Ann Vasaly

Cicero, Domestic Politics, and the First Action of the Verrines

In the First Action of the Verrines Cicero highlights the issue of judicial corruption, which appears to be leading to the passage of legislation ending the senatorial monopoly on composition of the juries in the quaestio de repetundis . The work might theoretically, therefore, furnish an important study of how Cicero publicly positioned himself on a key political issue at a crucial point in his career. Historians, however, often dismiss the political impact of the work, arguing that jury reform was essentially a fait accompli before the trial began. Rhetoricians likewise tend to understate its political importance, both because of its status as a substitute for a longer and fully elaborated oration and because of a pronounced tendency in recent scholarship to subordinate political comment in the judicial speeches to the immediate practical goals of legal advocacy. Cicero9s prosecution of Verres, however, involved an unprecedented move in the orator9s career. Through the trial he injected himself forcefully, and for the first time, into a contemporary political debate and thereby created for himself a new space from which to operate within the political landscape.

Cicero's Early Speeches

Ciceros first published speech, the Pro Quinctio , was delivered in 81 under Sulla dictator . At the beginning of this oration Cicero speaks of other cases he had undertaken; he had appeared in earlier civil actions during the same year. Cicero employed many of the same ethical strategies he had used in the Pro Qyinctio in the Pro Roscio Amerino , his first criminal case, argued in the following year. The trial involved an accusation of parricide against Sextus Roscius of Ameria, whose father had appeared on the list of those proscribed under Sulla. The preconsular speeches were concerned with crafting an image of the orator that would transcend the moment of the speech. His electoral success was not, therefore, as he claims in the speech, owed merely to the legal support he had given to his friends or to the mastery of his art attained during his long oratorical tirocinium . Keywords: Cicero; preconsular speeches; Pro Quinctio ; Sextus Roscius

Characterization and complexity: Caesar, Sallust, and Livy

It would be hard to over-estimate the role that characterization of individuals played in Roman historiography. The reasons for this are many and complex; only some of them can be touched on here. Of seminal importance was the prevailing moral didacticism of ancient history, which inclined Roman historians to portray events as dependent on the actions of individuals and these actions, in turn, as “indexes of goodness or badness of character.” The influence of the heroic characters of epic and drama, with their central roles in a narrative of events, would have been pervasive, especially in light of the fact that from the time of Naevius and Ennius the subject-matter treated by poets and writers of Roman history had often overlapped, with historians retailing myth and legend, on one hand, and playwrights and epic poets writing of recent Roman historical events on the other. A focus on individuals played an obvious role in the purely affective appeal of earlier historical texts in both Greek and Latin, and Roman historians could look especially to their Hellenistic Greek predecessors for models of gripping narratives that revolved around the virtues or, more often, vices of a major actor.

Cicero's Correspondence: A Literary Study

There has been a great revival of interest in the writings of Cicero, one of the most important Latin prose writers; his letters have remained unaccountably neglected, save for basic textual and explanatory work, and for detailed history. This study shows that Ciceros letters should be regarded as artistic works, the artistry no less real for being bound up with personal situations. With close analyses, extensive use of contemporary literature, and a new understanding of the role of rhythm in the letters, Prof Hutchinson reveals the value of approaching the letters as writing. Such an approach will be found of significance for history as well as literature. All Latin in the text is translated. translated.