All posts tagged Defence Speeches

Pro Milone by Cicero (52 BC)

All five speeches in the Oxford University Press selection of Defence Speeches by Cicero are given extremely thorough and wonderfully lucid introductions by the volume’s editor and translator, D.H. Berry. Pro Milone has the longest introduction of the lot, at 12 pages of small font, i.e. a lot of content because there’s a lot to explain.

The trial of Titus Annius Milo, generally referred to as Milo, was held between 4 and 7 April 52 BC. He was charged with the murder of Publius Clodius Pulcher. While he was prosecuted by the usual number of three advocates – Appius Claudius Pulcher, Marcus Antonius and Publius Valerius Nepos – he was defended by just Cicero.

Publius Clodius Pulcher

For a change the background is fairly simple. From the late 60s onwards Clodius had established himself as a rabble-rousing tribune of the people who developed a wide popular following and developed tough street gangs to intimidate and beat up his opponents. He first clashed with Cicero when the latter testified against him at his trial for dressing up as a woman in order to infiltrate the rites of the goddess Bona Dea being held in Julius Caesar’s house (because Caesar held the office of pontifex maximus) in December 62.

From that point onwards Clodius sought revenge and his gangs took to intimidating Cicero on numerous occasions. In 58, Clodius was elected tribune of the plebs and passed a law declaring anyone who had put to death Roman citizens without a trial guilty of treason. This was targeted solely at Cicero who, as consul in 63 BC, had followed the advice of the senate and had five leading members of the Catiline conspiracy put to death. Despite the support of the senate, the letter of the law defined Cicero as a criminal liable to the death penalty and so he was forced to flee into exile in Greece. 18 months later, in 57, the political atmosphere in Rome changed and he was allowed to return.

During his absence Clodius’s street gangs for the first time met their match in equal and opposing groups of fighters organised by ex-gladiator Titus Annius Milo, who held the post of tribune. Milo arrested some of Clodius’s men, was attacked by his gangs, attempted to prosecute Clodius for violence and, when that failed, recruited gangs of his own to meet violence with violence.

In 56 Clodius brought Milo to court but the trial was broken up by brawling and not reconvened. When Cicero defended another tribune he used the opportunity to issue a rallying cry to patriots to gather round patriots such as Milo and against traitors such as Clodius. The two became close allies. Milo provided bodyguards to protect the builders who were rebuilding Cicero’s house (after Clodius had it demolished during his exile) from Clodius’s gangs who were attacking them.

In April 56 Cicero delivered a blistering attack on Clodius and especially his sister, the notorious Clodia, as part of his defence of Marcus Caelius Rufus (referred to as as Caelius) in the speech known as Pro Caelio. Clodius’s hatred grew even deeper and resulted in several violent incidents, but Clodius’s main enemy was Milo.

In late 53 both Milo and Clodius stood for office, Milo for consul, Clodius for praetor. Cicero strongly backed Milo’s campaign since, as consul, he would be able to control Clodius. But every attempt to hold elections was foiled by outbreaks of violence and 52 opened with no magistrates elected.

The murder of Clodius

It was only a few weeks into the year, on 18 January 52, that Milo and his entourage encountered Clodius and his followers on the Appian Way outside Rome heading in opposite directions. They passed in surly silence but the rearguard of both gangs provoked each other and started fighting. It spread and became a general melee. Clodius was wounded with a spear and taken to a nearby inn at which point Milo was faced with the choice between leaving a wounded and infuriated enemy alive or doing away with him for good. So he had his men drag Clodius into the road and finish him off, leaving the body.

Milo’s trial

Having been done various favours by Milo over the years Cicero felt duty bound to speak in his defence. His presentation was seriously hampered by booing and catcalls from Clodius’s followers and it is said that Cicero didn’t manage to finish. In any case the facts were generally agreed and Milo was convicted. He hurriedly went into exile in Massilia, modern Marseilles. Subsequently Cicero polished his text and had it published. It was his last surviving court speech and is widely considered his masterpiece.

What makes it twice as interesting is that it is the only speech by Cicero for which we have an independent and separate account, by a first century AD scholar named Quintus Asconius Pedianus (3 to 88 AD) and that Asconius’s account drastically differs from Cicero’s. Its existence suggests the extent to which Cicero manipulated the facts and distorted the narrative (lied) in his speeches.

Some people thought the best line of defending Milo would have been to claim that eliminating Clodius was in the interests of public peace and order. Marcus Junius Brutus wrote and circulated the speech he thought should have been given along these lines. But instead Cicero decided to base his entire long speech on the premise that Clodius knowingly set a trap for Milo, who was therefore justified in defending himself. However, according to Asconius the encounter on the Appian Way was an accident and the outbreak of violence was an accident.

Asconius’s version

Berry includes in this edition a translation of Asconius’s version, his summary of the events surrounding Clodius’s murder and of the trial itself (and of the trials of Clodius and Milo’s associates which followed). In fact he recommends that the reader read it first, before reading Cicero’s account. It is a trim ten pages long.

Berry points out the key substantive difference between Cicero and Asconius, namely Cicero says Clodius planned an ambush which Milo heroically defended himself from, while Asconius (and, in the event, the jury) believed it was sheer luck that led to a purely accidental meeting on the Appian Way.

But there’s another way in which Asconius’s account sheds light on Cicero’s –it is brief and to the point. It is arranged in a simple chronological order, dealing with the background, the events on the day, and the complex arrangements regarding Roman law which led up to the trial itself. In many places it reads like a Wikipedia article. Asconius doesn’t mention himself once.

All this is, of course, in striking contrast to what I’ve learned to think of as Cicero’s style, which is:

  • wordy, very wordy, gabby and verbose
  • rarely if ever addresses the facts, and if it does you barely notice because they are drowned in:
  • a never-ending stream of self-glorifying self-promoting references to himself, to his great achievement in saving the state during the Cataline crisis, to his importance as a mentor and role model for the young, to his tastes in literature, to the hard work he’s put in to becoming Rome’s leading advocate, and so on and so on
  • barrages of references to Great Romans From The Past: to Scipio Aemilianus and Gaius Laelius and Quintus Metellus and Cato the Elder, and so on and on, great names yoked into his discourse in order to boost it, make it sound more patriotic and weighty
  • cluttered and repetitive: his defence of Archias is short by his standards but still manages to repeat certain claims 3 or 4 times; arguments and related sub-arguments pop up unexpectedly, with no apparent logic and then, a few pages later, pop up again
  • melodrama: in every trial Cicero makes out that the entire future of Rome, and all its citizens and women and children and their great heritage is at stake! and that only acquitting the noble defendant – a man ‘who has done more for his country than any other man in history’ (76) – can save the nation from ‘national calamity’! This unrelenting hyperbole must have gotten pretty tiring.

