Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (2 page)

Note:
Ver
. 56 denotes § 56 of
In Verrem
I (the first
actio
or ‘hearing’);
Ver
. 2.5.56 denotes § 56 of
In Verrem
II.5 (the fifth speech of the second
actio
).

M
ARCUS
T
ULLIUS
C
ICERO
was the greatest orator of the ancient world. His dates were 106–43
BC
: so he lived through the fall of the Roman republic. This was a period of national instability and unprecedented political competition, and the power of persuading others through speech became as important as it has ever been. Cicero rose to prominence not because of his birth (his non-aristocratic, Italian origin was a severe handicap to him), but because of his ability. He could persuade the ordinary citizens of Rome to vote down proposals that were in their interest, and he could (it seems) persuade just about any jury that black was white. In a gesture of triumph he published his speeches for his contemporaries and posterity to admire and imitate. Fifty-eight of these still survive today in whole or part. They are in every sense classics—works which have been read, enjoyed, quoted from, studied, and imitated by people in western societies, off and on, for two millennia. And in a world in which mass communication becomes ever more important, they retain their interest, relevance, and vibrancy.

Cicero excelled in both of the two main types of oratory, ‘forensic’ (the oratory of the forum, i.e. of the law courts, also known as ‘judicial’) and ‘deliberative’ (the oratory of the political assemblies). A third type, ‘epideictic’ (the oratory of display, or of praise and blame—more technically, ‘panegyric’ and ‘invective’), was less important at the higher political level in Cicero’s time, though from the 40s
BC
it started to take the place vacated by deliberative oratory, as senators’ freedom of action and expression was progressively removed. Cicero’s
Defence Speeches
,
¹
to which this book is a companion, contains five forensic speeches, all speeches for the defence, and all except one to some degree (like virtually all of Cicero’s speeches, in fact) connected with politics. This volume, on the other hand, presents a more diverse collection: two further forensic speeches, both speeches for the prosecution, four deliberative ones, and three epideictic ones (counting
In Catilinam
I, which does not fit easily into any scheme of classification, as an epideictic speech, and
In Catilinam
II–IV as deliberative speeches). All these speeches are strongly political, and the volume has therefore been called
Political Speeches
. (Incidentally, the term ‘political’ is used by some scholars as a synonym for ‘deliberative’, and so it should be pointed out that though all the speeches in this volume are ‘political’ in the normal sense, only a minority would be classed as ‘political’ in the sense of ‘deliberative’.)
In Verrem
(‘Against Verres’) I and II.5 are a prosecution of a corrupt governor of Sicily, and are concerned with Roman provincial government, and with the question whether senators deserve the exclusive right to sit on juries.
De imperio Cn. Pompei
(‘On the command of Gnaeus Pompeius’) is a classic deliberative speech recommending the appointment of Pompey (as Pompeius is known in English) to an important military command in Asia Minor; it also is concerned with Roman government, while at the same time giving us a clear view of the way politics worked at Rome, and the way magistrates presented themselves to their electors.
In Catilinam
(‘Against Catiline’) I–IV are a set of speeches originally delivered at four separate moments during the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63
BC
, when Cicero was consul: the first is a denunciation of Catiline in the senate, the second and third are reports to the people on the situation and the action Cicero has taken, and the fourth is Cicero’s contribution to the famous debate in the senate on the punishment of the conspirators.
Pro Marcello
(‘For Marcellus’) is an epideictic speech from the period of Caesar’s dictatorship: Cicero offers Caesar effusive thanks for permitting the return to Rome of his most implacable republican enemy. Finally,
Philippic
II is another epideictic speech, but from the period following Caesar’s assassination: this famous invective is the devastating attack on Mark Antony which was ultimately to cost Cicero his life. All these nine speeches have been consistently viewed as masterpieces of oratory since they were first written. At the beginning of the second century AD, Tacitus (
Dialogus
37.6) singled out for special praise the speeches in which Cicero defended Milo and attacked Catiline, Verres, and Antony—a selection which includes seven of our speeches. But all the speeches presented here rank among the most celebrated works of Latin literature; and together they occupy an important place in western intellectual culture.

