‘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.

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Credit

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

Cicero reviews

• The letters of Cicero
• On the nature of the gods 1
• On the nature of the gods 2
• On the nature of the gods 3
• De republica
• De legibus
• On old age
• On friendship
• Introduction to Cicero’s defence speeches
• Pro Murena
• Pro Archia
• Pro Caelio
• Pro Milone
• Imperium by Robert Harris
• Lustrum by Robert Harris
• Dictator by Robert Harris

Roman reviews

• Complete list of my Roman reviews