In contrast to all this, Asconius’s style and presentation is a wonderful breath of fresh air and makes you realise that not all ancient writing needs to be as verbose, overwrought, self-indulgent and confusing as Cicero’s.

Here’s Cicero:

So give me your attention, gentlemen, and lay aside any fear you might have. For if you have ever had the power of judging loyal and valiant men, if you have ever had the power of judging meritorious citizens, and if specially selected men from the most distinguished orders have ever been given the opportunity of demonstrating, by their actions and their votes, that approval of valiant and loyal citizens which they have so often expressed in the past by looks and words; if that is how it is, then you have at this moment complete power to decide whether we who have always upheld your authority should linger on in adversity for all time, or whether, after being persecuted for years by the most degraded citizens, we are at long last to be revived by your good selves, and by your honour, your courage and your wisdom. (4)

Here’s Asconius:

Milo was travelling in a coach with his wife Fausta, the daughter of Lucius Sulla the dictator, and his friend Marcus Fufius. Following them was a large column of slaves and also some gladiators, including two well-known ones, Eudamus and Birria. These were moving slowly at the rear of the column, and started an altercation with Publius Clodius’s slaves. As Clodius looked back menacingly at the disturbance, Birria pierced his shoulder with a spear. Then a fight began, and more of Milo’s men ran up. The wounded Clodius, meanwhile, was carried into a nearby inn in the territory of Bovilla. (32C)

I appreciate that Cicero was working within a specific genre – the advocate’s speech – that oratory had a host of rules, that the audience expected a show of rhetorical fireworks and that, in this respect, Cicero’s over-ripe performances were following convention and pleasing the crowd. And that, by contrast, Asconius’s commentary is just that, a scholarly text conforming to a completely different set of conventions and required to be precise and factual. But my God, what a relief it is to turn from Cicero’s gluttonous grandiloquence to Asconius’s spartan diet of bread and water.

Two versions of Cicero’s speech

Berry devotes several pages of his introduction to making a key point about the text. The version we have is a document Cicero heavily revised and reworked after the trial. Evidence for this comes from two sources. Firstly Asconius and the noted 1st century orator Quintilian both refer to the original version Cicero actually delivered at the trial – they’d both read it – and distinguish it from the text we have.

Secondly, Berry is the latest in a long line of scholars to detect a noticeable change in the text: the first two-thirds of the speech are favourable to the then-most powerful man in Rome, former general Gnaeus Pompeius, generally known as Pompey the Great:

  • ‘the wise and fair-minded Gnaeus Pompeius’ (2)
  • ‘a man of lofty and almost divine mind’ (21)
  • ‘a man of the highest principles’ (21)
  • ‘the exceptional carefulness of Gnaeus Pompeius’ (65)
  • ‘so very brave a man as Gnaeus Pompeius’ (66)

But around section 70, Pompey becomes more the focus of the speech and for the final third the references to him become notably hostile. Berry thinks this is because the first two-thirds are close to what Cicero delivered on the day, when the outcome of the trial still hung in the balance and it made sense to suck up to Pompey. The final third of the second version of the text was composed after it had become clear that Pompey in fact supported the prosecution and (tacitly, in the background) helped Milo be convicted. Hence the switch in tone from sucking up to critical.

The speech itself

It takes up 40 pages in the OUP edition and is divided into 105 sections. The central point is that Cicero chose to frame the events as Clodius having set a trap for Milo and so the response of Milo and his entourage was justified self-defence. He says:

  • it was Clodius who set a trap for Milo (6) and repeatedly tries to narrow the entirety of the case down to this one point, that either Clodius or Milo set a trap, and it was Clodius (31)
  • if it is agreed that Clodius set a trap, then it is no crime for a Roman to kill a criminal if his house is being burgled, or he is being assaulted or sexually attacked – a bandit may be lawfully killed (11) – and gives a roll call of Eminent Romans who have killed enemies but still been honoured (8, 9, 10)
  • it is a natural law which needs no encoding, that a man may use violence to defend himself if attacked (10)
  • he states and then repeats the claim that, by killing Clodius, Milo did the state and the people a favour, to ‘the benefit to our country, the benefit to you, and the benefit to all loyal citizens’ (30)
  • it was just the latest in a long line of services Milo has performed ‘for our country’
  • the senate has repeatedly spoken in favour of Milo (12)

Cicero asks who had the most motive for setting a trap? The obvious answer is Clodius, for Clodius was running for the office of praetor whereas Milo was running for consul and showed every sign of being elected. Now if they’d both been elected, Milo would have cramped Clodius’s (no doubt treasonous plans) at every turn – so Clodius had a clear and obvious reason for eliminating Milo. Whereas, now that he has been brought to trial for Clodius’s murder, Milo’s position is in deep jeopardy: in other words Milo had no motive for killing Clodius, quite the contrary, his murder has jeopardised his career and even his life (34).

Having established, to his own satisfaction, that the case boils down to which of the 2 men planned to ambush the other, Cicero compiles a dozen or more ways in which the time and location and make-up of the two entourages all favoured Clodius, so he was the obvious planner and trapper.

Cicero’s speech is laced with the usual references to Great Romans in order to big up his speech, to make it seem more weighty and prestigious by associating his case with Famous Men, something which really counted in this super-patriotic society.

In a related way, he continually makes the case sound as if it’s not about the guilt of just one man, but that the entire fate of the state – and therefore of the entire world (19) – is at stake. This is a familiar Cicero strategy, to make it sound as if the entire world will collapse if his man isn’t acquitted.

And both lines of argument are also connected with Cicero’s relentless flattery of the jury:

  • ‘specially selected men from the most distinguished orders’ (4)
  • ‘the most distinguished men from all the orders’ (5)
  • ‘the brightest luminaries from the most distinguished orders’ (21)

Indeed the final phrase of the entire over-ripe performance is unfettered sucking up to the jury of ‘those who are the best, the wisest and the most brave.’ (105)

Above all else, Cicero’s speech is full of endless references to himself, to his tangled history with Clodius – with an extended description of how it was Clodius’s intimidation which (unfairly) drove him into exile in 58 – and all after he had saved the state, single handed, by his own quick thinking (36 and 73 and yet again at 82).

