio (to whom we will return in Chapter 8). In the Thirteenth Philippic, Antony tries to redraw the divide between pro- and anti-Caesarian elements, which would unite his army with those of Octavian and the consuls against Cicero: “Quam ob rem vos potius animadvertite, . . . utrum sit aequius concurrere nos quo facilius reviviscat Pompeianorum causa totiens iugulata, an consentire ne ludibrio simus inimicis. . . . Quod spectaculum adhuc ipsa Fortuna vitavit, ne videret unius corporis duas acies lanista Cicerone dimicantes, qui usque eo felix est, ut isdem ornamentis deceperit vos, quibus deceptum Caesarem gloriatus est.” “Therefore, consider instead for yourselves . . . whether it is more just for us to fight with each other, enabling the Pompeians’ cause to come back to life more easily when it has already been slaughtered so many times, or to reconcile and not to be a joke to our enemies. . . . Fortune herself has so far shielded us from this spectacle of two parts of a single army fighting against each other with Cicero running the show, who has been successful thus far in deceiving you with those same flourishes with which he boasted of having deceived Caesar.” (13.38–40)

Antony inverts Cicero’s persona as a dux togatus (Cat. 2.28, 3.23), a leader by civic means,63 by labeling him a lanista instead, one who trains his followers to take up arms and fight for sport. Likewise, just as Cicero 62

Ramsey 2010.

63

May 1988: 56–7; Hall 2013: 217.

196

The Voice of a Faction

interprets Antony’s offers of peace and negotiation as a trap intended to lull the senate into complacency, Antony claims to see through Cicero’s rhetoric to his true war-mongering intentions. Antony thus provides an interpretive framework to compete with Cicero’s – so effectively, in fact, that Lintott questions Cicero’s prudence in reading these passages from Antony’s letter to the senate at all.64 Antony can be seen using many of Cicero’s own strategies in his partisan rhetoric. He goes on to warn the senate that the “Pompeians,” whom Cicero calls republicans, will be even more arrogant in victory than they were in defeat, in a way that Cicero mocks as pseudophilosophical: Sed iam se colligit et ad extremum incipit philosophari. “Si me rectis sensibus euntem di immortales, ut spero, adiuverint, vivam libenter. Sin autem me aliud fatum manet, praecipio gaudia suppliciorum vestrorum. Namque, si victi Pompeiani tam insolentes sunt, victores quales futuri sint, vos potius experiemini.” Praecipias licet gaudia; non enim tibi cum Pompeianis, sed cum universa re publica bellum est. Omnes te di, homines summi, medii, infimi, cives, peregrini, viri, mulieres, liberi, servi oderunt. But then he gets himself together and starts philosophizing at the end. “If the gods favor me as I proceed with virtuous thoughts, as I hope they will, I will live on happily. But if another fate is in store for me, I anticipate joy in the punishments you will all suffer. For if the conquered Pompeians are so insolent now, you will be the ones to find out what they’ll be like as conquerors.” Well may you rejoice now; your war is not with the Pompeians but with the whole republic. All gods and men, of high, middle, and low status, citizens and immigrants, men and women, free men and slaves, hate you. (13.45)

Antony’s philosophizing actually sounds remarkably similar to Cicero’s own rhetoric as a martyr (see Chapter 3). Antony presents himself as the humble servant and potential martyr for a just cause (rectis sensibus), in contrast to the “insolent Pompeians,” whom he and the Caesarians have already defeated once, insinuating that they will be defeated again if the Caesarians reunite. This characterization picks up on the rhetoric of Caesar’s Bellum Civile (see, e.g., 1.76, 3.96): the cruelty of the Pompeians is highlighted and proscriptions ominously foreshadowed, while Antony portrays himself as looking out for the interests of his audience.65 Moreover, the argument that the all-important veterans (see Chapter 6) 64 65

Lintott 2008: 400–1. On Caesar’s rhetoric, see Grillo 2012: 106–17; Peer 2015: 19, 107, 151–2, 166. Cicero makes much the same assessment in Att. 11.6.2; cf. Batstone and Damon 2006: 93–4.

Conclusion

197

had fought against the Pompeiani suggests that Antony is taking advantage of the senate’s desire to curry favor with the veterans, and arousing old feelings of rivalry to sway the senators to his side. Partisan rhetoric had, by 43 bce, developed a clear set of conventions, through the tropes of the 50s and the rhetoric of the civil war. Antony’s characterization of Cicero as the last vestige or pale copy of an alreadydefeated enemy, or as an insolent conqueror with few real supporters remaining, matches Cicero’s characterization of him, point for point. Antony used the name of Caesar to give coherence and purpose to his “party,” associating his current campaign with all the successful, almost miraculously fortunate campaigns of Caesar.66 Cicero also claimed to have forged a connection between the true heirs of Caesar and the republican senate Caesar had once alienated, reuniting the powers of the state and reconstituting the republic into one single mega-faction, with a few troublemakers left to eradicate. Both claimed to have transcended partisanship, using the delegitimizing tactics of partisan rhetoric to do so. And while Cicero ultimately failed to isolate Antony, as Harries points out, his “rhetoric of communal unity” based on “the totemic value of the institutions of the res publica” offered an instructive model for Octavian’s later propaganda.67

Conclusion When he returned to Rome in 57, Cicero described a political scene split in two unequal parts, identifying himself with the larger, victorious party, and placing himself in the role of its leader against the smaller, defeated one. This distracted from questions about Pompey’s place in this crusade or the actual existence of an optimate party, and facilitated Cicero’s claims that his restoration and the rebuilding of his house in De Domo Sua had much broader significance for the community. In his rhetoric, they did not represent the vindication of him as an individual, but of a whole ideological system and all its proponents. He denies the legitimacy of Clodius’ political actions by dismissing him as a degenerate criminal who only wanted to destroy institutions to enable his own lawlessness, and dismissing his supporters as a “false,” manufactured party. In Pro Sestio, this also has the effect of rationalizing a war on Clodius and his ilk by any means necessary, even by the use of violence, for which Cicero criticized Clodius so vociferously. In the Philippics, particularly the Thirteenth, we 66

Welch 2008.

67

Harries 2006: 224.

198

The Voice of a Faction

see Antony and Cicero both trying to use these same strategies of partisan rhetoric to unite various smaller factions into one great party, rallied under the banner of Caesar’s legacy or of the “republic” respectively. Most of their contemporaries seemed hesitant to declare for one side or the other, but Cicero and Antony only insisted all the more vehemently that they enjoyed unanimous support as party leaders. As these examples show, optimate ideology is used by Cicero (and popularis ideology seems to be used by Clodius and Antony) not only to encourage supporters, but to deflect and distract from the attacks of opponents. This is not to say that factions did not exist in the late Republic, as they certainly did, if for short, isolated periods of time. But these factions exist also as rhetorical tropes, because they provided the material for amplification and elaboration in the ideological sphere. It was not the ideology that drove the formation and coalescing of the factions, but personal loyalties not entirely unlike the traditional clientelae of the past; however, once formed, those factions were elevated and dignified through partisan rhetoric, as were the personae of individual orators who claimed to represent them. Given this factionalized atmosphere, Cicero could appeal to the self-image of the boni as respectable promoters of republican institutions and victims of violence, or damage the reputations of populares by labeling them violent, licentious, and unpopular in attacks on their characters. By demonizing populares, Cicero tried to endow the optimates with a grand sense of purpose and unity, a cosmic destiny he then promised to help them fulfill. Partisan rhetoric offered a heuristic to distinguish the right faction from the wrong one, to generate legitimacy and the moral high ground for the former and to abuse the latter.

chapter 8

A Great Man’s Spokesman

Introduction In pursuing powerful connections, ambitious orators enhanced the political status of Caesar and Pompey, and propelled the late Republican trend of exceptionalism. Because they benefited from the dynasts’ power themselves, they did their utmost to add to it; in serving themselves, they served the dynasts also. Both Clodius and Cicero sought to benefit from a connection to the “triumvirate” in the 50s when it was advantageous. The “first triumvirate” also sometimes utilized less prominent orators as their spokesmen, as did Pompey and Caesar individually during the years leading up to the civil war, and this role seems to have become increasingly advantageous for young politicians. Curio and Antony gained prominence from taking on such a role in the debates leading up to the outbreak of civil war in 49. By definition, the spokesman himself did not occupy (nor did he claim to occupy) the top of the hierarchy. For Cicero and high-ranking senators, a perception of subordination to Pompey, Caesar, Crassus, or anyone else was humiliating.1 For Curio and Antony, however, just embarking on the cursus honorum, such subordination was a worthwhile concession in the short term, in anticipation of long-term benefits.2 Over the course of the 50s and 40s, as we will see, the rhetoric of acting as a dynast’s spokesman became less fraught with tensions and pitfalls, and more straightforwardly advantageous, as the role of dynast itself was normalized.3 1 2 3

See, e.g., Cic. Leg. Man. 70, Phil. 10.4–6, Caes. BC 1.2.1. See Dettenhofer’s case studies of both for biographical details. This phenomenon was not limited to the 50s and 40s bce, and many individuals, especially tribunes, take up this role in the histories of Sallust and Livy – Memmius and Saturninus achieved extraordinary power advocating for Marius, for example, and Memmius’ oration at Sall. BJ. 31 is reminiscent of Curio’s and Antony’s speeches discussed in this chapter – but it is hard to tell if Livy and Sallust are imposing their own contemporary lens as a framework through which to construct historical narratives, and fashioning historical characters in the mold of Curio and Antony; see Taylor 1962; Thommen 1989; Vasaly 2015: 106. See also Tatum’s discussion of

199

200

A Great Man’s Spokesman

When it came to the “first triumvirate,” responses were polarized. At one end of the political spectrum were Cato the Younger and other optimates, actively and aggressively obstructing Pompey and Caesar’s political agenda.4 At the other end of the spectrum were individuals – especially tribunes – embracing the role of spokesmen and subordinates to the dynasts with increasing enthusiasm, as we can see in De Haruspicum Responsis, Asconius’ commentary on Pro Milone, and Cicero’s correspondence with Caelius. Cicero, meanwhile, made an effort to avoid the role of spokesman or subordinate. While Cicero has sometimes been called a spokesman or mouthpiece for Pompey and Caesar in 56–54 bce, the reality was more complicated. In fact, in comparison to others, Cicero consciously avoided that role. In relation to strong opposition and partisan spokesmen, Cicero sought to define and occupy a middle ground of support and cooperation, but not devotion. Cicero was careful to sidestep the role of spokesman, as we can see especially in Pro Balbo, De Provinciis Consularibus, and Pro Marcello. The office of tribune in the Roman republic conferred a great deal of power: sacrosanctity, the authority to propose laws, veto power, and the right to summon and to address the popular assembly (concilium plebis) or a contio.5 However, it was still a junior magistracy, a stepping stone to greater things.6 To earn support on that path to advancement, some tribunes of the late republic started to use their powers to advocate for measures that would benefit more powerful, senior politicians, in the hopes that those senior politicians would return the favor.7 To their identity as young, low-ranking political figures, they added a character of ambition and boldness in wading into political clashes above their rank. Praising a great man (or attacking his enemies) was an opportunity to show off rhetorical artistry, sometimes with an edge of subversiveness and defiance if it conflicted with the views of other important figures. Often, the most powerful men in Rome had become alienated from the peers whom they had defeated or eclipsed.8 Thus, a powerful politician might rely quite

4 5 6 7 8

intermediaries, henchmen, and go-betweens; Tatum 2017. Russell discusses narratives blaming such tribunes for the crisis of the late republic in Russell 2015. Discussed in Chapter 3; see also Taylor 1949a: 162–71; Gruen 1974: 53–8, 102–6, 460–98; Bellemore 2005; Jehne 2017. Bleicken 1955; Thommen 1989; Bleicken 1998: 484–505; Fantham 2004: 211; Badian 1996; Steel 2010; Arena 2012: 53; Kondratieff 2012. Sulla cut off that path to advancement from the tribunate, but it was soon restored by Pompey (Cic. Leg. 3.19–26). Pina Polo 1994: 84–92. Russell also argues that tribunes took up strong ideological positions to distinguish themselves from each other; Russell 2013: 102. Discussed in Chapter 5; see also Epstein 1987: 56–8.

Introduction

201

heavily on their juniors as spokesmen of a sort, who were looking to create relationships with him to earn recognition and favor (both from him and from the populus). If the senior politician in question was already popular with the masses, so much the better, for the concilium plebis would be more likely to pass the tribune’s legislation in support of the great man, making another positive mark on the tribune’s own record. Some tribunes thus made use of their opportunity to summon and address an assembly, and recruited other men’s auctoritas and popularity to make that opportunity count. This sort of mutually beneficial relationship was not limited to tribunes, but extended more broadly across the Roman political hierarchy as well. While Cicero was never a tribune, for example, he had sought to benefit from supporting Pompey in the expectation of similar political benefit with his contional oration Pro Lege Manilia as praetor in 66, early in his career. In the early to mid-twentieth century, a prosopographical approach in ancient history focused on the dynasts and their networks of allies.9 While that approach is no longer in fashion, prosopography certainly makes for compelling historiography, and exceptional individuals did indeed loom large in the events of that period. Ronald Syme diagnosed the ills of the late republic as symptoms of an escalation of the competition for glory among Rome’s elite, resulting in an arms race of ever-greater dynasts: “the traditional devices which the nobiles exploited in the struggle for honour and power were annexed and enhanced in the fatal sequence of the dynasts: Marius, Sulla, Pompeius, Caesar.”10 Peter Brunt describes a similar narrative arc: “the old conflict of optimates and populares had changed first into one between Republicanism and autocracy and then into a contest between rivals for a position in the state which was not responsible by any nonviolent process to either senate or people.”11 Seen this way, the whole period has an attractively linear, tragic feel to it, as Plutarch also thought: Brutus lost at Philippi because “affairs, it seems, could no longer be in the control of the many, but needed monarchy” (Brut. 47.4). The story of the Late Republic is dominated by heroes (or villains), if not by the “gods and kings” of tragedy then by godlike or deified proto-kings. Their characters, spectacular achievements, reversals of fortune, and downfalls fascinate readers and naturally draw their attention, so that historians face an uphill 9 10

11

The most important figures include Münzer, Gelzer, and Syme. Syme 1964: 6. See also the argument that Pompey’s leadership style became a model for Augustus’ principate in various ways: Meyer 1918; Lehmann 2004; Hurlet 2006; Vervaet 2010; Van der Blom 2016: 282. Brunt 1988: 35; cf. Coudry and Späth 2001; Hurlet 2010; Hurlet 2014.

202

A Great Man’s Spokesman

battle in turning the focus to other individuals, groups, and systemic forces.12 “Great man” history is a narrow and restrictive view of events: exceptional individuals may play a prominent role in determining what happens, but they do not single-handedly alter the course of history through sheer force of will and charisma. In addition, while it is clear in hindsight that Caesar and Pompey were extraordinary and important figures, they likely seemed less extraordinary to their contemporaries before the civil war; others, including Cato, Clodius, and Cicero, led more or less analogous networks of influence. However, dynasts held the same kind of fascination in antiquity; for many orators in the 50s and 40s bce, the question was not how to draw focus away from the dynasts and toward themselves, but rather how to associate oneself with the dynasts. Sharing that spotlight was easier and more advantageous than trying to steal it. This was true particularly because the dynasts did not operate primarily through oratory. Caesar was away in Gaul, although his “artful reporting” in his Gallic war commentaries intermittently brought his eloquent voice back to Rome.13 Pompey’s skills as an orator have recently received a positive reevaluation from Henriette van der Blom, but only to the extent that Pompey made effective speeches when called upon to do so, not that he used oratory as his political tool of choice or with greater skill than others.14 In fact, he often seems to have preferred using others as his spokesmen, including several tribunes15 – and arguably including Cicero as well, who was pressed into defending several of Pompey’s clients in the mid-50s. Likewise, Pompey’s colleague Crassus delivered sententiae and spoke as an advocate, but not with greater frequency or distinction than others of his political status.16 This left considerable space in the arena of public discourse for others to display their eloquence, and to prove their usefulness as spokesmen or supporters in return for political benefits. These spokesmen provided a rhetorical public message to legitimize or defend the dynasts’ political activities.17 Cicero’s persona as an ally of the dynasts is best understood as an example of this larger trend, and as we will see, he tried to avoid the role of spokesman in an effort to define and occupy a middle ground. 12 13 14 16 17

As Sherwin-White puts it, “the lines of perspective lead the historical eye inevitably to Caesar and the Principate;” Sherwin-White 1956: 1. This phrase comes from Welch and Powell 1998; see also Osgood 2009; Albrecht 2010. Van der Blom 2011; Van der Blom 2016: 113–45. 15 Van der Blom 2016: 138–9. For biographical treatments of Crassus see Adcock 1966; Marshall 1976; Ward 1977. Maria Dettenhofer has demonstrated the influence of these dynasts on politicians around them through seven case studies of men who came of age under the Republic but whose careers were ended or transformed by the rise of the dynasts, in the generation after Cicero’s; Dettenhofer 1992.

Friends of the “First Triumvirate”

203

This complicated balancing act emerges in the clashes between Cicero and Clodius in the 50s after Cicero’s return from exile, and their battle to claim the support of the “first triumvirate” for themselves – when it was advantageous. The “first triumvirate” is difficult to characterize as a political entity. The “three-headed monster”18 and their clients seem to have advocated for each other and each other’s friends politically, in elections and trials. However, the inconsistency of cooperation within the group and the wild variations in its popularity and influence over time complicate the picture.19 The triumvirs’ role in the confrontations between Clodius and Cicero has particularly stymied scholars, as neither Clodius nor Cicero was simply for or against the “triumvirate,” but both claimed to have their support when it offered a strategic advantage.20

Friends of the “First Triumvirate” Just as both Cicero and Clodius claimed to have the populus on their side – Clodius for the law that exiled Cicero, Cicero in the vote for his recall (see Chapter 6) – each also claimed that Pompey, Caesar, and sometimes Crassus were on his side. Clodius often connected himself to Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus in promoting his political agenda, as we learn from Cicero’s speeches.21 Cicero did his best to deny that those connections existed, to deprive Clodius of that source of political capital. Those connections obviously could be politically advantageous, whether they were fictitious, real, or somewhere in between. Clodius connected himself to the “triumvirate” in the moments when the three men were at their most 18 19

20

21

This was the title of a pamphlet by Varro criticizing the triumvirate, attested in App. BC 2.9; Catullus Carm. 29 also gives some sense of the opposition to their influence. Brunt 1988: 486 argues against the prosopographical tradition, and concludes that affiliations with or against the triumvirate “could never have been inferred from prosopographical data” and that the Conference of Luca had less impact on politics than is often thought. See also Van der Blom 2016: 54–5. An older view of Clodius as a tool of the triumvirs has now been more or less displaced; see Lintott 1967; Benner 1987; Gruen 1996; Lintott 1999a: 190–9; Steel 2013: 169–70. In characterizing the politics of Rutilius Lupus, a tribune who seems to have followed Cicero in advocating for Pompey’s interests at Caesar’s expense in 56 bce, Mitchell writes: “Men like P. Clodius, C. Cato, C. Curio, although they appeared at times as ardent supporters of particular individuals, had minds of their own, and there is every indication that Lupus had also. Apparently he was the figure of greatest interest among the tribunes for 56. His first performance in the senate after entering office was eagerly anticipated and brought an unusually large turnout. Cicero describes it: frequentes fuimus; omnino ad ducentos. Commorat expectationem Lupus. He responded to their expectations with his speech on the Campanian land; that he needed prompting for his spirited attack on Caesar’s law has neither proof nor probability”; Mitchell 1969: 305. And from Att. 2.7.3, a letter from before Cicero’s exile.

204

A Great Man’s Spokesman

popular themselves,22 and particularly when he was appealing to the plebs in contiones, an audience more enthusiastic than the senate was about Pompey and Caesar. Cicero, meanwhile, likewise drew attention to his alliance with Pompey by thanking the great man for his support for his recall, especially in his post reditum speech to the Quirites; but Cicero also thanked the other senators who had joined Pompey in this effort (see Chapters 2 and 5), claiming that he was not just a friend of Pompey but of the whole republic. There seemed to be general consensus that Caesar had enabled Clodius’ adoption, election to the tribunate, and success in driving Cicero out of the city, and that Pompey had declined to stop them, if he had not actively supported them (e.g., Prov. Cons. 18, Pis. 75–7, 79).23 Cicero tried his best to lay blame at the feet of Clodius and the consuls of 58 instead, in order to dispel the damaging impression that he had been marked for persecution by the “first triumvirate.”24 Cicero tried to portray Clodius’ relationship with the dynasts as onesided or as wishful thinking, rather than a real partnership. When Clodius read letters in a contio from Caesar “to Pulcher” to prove the closeness between them, Cicero railed that a real friend of Caesar never would have read his letters in public, and that Clodius had probably forged the letters in any case (Dom. 22).25 To an audience of senators in De Haruspicum Responsis, Cicero explicitly asserts that Clodius had flaunted his connections with the “first triumvirate” in order to increase his influence as tribune in 58 bce: an iste nisi primo se dedisset iis quorum animos a vestra auctoritate seiunctos esse arbitrabatur, nisi eos in caelum suis laudibus praeclarus auctor extolleret, nisi exercitum C. Caesaris – in quo fallebat, sed eum nemo redarguebat – nisi eum, inquam, exercitum signis infestis in curiam se inmissurum minitaretur, nisi se Cn. Pompeio adiutore, M. Crasso auctore, quae faciebat facere clamaret, . . . tam crudelis mei, tam sceleratus rei publicae vexator esse potuisset? If that man had not first given himself up to those whose minds he thought had been divorced from your authority, if he had not praised those men to the skies with his eulogies, distinguished leader that he is, if he had not threatened that he would send the army of Caius Caesar (he lied about this, but no one refuted it) into the senate under hostile standards, if he had not 22 25

Rundell 1979. 23 Lintott 2008: 177. 24 Cf. Tatum 1999: 151–3. Discussed in Riggsby 2017: 273 as evidence for Cicero’s handling of documentary evidence.

Friends of the “First Triumvirate”

205

proclaimed that he was doing what he was doing with Cnaeus Pompeius as a supporter and Marcus Crassus as a leader . . . could he have been a tormentor so cruel to me, so wicked to the republic? (Har. Resp. 47)

Cicero casts Clodius’ relationship not as an alliance, but as a “surrendering,” implying subjugation and submission, echoed in his ironic labeling of Clodius as a “distinguished leader.” He emphasizes the emasculating powerlessness of this position of subordinate spokesman, even as he also maintains that the whole relationship is a political fiction invented by Clodius. Clodius lied about his access to Caesar’s army, or so Cicero insists. Cicero also describes Clodius’ motivations as based on a fundamental error: Clodius attached himself to Caesar and Pompey because he thought that there was conflict between them and the senate (conflict that Cicero denies), and that he and the dynasts could oppose the senate as a common enemy. Cicero, in rebutting Clodius’ claims to have the support of the three dynasts, is also framing himself as the unifying force, the senate’s champion and leader, an auctor in his own right, whose exile had been contrived through lies and deceit, not through legitimate legal processes or for legitimate political reasons. Clodius apparently labeled Pompey and Crassus his adiutor and auctor respectively here, his “backer” and “leader” or perhaps “mentor,” suggesting that he claimed positively that he was acting on their behalf, or at their direction. These terms suggest a political relationship that goes above and beyond the usual, transactional sense of a patron’s officium. The position of a right-hand man or even a client of Pompey and Crassus, then, might have had more political sway than that of an autonomous political actor, in Clodius’ calculation, and the disadvantages of being criticized for this position seem to have been outweighed by its advantages.26 In Pro Sestio, Cicero claims again that Clodius trumpeted his own connections with Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar as his political auctores and adiutores “in all his contiones” (Sest. 39–40, cf. 42, Mil. 88).27 By contrast, Cicero later claims in Pro Balbo that Pompey wanted him (Cicero) to be his “promoter and advocate” (praedicator et actor) (Balb. 4): rather than following the instructions of an auctor et adiutor, perhaps Cicero gives himself greater agency in the relationship. He is able to 26

27

See also Vat. 38, in which Cicero ridicules Vatinius for promising “that you were going to succeed at everything you wanted in defiance of gods and men because of some incredible love C. Caesar had for you.” This pair of nouns occurs at Sest. 40, Dom. 66, and Har. Resp. 47 to refer specifically to Pompey and Crassus vis-à-vis Clodius. Cicero describes his own enthusiastic supporters as auctores et adiutores as well, referring to Torquatus’ apparently noteworthy support of Cicero in his consulship (Sull. 34), and to the advocates of his restoration in 57 (Red. Pop. 9), including Pompey (Dom. 30).

