Expressions of thanks or praise should be sent directly to the reviewer, using the email address in the review. 5.11.25, 8.3.75, 9.4.44, 11.1.34, 11.3.84, 11.3.167). Please subscribe or login. Roscius and Archias were artists of quite a different kind: Roscius was a Roman eques, now dead, who had acted in plays before large audiences; Archias was a Syrian immigrant who wrote poetry in Greek for a small number of aristocratic families. It is one of the best. A typical jurorone of a panel of seventy-five20would have taken an entirely different view. Throughout the speech Cicero wishes to show that Archias is someone who is useful to society. Archias career is recounted up as far as his arrival in Rome in 102; Cicero impressively manages to connect him with both the consuls of that year, Marius and Catulus. Some features of this site may not work without it. We should therefore begin by asking what it was about this particular case that led Cicero to adopt such a style.17 The question is especially pertinent in the context of the exordium, since stylistic brilliance was normally to be avoided in this part of the speech (Inv. 12). Archias's defense was undertaken by a former pupil of his, the previous year's Consul, Marcus Tullius Cicero. Thus in the last (hopelessly corrupt) sentence of section 5, C. informs us of a textual crux but maintains focus upon the meaning of the sentence as printed. 4. In 65 BC, the Roman Senate passed the Lex Papia de Peregrinis, which challenged false claims of citizenship and expelled foreigners from Rome. 4.74), and there is no reason to suppose that the one that heard Archias the following year was any different. 61): Et quoniam non est nobis haec oratio habenda aut in imperita multitudine aut in aliquo conventu agrestium, audacius paulo de studiis humanitatis quae et mihi et vobis nota et iucunda sunt disputabo. Self-Reference in Ciceros Forensic Speeches, A Volscian Mafia? The extent of upper-class Roman prejudice regarding a mans place of origin is revealed by the fact that, in the year before Archias trial, Cicero himself had been described in the Senate by one patrician as animmigrant citizen (inquilinus civis, Sal. It ends with a curious reference to the praetor in charge of the court ( 32): quae a foro aliena iudicialique consuetudine et de hominis ingenio et communiter de ipso studio locutus sum, ea, iudices, a vobis spero esse in bonam partem accepta, ab eo qui iudicium exercet certo scio. For other forms of mental relaxation are in no way suited to every time, age, and place. The chapter examines the style used by Cicero in Pro Archia and asks what it was about this particular case that led him to adopt such a style. [Kuhlmann, 1976]). The Pro Archia, or, to give it its full (and translated) name, the Speech on Behalf of Aulus Licinius Archias the Poet, is a speech given by the Roman orator Cicero, in defence of Archias on the charge of falsely claiming to be a Roman citizen. Scholars all give the date as 62, citing our passage; but our passage is not so specific. He uses dramatic rhetoric to discredit the case of his opponent, Grattius,[3] whom he here names. Poets (at least good ones) were of course highly esteemed by cultured Romans such as the Catuli, the Luculli, and Cicero himself, but such men were a minority. In his speech defending Archias-the Pro Archia-Cicero argues that Archias was a Roman citizen. In Pro Lege Manilia, admittedly a speech to the people, he pretends to be only vaguely aware that Athens was once a great sea power (Leg. The brief introduction (Section B) includes the background of the trial, defense strategy, date, outcome (probably acquittal), and an outline of the speech. Abstract. 28), The measures which I, jointly with you, undertook in my consulship for the safety of the empire, the lives of our citizens, and the common weal of the state, have been taken by my client as the subject of a poem which he has begun; he read this to me, and the work struck me as at once so forcible and so interesting, that I encouraged him to complete it. Others can more ably comment on the editions success in that regard. Treating the jury as intellectuals also serves to reduce the apparent cultural distance separating them and Archias: during the trial, Cicero, Archias, and the jury will all be literary men together. ), and Cicero had set aside time during it to defend a relation of Lucullus (Att. In Pro Archia, then, we are not spectators of one of the great oratorical clashes which signalled the imminent fall of the Republic; instead, the case is a more small-scale affair, involving a defendant who was, by himself of no political or social importance whatsoever. 13.1.4).13 Secondly, Cicero had high hopes that Archias would immortalize his suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy in Greek verse ( 28, 31), just as he had immortalized the achievements of Lucullus. Aulus Licinius Archias, (born c. 120 bc, Antioch, Syria [now Antakya, Turkey]), ancient Greek poet who came to Rome, where he was charged in 62 bc with having illegally assumed the rights of a Roman citizen. Abstract. The Romans seem to have found it advantageous to make use of every argument at their disposal, not merely the decisive ones: this can be observed not only in oratory but also for example in Lucretius. Instead of a conclusio, however, we now have a digressio which accounts for significantly more than half the speech ( 1230). Cicero says that he attracted the attention of the Metelli Numidicus and Pius, M. Aemilius Scaurus, and L. Crassus, and also that he was on close terms with M. Livius Drusus (the tribune of 91), the Octavii, Cato (the father of Uticensis), and the Hortensii ( 6).8 During this period the young Cicero also received instruction from Archias ( 1): Archias was presumably his Greek grammatikos.9. Macrob. This second part can be subdivided in several ways (MacKendrick identifies the decisive breaks), but for the most part the transitions are gradual and one point merges into the next. So let the name of poet, gentlemen, which no barbarian race has ever treated with disrespect, be a sacred name among you, the most enlightened of men. I should like therefore to pause at this point and consider what are Ciceros reasons for including this digression, and for allowing it so to dominate the speech. Cat. Manil. 