There is something more than ludicrous about Cicero’s endless self glorification and self justification, his references to the way ‘the entire people of Italy was united by concern for his welfare’ (38), and the later passages which repeatedly refer to his exile and then ‘my restoration’ (39, 68 and 87 and 88).

The reader learns to shiver at the familiar words ‘And as for me, gentlemen…’ which introduce yet another variation on what a hero he was single-handedly saving the state during the Cataline crisis, how unjustly he was terrorised into exile by Clodius, and how ‘all of Italy’ and ‘the entire Roman people’ celebrated his return. One of the most frequent words in a speech by Cicero is ‘me’.

And so it comes as no real surprise, but is still vaguely ludicrous that the final passage in the entire speech is an extraordinarily long eulogy not to Milo, but to himself!

But as things are, Titus Annius, there is one consolation that sustains me – the thought that there is no duty of love, support, or devotion in which I have failed you. I have incurred the hostility of the powers that be for your sake; I have exposed my body and my life many times to the weapons of your enemies; I have abased myself as a suppliant before many people for your sake; I have risked my own property and possessions, and those of my children, by throwing in my lot with yours; and today, if any violence has been arranged, of if there is to be any life and death struggle, then I claim it as my own. What, then, does that leave? What more can I do for you, to repay your services to me, except to consider your own fortune, whatever it may be, my own? I shall not refuse it. I shall not say ‘No’. (100)

Several times Cicero refers to the tears in his eyes as he speaks (‘I can no longer speak for tears’, 105). This is a histrionic performance. He was on a stage. He was playing a tragic death scene, playing to the crowd, tugging the heartstrings of the jury, using every rhetorical and psychological and dramatic trick to align his own auctoritas and his noble self-sacrificing actions with those of Milo, trying to make them both out to be ‘saviours of their country.’

But wait! Cicero has more to say about himself! He always does:

How unhappy I am! What appalling luck I have had! You succeeded, Milo, in obtaining the help of these men in recalling me to my country; shall I be unsuccessful in obtaining their help to keep you in yours? What shall I say to my children, who count you as their second father? What shall I say to you, brother Quintus, who are now far away, but who shared those difficult times with me? That, in attempting to protect Milo’s welfare, I was unable to obtain the help of the very men who had helped Milo to secure my own welfare? Unable in what sort of cause? One that was approved by all the nations of the world. Unable to protect Milo’s welfare from whom? From those who had felt the greatest relief at the death of Publius Clodius. And on whose advocacy? My own. (102)

What terrible crime did I devise or what awful deed did I commit, gentlemen, when I tracked down, uncovered, exposed and expunged those indications of our impending destruction? All my troubles, and those of those close to me, derive from that source. Why did you want me to return to Rome? Was it so that I could watch the expulsion of those by whom my restoration was secured? I beseech you, do not let my return be more painful to me than my departure was! For how can I consider myself restored if I am to be separated from those who were responsible for securing my restoration? (103)

Subsequent trials

One last important thing: because it is so widely considered Cicero’s ‘masterpiece’ and is often read or studied by itself, a false impression is created of Pro Milone as sitting in splendid isolation like a statue on a plinth. It is salutary, then, to learn from the introduction (and from Asconius’s account, which devotes its last 2 pages to the fact) that the Milo trial was immediately followed by a succession of further trials, all related to the events of that day, and that Cicero was just as involved in these trials as in the Milo one.

Far from his world falling apart when Milo was convicted – as his histrionic performance stated – Cicero merely went back to his study and knocked out another defence speech. And another. And another.

Thus, although Milo was found guilty in the trial we’ve been following, and packed his bags and went into exile overnight, he was, in his absence, the subject of three further trials:

  • Milo prosecuted for electoral malpractice (bribery) – convicted in his absence
  • Milo prosecuted under the law on illegal association – convicted in his absence
  • Miilo prosecuted under a different law about illegal violence – convicted in his absence

But the battle between Milo and Clodius’s followers raged on in the courts:

  • Milo’s gang leader, Marcus Saufeius – the man who actually supervised the attack on the inn where Clodius had taken refuge and his actual murder – was tried and acquitted by just one vote – and he was defended by Cicero and Caelius.
  • Saufeius was then immediately retried, under an alternative law about illegal violence, was again defended by Cicero, and again acquitted, this time by a larger majority.
  • Meanwhile, Clodius’s gang leader, Sextus Cloelius, was prosecuted for taking Clodius’s body into the senate building on the day of his funeral, which resulted in the building being set on fire, and was convicted by a near unanimous verdict.
  • A number of other Clodians were tried and convicted.
  • A Clodian ex-tribune, Quintus Pompeius Rufus, was prosecuted by Caelius for the burning of the senate house, convicted and went into exile – Cicero was delighted because Pompeius had been spreading the lie that Cicero had organised Clodius’s murder.
  • Then another Clodian ex-tribune, Titus Munatius Plancus Bursa, was prosecuted by Cicero, also for responsibility in the burning of the senate house, convicted and went into exile.

Plancus’s conviction, in particular, pleased Cicero. We have a letter to a friend in which he says the conviction of Plancus gave him more pleasure than the death of Clodius a) because he preferred justice to be done in a court of law than at swordpoint b) because it reflected well on his friend Milo but – and this is what is so characteristically Ciceronian about the letter and his reasons – because c):

I was especially pleased at the display of good-will towards me on the part of honest men in the face of an astonishing amount of pressure from a very grand and powerful personage [he’s referring to Pompey, who tried to defend Plancus]

As so often in his legal speeches, the whole thing ends up being about him. He goes on to say:

It is a great victory. No braver Roman ever lived than those jurymen who dared to find him guilty in spite of all the power of the very personage who had empanelled them [Pompey]. They would never have done that if they had not felt my grievance as their own.

There is something winningly boyish in Cicero’s complete inability to conceive of justice as an objective factual thing, and persistently see it in solely personal terms, of whether the great figures in the land, judges and juries are for him or against him.

Slavery

Few editors comment on it but I am continually appalled at the casual references to slavery in every one of these old Roman texts. I know slavery was universal and universally accepted, and the editors of all the books I’ve read generally take it for granted – but it never ceases to shock and upset me.