206

A Great Man’s Spokesman

confer a desirable benefit actively on Pompey through oratory, as a peer rather than a subordinate. His character as Pompey’s grateful friend in that speech (see Chapter 2) is also a more dignified alternative to the kind of position as a proxy that Clodius seems to have embraced. However, Clodius also turned on Pompey repeatedly and launched attacks against him (see, e.g., Har. Resp. 48–50, and the discussion of De Domo Sua in Chapter 7),28 and he sometimes used the “triumvirate” as a wedge to create division in the senate.29 Pompey and Caesar were seen by many senators as a threat to the senate’s authority (and to individual careers), and while most senators were reluctant to be on the dynasts’ bad side, they were also wary of any perceived exercise of the dynasts’ influence. In early 56 bce, Pompey’s popularity with both people and senate was at a low ebb (Q. fr. 2.5.3).30 Even Cicero distanced himself from his friend: after the riot in February 56 discussed in Chapter 8, Cicero confided to his brother that he had avoided the senate altogether “so that I would neither keep silent on such important matters nor offend the sensibilities of the good men by defending Pompey (he was being carped at by Bibulus, Curio, Favonius, and the younger Servilius)” (Q. fr. 2.3.2). In addition, Clodius may have wanted to demonstrate greater autonomy in 56, once he was no longer a tribune and moved up to the rank of aedile.31 Association with Pompey or the first triumvirate carried political risk as well as advantage, and the balance shifted from year to year and even from month to month. Like Clodius, Cicero was opportunistic and inconsistent in representing his relationship with Caesar and Pompey. In April of 56 he seems to have been contemplating opposition to the distribution of land in Capua to Caesar’s veterans, to chip away at Caesar’s authority and at the loyalty of Caesar’s troops (Fam. 1.9.8–9, Q. fr. 2.7.2).32 He seems to have been attempting to promote Pompey at the expense of Caesar and Crassus, to break up the “triumvirate,”33 but was then pressed to support the three of 28 29 30

31 32

33

In Q. fr. 2.3.2, Clodius seems to be playing Crassus against Pompey. Rundell 1979: 319; Tatum 1999: 166–75. Pompey apparently thought that his own fellow “triumvir” Crassus was sponsoring attacks against him (Q. fr. 2.3.4). In 54, even when Pompey “could do anything” (omnia possit) and it was rumored that he might be elected dictator, Cicero expressed surprise that he only had enough influence to get his client Gabinius acquitted by a margin of 38 to 32 (Q. fr. 3.4.1–2). Tatum 1999: 198–9. Cary 1923; Balsdon 1957; Lazenby 1959; Stockton 1962; Mitchell 1969; Gruen 1969; Grillo 2015: 9–10. A tribune, taking up this cause himself, even borrowed from Cicero’s own arguments (perhaps from De Lege Agraria and that debate over land in Capua) (Q. fr. 2.1.1). Cicero does not say that he participated in this debate in that letter or in Q. fr. 2.7.1–2, but he may be simply withholding that information from Caesar, with whom Quintus was serving in Gaul. Lazenby 1959: 67; Gruen 1974: 107, 303.

Friends of the “First Triumvirate”

207

them together as a single entity. Pompey, after renewing his ties with Caesar at the conference of Luca in the same month, instructed Cicero not to proceed in this direction. Having yielded to Pompey’s suggestion,34 Cicero wrote dramatically to Atticus that “my palinode seemed pretty low to me, but goodbye to honest, true, virtuous politics! It is unbelievable, the treachery of those leading men (that’s what they want to be, and would be, if they had any constancy in them)” (Att. 4.5.1–2). His “palinode,” his recantation, seems to have been a letter (not extant) in which he crossed party lines to support Caesar.35 The “treachery” (perfidia) of Pompey and Caesar lies in their shifting of alliances: first they were against each other, and now they are working together, simply for expediency’s sake. Cicero’s dig at men who wish to be principes but who cannot be because of their perfidia marks Pompey and Caesar as different from the traditional republican leading man, and indeed as different from himself, because they fall short of a moral standard of integrity and consistency. His surviving letters make it clear that he did not endorse these dynasts wholeheartedly, but did so partially out of fear, as a pragmatic way to protect himself politically from the kind of persecution that had driven him from Rome in 58 bce.36 However, Cicero does not take on the role of spokesman or servant. In fact, he casts himself sometimes as the dynasts’ preceptor or even as a princeps himself. One result of his new “friendship” was his defense of Cornelius Balbus in 56. His speech, as we saw in Chapter 2, escalates from expressions of friendship toward Pompey and Balbus to a panegyric of the great man and his irrefutable authority. However, having done with the substance of the case, he moves back to the prosecution’s motivations at the end of the speech: Non igitur a suis, quos nullos habet, sed a suorum, qui et multi et potentes sunt, urgetur inimicis; quos quidem hesterno die Cn. Pompeius copiosa oratione et gravi secum, si vellent, contendere iubebat, ab hoc impari certamine atque iniusta contentione avocabat. Et erit aequa lex et nobis, iudices, atque omnibus qui nostris familiaritatibus implicantur vehementer 34

35

36

It is unclear how much Cicero had said in public to indicate that he was going to oppose Caesar, or whether he planned to follow this initiative with more significant opposition. He had already successfully proposed a command as curator annonae for Pompey months earlier (discussed in Chapter 7), so his support of Pompey had remained consistent. Grillo 2015: 9–16 includes a helpful review of bibliography on the identification of Cicero’s “palinode,” and see 261–82 on the relevant passage in Prov. Cons. My own inclination is to follow Holmes (as Grillo does) in thinking that the palinode is a private letter that does not survive, and which predates Prov. Cons.; Holmes 1920. Cicero gives accounts of the results of his “palinode” after the fact in Fam. 1.9, and at Pro Plancio 91–4. Anderson 1963: 48–54; Rawson 1978: 98–138.

208

A Great Man’s Spokesman utilis, ut nostras inimicitias ipsi inter nos geramus, amicis nostrorum inimicorum temperemus. And so, it is not by his own enemies (of whom he has none) but by those of his connections (of whom there are many powerful ones) that he is pressed. Yesterday, in fact, Cnaeus Pompeius gave an eloquent and weighty speech ordering those enemies to take him on if they wanted to, he called on them to abandon this uneven and unjust contest. And it would be a fair and really practical rule both for us, gentlemen of the jury, and for all who are implicated in relationships with us, to carry on our own feuds among ourselves and refrain from attacking the friends of our enemies. (59–60)

Balbus’ own status and wealth make him the target of envy, Cicero explains, as do his ties with Pompey and Caesar. Pompey’s enemies are to be feared not only by Balbus, but, implicitly, by all. Poor Balbus – and poor Pompey – tolerate enough envy and malice, without suffering the insult of losing this case, Cicero admonishes. Rubio notes that this passage has Demosthenic and Platonic echoes, which help to dignify Cicero’s stance.37 Here, in his peroration, Cicero frames his defense as autonomous and voluntary rather than obligatory, driven by Cicero’s own sense of how politics should be done.38 This is having his cake and eating it too: he gets to complain about the unfairness of targeting Balbus just to get at Pompey in an “unjust contest,” and yet then denies that Pompey’s position is exceptional, implying that Pompey, Caesar, Cicero, and all of “us” occupy the same position vis-à-vis networks of clients. Cicero includes himself among the great men being persecuted here. This is not entirely unfair, for Cicero’s friends and allies were the targets of many prosecutions in this year. Cicero, like Pompey and Caesar, exposed his clients and supporters like Milo and Sestius (and perhaps Caelius, as we will see) to great personal risk because of their association with him, and went to great lengths to defend those supporters.39 If we had speeches surviving from Cicero’s clients and supporters, we might find that they cited him as their adiutor et auctor and that he, too, offered power by association. Was Cicero, then, a dynast himself? The lack of a military command may disqualify him from our category of “dynasts” as we now understand them (i.e., as proto-emperors),40 but as a political actor at the time, his network of agents and supporters was far from negligible. Pompey and Caesar sought Cicero’s support, from the formation of the “first 37 40

Rubio 1954: 138–9, s.v. 60. 38 Steel 2001: 109–10. 39 Lintott 2008: 189–201. See, for example, Steel’s treatment of the late Republican dynasts and their “experiments in autocracy,” in which she foregrounds military activities; Steel 2013.

Friends of the “First Triumvirate”

209

triumvirate” to Caesar’s dictatorship, suggesting that Cicero was a desirable ally. As we have seen, he does claim to be on their level politically, if not their equal, in Pro Balbo. While he had acted as a sort of spokesman for Pompey in 66 in his speech Pro Lege Manilia, he boasted to Atticus after his consulship that his political influence was so great that jealous young populares were starting to refer to Pompey as “Gnaeus Cicero” (Att. 1.16.11). His brother Quintus urged him to tell voters in 64 that he had been winning Pompey over to his own political perspective, not the other way around (Comm. Pet. 5). At the end of his life, Antony labeled him the lanista, the gladiatorial trainer, of the senatorial party in 43 bce, and rumors apparently circulated that he would take office as dictator (Phil. 13.40, 14.14–15). For his part, Cicero does not openly express the kind of ambitions we associate with the dynasts – but neither, perhaps, did the dynasts themselves, whether they possessed those ambitions or not.41 Pompey’s and Caesar’s exceptional status led to civil war, which Cicero (as he tells us himself) deliberately avoided.42 He claims that he had been willing to sacrifice his dignitas, when he was driven into exile in 58 – but perhaps only in anticipation of the glorious restoration he eventually received in 57, or perhaps only because he had no army to defend his dignitas. Neither Pompey nor Caesar made that concession. Cicero tells us himself in letters like the one about his palinode that he was not like the “triumvirs,” and that self-fashioning claim has been persuasive to a surprising degree, even though his claims that he chose of his own accord to praise the “first triumvirate” in 56 bce have been met with skepticism. Cicero’s praise of Pompey and Caesar in his speeches after Luca (De Provinciis Consularibus and Pro Balbo) provides a benefit to them, in return for which he expects political reinforcement. His praise also provides justification for his decision to support the triumvirate in the first place. These great men, their heroic exploits, their moral forbearance, and their devotion to the senate and republican government are all emphasized, and all merit Cicero’s support. In his account, it is not that Pompey and Caesar commanded him to support them; it is that the facts themselves did so, so that his reversal of policy was just a triumph of pragmatic common sense. To express this idea, he presents a modified analogy of the ship of state metaphor: if a storm lies between you and safe harbor, it is more responsible 41

42

Cicero notes in Pro Balbo, while praising Pompey’s auctoritas, that “the senate and people of Rome have given him prizes of the highest order, not while he was seeking positions of power (imperia), but while he was actually turning them down (recusanti)” (10). Turning down power (recusatio imperii) as a political strategy to win trust and admiration was a technique later adopted by Augustus. Dom. 63–4, Sest. 43–9.

210

A Great Man’s Spokesman

to change your intended course to sail around it (Fam. 1.9.18, 21; Balb. 61). In abandoning whatever policy he might have chosen otherwise, he argued that he was not betraying his friends or his principles, but a lost cause (Fam. 1.9.17), the false hope of otium cum dignitate (cf. De Orat. 1.2–3). In his view, attempts to obstruct or depose the dynasts were futile, at least for him, but his reluctance in this reconfigured relationship is also clear. Cicero’s posture of defensiveness does put some distance between him and his powerful friends and implies some criticism. He frames his alliance with them as a compromise, not the ideal choice but the best one available. Still, he praises Pompey and Caesar openly, as their ally and friend, to give himself greater persuasive influence. In 54 bce,43 Cicero takes an even more defensive posture in Pro Plancio and Pro Rabirio Postumo regarding his relationships with Pompey and Caesar, after prosecutors in both trials criticized him for his obsequiousness. This shows that his perceived lack of independence had become a political liability, exploited by his opponents to undermine his efficacy as an advocate. Cicero insists that while he has been supporting the interests of Pompey and Caesar, it is because they coincide with his own. These powerful friends of his would never ask anything of him that he would not gladly give them, he maintains, nor would they ask anything of him that would harm the republic (Planc. 91–4, Rab. Post. 32–3, cf. Prov. Cons. 23). In the letter to Lentulus written in the same year, which contains a long justification for his post-palinode policy, he continues to argue that his actions, however others criticized them, had brought him both political support and security (Fam. 1.9.11–12).44 He also benefited financially from the relationship (1.9.21). All in all, like Clodius, Cicero seems to have found that life was generally easier when one’s name was joined with that of Caesar and Pompey, despite the criticisms he faced.

Clodius’ Avengers Tan and Vanderbroeck have also explored the possibility that Clodius himself earned the label of dynast in the political sphere because he assembled a political network that proved effective over time, even while holding no office.45 The coalescing of a faction around him, and later the 43

44 45

Likely because of his defense of his former targets, Vatinius and Gabinius, in that year; Cicero wrote to Quintus in November that “I am tormented by the fact that some of my enemies have not been attacked by me, and others have even been defended, that not only my mind but even my hatred is not free” (Q. fr. 3.5.4). Bernard sees close resonances between this letter and Pro Plancio; Bernard 2007. Vanderbroeck 1987: 141; Tan 2013.

Clodius’ Avengers

211

rise of three spokesmen seeking to avenge his death and protect his legacy, set important precedents for Caesar’s supporters and posthumous avengers. In Pro Caelio, earlier in the same year as Pro Balbo, Cicero characterizes Clodius as the puppetmaster behind Caelius’ prosecution, alleging that “shots are being fired openly at [Caelius], but they are supplied in secret” (Cael. 21), and urging the jurors to thwart this tactic: Ex hac copia quam multos esse arbitramini qui hominibus potentibus, gratiosis, disertis, cum aliquid eos velle arbitrentur, ultro se offerre soleant, operam navare, testimonium polliceri? Hoc ex genere si qui se in hoc iudicium forte proiecerint, excluditote eorum cupiditatem, iudices, sapientia vestra, ut eodem tempore et huius saluti et religioni vestrae et contra periculosas hominum potentias condicioni omnium civium providisse videamini. From this crowd [present in the forum], how many men do you think there are who are used to offering themselves spontaneously to powerful, obliging, well-spoken men, when they think they want something, to assisting them, to promising testimony? If some members of this category have perhaps thrust themselves into this trial, shut out their greed, jurors, with your wisdom, so that you seem to look simultaneously to this defendant’s welfare and to your own responsibility and to the situation of all citizens against the dangerous domination of individuals. (Cael. 21–2)

The political trials of the late Republic, in which the less powerful were prosecuted as proxies for their friends and patrons, had formed enough of a pattern for Cicero to count on his audience’s familiarity with it, and even resentment of it. By invoking this pattern, Cicero hopes to cast aspersions on the sincerity of Caelius’ prosecutors and thus on the veracity of their testimony or the justness of the legal proceedings. He redirects their focus away from Caelius to a category of mercenary orators and witnesses who have so little regard for their own dignity that they would readily sell their services, and to “the dangerous domination of individuals,” which the jurors may (he hopes) resent enough to make a vote for Caelius seem like a vote against tyranny and persecution. This passage suggests that public opinion regarded “the dangerous domination of individuals” as a worrying trend at the time, that Clodius was one of those men with despotic aspirations, and that this anxiety could be used to motivate a jury to check the powers that lay behind Caelius’ prosecution. Pursuing a political career through attachment to one powerful man or another seems to have become increasingly common, perhaps even the new normal. Although Cicero poses as an obstructionist to this trend in Pro Caelio, his own defense of Balbus (and his later defense speeches for Caninius Gallus, Gabinius, Vatinius, and Rabirius

212

A Great Man’s Spokesman

Postumus) helped to facilitate and legitimize the first triumvirate’s operating.46 After Clodius’ death in 52 bce, three tribunes rose to take Clodius’ place as leaders of the masses, relying specifically on their relationship with Clodius: Q. Pompeius Rufus, T. Munatius Plancus Bursa, and C. Sallustius Crispus, the historian.47 In Asconius’ commentary of the events leading up to Milo’s trial for Clodius’ assassination, he writes that these three tribunes incited a riot at Clodius’ funeral, in the course of which Clodius’ angry supporters burned not only his funeral pyre but the Curia Hostilia and the Basilica Porcia (Mil. 29).48 Pompeius Rufus in particular exploited his relationship with Clodius: according to Asconius, he “had been P. Clodius’ closest friend and openly declared that he was a follower of that faction (sectam)” (45). This role as Clodius’ avenger and political heir was a source of rhetorical advantage for Pompeius, lending his orations greater pathos and power to incite his audience to action, at a time when emotions were already running high.49 The three Clodian tribunes held “daily” contiones in the few months between January of 52 and the beginning of Milo’s trial in early April (Asc. Mil. 45), and in the last of these they raised a host of Clodian supporters to attend the trial and harass or intimidate Cicero and his fellow advocates (ibid. 46).50 This episode, with which Morstein-Marx opens his book on oratory and the masses,51 is an extraordinary demonstration of the immediate influence of popularis orators on politics. These three rallied around the leading figure of Clodius after his death and exploited his memory, and the loyalty of his crowds of supporters, to advance their own careers and promote their own agenda. They were united not only by their claims to adhere to a common ideology, but by their association with a single leading man, Clodius, and their rallying cry of vengeance (or justice) for his death. Clodius’ popularity thus became their popularity; his followers transferred their enthusiasm to these successors readily and allowed those successors to become more prominent and more powerful than they might otherwise have been. It is worth noting that Asconius is able to quote verbatim from one of Bursa’s contiones, reporting and criticizing the activities of the senate (39): Bursa (or an eyewitness) thus apparently published at least one of his speeches from

46 49

50

Gruen 1974: 312–31. 47 Vanderbroeck 1987: 168. 48 Sumi 1997. Clodius’ widow, Fulvia, and his mother-in-law Sempronia played a role in this incitement of rioting over Clodius’ death as well (Asc. Mil. 32-3, 40); see Babcock 1965; Brennan 2012; Gladhill 2018; López Pérez 2018. Pina Polo 1997: 144–5. 51 Morstein-Marx 2004: 1–4.

Caesar’s Tribunes

213

this critical time, in order to further enhance his political legacy. Milo was convicted and went into exile, but the coalition of Clodian tribunes was short-lived: Bursa and Pompeius Rufus were also soon tried, convicted, and exiled (Fam. 7.2.2–3, 8.1.4), and Sallust was later removed from the senate (Dio 40.63.4). All three, however, had earned valuable credentials among the populares and appear later in our sources as partisans of Caesar during the civil war, having transferred their loyalty from one popularis dynast to another.52 The coalescing of a faction around Clodius even after his death illustrates the political benefits of exploiting connections to a shared cause, but also exemplifies the formation of parties increasingly centered around rival leaders (Caesar and Pompey) rather than rival political approaches or ideologies. Caesar also found ways to operate through the tribunes Curio and Antony, in office in 50 and 49. In his letters, Cicero expresses concern that Caesar might have “contrived something secretly through his (suos) tribunes” to prevent him from receiving a triumph for his exploits in Cilicia (Att. 7.7.4), and indeed Caesar does seem to have been acting through the tribunes as spokesmen.

Caesar’s Tribunes Cicero left the city to take up a proconsulship in Cilicia in 51 bce, and would not deliver another oration until Pro Marcello in September of 46 bce. In that interval, the political landscape was transformed, not only by the civil war itself but by the senatorial debates and political discourse leading up to it. Thanks to Cicero’s correspondence with Caelius, we can reconstruct Caesar’s relationship with one important participant, Gaius Scribonius Curio the younger, in 50 bce, and Curio’s emergence as a spokesman for Caesar. Curio was a talented young orator from a distinguished family, but he found himself tribune in a singularly uneventful year of logjams and obstructionism, when even the consuls failed to muster enough power to get the senate to act on anything (Fam. 8.6.3). His year in office was going to waste, when along came an opportunity for fame (or notoriety), possibly accompanied by a bribe from Caesar.53 Suddenly, Caelius reported to Cicero (away in Cilicia), Curio 52 53

Plancus Bursa: Fam. 8.1.4, 9.10.2; Phil. 6.10, 12.20. Pompeius Rufus (probably): Bell. Afr. 85.7. Sallust: Bell Afr. 8.3, 34.1–3; App. BC 2.92, Dio 42.52.1, 43.9.2. Dio Cassius reports that Caesar bribed Curio to act as his defender back in Rome (40.60–1, cf. Vell. Pat. 2.48.3–4, Luc. BC 1.269–71), but Lacey argues that this is not borne out by the evidence; Lacey 1961; cf. Coudry 2019.

214

A Great Man’s Spokesman

was being “boiled alive” in the senate because he had acted “with a total lack of integrity” (levissime),54 crossed party lines, and proposed a raft of popularis legislation, which Caelius characterizes explicitly as “speaking for Caesar” (Fam. 8.6.5).55 It is noteworthy that Caelius sees those two affiliations as equivalent: to propose popularis legislation (a “Rullan”56 land law and a grain law) in 50 bce was tantamount to speaking for Caesar.57 We could compare Curio’s political campaign to Clodius’ stance in his tribunate, and his promulgation of popularis legislation with Caesar as his adiutor et actor. When Cicero wrote a reply to Caelius, he crowed that he had predicted that Curio would take this obvious step to advance his career (Fam. 2.13.3). Whether Curio had received a bribe, merely wanted to get some attention for his tribunate, or both, he found an easy solution in turning popularis and Caesarian.58 It is impossible to prove definitively to what extent Caesar had dictated Curio’s new agenda, and the primary sources differ. Plutarch treats Curio simply as Caesar’s proxy or mouthpiece in Rome, writing that Caesar’s proposals, as presented by Curio, were met by praise and garlands of flowers (Caes. 30.1–2; compare Dio 41.1–4). Whatever the reality, Curio seems to have capitalized on portraying himself as an advocate for Caesar, and by April, he had given up all of his proposals except one, according to Caelius: that Caesar should not be forced to lay down his imperium in November (Fam. 8.11.3). This was controversial in itself, but Curio also mounted direct attacks on Pompey and his administration in his second consulship (55 bce), exacerbating tensions. Caelius wrote: “I’ll tell you this much: if they suppress Curio in every matter, Caesar will defend his intercessor” (ibid.). Caelius labels him Caesar’s intercessor, without explanation, as if Cicero can be expected to agree with that label, and he expects that role to demand Caesar’s protection and defense, according to the rules of political reciprocity. In fact, Curio later became one of Caesar’s officers in the civil war, delivering at least one speech on his behalf in 49 (Cic. Att. 10.4.8).59 Caesar even gives Curio the unprecedented honor of 54 55

56 57 58 59

On this word, see Chapter 6. Caelius interpreted Curio’s land law as advantageous to Caesar, because it would leave some land at the state’s disposal at the very time Caesar might return and look to settle his veterans (Fam. 8.10.4). Likewise, Lacey proposes that Curio’s road law might have offered a post for Caesar in which he could shelter himself from prosecution; Lacey 1961: 326. A reference to the law to which Cicero responded as consul in his three orations De Lege Agraria. Millar 1998: 191–3. Gruen (1995: 471–83) is skeptical that Curio was in fact acting as a partisan of Caesar at all. Cf. Dettenhofer 1992: 45–63. Dettenhofer 1992: 146–54.

Caesar’s Tribunes

215

two direct speeches in the Bellum Civile, and depicts his valiant decision to fight to the death rather than retreat (2.23–45).60 Curio’s service was not limited to helping Caesar himself; he also advanced the cause of other Caesarians. According to Plutarch: Κουρίων ὁ Ἀντωνίου φίλος ἐκ μεταβολῆς θεραπεύων τὰ Καίσαρος Ἀντώνιον προσηγάγετο, καὶ μεγάλην μὲν ἀπὸ τοῦ λέγειν ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς ἔχων ἰσχύν, χρώμενος δὲ καὶ δαπάναις ἀφειδῶς ἀφ᾽ ὧν Καῖσαρ ἐχορήγει, δήμαρχον ἀπέδειξε τὸν Ἀντώνιον, εἶτα τῶν ἐπ᾽ οἰωνοῖς ἱερέων, οὓς Αὔγουρας καλοῦσιν. ὁ δὲ εὐθὺς εἰς τὴν ἀρχὴν παρελθὼν οὐ μικρὸν ἦν ὄφελος τοῖς πολιτευομένοις ὑπὲρ Καίσαρος. Curio, a friend of Antony who had changed sides to support Caesar’s interests, promoted Antonius. Because he had great influence among the people from oratory and spent the money Caesar had given him prodigiously, he got Antony elected tribune and then to the priesthood for bird signs, which they call Augurs. Upon taking office Antony immediately became no small help to those advocating for Caesar. (Ant. 5.1–2)

In Plutarch’s description, Curio’s influence is twofold: his oratory gives him the ability to sway the masses, and so does Caesar’s money. Cicero later wrote disapprovingly that “if Curio had been willing to listen to me, he would have preferred to earn honors, as he had started to do, rather than profits” (Brut. 280). The profits scorned by Cicero, however, in conjunction with Caesar’s protection and support, represented a valuable opportunity to Curio to improve his political standing both as tribune and afterwards, and later for Antony. Meanwhile, Suetonius notes that Pompey started practicing declamation and rhetorical exercises specifically in order to confront and refute Curio’s orations, and thus Caesar’s case (Rhet. 1). It is telling that Pompey saw Curio as a serious political threat, and that he felt that he had to speak for himself on this occasion and not through spokesmen; perhaps Curio had insulted his target’s rhetorical abilities, as Cicero often did in invectives, and Pompey wanted to prove the tribune wrong. The clash between the two great men and their proxies was now imminent, if not inevitable – in fact, in Gruen’s view, Curio was largely responsible for it, and acted against Caesar’s wishes in actuating it.61 60 61

Batstone and Damon 2006: 98–100; Grillo 2012: 32–4; Peer 2015: 83–7. “The break between the dynasts need never have occurred. It was consciously fostered by Curio for his purposes, by the Marcelli and the Catonians for theirs. The aim was not to generate civil war, but to split the combine, which had weighed so heavily in Roman politics for a decade. But their tactics created a situation that rapidly got out of hand.” Gruen 1974: 496.