1.79)). Quaeres a nobis, Grati, cur tanto opere hoc homine delectemur. Great stress is laid, for example, on ita, sic, or tam preceding a result clause, or on the use of demonstrative pronouns to anticipate relative clauses, as in section 4: ab eis artibus quibus aetas puerilis ad humanitatem informari solet. Pointing out such features crucially nudges students beyond the beginners tendency to atomize Latin into discrete, unconnected units and instead gets them to read longer sentences as coherent structures. For a short speech defending a man of relatively little importance on a charge of no great gravity, the reader of Ciceros Pro Archia is well-served with a broad range of Latin texts, English translations, and commentaries approaching the speech from a variety of angles (literary, historical, legal, and philological). Anth. On the political aspect see further Gruen and Stockton (cited n. 12), the former making too much of and the latter too little of the trials political significance. Especially relevant are Narducci, E. Cicerone e leloquenza romana, Rome and Bari (1997), and Dugan, J. A show of stylistic brilliance on Ciceros part will therefore reflect creditably on the man who taught him. The technique is similar to that employed the previous year in Pro Murena (Mur. Cicero immediately takes us into a world of intelligent culture in which he and Archias play a part, and in which the jury are flattered into fancying that they also belong. In this passage (which comprises less than two-thirds of the Latin sentence) the atmosphere of high culture is conveyed not only by what Cicero is saying but very largely by the sophisticated way in which the clauses are accumulated and integrated. In this regard the commentary puts its finger on one of the most difficult tasks in learning (and teaching) Latin at this stage: no longer reading solely in order to translate for the test but also in order to develop a more refined Sprachgefhl. Cicero and his Italian Clients in the Forensic Speeches, The Rhetoric of Character in the Roman Courts, Audience Expectations, Invective, and Proof. Stripped to its essentials, the argument runs as follows:If I have any talent, experience in speaking, or technical skill in oratory derived from training in the liberal arts, then Archias has a strong claim on it. 54). The two examples he mentions here are Alexander the Great and Pompey the Great ( 24); the comparison is highly complimentary to the latter. Si quid est in me ingeni, iudices, quod sentio quam sit exiguum, aut si qua exercitatio dicendi, in qua me non infitior mediocriter esse versatum, aut si huiusce rei ratio aliqua ab optimarum artium studiis ac disciplina profecta, a qua ego nullum confiteor aetatis meae tempus abhoruisse, earum rerum omnium vel in primis hic A. Licinius fructum a me repetere prope suo iure debet. See also C. Murgias detailed review of Gotoffs book: Murgia, C. Review Article: Analyzing Ciceros Style, CP 76 (1981): 301-313. It is most likely under this law that Archias was prosecuted. The Twelve Tables allegedly were written by 10 commissioners (decemvirs) at the insistence of the plebeians, who felt their legal rights were hampered by the fact that court judgments were rendered according to unwritten custom preserved only within a small group of learned patricians. Inst. Cicero now moves on to the confirmatio, which, because of the simplicity of the case, is almost as brief as the narratio. Archias does not appear on the Roman census rolls taken during the period in which he claimed to have lived there. 41.3, 42.4), and in politics they shared the same conservative outlook. In this part he turns his attention specifically to poetry and to Archias, and argues that both are useful to society. Ciceros defense of Archias follows a two-pronged argument. 2.14.3). He was born at Antioch in Syria probably in the mid-120s, and at an early age became famous throughout the East as a professional poet.4 It is likely that at around this time some of his poems were anthologized by Meleager for his Garland, and the Greek Anthology contains thirty-seven epigrams attributed to a poet with the nameArchias. 19.9.1014 (19.9.14: cf. Chief among his enemies, and one who would stand to gain much by disgracing Lucullus was Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, better known as Pompey the Great. Licinius Archias was born in Antioch around 120 BC and arrived in Rome in 102 BC. Expand or collapse the "in this article" section, Expand or collapse the "related articles" section, Expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section, Art and Archaeology, Research Resources for Classical, Bilingualism and Multilingualism in the Roman World, Bronze Age Aegean, Death and Burial in the. He does so by presenting poetry in a particular way likely to appeal to his audience. Perhaps the project was opposed by one of Archias noble patrons; or one could speculate that this may have been a commission made impossible by the enthusiasm of the client. 4. Here, however, Cicero does need to explain briefly why Archias was never included in a census: that of 89 was abandoned, and when censuses were held in 86 and 70 he was each time accompanying L. Lucullus on campaign in the East. Clearly Cicero is not thinking only of poetry at this point:scriptores et Graeci et Latini (the Greek and Latin writers) would apply equally to prose historiography or biography, genres which some members of the jury may personally have considered more valuable and worthwhile, or less reprehensible, than poetry.