A moment in Asconius’s text is even more upsetting than usual, where he claims that, immediately after the fight on the Appian Way, Milo had travelled to Clodius’s country villa to find his son (presumably to kill him) but, finding the son had been taken away, interrogated the head slave, Halicor, by cutting off his limbs one by one, before going on to murder Clodius’s bailiff and two other slaves.

!

This incident is contained in the Asconius text that Berry includes in this edition and translates, but he nowhere mentions it and it doesn’t, of course, crop up in Cicero’s speech, which makes Milo out to be a noble and patriotic man, the saviour of his nation, a man who had ‘freed his country at his own personal risk’ (72).

But it’s moments like this, the steady trickle of throwaway references to how despicably slaves were treated in ancient Rome without free men blinking an eye, which make me feel physically sick and make all reference to the ‘civilisation’ of the ancient world seem like a mockery.

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Pro Archia by Cicero (62 BC)

Pro Archia is the shortest of the five speeches contained in the excellent Oxford University Press edition of Defence Speeches of Cicero, edited and translated by D.H. Berry (2000). It’s barely 12 pages long and yet even this slip of a thing requires a detailed three-page introduction from Dr Berry. In it he explains that: Aulus Licinius Archias was born plain Archias in Antioch in Syria in the mid-120s. As a young man he established himself as a poet and travelled round the eastern Mediterranean writing poems to order. In 102 he arrived in Rome and was welcomed into the home of Lucius Licinius Lucullus where he tutored the two young sons. He was sought out by other noble Roman families.

During this period Cicero himself took instruction from Archias (among his other achievements, Cicero was no mean poet) and explains in the speech that gratitude for his old teacher was one reason why he took the case.

As a result of the Social War, most of the tribes and towns of Italy were granted Roman citizenship, under a series of franchise laws. Archias took advantage of these laws to adopt full Roman citizenship, taking the Roman style name Aulus Licinius Archias, the Licinius a tribute to the family who took him in and sponsored him.

Archias accompanied the general Lucius Lucullus to Asia when the latter was put in charge of managing the war against King Mithridates, 73 to 67 BC. Although successful Lucullus lost the confidence of his troops and was replaced, much to his chagrin, by the charismatic general Gnaeus Pompeius (generally referred to as Pompey in English), who wound up the campaign and claimed the credit. Lucullus commissioned Archias to write a poem praising his conduct of the war.

In 65 the tribune Gaius Papius passed a law expelling from Rome all non-citizens who did not have a fixed residence in Italy. In 62 Archias was named in a prosecution alleging he was not a proper citizen and so should be expelled.

Berry explains that Archias had, in fact, done everything necessary under the social laws to gain full citizenship and that therefore scholars have seen the prosecution as politically motivated. it is thought the prosecutor, Grattius, was an agent of Pompey’s who was continuing his vendetta Lucullus by attacking the latter’s pet poet. Alternatively, maybe Grattius undertook the prosecution on his own initiative to curry favour with Pompey.

Therefore, as so often, the case was not a narrowly legal matter, but was embedded in the fraught power politics of the time. The case for Archias’s citizenship was so straightforward that Cicero deals with it in the first few pages. Thereafter he shifts the entire debate away from laws or politics and onto the subject of literature. Thus he was deftly able to avoid alienating either side in the feud – doing the Lucullus family a favour by defending their poet, but without casting any aspersions on Pompey, who is mentioned only once, in a deliberately flattering way (24).

Cicero’s self-centredness and patriotism

This is the third Cicero speech I’ve read and I’ve gotten used to what I at first thought was his immense self-centredness but I’m coming to realise must have been the accepted style – that the speaker dwells at inordinate length on his own experiences and character and his motives for taking the case, his relationship with the accused and so on.

The other thing which is becoming apparent is the immense amount of space devoted to naming famous Romans. These Romans may be forebears of the prosecutor or accused, or people involved in the case for one reason or another, but, as a rule, Roman literature involves an inordinate number of references to previous generations of eminent Romans. If a lot of Cicero’s texts repeatedly refer to himself, this self-centredness is mimicked, at a higher level so to speak, by the way the texts are so very Roman-centric (see below).

The modern reader is tempted to skip past these sections in order to get to the meat, but I am coming to realise their importance in creating a kind of fabric of authority in a text or speech. It is often blatant name-dropping but with the purpose of adding weight and lustre to a client’s case by associating him with great men from the past.

Section by section synopsis

(1) Cicero tells the jury he owes a great deal of his ability as an orator to early training with Achias.

(2) It may seem illogical, given that Achias is not an orator but a poet, but Cicero tells the jury he has always been interested in all branches of culture, which are ‘linked by a sort of common bond’.

(3) He flatters his auditors, describing the magistrate as an excellent man, the jury as a most excellent jury and apologises that he is using a style not conventionally used in a law court, to ‘speak more freely on cultural and literary matters’ than is usual.

(4) He gives a brief resume of Achias’s life: born in Antioch (‘to high ranking parents’); as soon as he reached maturity, devoting himself to literary composition; then plying his trade around the Med, exciting admiration wherever he went.

(5) Arriving in south Italy, Achias was celebrated wherever he went and awarded citizenship of various cities. Arriving in Rome during the consulship of Marius and Catulus he was taken in by the Lucullus household.

(6) A typical display of eminent names: Cicero says Archias was sought out by Quintus Metellus Numidicus and his son Pius, Marcus Aemilius, Quintus Catulus and his son, Lucius Crassus, and was on close terms with the Luculli, Drusus, the Octavii, Cato, and the Hortensii.

(7) Cicero tells that, travelling back from Sicily with Marcus Lucullus, they passed through the town of Heraclea where they took advantage of the law of Silvanus and Carbo to legally make him a citizen. He fulfilled all the requirements and presented himself before the praetor Quintus Metellus to be registered.

(8) Thus, by section 8 of this 32-section speech, Cicero has made his case: Achias cannot be convicted of fraudulently behaving like a citizen because he is a citizen which can be proved by reference to the register of Heraclea – and the citizens who have come from Heraclea to vouch for him – and to ‘a man of the highest standing and the greatest possible conscientiousness and honour’, Marcus Lucullus, who is here in court to testify. Cicero says he could rest his defence right there, after only 3 or 4 minutes of speaking.