216

A Great Man’s Spokesman

In 49, Antony soon took up Curio’s role as a tribune advocating for Caesar and attacking Pompey, as Cicero wrote to Atticus: habebamus autem in manibus Antoni contionem habitam x Kal. Ianuar., in qua erat accusatio Pompei usque a toga pura, querela de damnatis, terror armorum. in quibus ille quid censes aiebat facturum esse ipsum, si in possessionem rei publicae venerit, cum haec quaestor eius infirmus et inops audeat dicere? quid multa? non modo non expetere pacem istam sed etiam timere visus est. We also had in hand a speech of Antony in a contio, held on the twenty-first of December, which contained a prosecution of Pompey all the way back to the day he put on the toga pura, an objection about the men who had been convicted, and a threat of armed violence. To which [Pompey] said, “What do you think that man will do himself, if he gains control of the republic, when his lowly and resourceless quaestor dares to say these things?” Why should I say more? Not only does [Pompey] seem not to be trying for peace, he actually seems to fear it. (Att. 7.8.4)

Pompey seems to be more offended by Antony’s impudence than by his speech. By calling Antony not tribune but quaestor, an office in which Antony had served with Caesar in Gaul in 52 or 51, Pompey emphasizes his connection to Caesar; he does not see Antony as an independent actor with real political principles, but as the agent or proxy of a more powerful leader.62 Moreover, Pompey emphasizes the disparity in dignitas between himself, a consular three times over, and Antony, a lowly quaestor, in order to portray Antony’s invective as an unnatural act of audacity. While it was common for younger, less well-known politicians to undertake the prosecution of great men,63 Pompey charges that Antony, in a contio and outside the courts, had transgressed against the normal political hierarchy. And he clearly views Antony’s audacity as a step toward control of the republic for Caesar. Antony, meanwhile, benefits from his association with Caesar, and more specifically, from acting as a proxy or spokesman for Caesar. He gains political influence and attention far beyond what most tribunes could expect. A role as Caesar’s spokesman and defender offered a bigger stage, a brighter spotlight.64 Caesar benefits also: while he is absent, the political message still circulates that Pompey has abused power for decades (usque a toga pura), culminating in the sole consulship of 52 bce, which saw so 62 64

Dettenhofer 1992: 66–71. 63 See Chapter 4. Caesar cited the abuse of Antony and his colleague Cassius as tribunes as one of his reasons for crossing the Rubicon (BC 1.2.7, 1.5.1–5, 1.7.2–6; cf. Cic. Fam. 16.11.2). Raaflaub 1974: 152–5; cf. Stanton 2003; Morstein-Marx 2007.

Caesar’s Tribunes

217

many political leaders tried and convicted under Pompey’s laws and quaestiones.65 Even after Caesar’s death, Antony behaved as his spokesman, and perhaps derived even more power from a role as the dictator’s avenger than he had as his proxy in life.66 In many ways, this is a sequel to the three tribunes’ contiones after the death of Clodius in 52, including the funeralturned-riot. After Caesar was assassinated, Antony combined the roles of spokesman and avenger to deliver his famous funeral eulogy. By the second century ce, that oration had attained legendary status; Dio and Appian compose their own versions and report the now-famous scene of Antony showing Caesar’s bloodstained toga to the crowd (Dio 44.35–9, Appian BC 2.143–6).67 Even today, as Mahy notes, it is difficult to separate the power of Antony’s words from the crowd’s approbation for praise of Caesar,68 which is exactly why Antony chose to emphasize his closeness with Caesar as the cornerstone of his political persona in this period. From Cicero’s point of view, a relationship to Caesar’s legacy was tantamount to seeking one-man rule for Antony, because Caesar had set a precedent from which there was no turning back;69 perhaps this should have made Cicero more cautious in endorsing the young Caesar as he did. From this position of power, Antony filled imperial posts with “the tyrant’s satellites” (Att. 14.5.2) and forced Cicero and his friends to behave “as if we were afraid of those whom we have already beaten” or killed (14.6.2). Perhaps Cicero found it difficult to take a former lowly spokesman seriously as a political force in his own right. In the Philippics he stressed that Antony was no Caesar, in an attempt to undermine Antony’s connection to the dynast.70 While Curio and Antony were occupying center stage in the prelude to civil war, where was Cicero? He had left his province, but did not enter the city (or the debates in the senate) on the pretext that he was waiting to be granted a triumph for his campaigns in Cilicia. To avert civil war in 50, the options were to take power (and legions) away from Pompey, from Caesar, or both (Curio’s proposal), and Cicero’s professed friendships with both 65

66 67 68

Raaflaub 2010b: 170–1. According to Shackleton Bailey 2004: 308, the damnati in question are the Clodian tribunes of 52 as well as other populares, who would be restored during Caesar’s first dictatorship (Caes. BC 3.1.4), as another sign of the political stance he had adopted as a popularis dynast (see below). Others have argued that the damnati belong to a much earlier period (a toga pura) and are thus Marian partisans of the earlier civil war: Lintott 2008: 279; Steel 2013a; van der Blom 2016: 256. Cf. Ferriès 2012: 57. Accounts that Kennedy suggests may have originated with Asinius Pollio’s contemporary account; Kennedy 1972: 298. Mahy 2013: 340. 69 Cf. Usher 2010: 131–3. 70 Phil. 1.32; 2.116–7; 10.16, 22; 13.47.

218

A Great Man’s Spokesman

Pompey and Caesar made any of these options impossible, in his eyes (7.1.1–4, 8.13). He wrote to Caelius about the impossibility of being both a good citizen and a good friend in such circumstances (Fam. 2.15.3).71 Likewise impossible was a continuation of his arguments from Pro Balbo and De Provinciis Consularibus, that Pompey and Caesar would submit to the senate’s will or that their decisions were legitimate because of their virtue. The backlash to this would have been extreme, and in any case these arguments were irrelevant now that the two men were in conflict, and only one (if either) could receive the senate’s validating approval. There was no longer a middle ground. In the absence of any expedient position, any persuasive oratorical persona with any leverage, Cicero retreated to work behind the scenes, to try to negotiate a truce out of the public eye where the dynasts might be more likely to agree on a compromise, as they had at Luca (see Fam. 16.12, Att. 7.17, 8.11a on his diplomatic efforts). “‘Speak, Marcus Tullius.’ What will I say? . . . Let someone else give his opinion first; it suits me just fine to be making a bid for a triumph, and be outside the city for a very legitimate reason. Still, they will try to get a speech out of me.72 Maybe you’ll laugh at this, but I actually wish I were delaying in my province now!” (Att. 7.1.4–5). Caesar, upon arriving in Rome, pressured him in person (and Antony pressured him in a letter) to attend the senate and to speak for Caesar’s interests.73 That pressure finally forced him to make a decisive commitment to Pompey, as he contemplated the prospect of life as Caesar’s supporter: “will my indignation be able to keep quiet? Will my eyes be able to bear the sight of giving an opinion together with Gabinius, and even seeing him be asked for his first? . . . But why talk about my enemies, when I won’t be able to see my friends, whom I defended, in the senate house without pain, or interact with them without shame?” (Att. 10.8.3).74 After surrendering to Caesar in 48, Cicero was caught in a similar dilemma, even though Pompey was dead. He could speak ill of his dead friend and betray his memory, taking on a spokesman role as Curio and Antony had, or he could take up the rhetorical role of his avenger in a city 71 72

73 74

Brunt 1986. A month or so later, Cicero had come to a conclusion: “as for what you ask, what will happen when the word is spoken: ‘speak, Marcus Tullius’? In short, I agree with Cn. Pompeius. I will still encourage Pompey himself towards a truce in private” (Att. 7.3.5). Att. 9.18, 10.8.3, 10.8a & b; on Cicero and Caesar’s correspondence in these years see White 2003; Crawford 2017. Macrobius attributes sarcastic jokes at Pompey’s expense to Cicero, however, which even made Pompey wish that Cicero had chosen the other side (Sat. 2.3.7–8); after Pharsalus, Cicero’s wit also “bared its teeth against Caesar” (2.3.9).

Caesar’s Tribunes

219

controlled by Caesar and his partisans, a pointless and self-destructive exercise (Pompey’s death would not have been met with grief by the masses, like Clodius’ or Caesar’s).75 Either role would have been undermined by his own stance of neutrality early in the war. He thus maintained his public silence (which conveyed a message of its own, as I argued in Chapter 4) until September of 46, when Caesar agreed to hear discussion about the restoration of Marcus Claudius Marcellus, another former Pompeian. On that occasion, Cicero could deliberately avoid the role of spokesman and emphasize the importance of the senate’s collective authority instead, claiming that Caesar “has restored me to myself and likewise to the republic, with no one pleading my case, and has restored the rest of the most distinguished men to themselves and to their country, whose numbers and dignity you see in this very gathering” (Marc. 13, cf. Lig. 7, 36). This was far from Curio’s turnabout to popularis politics in Caesar’s name. Cicero praised the dictator in the most effusive possible terms, but sought to balance that praise with a show of independence by foregrounding the restoration of republican government, i.e. the senate, as we have seen in Chapter 5.76 Unlike Curio and Antony, rather than attacking Pompey or other enemies of Caesar, Cicero alluded vaguely to collective misunderstandings and differences of opinion (Marc. 30–1), and even praised Pompey in Pro Ligario (18–19) and Pro Deiotaro (12).77 He also claimed that he had tried to act as a neutral mediator and peacemaker between the two dynasts, rejecting partisan loyalty to either one or the other, as long as that position remained tenable.78 In breaking his silence at this particular time, Cicero had also waited until he could address Caesar face to face, rather than speaking about the dictator in the third person.79 This speech cannot be compared to the content of Curio’s or Antony’s speeches, and it is difficult to know how those spokesmen characterized their relationship to Caesar themselves, but they were certainly linking themselves with Caesar in his absence. In Pro 75 76

77 78 79

Att. 8.13, 9.13.4. Gagliardi also argues that Cicero goes to great lengths in the Caesarian orations to paint Caesar as the patron of the whole state rather than of a political party, so that Caesar will be obligated to make apparently nonpartisan decisions in favor of former Pompeians; Gagliardi 1997: 41. Lig. 6–7, 18–19; Deiot. 12; Phil. 1.23, 2.37–9; Antony apparently saw him as “an adversary of Caesar” (Phil. 1.28). Marc. 14–15; Lig. 28; Deiot. 28; Phil. 2.24, 37; 7.7–8. Cicero may have preferred to deal with Caesar in person after witnessing the violent jockeying for power among his subordinates, especially Dolabella and Antonius, before the dictator’s return from the East. Tempest points out that while Cicero is deferential in Pro Marcello toward Caesar, he also dons a distinct “affectation of parrhesia”; Tempest 2013: 265–6.

220

A Great Man’s Spokesman

Lege Manilia, Cicero never addresses Pompey but praises him in the third person.80 In Pro Marcello and the other Caesarian orations, however, Cicero addresses Caesar directly, face to face. Cicero waited for months for Caesar to return to Rome in 46 bce before breaking his public silence, and rather than speaking with the dictator looming behind him as a patron or as an enemy, Cicero turns to face him in Pro Marcello.81 In that context, perhaps Cicero could have claimed that he was being polite rather than sycophantic in his praise, and thus could have dignified his position to some extent. Caesar might even have felt pressured by the norms of decorum to praise Cicero in return. Curio and Antony had benefited from their position as spokesmen particularly because Caesar was absent from the city, and Clodius’ avenging tribunes had delivered their spate of speeches after their leader’s death, as we saw in Chapter 7; as far as the evidence suggests, the spokesman role was limited to speaking about the dynast in the third person. Cicero in Pro Marcello thus seems to have sidestepped the spokesman role in this aspect as well. Later, in defending Ligarius and Deiotarus, Cicero was also making a public statement about his allegiance: he had not severed ties with the Pompeians, but sought to reintegrate them into the republic under Caesar’s regime, resuming a role again as a peacemaker and attempting to find a middle course between extremes, neither spokesman nor attacker.

Conclusion It is challenging, even for a great orator, to explain effectively and persuasively why he is arguing for a compromise, revision, or reversal of a policy he has earlier supported, without losing face and sacrificing his reputation. The task only becomes more challenging when that reversal occurs in favor of a powerful figure, because the most obvious explanation is also the cynical one: that the orator has sold out his principles for political expediency, that the powerful man has coerced him into a position he must now rationalize with some veneer of respectability. That obvious narrative is a difficult one to displace; the more the orator denies it, the more his audience’s suspicions might seem to be confirmed. It is no wonder that Cicero saw his “palinode” and its aftereffects as a potentially fatal blow to 80

81

In Pro Milone, he addresses Pompey at one point and promises to shout loudly enough that Pompey will still hear him from across the forum (Mil. 68), as we saw in Chapter 4, but is not praising the dynast in his apostrophe, but rather conciliating him from a position of potential hostility. Likewise, he withdrew again while Caesar was in Spain in 45, before delivering his defense of Deiotarus after Caesar’s return; Lintott 2008: 334–5.

Conclusion

221

his political future. Even worse, in Cicero’s case, he seemed to be reversing course at the behest of powerful men who had allowed him (at a minimum) to be driven into exile, giving his loyalty to the very people who had harmed or betrayed him and who had enabled his enemy Clodius, as Clodius was eager to remind everyone. What Pompey and Caesar had actually done to Cicero then or what power they actually had over his actions after the Conference of Luca is beside the point; it was not the truth that Cicero had to contend with, but public perception. Cicero adopted a certain set of rhetorical strategies in an attempt to solve the problem with which he was presented. He chose to portray himself as an influential but embattled patron in his own right and as a unifying conservative force in the senate, steering the ship of state on the safest course available under the circumstances (and that last qualification is essential). What we can see by studying Cicero in contrast to Clodius and tribunes like Curio and Antony is that this was an attempt to find a rhetorical middle course between opposition and partisan devotion. Both he and Clodius, in 57–56 bce, manufactured political capital out of affiliation with Pompey – in Cicero’s case, especially when he was defending Pompey’s clients, like Balbus – and Clodius went a step further, citing all three members of the “first triumvirate” as patrons of a sort. Yet a role as their spokesman or lackey, rather than their friend, was potentially humiliating, implying sycophancy, insincerity, and weakness, as well as a disregard for republican norms. Cicero attempted to disgrace both Clodius and members of Clodius’ network for doing more powerful men’s dirty work, and to make it clear that he had not stooped so low himself from his consular rank. Shying away from taking on the role of an enthusiastic spokesman, Cicero tried to find a middle ground, acting as a supporter and bestowing his enthusiastic approval, but doing so in the name of unity and cooperation, and without citing Caesar or Pompey as directing his actions, as if he were doing them a favor rather than doing their bidding. After Pharsalus, he continued to claim a role as a Pompeian partisan and a republican, rather than simply advocating for Caesar’s interests. He is not one of the dynasts, but he is not one of their spokesmen either. Studying Curio and Antony also helps us to understand how the dynasts of the late Republic changed the world of oratory. In the political landscape of the late republic, some figures rose higher than others (and increasingly towered over them), presenting a navigational challenge for others. The dynasts’ exceptional dignitas attracted followers, who were happy enough to ride a dynast’s coattails if it meant increased influence and fame for the

222

A Great Man’s Spokesman

followers as well, even if it propagated or increased the dynast’s power at the same time. The more successful these spokesmen became, the more eager young aspiring politicians were to follow in their footsteps. The complications faced by Cicero did not exist for lower-ranking politicians, especially tribunes, who were virtually expected to attach their political fortunes to the bandwagon of one dynast or another – whether that was Pompey, Caesar, Clodius, or even Cicero. And as time wore on, as Pompey claimed his extraordinary sole consulship and as the leadership of the senate began to see some advantages to pairing their fortunes with his, the existence of dynasts became normalized. This elevation of a single man as the princeps of all, the chief of the optimates who bound them all together under his military leadership, was distinctly nontraditional in republican politics. However, because it was advantageous for ambitious individuals, over time it became common practice. It was then no longer a question of whether the republic could tolerate such an imbalance of power, but a question of which dynast’s side the republic was on. Instead of balancing the senate’s authority against that of an individual, leading senators learned to fight fire with fire and to raise one dynast to combat another. They learned this by listening to orators who identified themselves as dynasts’ spokesmen, by listening to Cicero’s appeasing rhetoric or observing demonstrations of the power of Clodius’ network, and becoming inured to any distasteful aspects of this new political discourse.

Conclusion

Each of the chapters in this book presents a persona that Cicero took up when it seemed particularly advantageous. For Cicero, a persona is not so much a mask with clearly defined features, but only a point of reference and a point of departure, a paradigm that is familiar and comprehensible to his audience but offers a world of possibilities for improvisation and modification. Each persona is also a tightrope of sorts, a delicate point of balance between extremes. Stray to one side or the other, and the persona becomes unappealing or ineffective. Stray too far toward populism, and you’ll embody the vice of levitas. Tell a joke that’s too funny, and you’ve become a clown. Respond to an enemy’s attack too vigorously, and you’re a howling rabula. Walk a line between full-throated support of a nascent tyrant and causing him offense. Even Cicero did not always strike the right balance to please his audiences. But his efforts to perform such balancing acts, and to theorize and articulate each type in the process, are a profoundly important source of insight into the value system of Republican political culture, because they reveal these tensions. It is also worth appreciating the degree to which Cicero was willing to turn to selfdeprecation and self-mockery, and alternatives to authority as traditionally construed. He is nihilistic, hilarious, grateful, emotional, melodramatic, and even self-effacing in turns. He is deeply respectful of the archetype of the grave, paternalistic, censorious Roman vir, but his personae cover much more ground and embrace many more idioms for political action. This is evidence of versatility and adeptness as a forensic advocate, rather than cowardice or an inability to inhabit the straightforward ideal archetype. The other aspect of Cicero’s personae that I have emphasized throughout this book is the degree to which Cicero’s personae were moving targets, especially in the period of the 50s and 40s bce. In particular, he did not take on his personae in isolation, but in relation to others, and some of those others were so powerful, so dominant, so omnipresent in his audiences’ 223

224

Conclusion

minds that he was forced to adapt his own practices around them. They changed the topography of the political arena in which Cicero operated, offering obstacles to negotiate. Cicero’s personae were essential tools in this negotiation, and were especially essential as Cicero tried to make his navigation of political vicissitudes appear as smooth and graceful as possible, a path freely and wisely chosen rather than a haphazard buffeting. Cicero stakes a claim to leadership himself as a moral authority, as the beneficiary of popular approval, or as the leader of a party, and describes those he designates as friends and allies in similar terms. He inverts his own self-fashioning techniques to reject his opponents’ authority: his opponents are cast as morally corrupt, indecorous, friendless, unpopular, inarticulate. When he is attacked directly – and republican oratory permitted a shockingly high level of invective, as well as of praise – he tries not only to defend himself but to undo his opponent’s attack altogether by obliterating his credibility as an orator. As for his friends, colleagues, supporters, and allies, he carefully manages these relationships, generously meting out praise and performing effusive gratitude and loyalty, as a demonstration not of sycophancy but of fair exchange in the economy of praise. The authority others gain from his praise adds to his own authority in connection with them as well. Beyond this network, especially in this second half of his career, he claims to represent the republic and its traditions in general, and the senate in particular. He draws attention away from himself as an individual, his own personal desires and concerns, by connecting himself to causes of great historic import, to imbue his arguments with symbolic significance and nobility in cases where that approach is useful. His creativity in telling stories about the political landscape and Roman history is not deployed for its own sake, but as the foundation for political action and self-promotion. Focusing on his personae helps us to achieve a critical awareness of that process. To what degree was Cicero successful in deploying his personae to seize political power? He didn’t prevent the rise of Caesar or the fall of the Republic; he never enjoyed otium cum dignitate; he died a violent, politically motivated death; he didn’t win all of his cases. Pompey, Caesar, Antony, and Octavian mostly disappointed his hopes and expectations, and they did not act according to the narrative framing and value systems he had set out for them. He was often deeply frustrated, even to the point of despair and depression. But politics is a world that defies any individual’s attempts to control it. It seems to have a mind of its own, because the factors involved are so many and so complex in their interactions. And when political events turn on the outcome of military campaigns,

Conclusion

225

themselves subject to the vicissitudes of fortune and the whims of the gods, events become even more difficult to steer. Amid all of this, Cicero managed to keep himself in the fray and to make his voice heard. He was unusually influential for an unusually long time, which was a feat in itself, especially because he mostly avoided military or provincial commands. And his bouts of despair and depression soon saw him flinging himself back into politics with bursts of energy and creativity, as in the post reditum period and the Philippics; if he was deeply affected by setbacks, he also seems to have been inspired (ultimately) by them to try to rise to the occasion. Largely because of his revival of old rhetorical tropes and tactics – rejection of popularis politics, championing of senatorial cohesion, and nobility in martyrdom – in the Philippics, we may see the aftermath of Caesar’s death as a new opportunity to restore the republic, rather than viewing Antony as simply continuing what Caesar had begun. His idealistic portrayals of the senate, the leadership of the boni, and a selfsacrificing fidelity to the state provided the framework for later authors viewing the republic with nostalgic admiration.1 As we have seen in the chapters on friendship, factions, and dynasts, however, Cicero did not choose to channel his energy into direct attacks on Pompey and Caesar. Perhaps the new man did not dare. He was also deeply indebted to Pompey for his restoration, and more literally in debt to Caesar. If he wanted to preserve the republic, as his own self-fashioning suggests he did, then while his efforts to suppress the sedition of Catiline, Clodius, and Antony might be praiseworthy, he let the two biggest threats to republican governance grow without much interference. On one hand, his veneration for republican traditions and his deeply held belief in the justice of pluralistic government are admirable: he never tried to become a dynast or a tyrant himself, aspiring instead to be remembered as a diligent and wise statesman in control of his own desires and ambitions, and crafting personae in that image. On the other hand, he never really fully confronted these two men who did aspire to greater power. He accepted certain threats to the republic as an inevitability, a fact of life. The idea of politics as a marine navigation in the “ship of state” through various storms does entail a certain degree of passivity: Cicero accepted Pompey and Caesar, as well as popular disaffection, as obstacles to navigate, storms to weather, rather than problems to be confronted and removed. If he hadn’t, he might have remained in exile, or been assassinated sooner. We might 1

The reception of Cicero, especially in the imperial period, has been a subject of much recent interest: Altman 2015b; Keeline 2018; LaBua 2019; van den Berg forthcoming.

226

Conclusion

not have this corpus of later speeches at all, to say nothing of the philosophica and letters that have been so influential in later ages. He also remained myopically focused on the individuals in his orbit and largely ignored the social and economic problems affecting the Roman masses in the late Republic, neglecting opportunities or possibilities for reform.2 Perhaps he saw no alternative. After Cicero’s death, the world of oratory changed. The end of the republican constitution diminished the senate’s authority and thus diminished the importance of deliberation in that institution, while deliberative oratory in contiones may have ended altogether.3 However, oratory was still necessary as a political tool for senators, triumvirs, princes, and emperors. In the triumviral period, especially in the latter half of the 30s bce, partisan rhetoric was as pervasive and vicious as it had ever been.4 Octavian even published a corpus of speeches as a triumvir.5 The courts continued to operate, and each generation continued to see the rise of one or two prominent orators whose speeches outshone the rest: in the Augustan era it was Asinius Pollio and Messalla Corvinus who competed for this title, with vastly different styles.6 The courts even provided opportunities for ambitious but lower-status delatores to bring prosecutions and speak in the senate, to the detriment of their higher-ranking targets.7 While new legal processes put an end to such long, ornate, dramatic speeches, the Romans’ affection for rhetorical flourishes was channeled into the new venue of recitations and declamation, no longer just a training tool but now also a species of artistic performance.8 For the emperors and their heirs, there were speeches to be made in the senate and to armies, and with speeches came the work of self-fashioning. Augustus’ dignity, Tiberius’ crabbed obscurity, Germanicus’ compassion, or Caligula’s early populism were expressed through oratory in particular, and became key parts of historical narratives about them.9 The study of Cicero’s self-fashioning and projection of various personae is thus useful beyond his corpus, to shed light on the practices of other 2

3 4 6 7 8 9

A possible exception is his Lex Tullia de ambitu, but he defended the consul elect Murena charged under that law in the same year in which it was passed, which was viewed as hypocritical (Mur. 3, 5, 67). Pina Polo 2011: 294–5. On the senate, de Marini Avonzo 1957; Brunt 1984; Burgers 1999. Osgood 2006. 5 App. BC 5.130; Dio 49.15.3. On Pollio and Messalla, see André 1949; Kenty 2017. On the imperial courts, see Parks 1945; Bleicken 1962; Levick 1986; Crook 1995; Sordi 1996; Guerin 2009; Rutledge 2010. Cerami 1998; Rutledge 1999; Rutledge 2001. Bonner 1949; Bloomer 1997c; Connolly 2007: 237–61; Bloomer 2010; Bernstein 2017. Tac. Ann. 13.3; Suet. Aug. 86.2–3; Tib. 70.1; Calig. 3.1–4.1, 15.1–16.2, 53.1–2.

