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Pro Milone

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   The Pro Tito Annio Milone ad judicem oratio (Pro Milone) is a speech
   made by Marcus Tullius Cicero on behalf of his friend Titus Annius
   Milo, who was accused of murdering his political enemy Publius Clodius
   Pulcher on the Via Appia, written and delivered by Cicero on the 7th
   April, 52 BC.
   Cicero at about the age of 60, from an ancient marble bust
   Cicero at about the age of 60, from an ancient marble bust

Events surrounding the case

   Milo was a praetor at the time, attempting to gain the much-vaunted
   post of consul; Clodius was a former tribune standing for the office of
   praetor. The charge was brought against Milo for the death of Clodius
   following a violent altercation on the Via Appia outside Clodius'
   estate in Bovillae. After the initial brawl, it seems that Clodius was
   wounded during the fight started by his own slaves as well as those of
   Milo. His followers then carried him to an inn at Bovillae, but Milo's
   men did not relent, instead attacking the inn, killing the innkeeper,
   and dragging Clodius out into the road in order to end his life.

   This was the sequence of events described by the prosecution and the
   commentary of Asconius, an ancient world commentator who analyzed
   several of Cicero's speeches and had access to various ancient
   documents which are no longer extant. The absence of a summary of the
   chain of events in Cicero’s speech may be attributed to their
   incriminating evidence against Milo. Presumably, Cicero realized that
   this was the primary weakness, and as the trial unfolded it turned out
   to be so. We can assume from the fact that the jury did indeed convict
   Milo, that they felt that although Milo may not have been aware of
   Clodius's initial injury, his ordering of Clodius’s butchering
   warranted punishment.

   When initially questioned about the circumstances of Clodius’s death,
   Milo responded with the excuse of self-defense, that it was Clodius who
   laid a trap for Milo in which he might kill him. Cicero had to fashion
   his speech to be congruent with Milo's initial excuse, restraint which
   probably affected the overall presentation of his case. In order to
   convince the jury of Milo’s innocence, Cicero used the fact that
   following Clodius's death, a mob of his own supporters, led by the
   scribe Sextus Cloelius, carried his corpse into the Senate house (
   curia) and cremated it using the benches, platforms, tables and
   scribes' notebooks as a pyre. In doing so they also burnt down much of
   the curia; the Clodian supporters in their fury also launched an attack
   on the house of the then interrex, Marcus Lepidus; and therefore Pompey
   ordered a special inquest to investigate this as well as the murder of
   Clodius. Cicero refers to this incident throughout the Pro Milone,
   implying that there was greater general indignation and uproar at the
   burning of the curia than there was at the murder of Clodius.

   Due to the violent nature of the crime as well as its revolutionary
   repercussions (the case had special resonance with the Roman people as
   a symbol of the clash between the populares and the optimates), the
   special inquest set up by Pompey included a hand-picked panel of judges
   in order to avoid the corruption that was rife in the political scene
   of the late Roman Republic); as well as the presence of armed guards
   stationed around the law courts to placate the violent mobs of each
   side's supporters.

   The first four days of Milo’s trial were dedicated to opposition
   argument and the testimony of witnesses. On the first day Gaius
   Causinius Schola appeared as a witness against Milo and described the
   deed in such a way as to portray Milo as a cold-blooded murderer. This
   worked up the Clodian crowd who in turn terrified the advocate on
   Milo's side, Marcus Marcellus. As he began his questioning of the
   witnesses, the Clodian crowd drowned out his voice and surrounded him.
   This action taken by Pompey prevented too much furore from the
   vehemently anti-Milonian crowds for the rest of the case. On the second
   day of the trial the armed cohorts were introduced by Pompey. On the
   5th and final day, Cicero delivered the Pro Milone in the hope of
   reversing the damning evidence accrued over the previous days.