(9) Cicero concedes that the town records of Heraclea were destroyed in the Social War but what need for them beside the witness of the town itself. If the prosecution wants proof of Archias’ residence in Rome then this can be presented thanks to the conscientious record-keeping of Metellus, which he goes on to describe.

(10) Two difficult-to-grasp points: Cicero sarcastically says that, when numerous other Greek towns were handing out citizenship to unworthy artisans, he supposes places like Tarentum were unprepared to grant citizenship to one who had gained the greatest glory! This is clearly a kind of exasperated sarcasm but its point is a little lost on us. Then Cicero says Archias didn’t take advantage of the other lists in which he was enrolled but insisted on being counted as a Heraclean – ‘under circumstances such as these, is Archias really to be driven out?’ It’s also a little hard to see the point of this fact, maybe it displays Archias’s nobility in not slipping in as a citizen of umpteen south Italian towns. Both points feel very secondary to the basic key facts he established in sections 7 and 8.

(11) He addresses a specific point of the prosecution that Archias’s name is missing from the census roll. Cicero simply states that at the last census Archias was on campaign with general Lucius Lucullus and that during the census before that he was also absent with Lucullus.

An additional fact: during the period the prosecution alleges Archias was not a citizen, he made a will according to Roman laws, took inheritances left him by Roman citizens and was nominated for a reward from the treasury – i.e. behaved in numerous ways as a Roman citizen and was accepted by other Roman citizens as such.

(12) It is at this point that the speech suddenly detours into a consideration of literature and Archias’s literary importance. Cicero does this, as so often, in a surprisingly personal way, baring his breast and speaking in a vainglorious way:

Yes, I for one am not ashamed to admit that I am devoted to the study of literature… Why should I be ashamed, gentlemen, given that in all the years I have lived, my private pastimes have never distracted me, my own pleasures have never prevented me, and not even the need for sleep has ever kept me away from helping anyone in his hour of danger or of need?

This is pure self-promotion, isn’t it? With a touch of wholly spurious self-dramatisation.

(13) Surprisingly, Cicero then goes on for another paragraph, saying no-one can blame him if he spends the time others devote to sport or games or pleasures on literary study – especially if the study results in the powers of oratory which he puts to the use of his friends in adversity. Why, you might reasonably think, is Cicero clogging up a short speech about Archias’s citizenship with a lengthy apologia of his own penchant for studying literature?

(14) More self promotion as Cicero explains that only the example of great men recorded in literature inspired him to expose himself ‘to so many great struggles and to the daily attacks of desperate men, which I have been facing for the sake of your security.’

(15) Cicero invents a rhetorical question from a fictitious critic, asking whether the great men he invokes were experts in literature. This allows Cicero to concede that many of them probably weren’t but that, nonetheless:

When a natural disposition which is noble and elevated is given in addition a systematic training in cultural knowledge, then something remarkable and unique comes about.

(16) As mentioned above, Cicero then gives a list famous Roman forebears as evidence of the importance of literature to leading Romans of times gone by. He names the younger Africanus, ‘a godlike man’ [who we know Cicero made the key figure in several of his philosophical writings, on the gods, on the republic and on friendship], Gaius Laelius [central speaker in On friendship], Lucius Furius and Cato the Elder. So the study of literature definitely added to the wisdom and honour of these great men.

But he adds a second point, that even if the study of literature did not lead to statesmanlike qualities, still it should be recommended because:

this form of mental relaxation broadens and enlightens the mind like no other.

Whereas other forms of relaxation may be appropriate for specific times and places and age groups, literature is universal:

The study of literature sharpens youth and delights old age; it enhances prosperity and provides a refuge and comfort in adversity; it gives enjoyment at home without being a hindrance in the wider world; at night, and when travelling, and on country visits, it is an unfailing companion.

(17) It may be that some have no taste for literary achievement but surely they can recognise it in others? The great actor Roscius had died earlier that year (62) and was universally mourned when he died and yet he only entertained with his body, with his external self. How much more should ‘extraordinary motions of the mind and quickness of intellect’ be celebrated?

(18) Cicero then testifies to having seen Archias on countless occasions extemporise poetry on the topics of the day. And his written compositions have been acclaimed as equal to the ancients.

Should I not love such a man, should I not admire him, and should I not think it my duty to defend him by every means possible?

As so often, the client is the intended subject of the sentence and yet, somehow, the main presence is Cicero himself, booming his virtue. He goes on to give the standard account of a poet’s divine inspiration which was already, in his time, a stock cliché and would last another 2,000 years:

A poet is created by nature itself, activated by the force of his own mind, and inspired, as it were, by a kind of divine spirit. Rightly does our own great Ennius call poets ‘sacred’ because they seem to us to be marked out by a special gift and endowment of the gods.

(19) Even barbarian races respect their poets. Rocks and deserts have responded to the poet’s voice. Wild animals are turned aside by his singing. Cicero asks, in a typically plangent rhetorical question, whether the excellent race of Romans, alone, will ‘remain unmoved by the voice of a poet’?

He elaborates the point: various cities have competed to claim the great Homer as a citizen, long dead though he is. Is Rome to turn away a great poet who is not only alive, but belongs to Rome both by law and his own choice?

Third point: Archias has devoted much of his time in Rome to celebrating the Roman people. For he wrote a long poem about Marius’s war against the Cimbri, which the general, despite not caring about poetry, was said to like.

(20) And the value of poets is indicated by the way great men have vied to be celebrated by them. Themistocles wanted to hear his exploits celebrated by singers or performers; Marius thought his achievements would be made famous by the poet Lucius Plotius.

(21) Continuing the point, Cicero says that Archias has written a long poem celebrating the war against Mithridates, shedding glory not only on the commander in chief Lucullus, but also on the entire Roman people.

You can see how this is a convenient fact for Cicero because he then goes on to itemise some of the great victories, battles, sieges and so on of the war, all carried to success under the excellent Lucius Lucullus, mentioning his name four times. Sucking up is a crude term, but Cicero was doing it to the great general who was, of course, present in court. Maybe he turned and gestured to him at each name call. Maybe the crowd cheered each namecheck.

Back to the speech, Cicero draws the conclusion that all this writing up of heroic Roman military achievement means that Archias deserves the people’s gratitude:

Those who use their talents to write about such events serve therefore to increase the fame of the Roman people.

(22) It is really important to grasp just how patriotic Cicero was (see the deeply patriotic motive which runs throughout his tract De republica). Here he clarifies that the fancy words about a poet being created by nature and being ‘sacred’ are really only valid when he is praising Rome:

The praises of a poet shed glory not only on the person who is praised, but on the reputation of the Roman people also.