Conclusion

227

orators during and after his lifetime. In fact, his personae became useful models for later orators.10 However, I hope that this book will also be helpful to historians, in illuminating the processes by which Cicero generates narrative frameworks for understanding the events he describes. He is not an unthinking or a neutral narrator; he is a lawyer and a politician with specific goals to achieve, and he shapes his narratives and his cast of characters with those goals in mind. Rhetoric, both his and others’, provides a framework with which to understand the world, and language with which to describe it. It shapes understanding, not only for Cicero’s audiences, but for us as well. Partisanship, traditionalism, conservatism, demagoguery, exceptionalism, pluralism, and authoritarianism are not only historical facts but also narrative or rhetorical tropes, frameworks that help to account for events and interpret motivations, that help to make sense of the world in a particular way. I hope to have shown how Cicero deployed such tropes to depict himself in advantageous ways, to cast himself in advantageous and plausible types of narratives, situated in certain kinds of relationships. His roles as attacker, friend, martyr, nonsovereign, senator, popular, partisan, and quasi-spokesman helped his audiences to get a sense of where he was coming from and how his reactions fit into his broader perspective, but they also led audiences to view the world through the lens Cicero gave them, and they continue to do so today. 10

Winterbottom 1981; Narducci 2002; Gowing 2013; Keeline 2018.

Works Cited

Achard, Guy. 1981. Pratique rhétorique et idéologie politique dans les discours “Optimates” de Cicéron. Mnemosyne Supplement 68. Leiden: Brill. Adcock, F. E. 1966. Marcus Crassus, Millionaire. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons. Ahl, Frederick. 1984. “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome.” The American Journal of Philology 105 (2): 174–208. Albini, Umberto. 1959. “L’orazione contro Vatinio.” La parola del passato 14: 172–84. Albrecht, Michael von. 2003. Cicero’s Style: A Synopsis Followed by Selected Analytic Studies. Mnemosyne Supplement 245. Leiden: Brill. 2010. “Caesar und die Macht des Wortes.” In Cesare: precursore o visionario? Atti del convegno internazionale Cividale di Friuli, 17–19 settembre 2009, edited by Gianpaolo Urso, 223–40. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Alexander, Michael C. 1992. Review of Politische Strategien der Optimaten in der späten römischen Republik, by L. A. Burckhardt and Aufruhr und “Polizei” in der römischen Republik by Wilfried Nippel. The American Journal of Philology 113 (1): 140–3. 2002. The Case for the Prosecution in the Ciceronian Era. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Allen, Walter. 1954. “Cicero’s Conceit.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 85: 121–44. Altman, William H. F., ed. 2015. Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Cicero. Leiden: Brill. Alwine, Andrew T. 2015. Enmity and Feuding in Classical Athens. Austin: University of Texas Press. Anderson, William S. 1963. “Pompey, His Friends, and the Literature of the First Century b.c.” University of California Publications in Classical Philology 19 (1): 1–88. André, J. 1949. La vie et l’oeuvre de C. Asinius Pollion. Paris: C. Klincksieck. Applbaum, Arthur Isak. 2000. Ethics for Adversaries: The Morality of Roles in Public and Professional Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Arena, Valentina. 2012. Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2016. “Popular Sovereignty in the Late Roman Republic: Cicero and the Will of the People.” In Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective, edited by 228

Works Cited

229

Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner, 73–95. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Atkins, Jed W. 2013. Cicero on Politics and the Limits of Reason: The Republic and Laws. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Babcock, Charles L. 1965. “The Early Career of Fulvia.” The American Journal of Philology 86 (1): 1–32. Badian, Ernst. 1996. “Tribuni Plebis and Res Publica.” In Imperium Sine Fine: T. Robert S. Broughton and the Late Roman Republic, ed. Jerzy Linderski, 187–214. Historia Einzelschriften. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Balbo, Andrea. 2009. “Attività giudiziaria criminale e civile nello stato romano tra la fine della repubblica e i primi anni di Ottaviano (49–29 a.c.).” In La repressione criminale nella Roma repubblicana fra norma e persuasione, ed. Bernardo Santalucia, 527–75. Pavia: IUSS Press. Balsdon, J. P. V. D. 1957. “Roman History, 58–56 b.c.: Three Ciceronian Problems.” The Journal of Roman Studies 47 (1/2): 15–20. 1960. “Auctoritas, Dignitas, Otium.” Classical Quarterly, 10 (1), 43–50. 1963. “The Commentariolum Petitionis.” Classical Quarterly, 13 (2), 242–50. Baltussen, Han, and Peter J. Davis. 2015. The Art of Veiled Speech: SelfCensorship from Aristophanes to Hobbes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Baraz, Yelena. 2012. A Written Republic: Cicero’s Philosophical Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Barber, Kimberly A. 2004. Rhetoric in Pro Balbo. New York; London: Routledge. Bartsch, Shadi. 1994. Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Batstone, William W. 1994. “Cicero’s Construction of Consular Êthos in the First Catilinarian.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974–) 124: 211–66. 2009. “The Drama of Rhetoric at Rome.” In The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric, ed. Erik Gunderson, 212–27. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2010. “Caesar’s Republican Rhetoric and the Veils of Autocracy.” In Cesare: precursore o visionario? Atti del convegno internazionale, Cividale del Friuli, 17–19 settembre 2009, ed. Gianpaolo Urso, 181–206. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Batstone, William Wendell, and Cynthia Damon. 2006. Caesar’s Civil War. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Beard, Mary. 2012. “Cicero’s ‘Response of the Haruspices’ and the Voice of the Gods.” Journal of Roman Studies 102: 20–39. Bellemore, Jane. 2005. “Cato’s Opposition to Caesar in 59 BC.” In Roman Crossings: Theory and Practice in the Roman Republic, eds. Kathryn E. Welch and T. W. Hillard, 225–78. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Benner, Herbert. 1987. Die Politik des P. Clodius Pulcher: Untersuchungen zur Denaturierung des Clientelwesens in der ausgehenden römischen Republik. Historia Einzelschriften 50. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.

230

Works Cited

Bergemann, Claudia. 1992. Politik und Religion im spätrepublikanischen Rom. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Bernard, Jacques-Emmanuel. 2007. “Du discours à l’épistolaire: les échos du Pro Plancio dans la lettre de Cicéron à Lentulus Spinther (Fam. I, 9).” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 25 (3): 223–42. Bernett, Monika. 1995. Causarum cognitio: Ciceros Analysen zur politischen Krise der späten römischen Republik. Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag. Berno, Francesca Romana. 2005. “Fuoco e fiamme su Cicerone. Il personaggio di Clodio nella De domo sua.” Pan 23: 113–29. 2007. “La Furia di Clodio in Cicerone.” Bolettino di studi latini 37 (1): 69–91. Bernstein, Neil W. 2017. “Persona, Identity, and Self-Presentation in Roman Declamation.” In Self-Presentation and Identity in the Roman World, ed. Andreas Gavrielatos, 1–16. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Berry, D. H. 1993. “Pompey’s Legal Knowledge – Or Lack of It: Cic. Mil. 70 and the Date of Pro Milone.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 42 (4): 502–4. Billig, Michael. 1991. Ideology and Opinions: Studies in Rhetorical Psychology. London; Newbury Park; New Delhi: SAGE Publications. Bishop, Caroline. 2018. Cicero, Greek Learning, and the Making of a Roman Classic. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Bleicken, Jochen. 1955. Das Volkstribunat der klassischen Republik: Studien zu seiner Entwicklung zwischen 287 und 133 v. Chr. Munich: C. H. Beck. 1962. Senatsgericht und Kaisergericht. Eine Studie zur Entwicklung des Prozessrechtes im frühen Principat. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Kl., 3rd series, No. 53. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1998. Gesammelte Schriften. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Blom, Henriette van der. 2010. Cicero’s Role Models: The Political Strategy of a Newcomer. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2011. “Pompey in the Contio.” Classical Quarterly 61 (2): 553–73. 2014. “Character Attack and Invective Speech in the Roman Republic: Cicero as Target.” In Character Assassination throughout the Ages, eds. Martijn Icks and Eric Shiraev, 37–57. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. 2016. Oratory and Political Career in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2017. “Elite Rhetoric and Self-Presentation: Metellus Numidicus Returns.” In The Theatre of Justice: Aspects of Performance in Greco-Roman Oratory, eds. Sophia Papaioannou, Andreas Serafim, and Beatrice da Vela, 114–32. Mnemosyne Supplement 403. Leiden; Boston: Brill. Bloomer, W. Martin. 1997a. “Schooling in Persona: Imagination and Subordination in Roman Education.” Classical Antiquity 16 (1): 57–78. 1997b. Latinity and Literary Society at Rome. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Works Cited

231

1997c. “A Preface to the History of Declamation: Whose Speech? Whose History?” In The Roman Cultural Revolution, eds. Thomas Habinek and Alessandro Schiesaro, 199–215. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2010. “Roman Declamation: The Elder Seneca and Quintilian.” In A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, eds. William J. Dominik and Jon Hall, 297–306. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2011. The School of Rome: Latin Studies and the Origins of Liberal Education. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Blösel, Wolfgang. 2011. “Die Demilitarisierung der römischen Nobilität von Sulla bis Caesar.” In Von der militia equestris zur militia urbana. Prominenzrollen und Karrierefelder im antiken Rom, eds. Wolfgang Blösel and Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp, 55–80. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Bonnefond-Coudry, Marianne. 1989. Le sénat et la République romaine: De la guerre d’Hannibal à Auguste : pratiques délibératives et prise de décision. Rome: École Française de Rome. Bonner, Stanley Frederick. 1949. Roman Declamation in the Late Republic and Early Empire. Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool. Bonsangue, Valentina. 2013. “L’irosa eloquenza delle strumae.” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 31 (1): 58–72. Booth, Joan. 2007. Cicero on the Attack: Invective and Subversion in the Orations and Beyond. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Botermann, Helga. 1968. Die Soldaten und die römische Politik in der Zeit von Caesars Tod bis zur Begründung des zweiten Triumvirats. Vol. 46. Munich: C. H. Beck. 1992. “Die Generalabrechnung mit dem Tyrannen. Ciceros Rede für den König Deiotarus.” Gymnasium 99: 320–44. Botsford, George Willis. 1909. The Roman Assemblies from Their Origin to the End of the Republic. New York: The MacMillan Company. Bradley, James R. 1991. The Sources of Cornelius Nepos: Selected Lives. Harvard Dissertations in Classics. New York: Garland Pub. Braund, Susanna Morton. 1998. “Praise and Protreptic in Early Imperial Panegyric: Cicero, Seneca, Pliny.” In The Propaganda of Power: The Role of Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. Mary Whitby, 53–76. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. Brennan, T. Corey. 2012. “Perceptions of Women’s Power in the Late Republic: Terentia, Fulvia, and the Generation of 63 bce.” In A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, ed. Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon, 354–66. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Bringmann, Klaus. 1971. Untersuchungen zum späten Cicero. Hypomnemata: Untersuchungen zur Antike und zu ihrem Nachleben 29. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1986. “Der Diktator Caesar als Richter? Zu Ciceros Reden ‘Pro Ligario’ und ‘Pro rege Deiotaro.’” Hermes 114 (1): 72–88.

232

Works Cited

Brunt, P. A. 1965. “‘Amicitia’ in the Late Roman Republic.” The Cambridge Classical Journal 11: 1–20. 1982. “The Legal Issue in Cicero, Pro Balbo.” The Classical Quarterly 32 (1): 136–47. 1984. “The Role of the Senate in the Augustan Regime.” The Classical Quarterly 34 (2): 423–44. 1986. “Cicero’s Officium in the Civil War.” The Journal of Roman Studies 76: 12–32. 1988. The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Büchner, K. 1957. Humanitas Romana: Studien über Werke und Wesen der Römer. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. 1962. “Der Tyrann und sein Gegenbild in Ciceros ‘Staat.’” In Studien zur römischen Literatur. Vol. ii. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Burckhardt, Leonhard Alexander. 1988. Politische Strategien der Optimaten in der späten römischen Republik. Historia, Einzelschriften 57. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Burgers, Peter. 1999. “The Role and Function of Senatorial Debate: The Case of the Reign of Tiberius AD 14–37.” Latomus 58 (3): 564–73. Butler, Judith. 2001. “Giving an Account of Oneself.” Diacritics 31 (4): 22–40. Cape, Robert W., Jr. 1995. “The Rhetoric of Politics in Cicero’s Fourth Catilinarian.” The American Journal of Philology 116 (2): 255–77. Cary, M. 1923. “Asinvs Germanvs.” The Classical Quarterly 17 (2): 103–7. Castorina, Emanuele. 1975. L’ultima oratoria di Cicerone. Catania: N. Giannotta. Cerami, Pietro. 1998. “‘Accusatores Populares’, ‘delatores’, ‘indices’. Tipologia dei ‘collaboratori di giustizia’ nell’antica Roma.” Annali del Seminario Giuridico dell’Università di Palermo 45: 141–79. Cerutti, Steven. 1994. “Further Discussion on the Delivery and Publication of Cicero’s Second Philippic.” The Classical Bulletin 70 (1): 23–8. Chassignet, M. 2001. “La ‘construction’ des aspirants à la tyrannie: Sp. Cassius, Sp. Maelius et Manlius Capitolinus.” In L’invention des grands hommes de la Rome antique. Die Konstruktion der grossen Männer Altroms, eds. Marianne Coudry and Thomas Späth, 83–96. Actes du Colloque du Collegium Beatus Rhenanus, Août 16–18 Septembre 1999. Paris: De Boccard. Christenson, David. 2004. “Unbearding Morality: Appearance and Persuasion in Pro Caelio.” The Classical Journal 100 (1): 61–72. Christian, Emily. 2008. “A Philosophy of Legitimacy in Cicero’s Philippics.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology, eds. Tom Stevenson and Marcus Wilson, 37: 153–67. Prudentia. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd. Cipriani, G. 1977. “La Pro Marcello e il suo significato come orazione politica.” Atene e Roma 22: 113–25. Clark, Mark Edward, and James S. Ruebel. 1985. “Philosophy and Rhetoric in Cicero’s Pro Milone.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, neue Folge 128 (1): 57–72. Classen, Carl Joachim. 1985. Recht, Rhetorik, Politik: Untersuchungen zu Ciceros rhetorischer Strategie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

Works Cited

233

Clemente, Guido. 2018. “When the Senators Became ‘The Best.’” In Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome: Speech, Audience and Decision, eds. Henriette van der Blom, Christa Gray, and Catherine Steel, 203–21. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Connolly, Joy. 2007. The State of Speech: Rhetoric and Political Thought in Ancient Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2011. “Fantastical Realism in Cicero’s Postwar Panegyric.” In Dicere Laudes: Elogio, Comunicazione, Creazione del Consenso: Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Cividale del Friuli, 23–25 Settembre 2010, ed. Gianpaolo Urso, 161–78. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. 2015. The Life of Roman Republicanism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Corbeill, Anthony. 1996. Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2002. “Ciceronian Invective.” In Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric, ed. James M. May, 197–217. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. 2008. “O Singulare Prodigium: Ciceronian Invective as a Religious Expiation.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology, eds. Tom Stevenson and Marcus Wilson, 37: 214–39. Prudentia. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd. 2010. “The Function of a Divinely Inspired Text in Cicero’s De Haruspicum Responsis.” In Form and Function in Roman Oratory, eds. D. H. Berry and Andrew Erskine, 139–54. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2018. “Clodius’ Contio de Haruspicum Responsis.” In Reading Republican Oratory: Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions, eds. Christa Gray, Andrea Balbo, Richard M. A. Marshall, and Catherine E. W. Steel, 171–90. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Cornwell, Hannah. 2017. Pax and the Politics of Peace: Republic to Principate. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Correa, S. 2017. “Consolatio, Memoria e Identidad en las Cartas de Cicerón a Exiliados Pompeyanos del Año 46 AC (Cic fam. 4 y 6).” Athenaeum: Studi di letteratura e storia dell’antichità, no. 2: 551–68. Cottam, Martha L., Elena Mastors, Thomas Preston, and Beth Dietz. 2015. Introduction to Political Psychology: 3rd Edition. New York: Routledge. Coudry, Marianne. 2019. “Electoral Bribery and the Challenge to the Authority of the Senate: Two Aspects of Dio’s View of the Late Roman Republic (Books 36–40).” In Cassius Dio and the Late Roman Republic, edited by Josiah Osgood and Christopher Baron, 36–49. Leiden; Boston: Brill. Coudry, Marianne, and Thomas Späth, eds. 2001. L’invention des grands hommes de la Rome antique. Die Konstruktion der grossen Männer Altroms. Actes du Colloque du Collegium Beatus Rhenanus, Août, 16–18 septembre 1999. Paris: De Boccard. Cousin, Jean. 1962. Discours: Tome XV, Pour Caelius, Sur les provinces consulaires, Pour Balbus. Collection des Universités de France. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.

234

Works Cited

Craig, Christopher P. 1981. “The Accusator as Amicus: An Original Roman Tactic of Ethical Argumentation.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974–) 111 (January): 31–7. 1984. “The Central Argument of Cicero’s Speech for Ligarius.” The Classical Journal 79 (3): 193–9. 1990. “Cicero’s Strategy of Embarrassment in the Speech for Plancius.” The American Journal of Philology 111 (1): 75–81. 1993. Form as Argument in Cicero’s Speeches: A Study of Dilemma. Atlanta: Scholars Press. 2001. “Shifting Charge and Shifty Argument in Cicero’s Speech for Sestius.” In The Orator in Action and Theory in Greece and Rome: Essays in Honor of George A. Kennedy, ed. Cecil W. Wooten, 111–22. Mnemosyne Supplement 225. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. 2002. “Selected Recent Work on Rhetorica and Speeches.” In Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric, ed. James M. May, 503–31. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. 2004. “Audience Expectations, Invective, and Proof.” In Cicero the Advocate, eds. Jonathan Powell and Jeremy Paterson, 187–214. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. “Treating Oratio Figurata in Cicero’s Speeches: The Case of Pro Marcello.” In Papers on Rhetoric IX, ed. Lucia Calboli Montefusco, 91–106. Rome: Herder. 2010. “Cicero as Orator.” In A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, eds. William J. Dominik and Jon Hall, 264–84. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2014. “Rhetorical Expectations and Self-Fashioning in Cicero’s Speech for P. Sulla, §§18–19.” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 32 (3): 211–21. 2017. “Divine and Human in Cicero’s De Provinciis Consularibus.” In Ab omni parte beatus: Classical Essays in Honor of James M. May, ed. Anne H. Groton, 97–120. Mundelein, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. Crawford, Jane W. 1984. The Lost and Unpublished Orations. Hypomnemata: Untersuchungen zur Antike und zu ihrem Nachleben 80. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2017. “Cicero’s Correspondence with Caesar: Two Sides of the Story.” In Ab omni parte beatus: Classical Essays in Honor of James M. May, ed. Anne H. Groton, 181–200. Mundelein, il: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. Crook, J. A. 1995. Legal Advocacy in the Roman World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Culham, Phyllis. 1984. “Tablets and Temples: Documents in Republican Rome.” Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists 2 (2): 3. 1989. “Archives and Alternatives in Republican Rome.” Classical Philology 84 (2): 100–15. Cuny-le Callet, Blandine. 2003. “Un aspect du thème de la monstruosité morale dans la rhétorique cicéronienne: le monstre comme prodige et causeur de prodiges.” In Argumentation et discours politique: Antiquité grecque et latine,

Works Cited

235

Révolution française, monde contemporain, eds. Simone Bonnafous, Pierre Chiron, Dominique Ducard, and Carlos Levy, 203–12. Paris: Presses universitaires de Rennes. David, Jean-Michel. 1980. “Maiorum exempla sequi: l’exemplum historique dans les discours judiciaires de Cicerón.” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modernes 92 (1): 67–86. 1992. Le patronat judiciaire au dernier siècle de la République romaine. Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 277. Rome: École Française de Rome. David, Jean-Michel, Ségolène Demougin, and Élizabeth Deniaux. 1973. “Le Commentariolum Petitionis de Quintus Cicéron: état de la question et étude prosopographique.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt i (3): 239–77. Dawes, Tia. 2014. “Strategies of Persuasion in Philippics 10 and 11.” Classical Quarterly 64: 241–53. De Angelis, Francesco. 2010. “Ius and Space: An Introduction.” In Spaces of Justice in the Roman World, 1–25. Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 35. Leiden; Boston: Brill. De Lacy, Phillip H. 1977. “The Four Stoic Personae.” Illinois Classical Studies 2: 163–72. Dettenhofer, M. H. 1992. Perdita Iuventus. Zwischen den Generationen von Caesar und Augustus. Vestigia 44. Munich: C. H. Beck. Dobesch, Gerhard. 1985. “Politische Bemerkungen zu Ciceros Rede pro Marcello.” In Römische Geschichte, Altertumskunde und Epigraphik: Festschrift für Artur Betz zur Vollendung seines 80. Lebensjahres, eds. E. Weber and G. Dobesch, 153–231. Wien: Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Archäologie. Dressler, Alex. 2016. Personification and the Feminine in Roman Philosophy. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Dufallo, Basil. 2001. “Appius’ Indignation: Gossip, Tradition, and Performance in Republican Rome.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974–2014) 131: 119–42. Dugan, John. 2001. “How to Make (and Break) a Cicero: Epideixis, Textuality, and Self-Fashioning in the Pro Archia and In Pisonem.” Classical Antiquity 20 (1): 35–77. 2005. Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-Fashioning in the Rhetorical Works. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 2009. “Rhetoric and the Roman Republic.” In Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rhetoric, ed. Erik Gunderson, 178–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013. “Cicero and the Politics of Ambiguity: Interpreting the Pro Marcello.” In Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome, eds. Henriette van der Blom and Catherine Steel, 211–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2014. “Non sine causa sed sine fine: Cicero’s Compulsion to Repeat His Consulate.” The Classical Journal 110 (1): 9–22.

236

Works Cited

Duplá Ansuategui, Antonio. 2017. “Incitement to Violence in Late Republican Political Oratory.” In Political Communication in the Roman World, ed. Cristina Rosillo-López, 179–200. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. Dyck, Andrew R. 1998. “Narrative Obfuscation, Philosophical Topoi, and Tragic Patterning in Cicero’s Pro Milone.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 98: 219–41. 2002. “The ‘Other’ Pro Milone Reconsidered.” Philologus 146 (1): 182–5. 2004a. “Cicero’s Devotio: The Rôles of Dux and Scape-Goat in His Post Reditum Rhetoric.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 102: 299–314. 2004b. A Commentary on Cicero, De Legibus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2008. Cicero: Catilinarians. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Dyer, R. R. 1990. “Rhetoric and Intention in Cicero’s Pro Marcello.” Journal of Roman Studies 80: 17–30. Earl, Donald C. 1967. The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Edelman, Murray. 1977. Political Language: Words That Succeed and Policies That Fail. New York: Academic Press. Eder, Walter. 1991. “Who Rules? Power and Participation in Athens and Rome.” In City States in Classical and Medieval Italy, Ann Arbor, eds. Anthony Molho, Kurt A. Raaflaub, and Julia Emlen, 169–96. Stuttgart: F. Steiner. Edwards, Catharine. 1993. The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Epstein, David F. 1987. Personal Enmity in Roman Politics, 218–43 b.c. London: Croom Helm. Evans, Richard. 2008. “Phantoms in the Philippics: Catiline, Clodius and Antonian Parallels.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology, eds. Tom Stevenson and Marcus Wilson, 37: 62–81. Prudentia. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd. Fantham, Elaine. 1975. “The Trials of Gabinius in 54 BC.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte, no. H. 3: 425–43. 2004. The Roman World of Cicero’s De Oratore. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Favory, F. 1976. “Classes dangereuses et crise de l’état dans le discours cicéronien d’après les écrits de Cicéron de 57 à 52.” In Texte, politique, idéologie: Cicéron, 109–233. Annales littéraires de l’Université de Besançon 187. Besançon: Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté. Ferrary, Jean-Louis. 1997. “Optimates et Populares: Le problème du rôle de l’idéologie dans la politique.” In Die späte römische Republik/La fin de la republique romain: Un débat franco-allemand d’histoire et d’historiographie, eds. Hinnerk Bruhns, Jean-Michel David, and Wilfried Nippel, 221–31. Collection de l’École Française de Rome 235. Palais Farnése: École Française de Rome.