Content of the speech

   Throughout the duration of his speech Cicero does not attempt to
   convince the judges that Milo did not murder Clodius, but that the
   murder of Clodius was committed lawfully in self-defense. Cicero even
   goes as far as to suggest that the death of Clodius was in the best
   interests of the republic. Clodius as a tribune was a popularist, a
   populares leader of the restless plebeian mobs that plagued the
   political scene of the late Roman Republic. Possibly Cicero's strongest
   argument was that of the circumstances of the assault: its convenient
   proximity to Clodius' villa; the fact that Milo was leaving Rome on
   official business (nominating a priest for election in Lanuvium) yet
   Clodius had been distinctly absent from his usual rantings in the
   popular assemblies (contiones); that Milo was encumbered in a coach,
   with his wife, a heavy riding cloak and a retinue of harmless slaves
   (though his retinue also included slaves and gladiators as well as
   revellers for the festival at Lanuvium, to whose presence Cicero only
   implicitly refers) yet Clodius was on horseback, without a carriage,
   his wife or his usual retinue but with a band of armed brigands and
   slaves. If Cicero could convince the judges that Clodius had laid a
   trap for Milo, he could postulate that Milo committed the murder out of
   self-defense (Roman law at the time had no distinction between murder
   and manslaughter). Not once does Cicero mention the possibility that
   the two met by chance (which was the conclusion of both Asconius and
   Appian.

   Clodius is made out repeatedly in the Pro Milone to be a malevolent,
   invidious, effeminate character; craving power and organizing the
   ambush on Milo. In his speech Cicero gives Clodius a motive for setting
   a trap: his realization that Milo would easily secure the consulship,
   and thus stand in the way of Clodius' scheme to attain greater power
   and influence as a praetor. Fortunately, there was plentiful material
   for Cicero to build this profile, such as the Bona Dea incident in
   62BC; involving Clodius stealing into the abode of the Pontifex Maximus
   of the time, Julius Caesar, during the ritual festival of the Bona Dea,
   to which only women were allowed. It is said that he dressed up as a
   woman in order to gain access and pursue an illicit affair with Pompeia
   Sulla, the wife of Caesar. Clodius was taken to the law courts for this
   act of great impiety, but escaped the punishment of death by bribing
   the judges, most of whom had been poor (according to Cicero, who was
   the prosecutor during the case). Earlier in his career Lucullus had
   accused Clodius of committing incest with his sister, then Lucullus's
   wife; this too is often referred to in order to blacken Clodius's
   reputation.

   Milo, on the other hand, is perpetually depicted as a 'saviour of Rome'
   by his virtuous actions and political career up until that point.
   Cicero even goes as far as to paint an amicable relationship with
   Pompey. Asconius, as he does with many other parts of the Pro Milone,
   disputes this fact, claiming that Pompey was in fact afraid of Milo,
   "or else pretended to be afraid", staying in the upper parts of his
   property in the suburbs and employing a constant body of troops to keep
   guard. His fear was attributed to a series of public assemblies in
   which Titus Munatius Plancus, a fervent supporter of Clodius, stirred
   up the crowd against Milo and Cicero, casting suspicion upon Milo by
   shouting that he was preparing a force to destroy him. However, in the
   view of Plutarch, a first century AD writer and biographer of notable
   Roman men, Clodius had also stirred up enmity between Pompey and
   himself, along with the fickle crowds of the forum he controlled with
   his malevolent goading.

   The early part of the refutation of the opposition's arguments
   (refutatio), contains the first known exposition of the phrase silent
   enim leges inter arma ("in times of war, the laws fall silent"). This
   has since been rephrased as inter arma enim silent leges . At this
   point in the speech this phrase is integral to Cicero's argument. In
   the context of the Pro Milone the meaning behind the phrase remains the
   same as its use in contemporary society: Cicero was asserting that the
   killing of Clodius was admissible so long as it was an act of
   self-defence; postulating that in extreme cases, where one's own life
   is immediately threatened, violence without proper regard to the laws
   is justifiable. Indeed, Cicero goes as far as to say that such
   behaviour is instinctive (nata lex: "an inborn law") to all living
   creatures (non instituti, sed imbuti sumus: "we are not taught
   [self-defence] through instruction, but through natural intuition". It
   should be noted that this argument of the murder of Clodius being in
   the public interest is only presented in the written version of Pro
   Milone, as, according to Asconius, Cicero did not mention it in the
   actual version delivered).
   Cicero
   Enlarge
   Cicero