Because this is what all human beings desire:

We are all motivated by the desire for praise, and the best people are the ones who are most attracted by glory.

He repeats the idea that the Roman poet Ennius not only praised great men like Maximus, Marcellus and Fulvius, but shed glory on the whole Roman people and so their ancestors bestowed citizenship on him – are the jury, then, to disenfranchise this citizen of Heraclea who has been sought by so many cities as their own?

(23) A rather garbled passage in which he starts by saying that Greek literature is far more widely spread than Roman, then continues to say that literature not only records deeds of glory but thereby acts as an incentive to men to be heroic.

(24) Thus Alexander the Great kept a bevy of writers with him to record his deeds while in our own day Pompey conferred citizenship on Theophanes of Mitylene because he had written about him, and before his soldiers who shouted a great hurrah because they realised that they shared in the praise and glory of their leader.

(25) Cicero tells a funny story about Sulla who was handed a laudatory poem by the author, scanned it, then awarded him the value of the property he was auctioning at the time on condition that he never wrote another line. But the point is: would Archias have failed to gain citizenship from Sulla?

(26) Or would he have failed to gain citizenship from Quintus Metellus Pius who has given citizenship to so many others and once listened to some rather crude poets from Corduba? Because everyone is motivated by a desire for praise.

(27) More stories about great Romans: Decimus Brutus decorated the entrances to his temples and monuments with poems by Accius; Fulvius took Ennius with him when he went to fight the Aetolians and devoted the spoils of Mars to the Muses. How is this relevant? Because if generals have barely laid down their armour before they are honouring the names of poets, how much more so should jurors who wear the toga of peacetime.

(28) Characteristically, Cicero then decides to share even more about himself and let the jurors know that his exploits during the heroic year of 63 are even now being written up by Archias into an epic poem! For if you take away praise and glory what incentive does anyone have to get involved in great undertakings?

(29) If people had no concept of posterity they would never do anything great or crush themselves under obligations and work. It is the notion that our fame and glory will live on after our deaths which motivates the truly great.

(30) If great men take care to leave behind statues depicting their mere bodies, shouldn’t they take even more trouble to leave a record of their thoughts and deeds? As usual, Cicero adverts back to himself and his own sense that, even as he performed his heroic deeds, he was motivated by the thought that they would live on to aftercomers.

(31) A stirring peroration which summarises all the points to date.

(32) Cicero briefly explains that his speech has been in two parts: the technical part in which he dealt with the accusation, and then the slightly more unusual part where he digressed to discuss his client’s literary achievement and literature in general. He hopes the court will forgive his speaking on this subject.

Thoughts

Pro Archias is often considered important because of its discussion of literature but, as this summary indicates, that’s a little misleading; it would lead the reader to expect an essay about the origins or manner of Roman poetry, but there’s none of that, really. Instead what we get, in my opinion, is an explanation of the social function of poetry, and above all, the purpose of poetry in serving the Roman state, in praising great military leaders, in shining glory on Rome’s great military victories, in incentivising young men to emulate the great military deeds of their forebears.

Cicero is often talked about by his fans as if he is a sensitive, liberal figure and he often is – passages in this speech can be quoted out of context to make him sound like a completely contemporary professor of poetry. But surely, deep down, the evidence of De republica, De legibus and all these speeches is that Cicero has more in common with Kipling‘s notions of a hyper-patriotic literature designed to celebrate Victorious Generals and serve the Great Cause of Empire!

Credit

Defence Speeches by Cicero, translated and edited by D.H. Berry, was published by Oxford University Press in 2000.

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by Simon on July 15, 2022  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on July 15, 2022

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Pro Murena by Cicero (63 BC)

‘Hardly anyone dances when he is sober, unless he is insane…’
(Cicero defending his client against charges of loose living in Pro Murena)

It is late November 63 BC and Marcus Tullius Cicero is drawing towards the end of his year serving as one of Rome’s two consuls. The last few months have been marked by the increasingly scandalous behaviour of the Roman senator Lucius Sergius Catilina, who, frustrated in his plans to get elected consul for the following year (62 BC), is planning to overthrow the Roman state, to set Rome itself on fire, murder its leading politicians and lead an army of liberated slaves on the capital.

In the last few weeks Cicero, aware of the growing threat, has made blistering attacks on Catalina in the senate, prompting the latter to outspoken defiance and threats to bring everything down in flames, before he fled the capital. Now news has just arrived in Rome that Catalina has placed himself at the head of a rebel army in Etruria, with the obvious aim of marching on Rome and taking it by force and then implementing his violent social revolution. And it is at this moment of high jeopardy that a case comes to court in which Cicero, in his civilian capacity as Rome’s best advocate, is slated to speak for the defence.

The case has been brought against Lucius Licinius Murena. Murena is a prominent politician and general from a distinguished family and has just been elected to succeed Cicero as one of the two consuls for the following year, 62 BC, elected in the same contest in which Catalina was defeated.

The charge against Murena is of electoral malpractice i.e. bribery, and the prosecutors include some of the leading men of the state, including Servius Sulpicius Rufus, Gaius Posthumius, and Marcus Porcius Cato.

The election and the case and the Cataline rebellion are all intimately linked because Catalina only embarked on his uprising when he was defeated in the election for consul by Murena. It was the third time Catalina had stood for election to consul and failed and it was frustration and bitterness which spurred him to rebel against his city and class.

The speech itself is a classic example of Cicero choosing to ignore the main thrust of the charges in order to shift the point of debate onto a topic where he thinks he stands more chance of winning. Thus the focus of his speech is not whether Murena is guilty or not (there was widespread agreement that he was) but whether Rome could afford to send a distinguished general into exile at just the exact moment when she needed him to save her from Catalina’s uprising. Murena’s conviction and banishment would automatically require a supplementary election to be held to fill the now vacant post of consul. Could Rome afford to be distracted by the holding of a supplementary election at exactly the moment when it needed two consuls, both firing on all cylinders.

D.H. Berry is the translator and editor of the excellent Oxford University Press edition of five of Cicero’s best defence speeches. In his wonderfully lucid introduction to Pro Murena, Berry explains the motivations of the advocates involved on both sides of the trial.