Works Cited

237

Ferrary, Jean-Louis, and John Scheid, eds. 2015. Il princeps romano: autocrate o magistrato? Fattori giuridici e fattori sociali del potere imperiale da Augusto a Commodo. Pavia: IUSS. Ferriès, Marie-Claire. 2012. “L’ombre de César dans la politique du consul Marc Antoine.” In César sous Auguste, eds. Olivier Devillers and Karin Sion-Jenkis, 43–54. Ausonius Éditions, Scripta Antiqua 48. Bordeaux: Diffusion de Boccard. Fertik, Harriet. 2017. “Sex, Love, and Leadership in Cicero’s Philippics 1 and 2.” Arethusa 50 (1): 65–88. Fezzi, Luca. 2001. “La legislazione tribunizia di Publio Clodio Pulcro (58 ac) e la ricerca del consenso a Roma.” Studi Classici e Orientali 47 (1): 245–340. Fiore, Benjamin. 1997. “The Theory and Practice of Friendship in Cicero.” In Greco-Roman Perspectives on Friendship, edited by John T. Fitzgerald, 59–76. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Flaig, E. 2003. Ritualisierte Politik: Zeichen, Gesten, und Herrschaft im alten Rom. Historische Semantik, Band 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Flower, Harriet I. 2010. Roman Republics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fotheringham, Lynn. 2006. “Cicero’s Fear: Multiple Readings of Pro Milone 1–4.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 57: 63–83. 2007. “Having Your Cake and Eating It: How Cicero Combines Arguments.” In Logos: Rational Argument in Classical Rhetoric, ed. Jonathan Powell, 69–90. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 96. London: Institute of Classical Studies. 2015. “Plutarch and Dio on Cicero at the Trial of Milo.” In Fame and Infamy: Essays for Christopher Pelling on Characterization in Greek and Roman Biography and Historiography, eds. Rhiannon Ash, Judith Mossman, and Frances B. Titchener, 193–208. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Fotheringham, Lynn S. 2013. Persuasive Language in Cicero’s Pro Milone: A Close Reading and Commentary. London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London. Fraisse, Jean-Claude. 1974. Philia: la notion d’amitié dans la philosophie antique. Bibliothèque d’histoire de la philosophie. Paris: J. Vrin. Frisch, Hartvig. 1946. Cicero’s Fight for the Republic: The Historical Background of Cicero’s Philippics. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Fuhrmann, Manfred. 1992. Cicero and the Roman Republic. Translated by W. E. Yuill. Oxford & Cambridge: Blackwell. Fulkerson, Laurel. 2013. “Cicero’s Palinode: Inconsistency in the Late Republic.” Greece and Rome 60 (2): 246–61. Gagliardi, Paola. 1997. Il dissenso e l’ironia: per una rilettura delle orazioni “cesariane” di Cicerone. Naples: M. D’Auria. Gambet, D. G. 1970. “Cicero in the Works of Seneca Philosophus.” In Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 101: 171–83. Ganter, Angela. 2017. “Patronus und Amicus. Ciceros Tränen als grundlage sozialer Integration.” Ciceroniana online 1 (2).

238

Works Cited

Garcea, Alessandro. 2004. “Le langage des émotions dans les lettres d’exil de Cicéron.” In Epistulae Antiquae iii: Actes du IIIe colloque international L’épistolaire antique et ses prolongements européens. Université FrançoisRabelais, Tours, 25–27 septembre 2002, eds. Léon Nadjo and Élisabeth Gavoille, 153–67. Louvain; Paris: Peeters. Garcea, Alessandro, and Valeria Lomanto. 2014. “Hortensius dans le Brutus: une polémique rhétorique sous forme d’éloge funèbre.” In Le Brutus de Cicéron: rhétorique, politique et histoire culturelle, eds. Sophie Aubert-Baillot and Charles Guérin, 141–60. Leiden; Boston: Brill. Garsten, Bryan. 2009. Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Geffcken, Katherine A. 1973. Comedy in the Pro Caelio: With an Appendix on the In Clodium et Curionem. Wauconda, il: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. Gelzer, Matthias. 1912. Die Nobilität der römischen Republik. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. 1937. “Die Datierung von Ciceros Rede de Haruspicum Responso.” Klio 30 (30): 1–9. 1968. Cicero und Caesar. Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt-Am-Main 7, No. 1. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. George, David B. 1991. “Lucan’s Cato and Stoic Attitudes to the Republic.” Classical Antiquity 10 (2): 237–58. Gerrish, Jennifer. 2018. “Heroic Resonances in Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum 5.” Classical World 111 (3): 351–70. Gildenhard, Ingo. 2007a. Paideia Romana: Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. Cambridge Classical Journal: Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, Supplementary Volume 30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007b. “Greek Auxiliaries: Tragedy and Philosophy in Ciceronian Invective.” In Cicero on the Attack: Invective and Subversion in the Orations and Beyond, ed. Joan Booth, 149–82. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. 2011. Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero’s Speeches. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 2018. “Epistolary Communities in Cicero, 49–44 bce.” In Letters and Communities: Studies in the Socio-Political Dimensions of Ancient Epistolography, edited by Paola Ceccarelli, Lutz Doering, Thorsten Fögen, and Ingo Gildenhard, 205–38. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Gill, Christopher. 1988. “Personhood and Personality: The Four-Personae Theory in Cicero’s De Officiis i.” In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, ed. Julia Annas, 169–99. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Gladhill, Bill. 2018. “Women from the Rostra: Fulvia and the Pro Milone.” In Reading Republican Oratory: Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions, eds. Christa Gray, Andrea Balbo, Richard M. A. Marshall, and Catherine E. W. Steel, 297–308. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Works Cited

239

Goar, R. J. 1987. The Legend of Cato Uticensis from the First Century b.c. to the Fifth Century a. d. Collection Latomus 197. Brussels: Latomus. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face to Face Behavior. New York: Pantheon Books. Gómez Santamaría, Isabel. 2007. “El ‘Pro Marcello’ y el equívoco lenguaje de la resistencia ante el poder.” In Mvnvs qvaesitvm meritis: homenaje a Carmen Codoñer, eds. Carmen Codoñer Merino, Gregorio Hinojo Andrés, and José Hinojo Fernández Corte, 387–94. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca. Goodwin, Jean. 2001. “Cicero’s Authority.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 34 (1): 38–60. Görler, Woldemar. 1988. “From Athens to Tusculum: Gleaning the Background of Cicero’s De Oratore.” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 6 (3): 215–35. Gotoff, Harold C. 1986. “Cicero’s Analysis of the Prosecution Speeches in the Pro Caelio: An Exercise in Practical Criticism.” Classical Philology 81 (2): 122–32. 1993. Cicero’s Caesarian Speeches: A Stylistic Commentary. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2002. “Cicero’s Caesarian Orations.” In Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric, ed. James M. May, 219–71. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. Gotter, Ulrich. 1996. Der Diktator ist tot!: Politik in Rom zwischen den Iden des März und der Begründung des zweiten Triumvirats. Historia Einzelschriften 110. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Gowing, Alain M. 2000. “Memory and Silence in Cicero’s Brutus.” Eranos 98: 39–64. 2013. “Tully’s Boat: Responses to Cicero in the Imperial Period.” In The Cambridge Companion to Cicero, ed. Catherine Steel, 233–50. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Greenblatt, Stephen. 1973. Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles. First Edition. New Haven; London: Yale University Press. 1980. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press. Griffin, Miriam. 1986a. “Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: i.” Greece & Rome, Second Series 33 (1): 64–77. 1986b. “Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: ii.” Greece & Rome, Second Series 33 (2): 192–202. 1997. “The Composition of the Academica: Motives and Versions.” In Assent and Argument: Studies in Cicero’s Academic Books: proceedings of the 7th Symposium Hellenisticum (Utrecht, August 21–25, 1995), eds. B. Inwood and J. Mansfield, 1–35. Leiden; New York: Brill. Grilli, Alberto. 2005. “Populus in Cicerone.” In Popolo e potere nel mondo antico, ed. Gianpaolo Urso, 123–40. Atti del convegno internazionale Cividale del Friuli, 23–25 settembre 2004. Pisa: Edizioni ETS.

240

Works Cited

Grillo, Luca. 2012. The Art of Caesar’s Bellum Civile: Literature, Ideology, and Community. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2015. Cicero’s De Provinciis Consularibus Oratio. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. “The Artistic Architecture and Closural Devices of Cicero’s Ad Familiares 1 and 6.” Arethusa 49 (3): 399–413. Gruen, Erich. 1969. “Pompey, the Roman Aristocracy, and the Conference of Luca.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 18 (1): 71–108. 1974. The Last Generation of the Roman Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1996. “P. Clodius: Instrument or Independent Agent.” Phoenix 20: 120–30. Guerin, Charles. 2009. Persona. L’élaboration d’une notion rhétorique au Ier siècle av. J.-C. Volume I: Antécédents grecs et première rhétorique latine. Textes et traditions 18. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin. Gunderson, Erik. 2000. Staging Masculinity: The Rhetoric of Performance in the Roman World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Habicht, Christian. 1990. Cicero the Politician. Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Habinek, Thomas N. 1990. “Towards a History of Friendly Advice: The Politics of Candor in Cicero’s De Amicitia.” Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 23 (4): 165–85. Habinek, Thomas, and Alessandro Schiesaro, eds. 1997. The Roman Cultural Revolution. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Hall, Edith. 2006. The Theatrical Cast of Athens: Interactions between Ancient Greek Drama and Society. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Hall, Jon. 2002. “The Philippics.” In Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric, ed. James M. May, 273–304. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. 2008. “The Rhetorical Design and Success of Cicero’s Twelfth Philippic.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric, Ideology, eds. Marcus Wilson and Tom Stevenson, 282–304. Prudentia 37–8. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd. 2009a. “Serving the Times: Cicero and Caesar the Dictator.” In Writing Politics in Imperial Rome, eds. William J. Dominik, J. Garthwaite, and P. A. Roche, 89–110. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. 2009b. Politeness and Politics in Cicero’s Letters. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 2013. “Saviour of the Republic and Father of the Fatherland: Cicero and Political Crisis.” In Cambridge Companion to Cicero, ed. Catherine E. W. Steel, 215–29. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2014. Cicero’s Use of Judicial Theater. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Haller, B. 1967. “C. Asinius Pollio als Politiker und zeitkritischer Historiker.” Diss. Münster. Hanchey, Daniel. 2013. “Typically Unique: Shared Strategies in Cicero’s Pro Archia and Pro Balbo.” The Classical Journal 108 (2): 159–86. Hardimon, Michael O. 1994. “Role Obligations.” The Journal of Philosophy 91 (7): 333–63.

Works Cited

241

Hariman, Robert. 1995. Political Style: The Artistry of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harries, Jill. 2004. “Cicero and the Law.” In Cicero the Advocate, eds. Jonathan Powell and Jeremy Paterson, 147–64. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006. Cicero and the Jurists: From Citizen’s Law to the Lawful State. London: Duckworth. Harrison, Ian. 2008. “Catiline, Clodius, and Popular Politics at Rome during the 60s and 50s bce.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 51: 95–118. Haury, Auguste. 1955. L’ironie et l’humour chez Cicéron. Leiden: Brill. Hellegouarc’h, Joseph. 1963. Le vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la République. Publications de la Faculté de Lettres et Sciences humaines de l’Université de Lille, XI. Paris: Société d’édition “Les belles lettres.” Henderson, John. 1997. “Polishing off the Politics: Horace’s Ode to Pollio, 2.1.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 37: 59–136. Hickson-Hahn, Frances. 1998. “What’s So Funny?: Laughter and Incest in Invective Humor.” Syllecta Classica 9 (1): 1–36. Hodgson, Louise. 2017. Res Publica and the Roman Republic: “Without Body or Form.” Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Hölkeskamp, Karl-Joachim. 2010. Reconstructing the Roman Republic: An Ancient Political Culture and Modern Research. Translated by Henry HeitmannGordon. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2011a. “Self-Serving Sermons: Oratory and the Self-Construction of the Republican Aristocrat.” In Praise and Blame in Roman Republican Rhetoric, eds. Christopher Smith and Ralph Covino, 17–34. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. 2011b. “The Roman Republic as Theatre of Power: The Consuls as Leading Actors.” In Consuls and Res Publica: Holding High Office in the Roman Republic, eds. Hans Beck, Antonio Duplá, Martin Jehne, and Francisco Pina Polo, 161–81. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2013. “Friends, Romans, Countrymen: Addressing the Roman People and the Rhetoric of Inclusion.” In Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome, eds. Henriette van der Blom and Catherine Steel, 11–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holmes, T. Rice. 1920. “Cicero’s Παλινω̨δία and Questions Therewith Connected.” The Classical Quarterly 14 (1): 39–45. Hurlet, Frédéric. 2006. “Auguste et Pompée.” Athenaeum 94: 467–85. 2010. “Pouvoirs extraordinaires et tromperie: La tentation de la monarchie à la fin de la République romaine (82–44 av. J.C.).” In Private and Public Lies: The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Graeco-Roman World, eds. Andrew J. Turner, K. O. Chong-Gossard, and Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, 107–30. Leiden, Boston: Brill. 2014. “Les métamorphoses de l’imperium de la République au Principat.” Pallas. Revue d’études antiques, no. 96: 13–33. Jacotot, Mathieu. 2014. “De re publica esset silentium: Pensée politique et histoire de l’éloquence.” In Le Brutus de Cicéron: rhétorique, politique et histoire

242

Works Cited

culturelle, eds. Sophie Aubert-Baillot and Charles Guérin, 193–214. Leiden; Boston: Brill. Jarratt, Susan C. 2019. Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Jarratt, Susan C., and Nedra Reynolds. 1994. “The Splitting Image: Contemporary Feminisms and the Ethics of Êthos.” In Êthos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory, eds. James S. Baumlin and Tita French Baumlin, 37–63. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press. Jehne, Martin. 1995. Demokratie in Rom?: die Rolle des Volkes in der Politik der römischen Republik. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 2006. “Who attended Roman assemblies? Some remarks on political participation in the Roman Republic.” In Repúblicas y ciudadanos: modelos de participación cívica en el mundo antiguo, eds. Francisco Marco Simón, José Remesal Rodríguez, and Francisco Pina Polo, 221–34. Barcelona: Edicions Universitat Barcelona. 2017. “Why the Anti-Caesarians Failed: Political Communication on the Eve of Civil War (51 to 49 bc).” Political Communication in the Roman World. Impact of Empire, 27: 201–27. John, Oliver P., Richard W. Robins, and Lawrence A. Pervin, eds. 2010. Handbook of Personality, Third Edition: Theory and Research. Third edition. New York: The Guilford Press. Jones, C. P. 1970. “Cicero’s Cato.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, neue Folge 113 (2/3): 188–96. Kapust, Daniel. 2018. Flattery and the History of Political Thought. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Karataş, Sema. 2019. Zwischen Bitten und Bestechen: Ambitus in der politischen Kultur der römischen Republik – Der Fall des Cn. Plancius. Hermes Einzelschriften 115. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Kaster, Robert A. 1998. “Becoming ‘CICERO.’” In Style and Tradition: Studies in Honor of Wendell Clausen, eds. P. Knox and C. Foss, 248–63. Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner. 2001. “Controlling Reason: Declamation in Rhetorical Education at Rome.” In Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, edited by Yun Lee Too, 317–37. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. 2005. Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 2006. Cicero: Speech on Behalf of Publius Sestius. Clarendon Ancient History Series. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Keane, Catherine. 2015. Juvenal and the Satiric Emotions. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Keeline, Thomas J. 2018. The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire: The Rhetorical Schoolroom and the Creation of a Cultural Legend. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Kennedy, George. 1968a. “Antony’s Speech at Caesar’s Funeral.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 54 (2): 99–106.

Works Cited

243

1968b. “The Rhetoric of Advocacy in Greece and Rome.” The American Journal of Philology 89 (4): 419–36. 1972. The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 300 b.c.–300 a.d. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kenty, Joanna. 2017. “Messalla Corvinus: Augustan Orator, Ciceronian Statesman.” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 35 (4): 445–74. 2018. “The Political Context of Cicero’s Oration De Domo Sua.” Ciceroniana on Line 2 (2). 2021. “Divided Audience and Figured Speech in Cicero’s Pro Balbo.” American Journal of Philology. Kierdorf, Wilhelm. 1978. “Ciceros Cato: Überlegungen zu einer verlorenen Schrift Ciceros.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 121 (H. 2): 167–184. Knight, Jayne Elizabeth. 2015. “The Politics of Anger in Roman Society: A Study of Orators and Emperors, 70 bce–68 ce.” Diss. University of British Columbia. Kondratieff, Eric J. 2012. “Tribuni Plebis.” In The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger S. Bagnall. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Konstan, David. 1995. “Patrons and Friends.” Classical Philology 90 (4): 328–42. 1997. Friendship in the Classical World. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005. “Friendship and Patronage.” In A Companion to Latin Literature, ed. Stephen Harrison, 345–59. Chichester: Blackwell. Köster, Isabel K. 2014. “Feasting Centaurs and Destructive Consuls in Cicero’s In Pisonem.” Illinois Classical Studies, no. 39: 63–79. Koster, Severin. 1980. Die Invektive in der griechischen und römischen Literatur. Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain. Kroll, Wilhelm. 1933. Die Kultur der ciceronischen Zeit. ii vols. Leipzig: Dieterich. Krostenko, Brian A. 2001. Cicero, Catullus, and the Language of Social Performance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2005. “Style and Ideology in the Pro Marcello.” In Roman Crossings: Theory and Practice in the Roman Republic, eds. Kathryn Welch and T. W. Hillard, 279–312. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Kubiak, David P. 1989. “Piso’s Madness (Cic. in Pis. 21 and 47).” The American Journal of Philology 110 (2): 237–45. Kumaniecki, Kazimierz. 1960. Cicero Mensch – Politiker – Schriftsteller. Warszawa: Państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe. 1970. “Ciceros Cato.” In Forschungen zur römischen Literatur. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Karl Büchner., ed. Walter Wimmel, 168–88. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Kurczyk, Stephanie. 2006. Cicero und die Inszenierung der eigenen Vergangenheit. Cologne; Weimar; Wien: Böhlau. La Bua, Giuseppe. 2019. Cicero and Roman Education: The Reception of the Speeches and Ancient Scholarship. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Lacey, W. K. 1961. “The Tribunate of Curio.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 10 (3): 318–29.

244

Works Cited

1986. Cicero: Second Philippic Oration. Warminster: Aris & Phillips. Langerwerf, Lydia. 2015. “‘To Have Daring Is like a Barrier’: Cicero and Sallust on Catiline’s Audacia.” Greece & Rome (Second Series) 62 (2): 155–66. Larsen, Julian. 2008. “Cicero, Antony, and the Senatus Consultum Ultimum in the Second Philippic.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology, eds. Tom Stevenson and Marcus Wilson, 37:168–80. Prudentia. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd. Laser, Günter. 1997. Populo et scaenae serviendum est: Die Bedeutung der städtischen Masse in der späten römischen Republik. Bochumer altertumswissenschaftliches Colloquium 29. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Lazenby, J. F. 1959. “The Conference of Luca and the Gallic War: A Study in Roman Politics 57–55 b.c.” Latomus 18 (1): 67–76. Leach, Eleanor Winsor. 1990. “The Politics of Self-Presentation: Pliny’s ‘Letters’ and Roman Portrait Sculpture.” Classical Antiquity 9 (1): 14–39. 1999. “Ciceronian ‘Bi-Marcus’: Correspondence with M. Terentius Varro and L. Papirius Paetus in 46 b.c.e.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974–2014) 129: 139–79. 2001. “Gendering Clodius.” The Classical World 94 (4): 335–59. 2006. “An Gravius Aliquid Scribam: Roman Seniores Write to Iuvenes.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 136 (2): 247–67. Ledentu, Marie. 2004. Studium Scribendi: Recherches sur les statuts de l’écrivain et de l’écriture à Rome à la fin de la république. Bibliothèque d’études classiques 39. Louvain; Paris; Dudley, MA: Peeters Publishers. Leff, Michael. 1998. “Cicero’s Pro Murena and the Strong Case for Rhetoric.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 1 (1): 61–88. Lehmann, Gustav Adolf. 2004. “Der Beginn der Res Gestae des Augustus und das politische Exemplum des Cn. Pompeius Magnus.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 148: 151–62. Lenaghan, John O. 1970. A Commentary on Cicero’s Oration De Haruspicum Responso. Berlin; Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Leon, Harry J. 1935. “The Technique of Emotional Appeal in Cicero’s Judicial Speeches.” The Classical Weekly 29 (5): 33–7. Levick, Barbara. 1986. “The Politics of the Early Principate.” In Roman Political Life 90 b.c. – a.d. 69, ed. T. P. Wiseman, reprint, 45–75. Exeter Studies in History 7. Exeter: University of Exeter. Lévy, C. 1998. “Rhétorique et philosophie: la monstruosité politique chez Cicéron.” Revue des études latines 76: 139–57. Libero, Lorentana de. 1992. Obstruktion: Politische Praktiken im Senat und in der Volksversammlung der ausgehenden römischen Republik (70–49 v. Chr.). Hermes Einzelschriften 59. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Lintott, Andrew. 1967. “P. Clodius – Felix Catilina?” Greece and Rome 14: 157–69. 1974. “Cicero and Milo.” Journal of Roman Studies 64: 62–78. 1999a. The Constitution of the Roman Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1999b. Violence in Republican Rome. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Works Cited

245

2004. “Legal Procedure in Cicero’s Time.” In Cicero the Advocate, eds. Jonathan Powell and Jeremy Paterson, 61–78. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. Cicero as Evidence: A Historian’s Companion. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Livadiotti, Umberto. 2017. La forza del nome: identità politica e mobilitazione popolare nella Roma tardorepubblicana. Rome: Artemide. Lobur, John Alexander. 2008. Consensus, Concordia and the Formation of Roman Imperial Ideology. New York: Routledge. Long, A. A. 1995. “Cicero’s Politics in De Officiis.” In Justice and Generosity: Studies in Hellenistic Social and Political Philosophy, Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium Hellenisticum, eds. André Laks and Malcolm Schofield, 213–40. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. “Cicero’s Politics in De Officiis.” In From Epicurus to Epictetus: Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy, 307–34. Oxford: Clarendon Press. López Pérez, Mercedes. 2018. “Fulvia Flacca Bambalia, la primera mujer al servicio del poder en Roma, o la creación de un personaje literario.” In Mujer y poder en la Antigua Roma, eds. Gonzalo Bravo, Sabino Perea Yébenes, and Fernando Fernández Palacios, 85–101. Madrid; Salamanca: Signifer Libros. Loutsch, Claude. 1984. “Ironie et liberté de parole: remarques sur l’exorde ad principem du Pro Ligario de Cicéron.” Revue des études latines 62: 98–110. Lowe, Dunstan. 2018. “Loud and Proud: The Voice of the Praeco in Roman Love Elegy.” In Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature, edited by Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison, 149–68. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Lowrie, Michele. 2007. “Making an Exemplum of Yourself: Cicero and Augustus.” In Classical Constructions: Papers in Memory of Don Fowler, Classicist and Epicurean, edited by S. J. Heyworth, 91–112. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. “Cicero on Caesar or Exemplum and Inability in the Brutus.” In Vom SelbstVerständnis in Antike und Neuzeit/ Notions of the Self in Antiquity and Beyond, eds. Alexander Arweiler and Melanie Möller, 131–54. Berlin; Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Luibheid, Colm. 1970. “The Luca Conference.” Classical Philology 65 (2): 88–94. Luke, Trevor S., ed. 2014. “Cicero’s Epic and Civic Theologies of Departure and Return.” In Ushering in a New Republic: Theologies of Arrival at Rome in the First Century BCE, 88–112. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. MacKendrick, Paul Lachlan. 1995. The Speeches of Cicero: Context, Law, Rhetoric. ed. Emmett Leslie Bennett. London: Duckworth. Mackie, Nicola. 1992. “Popularis Ideology and Popular Politics at Rome in the First Century b.c.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, neue Folge 135 (1): 49–73. Mahy, Trevor. 2013. “Antonius, Triumvir and Orator: Career, Style, and Effectiveness.” In Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome, eds. Henriette van der Blom and Catherine Steel, 329–44. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

246

Works Cited

Manuwald, Gesine. 2004. “Performance and Rhetoric in Cicero’s Philippics.” Antichthon 38 (1): 51–69. 2007. Cicero, Philippics 3–9. Vol. ii. Berlin; New York: Walter de Gruyter. 2008. “Cicero Versus Antonius. On the Structure and Construction of the Philippics Collection.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology, eds. Tom Stevenson and Marcus Wilson, 37: 39–61. Prudentia. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd. 2011. “Ciceronian Praise as a Step to Pliny’s Panegyricus.” In Pliny’s Praise: The Panegyricus in the Roman World, ed. Paul Roche, 85–103. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012. “The Speeches to the People in Cicero’s Oratorical Corpora.” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 30 (2): 153–75. 2014. Cicero. Understanding Classics. London; New York: I. B. Tauris. 2018. “Senatus Me Auctore Decrevit (Cic. Phil. 6 1): On the Use and Functions of Senate Decrees in Cicero’s Political Speeches.” In Rappresentazione e uso dei senatus consulta nelle fonti letterarie della repubblica e del primo principato/ Darstellung und Gebrauch der Senatus Consulta in den literarischen Quellen der Republik und der frühen Kaiserzeit, eds. Andrea Balbo, Pierangelo Buongiorno, and Ermanno Malaspina, 37–56. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Marchese, Rosa Rita. 2014. “Speech and Silence in Cicero’s Final Days.” The Classical Journal 110 (1): 77–98. Marchetti, Sandra Citroni. 1999. “Volontà degli amici ed esercizio del potere in Cicerone.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 42: 65–94. Maric, Lazar. 2014. “Sincere Humans and Insincere Beasts: Cicero’s Politics of Humanity.” Antichthon 48 (January): 77–94. Marini Avonzo, F. de. 1957. La funzione giurisdizionale del senato romano. Milan: Guiffrè. Marrone, Giovannella Cresci. 2005. “‘Voi chi siete popolo . . . ’ Popolo ed esercito nella concezione cesariana ed augustea.” In Popolo e potere nel mondo antico: atti del convegno internazionale, Cividale del Friuli, 23–25 settembre 2004, ed. Gianpaolo Urso, 157–72. Pisa: ETS. Marshall, B. A. 1976. Crassus: A Political Biography. Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert. 1987. “Excepta Oratio, the Other “Pro Milone” and the Question of Shorthand.” Latomus 46 (Fasc. 4): 730–6. Masciantonio, Rudolph. 1967. “Balbus the Unique.” The Classical World 61 (4): 134–8. Mauss, Marcel. 1985. “A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person; the Notion of Self.” trans. W. D. Halls. In The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, eds. Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes, 1–25. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. May, James M. 1988. Trials of Character: The Eloquence of Ciceronian Êthos. Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press. 1995. “Patron and Client, Father and Son in Cicero’s ‘Pro Caelio.’” The Classical Journal 90 (4): 433–41.