Thanks to his voluminous writings, particularly his letters, we know more about Cicero than about any other person in ancient history. He was the elder son of a wealthy
eques
from Arpinum, a town about 70 miles south-east of Rome that had possessed full Roman citizenship since as early as 188
BC
; his younger brother Quintus was also to pursue a public career with distinction, and share his brother’s brutal end. Arpinum was notable for being the home town of Gaius Marius, the seven-times consul and in 102 and 101 the saviour of Rome from the northern invaders; Cicero’s paternal grandmother was in fact a relation of Marius by marriage. In
c
.95 the Ciceros bought a house in Rome so that the two boys should have the best education possible, and Cicero studied rhetoric under the two most famous orators of the day, Lucius Licinius Crassus (consul in 95) and Marcus Antonius (consul in 99); both men were later rewarded by being given parts in one of Cicero’s mature rhetorical works,
De oratore
(‘On the orator’, 55
BC
). During the Social War, Cicero saw military service: in 89 he served under Pompey’s father Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, and in 88 he served under Sulla. In 87 Marius occupied Rome and murdered his opponents, including Antonius. During the Cinnan regime which followed, Cicero continued his studies at Rome, studying rhetoric and, less usually, philosophy. In 82 Sulla recaptured the city, had himself appointed dictator, and ‘proscribed’ his enemies by posting in the forum lists of those to be killed. It was now (81), at the age of 25, that Cicero undertook his first court case, a civil case for Publius Quinctius afterwards published as
Pro Quinctio
(‘For Quinctius’). He lost; but he lost to the most distinguished advocate in Rome, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus.

The next year (80) he undertook his first criminal case,
Pro Roscio Amerino
(‘For Roscius of Ameria’). This was a defence of a man, Sextus Roscius, who had been charged with the murder of his father. The trial became sensational when Cicero boldly exposed the unscrupulous profiteering of one of Sulla’s cronies, the freedman Chrysogonus, who was behind the prosecution; he won his case and became famous overnight. Among the briefs which came to him as a result of this success was the politically sensitive defence of the freedom of a woman from Arretium (a town in Etruria). This time Cicero argued successfully that Sulla had not been justified in
stripping Arretium of its citizen rights. Both these cases helped Cicero to win the support of the Italians on whom he relied throughout his political career.

From 79 to 77 he studied abroad. The many cases which he had taken on immediately after the Roscius case had damaged his health (oratory was physically very demanding), and his defence of the woman from Arretium may also have made his absence from Rome politically expedient. The two brothers travelled to Greece, Rhodes, and Asia Minor (to which Quintus, who was also to pursue a political career, would later return as governor). They studied philosophy in Athens, and Cicero studied rhetoric under Molon of Rhodes. Molon, he later maintained, helped him to make his oratory a little more restrained, less ‘Asianist’ (elaborate and florid) in style. This toning down of his oratorical style was in keeping with the direction in which taste at Rome was moving, and it was also sensible in view of the risk to his health.

In 76 he was elected quaestor at Rome, and he served his term of office in western Sicily the following year. Election to the quaestorship brought life membership of the senate, and Cicero was the first member of his family to attain this distinction; thus he became in Roman terms a ‘new man’ (
novus homo
, the first man of a family to reach the senate).

This success was followed up in 70 by his election as plebeian aedile for 69. But, more significantly, he decided in 70 to undertake a prosecution: having served as an honest quaestor in Sicily five years earlier, he was only too happy to help the Sicilians by bringing a charge of extortion against the rapacious governor, Gaius Verres, who had systematically fleeced the province from 73 to 71. Verres’ defence, however, was undertaken by Hortensius, who was to be consul in 69, and he was also aided by one of the leading families in Rome, the Metelli. One Metellus had become Verres’ successor in Sicily, and made it difficult for Cicero to collect evidence; another was to be Hortensius’ consular colleague the following year; and a third would be praetor in charge of the court if, as the defence hoped, the case could be prolonged into 69. But in the event Cicero overcame all these obstacles. He collected his evidence quickly, delivered a brief opening speech, and then brought out his witnesses. In his speech he dwelt upon the political aspect of the case: if someone as obviously guilty as Verres were let off, the people would judge
the exclusively senatorial juries (prescribed by a law of Sulla’s) to be unfit to try cases, and a law would be passed handing the courts over to the
equites
instead. Once this speech had been given and the evidence presented, Verres went into exile, without waiting to hear more; and Cicero then published the speeches he would have gone on to deliver—
In Verrem
(‘Against Verres’) or, in English, the
Verrines
, a damning and sometimes hilarious exposé of Verres’ crimes. With this success Cicero took Hortensius’ place as Rome’s foremost advocate: Hortensius all but abandoned the courts, returning only when Cicero had reached the consulship, and then as his partner, not his opponent.