Bear in mind that in ancient Rome there was no police force and no state institutions for the administration of justice, no Crown Prosecution Service. So prosecutions could only be undertaken by individuals against other individuals, and both protagonists then tried to rope in friends, family or colleagues, the more eminent and high social status the better, onto their sides. The whole ‘system’ was riddled with private motives, grievances, opportunities to seize advantage, get rid of rivals, or ally with powerful patrons, and the Murena case was no different.

The prosecutors

Servius Sulpicius Rufus

Sulpicius had stood in the election for consul and been defeated by Murena. He was irked because, as a leading jurist, he had kept within the strict rules governing election behaviour. When Murena was elected, Sulpicius launched the prosecution a) because Murena had undoubtedly breached the law and b) because, if Murena was disqualified (and driven into exile) Sulpicius would stand in the resulting ‘supplementary election’ and stood a good chance of achieving his goal of becoming consul. So pretty crude political motivations, then.

Marcus Porcius Cato

Cato announced before the election that he would prosecute anyone found to breach the new, tougher electoral rules and so, as inflexible as a terminator, joined the prosecution regardless of its political and practical consequences.

The defenders

Quintus Hortensius Hortalus

Hortensius had been the leading advocate in Rome until the young up-and-comer Cicero defeated him in several cases at which point he retired. However, when Cicero was appointed consul in 63 Hortensius returned to the courts and the two now worked together, as on this case. Hortensius was a close ally of Lucius Licinius Lucullus, the general who had won great victories in the East until recalled by the senate and replaced by the boy wonder general, Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey), since when he had been sulking at his vast villa complex near Naples. Murena was related to Lucullus and had served as legate (second in command) for him in Asia, so Lucullus backed him and Hortensius was Lucullus’s agent in the courts.

Marcus Licinius Crassus

It’s surprising to find Rome’s richest man involved in the rough and tumble of a court case but his motivation was similar to Hortensius’s, namely opposition to Pompey. Crassus had resented Pompey ever since he had swept in at the end of Crassus’s prolonged campaign to put down the Spartacus rebellion in 71 BC and claimed all the credit for himself. Pompey had gone on to be given special commands against the pirates, in 67 BC, then sent to relieve Lucullus in the war against King Mithridates in Asia in 66. Now, with that war at an end, Pompey had announced he was soon to return to Rome. So Crassus got involved in the defence of Murena because it would be infinitely better for him to have the consul for 62 (Murena) in big debt to him, than to let Murena be exiled and the leadership of the just-about-to-start campaign against Catalina handed to his enemy, Pompey. (See what I mean about private motivations playing a big role in law cases?)

Cicero

Cicero’s own motivation is more puzzling. He was a good friend of the lead prosecutor, Sulpicius. He was favourably disposed to Pompey i.e. didn’t share the anti-Pompey animus which united Hortensius and Crassus. And Murena was being prosecuted under new, tighter legislation about electoral procedure which he had himself sponsored (the lex Tullia de ambitu). In the absence of any evidence, our best guess is that, as the Cataline conspiracy exploded into open warfare, Cicero wanted to ensure that one of the two consuls due to take over from him in just a few weeks’ time (on 1 January 62) was a seasoned general (as Murena was) who would be the Republic’s strongest possible defender against the rebels.

Also, because nobody’s motive in ancient Rome were pure or simple, it did Cicero no harm that Hortensius and Crassus were leading conservatives. Having risen to the top of the greasy pole by dint of talent and hard work, Cicero promptly espoused the conservative republicanism of the aristocracy and Crassus and Hortensius were leading lights of that faction. So it was a shrewd career and social move to work with them, no matter how temporarily.

Cicero’s speech

Cicero describes the prosecution case as being in three parts. Surprisingly for us, but customary at the time, only one of these parts is concerned with the actual evidence for the charges. Cicero enumerates the three parts as:

  1. an attack on his client’s private life
  2. a comparison of the merits of other candidates who stood against Murena in the consulship election
  3. actual charges of electoral malpractice (11)

As an amateur non-scholar and non-Latinist, for me several things stand out. One is the strongly ad hominem nature of the content throughout, the highly personal nature of both Cicero’s defence and his counter-attacks against the prosecutors. And the way these are entwined with Cicero’s unrelenting self promotion.

The speech is conventionally divided into fairly short (half page) 90 sections and Cicero spends the first 10 of these defending attacks which have obviously been made against him personally by both Sulpicius and Cato regarding his decision to defend Murena at all.

He devotes only four short sections to briskly addressing the accusations of personal immorality the opposition have made, stemming from Murena’s time in Asia, by pointing out that he was there serving as a junior officer under his father and therefore carrying out the kind of filial duty so important to Romans.

Then, somehow, we are back with personalities for a section where Cicero defends Murena against attacks of being a ‘new man’, something which Cicero, the quintessential ‘new man’, takes to heart, prompting him to justify his own attempts to open careers for men like himself.

As you read on, you find that Cicero’s arguments continually rotate back round to himself; they might digress off on this or that topic for a while but they always seem to come back to another way in which Cicero can promote himself, defend himself, extol his virtues and remind everyone of his sterling service to the state.

Sections 18 to 21 compare the careers of Sulpicius (who brought the case against Murena and stood against him and lost in the recent consular election) and Murena; both served as quaestors before Murena went off to work as legate under Lucius Lucullus while Sulpicius stayed in Rome and studied hard to become a leading jurist.

In 21 Cicero adverts to himself again, and the way his constant presence in Rome led to his astounding popularity, swank swank.

22 features a nice use of antithesis with Cicero directly comparing Murena’s daily life in an army in the field with Sulpicius’s cushy civilian existence. This develops, in sections 23 to 29, into Cicero, surprisingly, mocking and scorning Sulpicius’s chosen profession as legal expert (‘filled to the brim with trickery and foolishness’, 26, ‘consisting entirely of fictions and fabrications’, 28), unfavourably comparing the timid life of a scholar to the skills and manliness required by Murena’s of officer in the army. In other words, an extended attack on the prosecutor, completely ignoring the basis of the case.

And throughout, Cicero constantly refers to himself:

It seems to me that many men have started out with a strong preference for my procession, but when in due course they found they were not up to it, they sank to yours. (29)

I was aware of this when I was standing myself… (40)

Having done the same myself when I was a praetor and in my consulship… (42)

I repeatedly told you, Servius, that you had no idea how to campaign for the consulship… (43)

I myself have first-hand experience… (46)

To be a bit more precise, Cicero mocks Sulpicius for being a jurist or expert on the law. By comparison, he says the two qualities most required for a consul are military ability and the ability to speak, to be an orator, to control and sway armies and civilian crowds – both of which, of course, he claims his client has in abundance.