Works Cited

247

1996. “Cicero and the Beasts.” Syllecta Classica 7: 143–53. 2001. “Cicero’s Pro Milone: An Ideal Speech of an Ideal Orator.” In The Orator in Action and Theory in Greece and Rome: Essays in Honor of George A. Kennedy, ed. Cecil W. Wooten, 123–36. Leiden, Boston: Brill. Mcadams, Dan P. 2006. “The Problem of Narrative Coherence.” Journal of Constructivist Psychology 19 (2): 109–25. Meier, Christian. 1966. Res publica amissa: eine Studie zu Verfassung und Geschichte der späten römischen Republik. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Meister, Jan B. 2013. “Adventus und Profectio: aristokratisches Prestige, Bindungswesen und Raumkonzepte im republikanischen und frühkaiserzeitlichen Rom.” Museum Helveticum 70 (1): 33–56. Melchior, Aislinn. 2008. “Twinned Fortunes and the Publication of Cicero’s Pro Milone.” Classical Philology 103 (3): 282–97. Meyer, Eduard. 1918. Caesars Monarchie und das Principat des Pompejus: innere Geschichte Roms von 66 bis 44 v. Chr. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta. Meyer, Inga. 2003. “Die Datierung von Ciceros Rede de haruspicum responso.” Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft 6: 97–109. 2006. Von der Vision zur Reform: der Staat der Gesetze: Ciceros Programm einer Neuordnung der römischen Republik, 56–51 v. Chr. Quellen und Forschungen zur antiken Welt; Bd. 50. München: Utz. Michel, Jacques. 1962. Gratuité en droit romain. Études d’histoire et d’ethnologie juridiques. Brussels: Institut de Sociologie de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles. Millar, Fergus. 1984. “The Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic, 200–151 b.c.” The Journal of Roman Studies 74: 1–19. 1986. “Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (150–90 b.c.).” Journal of Roman Studies 76: 1–11. 1998. The Crowd in Rome. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Mitchell, Thomas N. 1969. “Cicero before Luca (September 57–April 56 b.c.).” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 100: 295–320. 1991. Cicero: The Senior Statesman. New Haven: Yale University Press. Moatti, Claudia. 1997. La raison de Rome: naissance de l’esprit critique à la fin de la République (iie-ier siècle avant Jésus-Christ). Paris: Éditions du Seuil. 2018. Res publica: Histoire romaine de la chose publique. Paris: Fayard. Möller, Melanie. 2004. Talis oratio – qualis vita: zu Theorie und Praxis mimetischer Verfahren in der griechisch-römischen Literaturkritik. Bibliothek der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 2.Reihe, B. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Mommsen, Theodor. 1996. The History of Rome. Translated by William Purdie Dickson. Reprint of 1894 edition. Vol. v. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press. Montague, Holly W. 1992. “Advocacy and Politics: The Paradox of Cicero’s Pro Ligario.” The American Journal of Philology 113 (4): 559–74. Monteleone, Ciro. 2003. La Terza Filippica di Cicerone: retorica e regolamento del Senato, legalità e rapporti di forza. Fasano: Schena.

248

Works Cited

Moreau, Philippe. 2003. “Donner la parole au peuple? Rhétorique et manipulation des contiones à la fin de la République romaine.” In Argumentation et discours politique: Antiquité grecque et latine, Révolution française, monde contemporain, eds. Simone Bonnafous, Pierre Chiron, Dominique Ducard, and Carlos Levy, 175–90. Paris: Presses universitaires de Rennes. 2012. “Exiler Cicéron. La lex Clodia de capite ciuis (58 avant J.-C.) a-t-elle comporté une clause de serment.” In La société romaine et ses élites. Hommages à Élisabeth Deniaux, eds. R. Baudry and S. Destephen, 35–42. Paris: Picard. Morgan, Llewelyn. 2000. “The Autopsy of C. Asinius Pollio.” Journal of Roman Studies 90: 51–69. Morrell, Kit. 2015. “Cato, Caesar, and the Germani.” Antichthon 49 (November): 73–93. 2017. Pompey, Cato, and the Governance of the Roman Empire. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 2018a. “‘Certain Gentlemen Say . . . ’: Cicero, Cato, and the Debate on the Validity of Clodius’ Laws.” In Reading Republican Oratory: Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions, eds. Christa Gray, Andrea Balbo, Richard M. A. Marshall, and Catherine E. W. Steel, 191–210. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 2018b. “Cato, Pompey’s Third Consulship and the Politics of Milo’s Trial.” In Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome: Speech, Audience and Decision, eds. Henriette van der Blom, Christa Gray, and Catherine Steel, 165–80. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Morstein-Marx, Robert. 2004. Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007. “Caesar’s Alleged Fear of Prosecution and His ‘Ratio Absentis’ in the Approach to the Civil War.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte, Bd. 56, H. 2: 159–78. 2013. “‘Cultural Hegemony’ and the Communicative Power of the Roman Elite.” In Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome, eds. Henriette van der Blom and Catherine Steel, 29–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mouritsen, Henrik. 2001. Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2013. “From Meeting to Text: The Contio in the Late Republic.” In Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome, eds. Henriette van der Blom and Catherine Steel, 63–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2017. Politics in the Roman Republic. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Münzer, Friedrich. 1920. Römische Adelsparteien und Adelsfamilien. Stuttgart: Metzler. Nardo, Dante. 1970. Il commentariolum petitionis. La propaganda elettorale nella “Ars” di Quinto Cicerone. Padua: Liviana Scolastica.

Works Cited

249

Narducci, Emanuele. 1997. Cicerone e l’eloquenza romana: Retorica e progetto culturale. Quadrante 86. Roma: Editori Laterza. 2002. Aspetti della fortuna di Cicerone nella cultura latina. Atti del 3. Symposium Ciceronianum Arpinas. Florence: Felice le Monnier. 2004. Cicerone e i suoi interpreti: Studi sull’ opera e la fortuna. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Nédoncelle, Maurice. 1948. “Prosopon et Persona dans l’antiquité Classique. Essai de bilan linguistique.” Revue des sciences religieuses 22 (3): 277–99. Neel, Jaclyn. 2017. “Cicero’s Rhetoric of Terror.” Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada 14 (3): 437–53. Nicholson, John. 1992. Cicero’s Return from Exile: The Orations Post Reditum. New York: Peter Lang. Nippel, Wilfried. 1995. Public Order in Ancient Rome. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Nisbet, R. G. M. 1939. M. Tulli Ciceronis De domo sua ad pontifices oratio. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1961. In L. Calpurnium Pisonem. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 1996. “Aristotle on Emotions and Rational Persuasion.” In Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, ed. Amélie Rorty, 303–23. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nybakken, Oscar E. 1939. “Humanitas Romana.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 70: 396–413. O’Gorman, Ellen. 2019. “‘The Noise, and the People’: Popular Clamor and Political Discourse in Latin Historiography.” In Complex Inferiorities: The Poetics of the Weaker Voice in Latin Literature, edited by Sebastian Matzner and Stephen Harrison, 129–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oliensis, Ellen. 1998. Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Opelt, Ilona. 1965. Die Lateinischen Schimpfwörter und verwandte sprachliche Erscheinungen: eine Typologie. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Osgood, Josiah. 2006. “Eloquence under the Triumvirs.” American Journal of Philology 127 (4): 525–51. 2009. “The Pen and the Sword: Writing and Conquest in Caesar’s Gaul.” Classical Antiquity 28 (2): 328–58. Östenberg, Ida. 2019. “Dulce et Decorum. Dying for the Fatherland (or Not) in Ancient Rome.” Lecture presented at the FIEC/CA 2019, University College London, July 8. Paananen, Unto. 1972. Sallust’s Politico-Social Terminology: Its Use and Biographical Significance. Annales Acad. Scient. Fennicae, Series B 175. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica. Papaioannou, Sophia, Andreas Serafim, and Beatrice da Vela, eds. 2017. The Theatre of Justice: Aspects of Performance in Greco-Roman Oratory. Mnemosyne Supplement 403. Leiden; Boston: Brill. Parks, E. Patrick. 1945. The Roman Rhetorical Schools as a Preparation for the Courts under the Early Empire. The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science lxiii 2. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.

250

Works Cited

Paulhus, Delroy L., and Paul D. Trapnell. 2008. “Self-Presentation of Personality: An Agency-Communion Framework.” In Handbook of Personality Psychology, 19: 492–517. Peer, Ayelet. 2008. “Cicero’s Last Caesarian Speech: The Pro Rege Deiotaro as a Final Warning before the Ides of March.” In Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History XIV, ed. Carl Deroux, 189–208. Collection Latomus 315. Brussels: Éditions Latomus. 2015. Julius Caesar’s Bellum Civile and the Composition of a New Reality. Farnham; Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Pernot, Laurent. 1993. La rhétorique de l’éloge dans le monde gréco-romain. Collection des études Augustiniennes. Série Antiquité. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes. 2015. Epideictic Rhetoric: Questioning the Stakes of Ancient Praise. Austin: University of Texas Press. Petrone, G. 1978. “La parola e l’interdetto. Note alla “pro Rege Deiotaro” e alle orazioni cesariane.” Pan 6: 85–104. Pieper, Christoph. 2014. “Memoria Saeptus: Cicero and the Mastery of Memory in His (Post-) Consular Speeches.” Symbolae Osloenses 88 (1): 42–69. Pina Polo, Francisco. 1989. Las contiones civiles y militares en Roma. Monografías de historia antigua. Zaragoza: Departamento de Ciencias de la Antiguedad, Universidad de Zaragoza. 1994. “Ideología y práctica política en la Roma tardorrepublicana.” Gerión 12: 69–94. 1997. Contra arma verbis: El orador ante el pueblo en la Roma tardorrepublicana. Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico. 2004. “Die nützliche Erinnerung: Geschichtsschreibung, ‘Mos Maiorum’ und die römische Identität.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 53 (2): 147–72. 2006. “The Tyrant Must Die: Preventative Tyrannicide in Roman Political Thought.” In Repúblicas y ciudadanos: modelos de participación cívica en el mundo antiguo, eds. Francisco Marco Simón, José Remesal Rodríguez, and Francisco Pina Polo, 71–101. Barcelona: Edicions Universitat Barcelona. 2011. “Public Speaking in Rome: A Question of Auctoritas.” In The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World, ed. Michael Peachin. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 2018. “Political Alliances and Rivalries in Contiones in the Late Roman Republic.” In Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome: Speech, Audience and Decision, eds. Henriette van der Blom, Christa Gray, and Catherine Steel, 107–27. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Pitcher, Roger A. 2008. “The Second Philippic as a Source for Aristocratic Values.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology, eds. Tom Stevenson and Marcus Wilson: 131–9. Prudentia. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd.

Works Cited

251

Pocock, L. G. 1926. A Commentary on Cicero in Vatinium. Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert. Powell, J. G. F. 2007. “Invective and the Orator: Ciceronian Theory and Practice.” In Cicero on the Attack: Invective and Subversion in the Orations and Beyond, ed. Joan Booth, 1–25. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Prost, François. 2003. “Un cas de constitution d’un genre: les discours de retour d’exil de Cicéron à la lumière du De oratore.” In Argumentation et discours politique: Antiquité grecque et latine, Révolution française, monde contemporain, eds. Simone Bonnafous, Pierre Chiron, Dominique Ducard, and Carlos Levy, 29–38. Paris: Presses universitaires de Rennes. Raaflaub, Kurt A. 1974. Dignitatis contentio. Munich: C. H. Beck. 2010a. “Creating a Grand Coalition of True Roman Citizens: On Caesar’s Political Strategy in the Civil War.” In Citizens of Discord: Rome and Its Civil Wars, eds. Brian W. Breed, Cynthia Damon, and Andreola Rossi, 159–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010b. “Poker um Macht und Freiheit: Caesars Bürgerkrieg als Wendepunkt im Übergang von der Republik zur Monarchie.” In Zwischen Monarchie und Republik: gesellschaftliche Stabilisierungsleistungen und politische Transformationspotentiale in den antiken Stadtstaaten, eds. Bernhard Linke, Mischa Meier, and Meret Strothmann, 163–86. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Raaflaub, Kurt A., and Mark Toher, eds. 1990. Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rabe, Anne Meredith. 2015. “Innovation and Invective in Cicero’s Violent Metaphors.” Diss. Providence: Brown University. Ramage, Edwin S. 1963. “Urbanitas: Cicero and Quintilian, a Contrast in Attitudes.” The American Journal of Philology 84 (4): 390–414. Rambaud, M. 1984. “Le Pro Marcello et l’insinuation politique.” Caesarodunum 19: 43–56. Ramsey, John T. 2003. Cicero: Philippics I–II. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2010. “Debate at a Distance: A Unique Rhetorical Strategy in Cicero’s Thirteenth Philippic.” In Form and Function in Roman Oratory, eds. D. H. Berry and Andrew Erskine, 155–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2016. “How and Why Was Pompey Made Sole Consul in 52 BC?” Historia 65 (3): 298–324. Rawson, Beryl. 1978. The Politics of Friendship: Pompey and Cicero. Sydney: Sydney University Press. Rawson, Elizabeth. 1975. Cicero: A Portrait. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rees, R. D. 2011. “The Whole Truth? Laudationes in the Courtroom.” In Praise and Blame in Roman Republican Rhetoric, eds. Christopher Smith and Ralph Covino, 83–98. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Remer, Gary. 2017. Ethics and the Orator: The Ciceronian Tradition of Political Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

252

Works Cited

Reynolds, Nedra. 1993. “Êthos as Location: New Sites for Understanding Discursive Authority.” Rhetoric Review 11 (2): 325–38. Richardson, John S. 1971. “The Commentariolum Petitionis.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte, no. H. 4: 436–42. Richlin, Amy. 2002. “Cicero’s Head.” In Constructions of the Classical Body, ed. James I. Porter, 190–211. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2011. “Old Boys: Teacher-Student Bonding in Roman Oratory.” The Classical World 105 (1): 91–107. Riemer, Ulrike. 2001. Das Caesarbild Ciceros. Hamburg: Kovac. Riggsby, Andrew M. 1995. “Appropriation and Reversal as a Basis for Oratorical Proof.” Classical Philology 90 (3): 245–56. 1997. “Did the Romans Believe in Their Verdicts?” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 15 (3): 235–51. 1998. “Self and Community in the Younger Pliny.” Arethusa 31 (1): 75–97. 2002. “The Post Reditum Speeches.” In Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric, ed. James M. May, 159–96. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. 2017. “Cicero, Documents and the Implications for History.” In Omnium Annalium Monumenta: Historical Writing and Historical Evidence in Republican Rome, eds. Kaj Sandberg and Christopher Smith, 257–78. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. Robb, M. A. 2010. Beyond Populares and Optimates: Political Language in the Late Republic. Historia Einzelschriften 213. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Roller, Matthew. 1997. “Color-Blindness: Cicero’s Death, Declamation, and the Production of History.” Classical Philology 92 (2): 109–30. 2001. Constructing Autocracy: Aristocrats and Emperors in Julio-Claudian Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2004. “Exemplarity in Roman Culture: The Cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia.” Classical Philology 99 (1): 1–56. 2009. “The Exemplary Past in Roman Historiography and Culture.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians, ed. Andrew Feldherr, 214–30. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2010. “Demolished Houses, Monumentality, and Memory in Roman Culture.” Classical Antiquity 29 (1): 117–80. 2018. Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Ronald, Kate. 1990. “A Reexamination of Personal and Public Discourse in Classical Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review 9 (1): 36–48. Rose, Peter. 1995. “Cicero and the Rhetoric of Imperialism: Putting the Politics Back into Political Rhetoric.” Rhetorica 13 (4): 359–99. Rosillo-López, Cristina. 2010. “Praising Caesar: Towards the Construction of an Autocratic Ruler’s Image Between the Roman Republic and the Empire.” In Praise and Blame in Roman Republican Rhetoric, eds. Christopher Smith and Ralph Covino, 181–98. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. 2017a. Public Opinion and Politics in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Works Cited

253

2017b. “Informal Conversations between Senators in the Late Roman Republic.” In Political Communication in the Roman World, ed. Cristina Rosillo-López, 17–33. Leiden; Boston: Brill. ed. 2017c. Political Communication in the Roman World. Leiden; Boston: Brill. 2018. “Political Participation and the Identification of Politicians in the Late Roman Republic.” In Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome: Speech, Audience and Decision, eds. Henriette van der Blom, Christa Gray, and Catherine Steel, 69–87. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Rubio, Lisardo. 1954. M. Tulio Cicerón: Defensa de L. C. Balbo. Filologia Clasica, xiv. Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. Ruch, Michel. 1965. Cicéron pour Marcellus. Érasme: collection de textes latins commentés. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Rudich, Vasily. 1985. “Accommodation to a Corrupt Reality: Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus.” The Ancient World 11: 95–100. 1993. Political Dissidence under Nero: The Price of Dissimulation. Oxford: Routledge. 2006. “Navigating the Uncertain: Literature and Censorship in the Early Roman Empire.” Arion, Third Series 14: 7–28. Rundell, W. M. F. 1979. “Cicero and Clodius: The Question of Credibility.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 28 (3): 301–28. Russell, Amy. 2013. “Speech, Competition, and Collaboration: Tribunician Politics and the Development of Popular Ideology.” In Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome, eds. Henriette van der Blom and Catherine Steel, 101–15. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rutledge, Steven H. 1999. “Delatores and the Tradition of Violence in Roman Oratory.” American Journal of Philology 120 (4): 555–73. 2001. Imperial Inquisitions: Prosecutors and Informants from Tiberius to Domitian. London; New York: Routledge. 2010. “Oratory and Politics in the Empire.” In A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, eds. William J. Dominik and Jon Hall, 109–21. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Ryan, Francis X. 1998. Rank and Participation in the Republican Senate. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Saller, Richard. 1989. “Patronage and Friendship in Early Imperial Rome: Drawing the Distinction.” In Patronage in Ancient Society, 49–62. London: Routledge. Samponaro, Laura M. 2007. “Style and Character in Ciceronian Oratory.” Diss. Columbia University. Sansen, Raymond. 1975. “Doctrine de l’amitié chez Cicéron: exposé, source, critique, influence.” Thèse Paris IV, 1972, Lille: Université de Lille. Santangelo, Federico. 2006. “Sulla and the Senate: A Reconsideration.” Cahiers du Centre Gustave Glotz 17: 7–22. Sattler, Peter. 1960. Augustus und der Senat. Untersuchungen zur römischen Innenpolitik zwischen 30 und 17 v. Christus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

254

Works Cited

Sauer, Vera. 2013. Religiöses in der politischen Argumentation der späten römischen Republik: Ciceros Erste Catilinarische Rede – eine Fallstudie. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Scatolin, Adriano. 2018. “Cicero’s Praise of Caesar in the Pro Marcello – a Reassessment of a Rhetorical Strategy.” In Papers on Rhetoric 16, eds. Lucia Calboli Montefusco and Maria Silvana Celentano, 135–50. Perugia: Editrice Pliniana. Schmidt, Peter L. 1978. “Cicero’s Place in Roman Philosophy: A Study of His Prefaces.” Classical Journal 74 (2): 115–27. Schmitthenner, Walter. 1960. “Politik und Armee in der späten römischen Republik.” Historische Zeitschrift 190 (1): 1–17. Schofield, Malcolm. 1995. “Cicero’s Definition of Res Publica.” In Cicero the Philosopher: Twelve Papers, ed. J. G. F. Powell, 63–83. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Schulz, Johannes. 2009. Das Verhältnis zwischen Augustus und dem Senat zwischen 24 v. Chr. und 13 n. Chr.: Kaiser Augustus und der Senat bzw. der Hochadel. München: GRIN Verlag. Schwindt, Jürgen Paul. 2000. Prolegomena zu einer “Phänomenologie” der römischen Literaturgeschichtsschreibung: von den Anfängen bis Quintilian. Hypomnemata: Untersuchungen zur Antike und zu ihrem Nachleben 130. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Seager, Robin. 1972. “Cicero and the Word Popularis.” The Classical Quarterly, New Series 22 (2): 328–38. 2014. “The (Re/De)Construction of Clodius in Cicero’s Speeches.” The Classical Quarterly 64: 226–40. Seel, O. 1953. Cicero: Wort, Staat, Welt. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett. Settle, James N. 1963. “The Trial of Milo and the Other Pro Milone.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 94: 268–80. Shackleton Bailey, D. R. 1971. Cicero. Classical Life and Letters. London: Duckworth. 1980. Cicero: Select Letters. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004. Cicero: Letters to Atticus: Volume 3, Books 5–7.9. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Sherwin-White, A. N. 1956. “Violence in Roman Politics.” The Journal of Roman Studies 46: 1–9. Sluiter, Ineke, and Ralph Rosen. 2004. “General Introduction.” In Free Speech in Classical Antiquity, eds. Ineke Sluiter and Ralph Rosen, 1–20. Penn-Leiden Colloquium on Ancient Values (2nd: 2002, University of Pennsylvania). Mnemosyne Supplementum 2. Leiden: Brill. Smethurst, S. E. 1958. “Cicero and the Senate.” The Classical Journal 54 (2): 73–8. Smith, R. E. 1966. Cicero the Statesman. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Sontag, Susan. 1969. “The Aesthetics of Silence.” Styles of Radical Will 3: 34. Sorabji, Richard. 2014. Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life, and Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Works Cited