Outcome and aftermath of the case

   In the account of later writer and Ciceronian commentator Asconius, the
   actual defense failed to secure an acquittal for Milo for three primary
   reasons: Cicero’s intimidation by the Clodian mob present on the final
   day, the political pressure exerted implicitly by Pompey for the judges
   to convict Milo, and finally, the sheer number of testimonies against
   Milo over the course of the case. Milo was condemned for the murder by
   a margin of 38 votes to 13 and was ostracized to the Gallic town of
   Massilia (Marseille). During his absence, Milo was prosecuted for
   bribery, unlawful association, and violence, for all of which he was
   successfully convicted. As an example of the volatile, contradictory
   and confusing political atmosphere of the time, it should be noted that
   the superintendent of Milo's slaves, one Marcus Saufeius, was also
   prosecuted for the murder of Clodius shortly after the conviction of
   Milo. The team of Cicero and Caelius defended him, and together,
   managed to acquit Saufeius by a margin of one vote. Furthermore,
   Clodian supporters did not all escape unscathed. The associate of
   Clodius, Sextus Cloelius, who supervised the cremation of Clodius's
   corpse, was prosecuted for the burning down of the curia and was
   convicted by an overwhelming majority of 46 votes. Following the trial,
   violence raged unchecked in the city between supporters of Clodius and
   Milo. Pompey had been made sole consul in Rome during the violent
   troubled times after the murder but before the legal proceedings
   against Milo had begun and he quelled the riots following this string
   of controversial cases with brutal military efficiency, regaining
   stability in Rome - for a while.

   The Pro Milone which survives to date is a rewritten version published
   by Cicero after the trial. Despite its failure to secure an acquittal,
   the surviving rewrite is considered to be one of Cicero's best works:
   thought by many to be the magnum opus of his rhetorical repertoire.
   Asconius describes the Pro Milone as "so perfectly written that it can
   rightly be considered his best.".

   The speech is full of deceptively straightforward strategies.
   Throughout his speech Cicero explicitly seems to follow his own
   rhetorical guidelines published in his earlier work De Inventione, but
   on occasion subtly breaks away from these stylistic norms in order to
   emphasise certain elements of his case and use the circumstances to his
   advantage (for example, by placing his refutation of the opposition's
   arguments (refutatio) far earlier in the speech than expected, he
   pounces on the opportunity to disprove quickly the plethora of evidence
   collected over the first four days of the trial). His arguments are
   interwoven with one another and coalesce during the conclusion
   (peroratio). There is heavy use of pathos throughout the speech,
   starting with his assertion of fear for the guards posted around the
   courts by Pompey in this special inquisition (the very first word of
   the speech is vereor - "I fear"). However, Cicero ends his speech
   fearless, becoming more emotive with each argument, and finally
   finishing by the beseeching of his audience with tears to acquit Milo.
   Irony is omnipresent in the speech, along with continual appearances of
   humour and constant appeals to traditional Roman virtues and
   prejudices, all of these tactics designed solely to involve and
   persuade his jury.

   In many ways the circumstances surrounding the case were apposite for
   Cicero, forcing him back to his own oratorial foundations: the charge
   of vis ('violence') against Milo not only suited a logical and
   analytical legal framework with evidence indicating a specific time,
   date, place and cast for the murder itself, but generally concerned
   actions that affected the community, thus allowing Cicero ample
   maneuvering room to include details of the fire in the curia, as well
   as the attack on Marcus Lepidus' house and the Bona Dea incident.

   Milo, having read the later published speech whilst in exile,
   humorously commented that if Cicero had only spoken that well in court,
   he would "not now be enjoying the delicious red mullet of Massilia".

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