This comparison of Murena and Sulpicius moves on to the flaws in the latter’s campaigning in the recent consular election, which Cicero itemises in devastating detail. His strongest point is that, from an early stage, Sullpicius persuaded the senate to pass a new law against electoral malfeasance stronger than the existing one. Everyone promptly concluded that Sulpicius was throwing in the towel and knew he would lose. Cicero does a witty impersonation of ordinary people on election day, discussing Sulpicius’s giving up and so abandoning him for Murena.

Cicero then lists the people Suplicius’s strict new law alienated, starting with the masses themselves (for, as Berry points out in a droll note, the people liked being bribed; it was one of the perks of being a Roman citizen.)

And this criticism of Sulpicius for threatening to prosecute whoever won the election instead of actively campaigning himself, segues into the reckless behaviour of Catalina during the same campaign which, of course, circles back round to Cicero’s role in the Catalina affair (up to that point) and suddenly the speech is all about Cicero’s actions and motivations in calling Catalina out in the senate (49 ff).

Murena was criticised for having decorated the triumph of his father with military gifts (as well as sharing in the triumph), and that he had lived in luxury while on military campaign. Regarding the triumph, Cicero argued that such actions were legitimate because he had served in the war under his father’s command. He added that the fact that he served in a war made him worthy of praise not criticism.

Incongruously, Murena was also accused of being a dancer, which made him in Roman eyes a person of less dignity. Cicero dismissed this as irrelevant.

Answering Cato

Eventually Cicero reaches the end of addressing issues raised by Sulpicius, takes a pause, and announces he is going to consider the arguments put by the other prosecutors, namely Gaius Postumius and Cato.

He devotes most time to Cato, pointing out that he is a highly moral and distinguished man, but that his adherence to Stoic philosophy has made him hard and inflexible. He asks Cato whether it is wise or practical to deprive the state of the service of an experience general now, at this crucial juncture, just as the Cataline conspiracy is reaching its climax.

Having established this theme in his section criticising Cato, Cicero expands it to bring his speech to a crescendo in the last 5 sections or so, as he turns to the jury and repeats the same idea half a dozen times, that this is no time to be jettisoning a consul and wasting the people’s energies on a supplementary election.

This I understand, but I was puzzled why, in the last few sentences, Cicero dragged in a few extraneous points which he hadn’t mentioned at all in the preceding 90 sections, asking the jury to consider the shock and shame and upset to Murena’s father and wife and extended family if he were to be exiled (87); and also to consider the virtue of his home town, ‘the extremely ancient town’ of Lanuvium (86).

These seem odd distractions to throw in right at the very end, oddly distracting from the pulverising central notion that we can’t afford to lose a consul and a general in this time of crisis.

Plutarch’s account

The order of defence speakers was Hortensius, Crassus and then Cicero, as he preferred speaking last and delivering the killer blow. Plutarch, in his Life of Cato describes the scene:

When the trial was held, Cicero, who was consul at that time and one of Murena’s advocates, took advantage of Cato’s fondness for the Stoics to rail and jest at length about those philosophers and what were called their ‘paradoxes’, thus making the jurors laugh. Cato, accordingly, as we are told, said with a smile to the bystander: ‘My friends, what a droll fellow our consul is!’
(Plutarch, Life of Cato, 21.5)

According to Plutarch, Cicero is said to have spoken below his usual standard because he was up late the night writing the speech, but it didn’t matter – Murena was acquitted, anyway: the jury accepted Cicero’s simple line that the national interest trumped strict adherence to the law or anything Murena might have actually done to breach it.

Subsequently

Murena was acquitted but the Cataline conspiracy was yet to reach its twin climaxes. Only a few weeks after the trial, Cicero was able to present to the senate documentary evidence (letters) and first person testimony from senior conspirators who had been part of the plan to overthrow the state. A famous debate followed about what to do with these five senior figures, which led to the decision to have them executed, which Cicero promptly did – an act which was to haunt the rest of his life as later political enemies would claim it was an illegal and even treasonous act. It would lead to his exile in 58 BC.

Having disposed of the leadership in the city, the struggle against Catalina turned to battle against the army he had raised in the north of Italy and here, ironically, Murena, who had been acquitted chiefly because of his military skills, was to play no part in the military campaign – the loyalist army which confronted and defeated Catalina’s forces in January 62 was led by Cicero’s fellow consul for 63, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, who had his command of the army extended by the senate into the new year solely for this purpose.

Murena, who Cicero had defended so successfully on the premise that the state needed him to defeat Catalina, in the event, played no role whatsoever in the defeat of Catalina. There’s no point studying history if you don’t have a taste for unintended consequences and ironic reversals.

The rule of three

Many rhetorical techniques are on display and there is much balancing of two ideas or parentheses, and some sentences contain four, five or six clauses – but the ancient rule of three is everywhere evident:

But if shunning hard work denotes sloth, rejecting supplicants arrogance, and abandoning one’s friends shamelessness, then this case is one which no one who is hard working or compassionate or loyal to duty could possibly refuse. (10)

For my part, gentleman, I should consider myself wicked had I deserted a friend, cruel had I deserted a man in trouble, arrogant had I deserted a consul. (10)

[Murena’s] father found him an invaluable help in moments of crisis, a comfort in times of strain, and a son to be proud of in moments of victory. (12)

There is nothing more fickle than the masses, nothing more unfathomable than people’s intentions, nothing more misleading than the entire process of an election. (36)

Marcus Crassus, a man of the greatest rank and diligence and oratorical skill… (48)

The rage in his face, the criminality in his eyes, and the insolence in his speech… (49)

He was a man of the greatest eloquence, the greatest devotion to duty, and the greatest integrity… (58)

I venture to predict that in due course experience will influence you, time will soften you, age will mellow you. (65)

Can’t lose with the rule of three. Makes anything sound grander, nobler, more effective.

Credit

Defence Speeches by Cicero, translated and edited by D.H. Berry, was published by Oxford University Press in 2000.

Cicero reviews

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by Simon on July 13, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Ancient history, Law, Translation
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Posted by Simon on July 13, 2022

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/07/13/pro-murena-cicero/

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