255

Sordi, Marta, ed. 1996. Processi e politica nel mondo antico. Contributi dell’Istituto di storia antico 22. Milano: Pubblicazioni dell’Università Cattolica del Sacro Cruore. Stanton, G. R. 2003. “Why Did Caesar Cross the Rubicon?” Historia 52 (1): 67–94. Steel, Catherine E. W. 2001. Cicero, Rhetoric, and Empire. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 2002. “Cicero’s Brutus: The End of Oratory and the Beginning of History?” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 46: 195–211. 2005. Reading Cicero. London: Duckworth. 2007. “Name and Shame? Invective against Clodius and Others in the Post-Exile Speeches.” In Cicero on the Attack: Invective and Subversion in the Orations and Beyond, ed. Joan Booth, 105–27. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. 2008. “Finessing Failure: The Sixth Philippic.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric, Ideology, eds. Marcus Wilson and Tom Stevenson, 255–65. Prudentia 37. Auckland, NZ: Polygraphia Ltd. 2010. “Tribunician Sacrosanctity and Oratorical Performance in the Late Republic.” In Form and Function in Roman Oratory, eds. D. H. Berry and Andrew Erskine, 37–50. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2011. “Cicero’s Oratory of Praise and Blame and the Practice of Elections in the Late Roman Republic.” In Praise and Blame in Roman Republican Rhetoric, eds. Christopher Smith and Ralph Covino, 35–48. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. 2013. The End of the Roman Republic 146 to 44 bc: Conquest and Crisis. The Edinburgh History of Ancient Rome. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2014a. “Rethinking Sulla: The Case of the Roman Senate.” The Classical Quarterly 64 (2): 657–68. 2014b. “The Roman Senate and the Post-Sullan Res Publica.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 63 (3): 323–39. 2015. “Introduction: The Legacy of the Republican Roman Senate.” Classical Receptions Journal 7 (January): 1–10. 2016. “Early Career Prosecutors: Forensic Activity and Senatorial Careers in the Late Republic.” In Cicero’s Law: Rethinking Roman Law of the Late Republic, ed. Paul J. Du Plessis, 205–27. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2017. “Re Publica Nihil Desperatius: Salvaging the State in Cicero’s Pre-Civil War Philosophical Works.” In Philosophie in Rom – römische Philosophie? Kultur-, literatur- und philosophiegeschichtliche Perspektiven, eds. Gernot Michael Müller and Fosca Mariani Zini, 269–82. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 358. Berlin: De Gruyter. Steel, Catherine, and Henriette van der Blom, eds. 2013. Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steel, Catherine E. W., Christa Gray, and Henriette van der Blom. 2018. “Introduction.” In Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome: Speech, Audience and Decision, eds. Henriette van der Blom, Christa Gray, and Catherine Steel, 1–12. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

256

Works Cited

Stem, Rex. 2005. “The First Eloquent Stoic: Cicero on Cato the Younger.” The Classical Journal 101 (1), 37–49. Stevenson, Tom. 2008. “Tyrants, Kings, and Fathers in the Philippics.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology, eds. Tom Stevenson and Marcus Wilson, 95–113. Prudentia 37. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd. 2009. “Antony as ‘Tyrant’ in Cicero’s First Philippic.” Ramus 38 (2): 174–86. Stevenson, Tom, and Marcus Wilson. 2008. “Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology, 1–21. Prudentia 37. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd. Stockton, David L. 1971. Cicero: A Political Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stone, A. M. 1980. “Pro Milone: Cicero’s Second Thoughts.” Antichthon 14: 88–111. 2005. “Optimates: An Archaeology.” In Roman Crossings: Theory and Practice in the Roman Republic, eds. Kathryn E. Welch and T. W. Hillard, 59–94. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Stroh, Wilfried. 1975. Taxis und Taktik: Ciceros Gerichtsreden. Stuttgart: Teubner. 1982. “Die Nachahmung des Demosthenes in Ciceros Philippiken.” In Éloquence et rhétorique chez Cicéron, 1–31. Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique 28. Geneva: Fondation Hardt. 2004. “De Domo Sua: Legal Problem and Structure.” In Cicero the Advocate, eds. Jonathan Powell and Jeremy Paterson, 313–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strunk, Thomas E. 2010. “Offending the Powerful: Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus and Safe Criticism.” Mnemosyne, Fourth Series 63 (2): 241–67. Sumi, Geoffrey S. 1997. “Power and Ritual: The Crowd at Clodius’ Funeral.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 46 (1): 80–102. Sussman, Lewis A. 1994. “Antony as a Miles Gloriosus in Cicero’s Second Philippic.” Scholia 3: 53–83. Syme, Ronald. 1938. “Caesar, the Senate and Italy.” Papers of the British School at Rome 14: 1–31. 1939. The Roman Revolution. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 1964. Sallust. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Talbert, Richard J. A. 1984a. “Augustus and the Senate.” Greece & Rome 31 (1): 55–63. 1984b. The Senate of Imperial Rome. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tan, James. 2008. “Contiones in the Age of Cicero.” Classical Antiquity 27 (1): 163–201. Tansey, Patrick. 2000. “The Princeps Senatus in the Last Decades of the Republic.” Chiron 30: 15–30. Taplin, Oliver. 1972. “Aeschylean Silences and Silences in Aeschylus.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 76: 57–97. Tatum, W. Jeffrey. 1999. The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Works Cited

257

2011. “Invective Identities in Pro Caelio.” In Praise and Blame in Roman Republican Rhetoric, eds. Christopher Smith and Ralph Covino, 165–80. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. 2013. “Campaign Rhetoric.” In Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome, edited by Henriette van der Blom and Catherine Steel, 133–50. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2017. “Intermediaries in Political Communication: Adlegatio and Its Uses.” In Political Communication in the Roman World, ed. Cristina Rosillo-López, 55–80. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. Taylor, Lily Ross. 1942. “Caesar and the Roman Nobility.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 73: 1–24. 1949a. Party Politics in the Age of Caesar. Sather Classical Lectures 22. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. 1949b. “On the Chronology of Cicero’s Letters of 56–55 b.c.” Classical Philology 44 (4): 217–21. 1962. “Forerunners of the Gracchi.” The Journal of Roman Studies 52: 19–27. Tedeschi, Antonella. 2005. Lezione di buon governo per un dittatore: Cicerone, Pro Marcello: saggio di commento. Bari: Edipuglia. Tempest, Kathryn. 2011. Cicero: Politics and Persuasion in Ancient Rome. London; New York: Continuum. 2013. “An Êthos of Sincerity: Echoes of the De Republica in Cicero’s Pro Marcello.” Greece & Rome 60: 262–80. Thommen, Lukas. 1989. Das Volkstribunat der späten römischen Republik. Historia Einzelschriften 59. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 2008. “Populus, Plebs und Populares in der römischen Republik.” In Populismus in Geschichte und Gegenwart, eds. Richard Faber and Frank Unger, 31–42. Würz: Königshausen & Neumann. Tiersch, Claudia. 2009. “Politische Öffentlichkeit statt Mitbestimmung? Zur Bedeutung der Contiones in der mittleren und späten römischen Republik.” Klio 91 (1): 40–68. 2018. “Political Communication in the Late Roman Republic: Semantic Battles between Optimates and Populares?” In Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome: Speech, Audience and Decision, eds. Henriette van der Blom, Christa Gray, and Catherine Steel, 35–68. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Tracy, Catherine. 2008. “The People’s Consul: The Significance of Cicero’s Use of the Term ‘Popularis.’” Illinois Classical Studies 33–34: 181–99. Trejo, Malena. 2017. “Formas del Stuprum en el discurso De Haruspicum Responso de Cicerón.” Circe de Clásicos y Modernos 21 (1): 1–15. Turner, Ralph H. 1975. “Role Taking: Process vs. Conformity.” In Life As Theater: A Dramaturgical Sourcebook, eds. Dennis Brissett and Charles Edgley, 85–100. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. Tzounakas, Spyridon. 2009. “The Peroration of Cicero’s Pro Milone.” Classical World 102 (2): 129–41.

258

Works Cited

Usher, Stephen. 2008. Cicero’s Speeches: The Critic in Action. Oxford: Aris & Phillips. 2010. “Cicero’s First Philippic and the Fall of the Republic.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 53 (1): 129–36. van den Berg, Christopher S. 2014. The World of Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus: Aesthetics and Empire in Ancient Rome. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. (forthcoming). Empire of Eloquence: Roman Rhetoric from the Death of Cicero to Late Antiquity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Vanderbroeck, Paul J. J. 1987. Popular Leadership and Collective Behavior in the Late Roman Republic (ca. 80–50 b.c.). Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology, III. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben. Vasaly, Ann. 1993. Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2015. Livy’s Political Philosophy. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Verboven, Koenraad. 2002. The Economy of Friends: Economic Aspects of Amicitia and Patronage in the Late Republic. Brussels: Editions Latomus. Vervaet, Frederk Juliaan. 2010. “Arrogating Despotic Power through Deceit: The Pompeian Model for Augustan Dissimulatio.” In Private and Public Lies: The Discourse of Despotism and Deceit in the Graeco-Roman World, eds. Andrew J. Turner, James H. Kim On Chong-Gossard, and Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, 11: 133–66. Leiden; Boston; Cologne: Brill. Vickers, Brian. 1998. In Defense of Rhetoric. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Vielberg, Meinolf. 2017. “Alte Freunde im Gespräch: Anspruch und Wirklichkeit der Amicitia bei Cicero.” Ciceroniana 1 (2). van der Wal, Rogier L. 2007. “‘What a Funny Consul We Have!’ Cicero’s Dealings with Cato Uticensis and Prominent Friends in Opposition.” In Cicero on the Attack: Invective and Subversion in the Orations and Beyond, ed. Joan Booth, 183–206. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Walser, Gerold. 1959. “Der Prozess gegen Q. Ligarius im Jahre 46 v. Chr.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 8 (1): 90–6. Walters, Jonathan. 1998. “Making a Spectacle: Deviant Men, Invective, and Pleasure.” Arethusa 31 (3): 355–67. Ward, Allen Mason. 1977. Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. Watts, Neville H. 1935. Cicero Orations: Pro Archia Poeta – Post Reditum in Senatu – Post Reditum Ad Quirites – De Domo Sua – De Haruspicum Responsis – Pro Plancio. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weigel, Richard D. 2002. Lepidus: The Tarnished Triumvir. London: Routledge. Welch, Kathryn. 2012. Magnus Pius: Sextus Pompeius and the Transformation of the Roman Republic. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. Welch, Kathryn E. 1995a. “Antony, Fulvia, and the Ghost of Clodius in 47 b.c.” Greece & Rome 42 (2): 182–201.

Works Cited

259

1995b. “The Career of M. Aemilius Lepidus 49–44 b.c.” Hermes 123 (4): 443–54. 2008. “Nimium Felix: Caesar’s Felicitas and Cicero’s Philippics.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology, eds. Tom Stevenson and Marcus Wilson, 181–213. Prudentia 37. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd. Welch, Kathryn, and Anton Powell. 1998. Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter: The War Commentaries as Political Instruments. London: Duckworth. White, Hayden V. 1966. “The Burden of History.” History and Theory 5 (2): 111–34. 1973. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore; London: Johns Hopkins University Press. White, Peter. 2003. “Tactics in Caesar’s Correspondence with Cicero.” In Caesar against Liberty? Perspectives on His Autocracy, eds. Francis Cairns and Elaine Fantham. Papers of the Langford Latin Seminar 11 (ARCA Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs 43). Cambridge: Cairns. Williams, Richard S. 1978. “The Role of Amicitia in the Career of A. Gabinius (Cos. 58).” Phoenix 32 (3): 195–210. Wilson, Marcus. 2008. “Your Writings or Your Life: Cicero’s Philippics and Declamation.” In Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric, Ideology, eds. Marcus Wilson and Tom Stevenson, 305–34. Auckland, nz: Polygraphia Ltd. Winterbottom, Michael. 1981. “Cicero and the Silver Age.” In Eloquence et rhétorique chez Cicéron, ed. Walther Ludwig, 237–74. Entretiens sur l’Antiquité Classique 28. Geneva: Fondation Hardt. 2002. “Believing the Pro Marcello.” In Vertis in Usum: Studies in Honor of Edward Courtney, eds. J. F. Miller, C. Damon, and K. S. Myers. MünchenLeipzig: Saur. Winterling, Aloys. 2009. Politics and Society in Imperial Rome. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Wirszubski, Ch. 1950. Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1961. “Avdaces: A Study in Political Phraseology.” The Journal of Roman Studies 51: 12–22. Wiseman, T. P. 1966. “The Ambitions of Quintus Cicero.” The Journal of Roman Studies 56: 108–15. 1971. New Men in the Roman Senate, 139 b.c.–14 a.d. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. Remembering the Roman People: Essays on Late-Republican Politics and Literature: Essays on Late-Republican Politics and Literature. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Wisse, Jakob. 1989. Êthos and Pathos from Aristotle to Cicero. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert. Wolf, Friedrich August. 1801. M. Tulli Ciceronis quae vulgo feruntur Orationes quattuor. i. Post Reditum in Senatu. ii. Ad Quirites post Reditum. iii. Pro Domo sua ad Pontifices. iv. De Haruspicum responsis. Berlin: F. T. Lagardii. Wooten, Cecil W. 1983. Cicero’s Philippics and Their Demosthenic Model: The Rhetoric of Crisis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

260

Works Cited

Wray, David. 2001. Catullus and the Poetics of Roman Manhood. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Wright, F. Warren. 1931. Cicero and the Theater. Smith College Classical Studies. Menasha, wi: The Collegiate Press. Yakobson, Alexander. 2006. “Popular Power in the Roman Republic.” In A Companion to the Roman Republic, eds. Nathan S. Rosenstein and Robert Morstein-Marx, 383–400. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. 2010. “Traditional Political Culture and the People’s Role in the Roman Republic.” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 59 (3): 282–302. 2018. “Aristocratic Dignity and Indignity in Republican Public Life.” In Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome: Speech, Audience and Decision, eds. Henriette van der Blom, Christa Gray, and Catherine Steel, 15–34. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Yavetz, Zvi. 1965. “Levitas popularis.” Atene e Roma 10 (3): 97–110. Zadorojnyi, Alexei V. 2007. “Cato’s Suicide in Plutarch.” The Classical Quarterly 57 (1): 216–30. Zarecki, Jonathan. 2014. Cicero’s Ideal Statesman in Theory and Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Zecchini, Giuseppe. 1980. “La morte di Catone e l’opposizione intellettuale a Cesare e ad Augusto.” Athenaeum 58: 39. 2009. “I partiti politici nella crisi della repubblica.” In Partiti e fazioni nell’esperienza politica romana, ed. Giuseppe Zecchini, 105–20. Milano: Vita e Pensiero. Zerba, Michelle. 2002. “Love, Envy, and Pantomimic Morality in Cicero’s De Oratore.” Classical Philology 97 (4): 299–321.

Index locorum

Aeschylus Agamemnon, 123 Anonymous Bellum Africum 8.3, 213 34.1–3, 213 85.7, 213 Appian Civil Wars 2.9, 143, 203 2.92, 213 2.118, 121 2.142, 128 2.143–6, 217 4.5, 152 5.130, 226 Aristophanes Frogs 911–24, 123 Aristotle Poetics 1450a, 5 Rhetoric 1.2.2–4, 6 2.1.5–6, 6 2.12.7, 18 3.7.4, 6 3.11.15–16, 61 Asconius Commentary on Pro Milone, 25 31, 107, 111 31–3, 107 32–3, 212 35, 107, 112 35–6, 109 36, 43 39, 212 40, 212 45, 212 46, 212 Commentary on In Pisonem, 45, 107

Commentary on Pro Cornelio 5.3, 46, 107 69, 156 Aulus Gellius Noctes Atticae 7.11.2–3, 33 12.12.2–4, 22 Caesar, Gaius Julius Bellum Civile, 71, 146 1.2.1, 199 1.2.7, 216 1.5.1–5, 216 1.7.2–6, 216 1.19.3, 93 1.76, 196 2.23–45, 215 3.96, 196 Cassius Dio Roman History 39.34.1–4, 93 40.60–61, 213 41.1–4, 214 42.22–5, 168 42.52.1, 213 43.9.2, 213 43.14.2–6, 122 43.15.2–18.6, 122 44.35–9, 217 44.34.1, 128 47.8.3, 84 49.15.3, 226 54.2, 107 Catullus, Gaius Valerius Carmina 29, 203 53, 28 Cicero, M. Tullius Pro Roscio Amerino, 42 2–3, 105 Divinatio in Caecilium, 31 In Verrem, 12, 15, 28

261

262

Index locorum

Cicero, M. Tullius (cont.) 1.1–3, 132 2.2.11, 93 2.2.176, 93 2.3.1, 28 2.5.141, 93 Pro Cluentio 110, 56 Pro Lege Manilia, 61, 65, 157, 201 2, 157 13, 93 70, 199 De Lege Agraria, 192, 206, 214 1.23–5, 154 2.3, 157 2.6, 157 2.6–9, 172 2.6–10, 154 2.9, 157 2.102, 157, 172 Pro Rabirio perduellionis reo 12–6, 172 Pro Murena, 54, 95, 105 3, 226 5, 226 6, 53 58–75, 84 67, 226 In Catilinam, 12, 47, 51, 83, 87, 97, 183, 192 1, 45 1.7–11, 134 1.15–16, 83, 134 1.18, 167 1.27, 167 1.29–30, 133 2.3, 83 2.15, 83 2.28, 195 3.13–15, 134 3.23, 195 3.27–9, 83 4, 98 4.1–2, 83 4.1–3, 134 4.3, 97 4.4–6, 134 4.18–20, 134 4.24, 134 Pro Sulla, 29, 111 21, 133 33, 111, 116 34, 205 Pro Archia 3, 93 Pro Flacco

24, 164 57, 164 61, 164 71, 164 Post Reditum in Senatu, 24, 53, 57, 60, 64, 82, 96, 137, 139, 154, 182, 225 1, 57 1–3, 137 5, 183 8, 127, 135 12, 140 16, 140 19, 59 20, 59 24, 137 25, 60 26, 141 28, 159 29, 60, 183 33, 141 33–4, 82 Post Reditum ad Populum, 24, 53, 57, 64, 82, 96, 137, 154, 159, 182, 225 1, 82 5, 57 9, 205 15, 59 16, 60 16–17, 183 17, 60 23, 29 De Domo Sua, 12, 24, 30, 35, 83, 85, 88, 97, 100, 137, 154, 177, 181–185, 197 2, 181 3, 182–183 4, 132 5–6, 184 11, 183, 184 14, 141 16–18, 183 22, 204 24, 131 25, 111 26, 140 27, 61 27–8, 183 27–30, 61 30, 60, 205 49, 163 55, 140, 181 55–6, 140 60–1, 163 61, 182 63–4, 82, 209 66, 205

Index locorum 68–9, 58, 60 69, 140 72, 160, 182 73, 135 75, 133, 182 75–6, 134 76, 160 83, 160 89–90, 186–187 94, 133 95, 133 96–9, 82 97–8, 85–86 99, 30 101, 135 102, 30 110, 133 127, 39 131, 162 Pro Caelio, 12, 25, 30, 31, 41, 97, 105 6, 30 7, 18, 31, 93 21, 211 21–2, 211 33–5, 19 71, 19 Pro Sestio, 12, 24, 25, 31, 32, 53, 83, 85, 87, 88–90, 96, 100, 137, 154, 164, 165, 177, 189–191, 197, 206 1–2, 163 2, 60 3, 93 20, 164 25, 140 28, 141 32, 140 33, 30, 184 36–8, 164 39, 30 39–40, 205 40, 205 41–2, 61 42, 205 43–9, 209 45–6, 82 46, 131 51, 89 60, 87 62, 91 74, 58 77–8, 190 79, 190 79–81, 88 81, 88 84, 190

263

85, 163 86, 191 86–7, 59 92, 191 96–7, 191 96–143, 137 100, 191 104–5, 185 106, 30 107, 60 108, 124–125 109, 30, 133, 184 110, 162 111, 163 114, 162 115, 164 119, 164 122, 93 124, 164 125, 164 130, 159 130–2, 160 132, 191 136, 89, 184 137, 89, 138 138, 89 139, 90 141, 164 143, 90 144, 59 In Vatinium, 24, 27, 31–35, 42, 137 1–2, 32–33 3, 164 5, 34 22, 42 33, 30 38, 163, 205 40, 30, 164 De Haruspicum Responsis, 24, 25, 27, 30, 32, 35–40, 42, 129, 139, 142, 191 1, 163 1–2, 36 2, 37 3, 37 4, 184 6, 59 7, 37 8, 38 11, 30, 184 13–16, 184 15, 135 16, 135, 136 17, 37 28, 163 39, 184

264

Index locorum

Cicero, M. Tullius, De Haruspicum (cont.) 42, 162 43–4, 163, 185 46, 184 47, 204–205 48–50, 206 59, 163 De Provinciis Consularibus, 1, 7, 12, 24, 40, 41, 53, 72, 90, 129, 133, 139, 142, 151, 152, 207, 209 1, 40 2, 40 14, 142, 150 17, 1, 62 18, 61, 67, 204 19–23, 143 22, 67 23, 144, 210 25, 144 35, 68, 69 38, 144 38–9, 151, 163 39, 145 40, 67 40–1, 68 41, 1, 62 44, 68 44–6, 143 45, 94 Pro Balbo, 12, 13, 24, 25, 53, 63, 64–66, 67, 90, 94, 99, 104, 143, 209, 211 1, 67 2, 64 4, 64, 205 8–10, 65 10, 209 17, 64 58, 66 58–9, 64 59–60, 207–208 61, 143, 210 62, 94 In Pisonem, 12, 24, 27, 41–46, 129, 139, 154 fr. 11a, 46 3, 30, 44 4–5, 134 7, 134 9, 30 14–16, 141 17, 43 18, 140 19, 44 21, 140 24, 44, 164 26, 126, 127, 150 32, 127

34, 60, 135 40, 142 45, 43 51, 160–161 52, 135 57, 164 59–63, 42 61, 42 64, 142 73, 48 75–7, 61, 204 79, 61, 63, 204 80, 138 81, 138 81–2, 68–69 82, 44 91, 30 99, 42–43 Pro Plancio, 24, 54, 87, 154, 160, 168, 210 9–11, 166 12–15, 168 24, 92 24–30, 168 33, 93 46–50, 168 59–64, 168 74, 57 86–94, 82 90, 99, 135 91–4, 67, 143, 207, 210 92, 70 93, 60, 70 93–4, 94 94, 69 Pro Rabirio Postumo, 53, 71, 72, 80, 90, 210 19, 43, 142 32–3, 210 42, 71 43, 71 Pro Scauro, 87 1b–5, 83 22–9, 44 Pro Milone, 24, 87, 90, 103, 106–113, 114, 117, 128, 177, 181, 192, 220 1, 108 2, 108 2–3, 108 3, 112 15, 107 22, 164 29, 212 39, 58 45, 212 58, 91 67–8, 109–110

Index locorum 67–9, 110, 115 68, 111, 220 69, 113 88, 205 91, 30 96–8, 87 Caesarian orations, 13, 53, 72, 73, 103, 113–120, 124, 128, 220 Pro Marcello, 24, 25, 29, 53, 71, 72, 73, 77, 80, 103, 106, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 122, 126, 139, 145, 146, 147, 152, 213, 219, 220 1, 122, 127 2–3, 122, 127 3, 146 3–4, 78 4, 114 6, 114 8–10, 72 9, 114, 127 12, 78 13, 127, 146, 219 14, 61, 68 14–15, 219 19, 72 21–2, 78 25, 78 25–6, 73 25–8, 73 30, 78 30–1, 219 38, 78 Pro Ligario, 24, 74, 111, 115, 116, 117 1, 105, 115 6–7, 115, 219 7, 219 18–19, 219 28, 219 36, 219 37, 73 Pro Deiotaro, 24, 73, 77, 106, 116, 117 1, 118 5–7, 118 9, 74 12, 219 28, 219 31, 74 33, 119 40, 73–74 Philippicae 12, 13, 31, 41, 46–49, 50, 53, 71, 75, 79, 80, 81, 85, 95–100, 102, 114, 128, 148, 152, 158, 173, 192, 193, 197, 217, 225 1, 24, 46, 77–78, 79, 122, 155, 169 1.1, 148 1.3–15, 122 1.5, 76

265

1.8, 148 1.11–12, 46 1.11–15, 77 1.21, 169 1.23, 219 1.25–6, 169 1.28, 219 1.29, 77 1.32, 217 1.33–5, 78 1.35, 78 1.37, 170 1.38, 148 2, 12, 24, 26, 27, 47, 50, 51, 83, 97, 98, 101, 129 2.1, 97, 150 2.1–7, 47 2.2, 149 2.5–6, 79 2.8, 48 2.9, 48 2.10, 48 2.12–14, 149 2.19–20, 48 2.24, 219 2.37, 97, 219 2.37–9, 219 2.43, 48 2.47, 49 2.51, 149 2.52, 149 2.63, 193 2.84, 48 2.86, 47 2.93–5, 74 2.101, 48 2.112, 49 2.116–17, 217 2.118, 97, 150 3, 24 3.6, 126, 173 3.8–10, 139 3.9, 149 3.18, 193 3.21, 49 3.28, 121 3.29, 96 3.36, 194 3.37–9, 79 3.39, 131, 173 4, 24, 139, 169, 170 4.1–2, 170 4.5, 173 4.11–12, 47 4.15, 98, 150 5, 24, 25, 129, 178

