Political Speeches
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Translated from the Latin by D.H. Berry
(Oxford World Classics, 2009) [70-43 BC]
400 p.
Cicero was considered, in his own time, the greatest orator of the Roman world, and his reputation has not faded greatly in the meantime, for those Latinists equipped to appreciate it. This volume gathers together a number of his most famous speeches — not all of them actually given in public, but all intended, at least, to be considered as contributions to Roman politics.
The earliest, from 70 BC, when Cicero was 30 years old, are two In Verram speeches which he prepared for the prosecution of Verres, a former governor of Sicily who had been arrested for corruption. Verres had two main characteristics: he was plainly guilty, and he was immensely wealthy. If acquitted, therefore, the reason would be plain: the courts were corrupted by bribery. Cicero therefore cannily turned the trial into a test of the Senators’ competence to sit as jurors over their peers: “This is a trial in which you will be passing verdict on the defendant, but the Roman people will be passing verdict on you.” This first speech was so effective that Verres fled before the trial could proceed. Nonetheless, Cicero later published a set of five speeches that he would have given, had the trial occurred, in which he set forth his evidence. The fifth of these is included here.
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In 66 BC Cicero gave a famous speech in praise of Pompey. In the previous year Pompey had, against all expectation, succeeded in clearing the Mediterranean of the pirates who had long plagued Roman traders, and, his star ascendant, was being considered for command in the war in the east against Mithridates. Cicero’s speaks in favour of granting Pompey this honour:
“My subject is the outstanding and unique merit of Gnaeus Pompeius — a subject on which it is more difficult to finish speaking than to begin.”
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In 63 BC Rome was upset by the Catiline conspiracy, an attempt by Catiline to overthrow the government and assume power. This is one of the most famous episodes in all of Roman history, thanks largely to the four great speeches, the Catilinarians, which Cicero, who was consul at the time, composed. The first was given to the Senate on 7 November, the day after the discovery of the conspiracy. Catiline himself was present, and much of the speech is addressed directly to him. A well-known fresco depicts the scene. Cicero advocated Catiline’s exile, rather than his execution, on the grounds that Catiline’s conspirators were likely to follow him, thereby cleansing the city of the trouble that has threatened it. And Catiline did flee the city, that very night.
The second Catilinarian was given the next day, this time to the people of Rome. Cicero described the conspiracy, marshaled the evidence, and urged any remaining conspirators to follow him out of the city. It is a sometimes humorous speech, in which the invective is inventive and powerful. A few weeks later, on 2 December, he laid a trap and intercepted correspondence between conspirators. On this evidence he arrested several of them who remained in Rome, and the next day he spoke again to the people of Rome to describe these developments; this is the third Catilinarian. Finally, on 5 December, Cicero spoke again before the Senate, presenting two main proposals for what to do with the captured conspirators: execute them (as advocated by Silanus) or condemn them to life in prison (as advocated by Caesar), and calling on them to make a wise decision.
As it happened, Cicero himself ordered the execution, without trial, of five captured conspirators, which caused great controversy in Rome and eventually led to Cicero’s being exiled for several years. His part in the drama saved the city (if his own account is to be believed) but nearly ruined his public career.
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By 46 BC Rome was in a quite different situation. Caesar was gaining power, and the Republic was under threat from within. Six years earlier Cicero had fought on Pompey’s side against Caesar, and, when Caesar had been victorious, Cicero ceased speaking in the Senate for fear of giving its proceedings a legitimacy he denied that it possessed. But in 46 BC Caesar offered clemency to Marcellus, a friend and ally of Cicero, and in response Cicero rose in the Senate and spoke in honour of Caesar, beginning with a phrase that became famous: “Diuturni silenti…” (The long silence…”). This speech’s unstinting praise of Caesar, in Caesar’s presence, strikes our ears as sycophantic, and we cannot help noting the change of tone from his earlier speeches to a healthier Republican Senate.
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The final speech in this collection comes from September 44 BC, about six months after the assassination of Caesar. It is the Second Philippic, a speech directed against Mark Antony, against whom Cicero, siding with Octavian, was fighting for control of Rome. The speech was originally called In Antonium (Against Antony), but acquired its peculiar title on account of a jesting comparison Cicero made, to a friend, between himself and Demosthenes, the most famous orator of the Greek world, who had composed a series of speeches, the Philippics, against Philip of Macedon.
Cicero had reason to later regret his Second Philippic, for in 43 political alliances changed, and Antony joined with Octavian (and Lepidus) to form the so-called Second Triumvirate. They drew up lists of those they wanted executed to consolidate their power, and Antony put Cicero’s name at the top. He was captured, and killed, on 7 December of that year.
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Reading these speeches is a crash course in the Roman history of the period, for Cicero stood at or near the center for most of his public life, and this is reason enough to get to know them. But surely part of the attraction, too, is the famous eloquence of Cicero, who is credited with turning the Latin language into an instrument of supple power and charm, and whose greatness as a rhetorician was admired for as long as Latin was spoken. Unfortunately, this aspect of his genius is hard to preserve in translation, and is, perhaps, ultimately unavailable to those of us who cannot read his original words with appreciation. Such is my lamentable condition.
D.H. Berry is, I am sure, a conscientious translator, but his renderings of these great speeches in this edition are not, I dare say, great English prose to compare with Cicero’s great Latin prose. We can appreciate the large scale structure of the speeches, and some of the rhetorical techniques, but the sheer beauty of the language, which seduced generations of admirers, is occluded. Damn you, John Dewey!
All Manner of Thing 