Cicero’s irresistible rise continued. In 67 he was elected praetor, by all the centuries (voting units in the centuriate assembly), three times over (because the election had to be repeated), and at the earliest age permitted by law (he was by now 39). He served his year of office as praetor in charge of the extortion court, the scene of his success against Verres; and in 66 he also gave his first deliberative speech,
De imperio Cn. Pompei
(‘On the command of Gnaeus Pompeius’), alternatively known as
Pro lege Manilia
(‘For the Manilian law’). Rome had recently suffered a serious reverse in the Third Mithridatic War (73–63). Public opinion wanted the command of the Roman forces, which since the beginning of the war had been held by Lucullus, to be given to Pompey, who had just enjoyed a spectacular success in wiping out the pirates of the Mediterranean, and was already on the scene; the traditionalists in the senate, however, such as Hortensius, did not wish to see Pompey’s career advanced any further. The tribune Gaius Manilius proposed a bill to have the command transferred to Pompey, and invited Cicero to support it. As a praetor, Cicero could not avoid expressing an opinion—and yet he did not wish to alienate either the senate or the people, given that he would shortly be standing for the consulship. His solution was to give the bill his enthusiastic support, while also taking care to compliment Lucullus. The bill was passed, Cicero published his speech, and Pompey concluded the war in 63. A nonpolitical speech, but a celebrated one, was also delivered in 66,
Pro Cluentio
(‘For Cluentius’). This was an oratorical triumph in which Cicero, as he afterwards boasted, ‘threw dust in the eyes of the jury’ (Quint.
Inst
. 2.17.21).

In 64 he was elected to the consulship for 63, again at the earliest
age permitted by law (he was 43 in 63). With this success his family entered the ranks of the nobility (a ‘noble’ was a direct descendant of a consul through the male line). It was certainly unusual for new men to rise as high as the consulship: the last one to do so had been Gaius Norbanus twenty years previously. Cicero’s consulship was an eventful one, and one that afforded further scope for the exercise of his oratorical talents. It began with his four speeches
De lege agraria
(‘On the agrarian law’), in which he successfully opposed the land redistributions proposed by the tribune Publius Servilius Rullus; the speeches demonstrate Cicero’s ability to persuade the people to vote down a proposal that was in their interest. He claimed to be a popular consul acting in the people’s interest, but was actually taking a conservative line. Now that he had reached the highest place in the ‘sequence of offices’ (
cursus honorum
), he was always to follow the conservative, traditional, and republican line which by nature he preferred. Having been allowed to join the club, he would defend its rules to the death.

But the major event of Cicero’s consulship, and indeed of his life, was his controversial suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy. The conspirators were a small group of failed politicians some of whom had ruined themselves financially in their attempts to secure political advancement and live up to their social status; some, in marked contrast to Cicero, were high-ranking aristocrats. Led by the patrician Lucius Sergius Catilina (‘Catiline’ in English), they hoped, by assassinations, arson, and a march on Rome, to seize power; then they would reward themselves with political office and put forward legislation for a general cancellation of debts (there is no evidence of any plans for wider reform, or of any genuine social concern). The conspiracy began in earnest with Catiline’s failure to be elected consul in July, and by mid-November he had thrown in his lot with an agrarian rising in Etruria led by one Gaius Manlius, a former Sullan centurion. Cicero’s vigilance and prompt action saved his own life from an assassination attempt and prevented the conspiracy from breaking out at Rome—but at the cost of executing without trial five leading conspirators (including one ex-consul, Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura), who had been arrested and had confessed their guilt. His illegal execution of the five men on5 December had the explicit backing of the senate and overwhelming public support (on Cato’s motion, he was voted father of his country by the people), and
probably saved a great many lives. Nevertheless, it was to lay him open to attack for years afterwards, and required him constantly to be justifying the action that he had taken (something which has unfairly caused him to be perceived as boastful and vain). His publication in 60 of his four magnificent speeches against Catiline (
In Catilinam
(‘Against Catiline’) or, in English, the
Catilinarians
) was a major exercise in self-justification. The effectiveness of his attack ensured that Catiline’s name was blackened for all time. Catiline himself, together with his army, was destroyed in the field by Cicero’s colleague as consul, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, at the beginning of 62.