266 Cicero, M. Tullius, Philippicae (cont.) 5.4, 44, 173 5.10, 193 5.23, 173 5.28, 173 5.32, 193, 194 5.38–47, 79 5.46, 151, 173 5.49, 151, 164 5.53, 79, 173 6, 24, 139, 155, 169, 170 6.3, 193 6.10, 213 6.17–18, 170–171 7, 24, 98, 129, 155, 169 7.4, 157, 164, 171–172 7.7, 98 7.7–8, 219 7.14, 150 7.17, 193 7.19–20, 171 7.22, 171 8, 24, 27 8.15, 98, 150 8.16, 96 8.19, 171 8.28, 47 8.29, 96 8.33, 79 9, 46 10.3, 150 10.4–6, 199 10.6, 150 10.16, 217 10.18, 174 10.19–20, 96 10.21, 173 10.22, 217 10.25–6, 79 11.23, 79 11.27, 150 11.36, 80 11.37, 174 11.39, 79 12, 24, 83, 99–100 12.4, 152 12.8, 173 12.12, 173 12.20, 213 12.22, 99 12.24, 97, 99 12.29, 173 12.30, 99 13, 25, 49, 178, 197 13.6, 150

Index locorum 13.16, 193 13.18–22, 173 13.20, 193 13.22, 98 13.23, 149 13.25, 193 13.33–5, 174 13.38–40, 195 13.39, 195 13.40, 209 13.43, 49 13.45, 48, 196 13.47, 195, 217 14.14, 98, 150 14.14–15, 209 14.26–7, 173 14.31–2, 173 14.31–4, 96 14.31–8, 80 14.37–8, 80 Epistulae ad Atticum, 191 1.14.2–4, 61, 66 1.16.2, 143 1.16.8, 93 1.16.11, 209 1.20.2, 165 2.1.3, 157 2.3.4, 67 2.7.3, 203 2.25.1, 71 3.8.4, 61, 86 3.10.2, 86 3.13.1, 61 3.14.1–2, 61 3.15.1–4, 61 3.15.4, 86 3.15.5, 140, 159 3.18.1, 61 4.1.4–5, 160 4.1.4–6, 160 4.1.6–7, 122 4.2.2, 85 4.2.4, 92 4.3.3, 92 4.5.1, 62, 67 4.5.1–2, 207 4.5.2, 1 4.6.2, 62, 66, 67 4.17.4, 93 5.1.2, 12, 68 5.4.3, 12, 68 5.5.2, 12, 68 5.6.2, 12, 68 5.10.4, 12, 68 5.13.3, 12, 68

Index locorum 5.14.2, 86 7.1.4–5, 218 7.3.5, 218 7.7.5, 193 7.8.4, 216 7.17, 218 8.3.2–3, 61 8.11a, 218 8.13, 219 9.5.2, 61 9.7b.2, 108 9.9.3, 1 9.11a, 1 9.13.3, 67 9.13.4, 219 9.13.6, 61 9.15.2, 1 9.16.2–3, 1 9.17, 1 9.17.1, 122 9.18, 122, 218 9.18.1, 122 10.1.3, 122 10.4.8, 214 10.8.3, 1, 218 10.8a, 218 10.8b, 218 11.6.2, 196 12.4, 124 12.4.2, 45 12.21.1, 45 12.40, 45 12.40.2, 75 12.41, 45 12.44.1, 45 12.45.2, 45 13.19.2, 116 13.20.2, 116 13.27.1, 124 13.28.1–3, 75 14.5.2, 217 14.6.2, 217 14.10.1, 122 14.12.2, 122 14.13.2, 193 15.13.1, 47 15.13.2, 47 15.13a.2, 47 16.2.6, 80 16.11.1, 47 Epistulae ad Brutum 1.3(7).1, 151 1.3.2, 172 1.4(11).3, 80 1.10(17).3, 151

1.15(23).9, 80 Epistulae ad familiares, 24, 103, 124 1.7.7, 164 1.8–9, 138 1.8.2–3, 64 1.8.3–4, 135 1.9, 143, 207 1.9.4, 34, 62 1.9.7, 67 1.9.8–9, 206 1.9.9, 7, 67 1.9.11, 63 1.9.11–12, 210 1.9.12, 131 1.9.15, 135, 136 1.9.17, 142, 210 1.9.17–20, 178 1.9.18, 210 1.9.19, 34, 62 1.9.20, 62 1.9.21, 12, 143, 210 2.13.3, 214 2.15.3, 218 3.10.10, 109 3.13.2, 58 4.4.4, 122 4.5.2, 86 4.5.5–g, 86 4.9.2, 122 4.14.1, 120, 123, 126 5.2.1, 133 5.2.6–7, 133 5.7.3, 73, 76 5.9–11, 34 5.9.1, 34 5.10a.3, 34 5.10b.1, 34 5.12.7, 58 6.13–14, 116 6.14.2, 117 7.1.1–4, 218 7.2.2–3, 28, 78, 213 8, 25 8.1.4, 213 8.6.1–2, 28 8.6.3, 213 8.6.5, 214 8.10.4, 214 8.11.1–2, 92 8.11.3, 214 8.13, 218 9.10.2, 213 9.12, 118 9.14.1, 76 9.14.2, 76

267

268 Cicero, M. Tullius, Epistulae (cont.) 9.14.7, 76–77 9.15–26, 126 9.15.4, 122 9.16.2, 75 9.16.4, 75 9.16.5, 121 9.18.1, 75 10.1, 77 10.1–24, 79, 147 10.3, 77 10.28.2, 148 10.28.3, 149 10.31–4, 79, 147 11.8, 151 11.28.2, 68 12.7, 170 13.77.1, 122 15.4.11–12, 58 15.4.16, 58 15.6.1, 58 16.11.2, 216 Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem, 187 1.3.9, 61 1.4.4, 61 2.1.1, 125, 206 2.1.3, 26, 46 2.1.4, 7 2.3, 25 2.3.1, 125 2.3.2, 177, 187–188, 206 2.3.3, 45, 61, 66 2.3.4, 206 2.4.1, 32, 34, 60 2.4.6, 57 2.5.3, 206 2.7.1–2, 206 2.7.2, 206 2.10.2–3, 26 2.10.5, 12, 67 2.11.1, 67 2.12.1, 67 2.13.1–2, 67 2.13.1–4, 12 2.13.4, 67 2.14.3, 12 2.15.1, 67 3.1.11, 46 3.1.15, 62 3.2.2, 26 3.4.1–2, 62, 206 3.5.1, 168 3.5.3, 67 3.5.4, 210 3.6.5, 62

Index locorum 3.8.1, 67 3.9.1, 62 De Inventione 1.15–18, 104 1.21–2, 6 1.22–5, 108 2.55, 55 3.32–7, 6 De Oratore, 64, 84, 89 1.2–3, 210 1.119, 104 1.119–21, 108 1.194, 79 1.202, 30 1.225, 157 1.226, 157 2, 110 2.28–32, 105 2.80–4, 104 2.102, 93 2.178–87, 20 2.182, 6, 28 2.199, 191 2.202, 108 2.205–16, 20 2.216, 110 2.229, 43 2.236, 20, 110 2.236–42, 30 2.237, 29, 31 2.237–8, 43 2.338, 156 2.279, 29 2.289, 20 2.317–24, 104 2.340, 30 2.342, 79 2.364, 19 3.3–6, 132 3.4, 162 3.10, 84 3.103–7, 55 3.195–8, 156 3.201–2, 55 3.203, 33 3.205, 23 3.225, 156 De Optimo Genere Oratorum 10, 109 De Republica, 73, 79, 90, 168 1.5, 164 2.61–3, 139 2.80, 164 6.25, 79 De Legibus

Index locorum 3.19–26, 200 3.31–2, 131 3.40, 92 Brutus, 24, 103, 122, 123, 124, 126, 128 7, 123 21, 45 24, 124 157, 123 164, 157 180, 30 184–9, 156 235, 125 251, 123 266, 123 278, 87 280, 215 324, 124 325–7, 19 Laus Catonis, 91, 94, 122 Orator 47, 30 88, 29 130–1, 106 132, 106 145–6, 19 160, 156 237, 156 Partitiones Oratoriae 2.44, 79 De Finibus 1.30–2, 48 Tusculan Disputations, 95 1.110, 79 2.14–16, 48 2.58, 79 3.3, 79 4.21, 37 4.67, 58 Lucullus (Academica Priora) 144, 172 Cato de Senectute, 49 28, 19 Laelius de Amicitia, 68, 76 10, 86 20–3, 53 26–32, 54 36–7, 54 51, 54 80, 54 98–101, 138 De Officiis, 80, 90 1.5, 48 1.98–9, 53 1.103–4, 30

1.107, 17 1.112, 91 1.115, 18 1.134–7, 29 2.43, 79 2.51, 54 3.117, 48 De Consulatu Suo Cicero, Quintus Tullius Commentariolum Petitionis 5, 179, 209 14, 157 35, 55 41, 161 51, 157 [Cicero] Rhetorica ad Herennium 1.81, 108 4.48, 93 Cornelius Nepos Epaminondas 9.3, 78 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) Odes 2.1, 11 Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) Satires 10.125, 12 Livy (Titus Livius) 1.49.7, 139 2.7.5–8.1, 136 2.41.11, 135 3.36.1–41.6, 139 4.13.3–9, 139 4.16.1, 135 6.11.6–19.7, 139 6.20.13, 135 10.28–30, 83 [Longinus] On the Sublime 44.1–2, 102 Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) Bellum Civile 1.269–71, 213 Macrobius Saturnalia, 106 2.1.8, 106 2.1.12, 106 2.3.5, 34 2.3.7–8, 218 2.3.9, 218

269

270 Macrobius (cont.) 2.3.14, 106 2.5.10, 164 Plutarch Antony 5.1–2, 128, 215 14.3 Brutus 19.1, 128 47.4, 201 Caesar 7.5–8.5, 142 67.8, 128 69.2–8, 121 Cato, 91 30.1–2, 214 31.3, 92 34.1–4, 93 42.1–5, 93 43.1–3, 91 43.1–4, 92 43.2–3, 92, 93 43.4–5, 91 44.3–4 Cicero, 106 5.6, 106 23.1–6, 133 27.1, 106 35.2–5, 107 38.2, 106 39.5–6, 116 42.3, 128 47.1–48.4, 84 Pyrrhus 8.12, 110 Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus) Institutiones Oratoriae 3.1–8, 105 4.1.8–48, 108 4.1.20, 108 4.2.17, 107 6.3.1, 105 6.3.3–4, 106 6.3.10, 110 6.3.11–13, 20 6.3.28, 43 6.3.34, 110 6.3.49, 111 6.3.68, 34 6.3.74, 116 6.3.84, 34 6.3.94–5, 110 6.3.99, 110

Index locorum 8.6.75–6, 61 9.2.14, 116 9.2.27, 116 9.3.54–7, 29 9.3.95, 45 11.1.73, 63 11.3.48, 108 12.1.14–17, 84 12.1.17, 84 12.6.3, 28 [Sallust] Epistulae ad Caesarem 2.6.2, 165 Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus) Bellum Catilinae, 91 49.1–4, 142 Seneca the Elder (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) Controversiae 7.2, 84 7.4.7, 28 Suasoriae 6.12, 102 6.17–24, 84 6.22, 50 6.24, 84 Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) De Brevitate Vitae 5.1, 102 De Constantia Sapientis 2.1–2, 93 De Providentia 2.9–10, 93 Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium 14.13, 92 Suetonius Tranquillus, Gaius De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus 1, 215 25.3, 75 Vita Divi Augusti 86.2–3, 226 Vita Divi Iulii 9, 142 Vita Gai 3.1–4.1, 226 15.1–16.2, 226 53.1–2, 226 Vita Tiberii 70.1, 226 Tacitus, Cornelius Annales 13.3, 226 Dialogus, 102 2–3, 102

Index locorum 34.1–7, 28 40.1, 51–52 Valerius Maximus Facta et Dicta Memorabilia 4.2.4, 63 5.11.ext.3, 110 6.2.4, 125 6.2.5, 93

6.2.8, 125 Varro, Marcus Terentius Menippean Satires 257, 30 379, 30 Velleius Paterculus Historia Romana 2.43.3, 28 2.48.3–4, 213

271

Index

Affect, 23, 28, 33, 35, 53, 61, 69, 70, 82, 97, 104, 113–115, 117, 129, 137, 142, 154 definition, 18–23 Amicitia, 70, 78, 79, 80–81 and praise, 80–81 as rhetorical trope, 80–81 claimed with Caesar, 67–75 with Antony, 75–80 Antony, a.k.a. Marcus Antonius the triumvir, 50–51, 101, 129, 151, 158, 178, 193–198, 199, 209, 224–225 before the civil war, 213, 215–221 in the Philippics, 46–50, 77–80, 81, 95–100, 147–150, 152, 169–175 Auctoritas, 58, 59, 66, 91, 103–128, 131, 148, 188, 201, 209 Cicero’s, 103–128, 165, 181 Audience, 17, 20, 23, 32, 43, 48, 54, 58, 69, 83, 85, 88, 89, 103, 107–110, 123, 125, 127, 130, 139, 141, 145, 148–149, 159, 175, 186, 193, 196, 223 bias of, 37, 85, 94, 211, 224 composition, 114, 126, 161, 188, 191, 204 effect of a speech, 3, 4–6, 9, 10, 11, 21, 22, 27, 29–30, 33, 38, 39, 45, 50, 51, 75, 82, 88, 99, 103, 105, 108–112, 119, 128, 139, 147, 162, 181, 189, 220, 227 êthos, 6, 9, 17, 20, 49, 51, 132 pathos, 55, 87, 88, 106, 180, 212 Brutus, D. Junius, 49, 79, 99, 147 Brutus, M. Junius, 45, 79, 84, 102, 121, 123, 147, 150, 172–173, 201 Caelius Rufus, M., 25, 31, 41, 126, 168–169, 200, 213–214 Caesar, C. Julius, 1, 3, 9, 11, 15, 16, 22, 24, 40, 44, 50, 56, 92, 150, 152, 163, 165, 199–200, 213–222, 224 author, 45, 71, 187, 196, 215 death, 77, 174, 175, 193

dictator, 25, 67–75, 76, 77–78, 96, 100, 103–128, 173, 193–198, 218–220 first triumvirate, 7–8, 53, 62–64, 81, 93, 95, 133, 138, 139, 199–200, 201–210, 225 Catilinarian conspiracy, 26, 29, 36, 45, 51, 53, 83, 87, 91, 97–98, 111, 132–134, 140–142, 150, 152, 164, 172, 182, 183, 192, 225 Cato, M. Porcius, 15, 19, 84–85, 87, 96, 100–102, 107, 143, 168, 200, 202, 215 death, 45, 84, 91, 94, 95, 100, 124 Character, 5, 10, 28, 61, 71, 74, 84, 87, 91, 92, 95, 97–99, 107, 110, 113, 121, 136, 138, 145, 151, 152, 154, 165, 166, 177, 185, 193, 196, 198, 200, 206 Cicero’s, 3, 48, 49, 50, 53, 63, 68, 70, 82, 84, 95, 137, 146, 177 definition, 18–23 Cicero’s consulship, 6, 13, 18, 43–44, 62, 82, 97, 105, 129, 134–136, 148, 154, 157, 168, 171, 205, 209 Cicero’s exile, vii, 9–13, 40–41, 66, 70, 82–83, 99, 101, 127, 139, 142, 145, 191, 203, 205, 209, 221, 225 political recovery from, 31, 35, 61, 80, 84–89, 132–134, 158–161, 182 recall from, 6, 34, 53, 57, 59–60, 74, 124, 129, 139, 141, 154, 158–161, 172, 173, 183, 186, 189, 204 Cicero’s house on the Palatine, 35, 39, 57, 88, 89, 135–136, 162, 181, 184, 197 Civil war (49–46 bce), 45, 61, 68, 73, 78, 97, 103, 115, 116, 145, 149, 152, 193, 197, 199, 202, 209, 213–218 Cicero’s letters during/after, 24, 77, 121, 191 Clodius Pulcher, P., 8, 21, 25, 26–27, 30, 44–46, 49–51, 78, 89, 92, 97, 141–143, 151, 181–189, 191–193, 195, 197–198, 201–210, 225 as political leader, 34, 177, 202, 210–211, 221–222 death, 107, 110, 113, 172, 212, 217, 219, 220

272

Index in 57–56 bce, 12, 35–40, 61, 125, 132, 168, 170, 181–189 tribunate, 82, 127, 129, 133–136, 139, 158, 214 Conference of Luca, 7, 62, 63, 143, 203, 207, 221 Consensus, 38, 125, 129, 131, 135, 137, 138, 147, 155, 159, 161, 171, 172, 173, 180 Contiones, 40, 43, 45, 77, 124–126, 136, 141, 161, 163, 164, 180, 185–188, 200, 212, 216–217, 226 by Cicero, 47, 156–157, 169–171, 191, 201 by Clodius, 36, 204, 205 Curio, G. Scribonius, minor, 195, 199, 213–217, 218–221 Demagoguery, 8, 24, 156, 162, 163, 175, 177, 227 Dolabella, P. Cornelius, 24, 28, 75–79, 118, 169, 219 Êthos, 2, 6, 9, 18, 20, 46, 49, 113, 131 Exemplarity, 13, 23, 64, 70, 76, 82, 83, 84, 88–90, 94, 97, 99, 101, 112, 131, 134, 135, 141 Extraordinary commands, 7, 41, 45, 61, 65, 67–68, 122, 133, 144, 145, 147, 151, 157, 183, 185, 207 Filibuster, 92–93, 101 First triumvirate, 7–8, 11, 13, 62–64, 69, 81, 93–95, 143–144, 184, 199–210, 212, 221 Forensic oratory, 21, 45, 67, 87, 93, 101, 106, 191, 203, 211 by Cicero, 223 Cicero’s, 2, 32–35, 56, 59–60, 87, 88–90, 91, 106–113, 115–120, 164–168, 208, 210 jury, 22, 32, 33, 41, 45, 54, 108, 164, 211 Gabinius, Aulus (cos. 58), 1, 8, 29, 43, 62, 63, 127, 129, 133, 139–142, 151, 206, 210, 211, 218 consulship, 41, 43, 126, 133 Gracchi, 19, 84, 156, 181, 185 Humor, 8, 29, 42, 47, 103, 105–106, 109–113, 115–120, 126, 128, 223 in invective, 38–40, 48–50 in rhetorical theory, 20, 29, 30, 110, 116 Invective, 26–52, 90, 95, 97, 128, 138, 148, 177, 179, 180, 181, 184, 191, 216, 224 Levitas, 154–176, 182, 223 Marcellus, M. Claudius, 72, 122, 145, 148, 219 Military, 1, 16, 51, 65, 71–72, 79, 98, 107–109, 112, 119, 124, 152, 158, 173–175, 193, 208, 222, 224

273

Milo, T. Annius, 37, 59, 61, 76, 80, 87, 106–113, 116, 117, 126, 168, 173, 187, 189, 191–193, 208, 212 Novus homo, 2, 35, 56, 157, 225 Octavian(us), C. Julius Caesar, later Augustus, 49, 79, 80, 147, 150–151, 173, 175, 193–195, 197, 224, 226 Optimates, vii, 8, 35, 89, 137, 138, 150, 152, 156, 163–165, 168, 177–180, 181–194, 197–198, 200, 201, 222, 225 as rhetorical trope, 8–9, 177–180 “Palinode,” Cicero’s, 7, 62, 67, 71, 207, 209–210, 220 Panegyric and praise, 29, 44, 80, 81, 117, 122, 207 “panegyric incapacity,” 113–114 and friendship, 53–54, 55–62, 63–73 Pathos, 20, 27–28, 48, 61, 85–88, 100, 115, 212 commiseratio in peroration, 74, 87 Philosophy, 13, 15, 42, 47, 79, 80, 84, 86, 87, 91, 95, 98, 100, 104, 113, 157, 158, 173, 196, 226 Piso Caesoninus, L. Calpurnius, 8, 26–27, 30, 40–46, 47–48, 67, 127, 129, 133–134, 138–143, 149, 150, 151, 160–161, 168 Pompey the Great, a.k.a. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, 1, 3, 7–8, 9, 11–12, 15, 22, 24, 25, 51, 56, 70, 75, 139, 148, 168, 193, 197, 199–200, 213 civil war, 68, 73–74, 115, 145, 147, 152, 214–222 first triumvirate, 43, 45, 53, 60–67, 81, 92–93, 94–95, 122, 124–126, 127, 138, 142, 143, 181–185, 187–188, 199–210, 225 in the 60s, 76, 157, 165, 201 sole consul in 52, 103, 106–113, 116, 124, 126, 222 Populares, vii, 24, 27, 34, 51, 132, 138, 141, 144, 174, 177–198, 201, 209, 212, 214, 217, 219, 225 and popularity, 154–158, 164–166, 167, 169, 172, 175, 185–187, 193–198 as rhetorical trope, 8–9, 177–180 Caesar, 144, 168, 213, 214 Cicero as popularis consul, 154, 157, 172 levitas, 150, 163–165, 171 popularis ratio, 164–166, 175, 190 Populus Romanus, 24, 58, 65, 115, 118, 130, 131, 135, 136, 154–176, 179–181, 182, 184, 185–187, 191, 192, 195, 201, 203, 206, 209, 215 popular opinion, vii, 9, 157, 166, 168, 174 Pragmatism, 19, 20, 41, 54, 69, 90, 93, 94, 103, 143, 207, 209

274

Index

Principate, 14, 28, 72, 93, 102, 116, 153, 201, 202, 209, 226 Publication and circulation of speeches, 45, 47, 51, 74, 97, 100, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 113, 114, 148, 156, 169, 212, 226 Quintus Tullius Cicero, 26, 32, 34, 46, 57, 59, 67, 125, 157, 187, 206, 209, 210 Relationships and personae, 9, 10, 18–23, 46, 54, 55, 61, 63–64, 66, 75, 80, 83, 132, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143, 146, 189, 201, 203–222, 224, 227 Republic, 34, 66, 68, 70, 73, 76, 78, 81, 82, 84, 86, 89, 90, 92, 96–97, 99–102, 110, 111, 112, 114, 122, 135, 136–137, 141, 146, 148, 149, 169, 172, 173, 174, 175, 177, 179, 180, 183, 185, 187, 189–198, 204, 205, 210, 216, 219, 225 “fall” of, 96, 102, 173, 200, 224 “republican” cause in civil war, 47, 79, 95, 147, 151, 152, 153, 170, 173, 174, 193, 194, 196, 201, 221 as political system, 1, 3, 6, 7, 11, 25, 26, 30, 34, 40, 44, 45, 55, 58, 60, 65, 73, 79, 80, 85, 103, 121, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136, 140, 143, 146, 151, 152, 155, 158, 161, 168, 169, 181, 192, 200, 207, 216, 220, 222 era, 9, 14–16, 23, 28, 29, 52, 84, 93, 126, 130, 135, 137, 141, 147, 148, 163, 167, 179, 183, 189, 198, 199, 201, 202, 208, 211, 221, 224, 226 ideal, 21, 24, 93, 131, 168 political system, 14 tradition(s) of, 2, 50, 51, 53, 89, 133, 147, 148, 151, 159, 209, 223, 224, 225

Sallust(ius) Crispus, C. (historian), 91, 178, 179, 192, 199, 212, 213 Second triumvirate, 84, 152, 226 Self-control of orator, 24, 27, 29, 33, 35, 36, 48–49, 72, 87, 106 Senate, 38, 42, 44–47, 49–50, 58, 60, 66, 75, 77, 80, 91, 93, 94, 98, 101–102, 118, 122, 126, 129–153, 156–157, 160, 163, 167, 169, 170–171, 173–174, 183, 185, 187, 190, 192, 194–197, 201, 203–206, 209, 212, 213, 217, 218, 221–222, 224, 225–226 “the will of,” vii, 6–9, 130, 132, 135, 140, 143, 149, 152, 186, 218 auctoritas senatus, 24, 41, 126, 219 Cicero’s senatorial speeches, 26, 35, 40, 44–47, 69, 72, 78, 79, 97–99, 136, 139, 144, 145, 147, 150, 158, 168, 218 Sestius, P., 32, 34, 35, 57, 59–60, 61, 67, 80, 87, 88–91, 164, 173, 189–191, 193, 208 Ship of state metaphors, 82, 94, 102, 131, 143, 209, 221 Tacitus, Cornelius, 28, 51, 102 Tyranny, 63, 69, 79, 91, 96, 103–104, 119, 129, 133–134, 135–136, 138–140, 143–146, 149, 151–153, 192, 211, 217, 223, 225 tyrannicide, 124 Vatinius, P., 28, 32–35, 40, 41, 43, 49–51, 62, 63, 67, 192, 205, 210, 211 Violence in politics, 14, 24, 34, 46, 82, 88, 106, 108, 112, 126, 169, 177, 179, 181, 184–196, 197–198, 212, 216 vis, 88, 107, 187, 189, 192