Pro Milone Cicero’s speech in defence of Titus Annius Milo was delivered in 52BC under extremely tense political circumstances. Milo was accused of murdering his (and Cicero’s) adversary Publius Clodius Pulcher on the Appian Way near Bovillae, about 11 miles from Rome: Cicero gives his version of Clodius’ death in the speech. Cicero was compelled to work with Milo’s initial claim that Clodius had laid a trap there and intended to kill him, and that his actions had been in self-defence. Cicero spoke on the fifth and final day of the trial, and so the speech responds to the incriminating evidence already given to the court by the prosecution. Cicero, therefore, does not claim that Milo was innocent of Clodius’ death, but reframes the skirmish as a patriotic act. Milo was not simply acting in self-defence, he suggests, but in the interests of the entire Republic. Throughout the speech he repeatedly blackens Clodius’ character, and works hard to glorify Milo by contrast. Milo, he claims, has saved Rome from the debaucheries and political machinations of a dangerous rabble-rouser and gang-leader. Perhaps the most famous phrase from the speech is ‘silent enim leges inter arma’ (‘in times of war the laws are silent’) – in other words, the unrest and violence caused by Clodius was enough for his own unlawful killing to be justified. In the case of the Pro Milone, unlike many of Cicero’s speeches, we know the outcome of the trial and many other circumstantial details thanks to a commentary on the text by Asconius, a writer of the first century AD. Cicero was unsuccessful in his defence, and Milo was condemned by 32 votes to 13, and exiled to Massalia (modern Marseille). The text we have is not the speech Cicero delivered on the day. He substantially redrafted it after the event before its publication. Cassius Dio tells us that when Milo read the revised text he commented that if Cicero had only spoken so well on the day, he would ‘not now be enjoying the delicious red mullet of Massalia.’ Talking Points Talking Point Notes
Activities and student tasks The chain of events Make a timeline of all the events that Cicero refers to in the sections that you are reading. The ideal outcome should be a complete timeline of all events referred to in the whole speech (those in the prescribed sections could be indicated in a different colour.) If time is short, students might be divided into groups to trawl separate shorter sections of the text and collate them (perhaps easiest done on a computer rather than on paper as Cicero’s account leaps around.) The prosecution’s response Write a rebuttal of Cicero’s speech, as spoken by the prosecution. This could be a very brief or a very lengthy exercise, depending on time available. The timeline exercise above is a good preparation for a more thorough response. Students could go on to consider our evidence for the eventual outcome of the case and decide what the relative strength of the two cases, and the two speakers, might have been. Rhetorical techniques today Visit http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/ Teachers may prefer to find speeches themselves from Hansard, or from other sources, especially if time is short. Or, students may simply need some steering (e.g. “Find a speech made in Parliament by your local MP”). Performing Cicero UCLA Classics department http://performingcicero.classics.ucla.edu Explore what Cicero’s speeches might have been like in performance, from sound to personality to costume. Exploring the main characters http://www.dl.ket.org/latin1/historia/people/clodius.htm http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/romansc/p/032110ClodiusPulcher.htm Discover more about Clodius, Milo and Cicero, with a timeline for Clodius’s life and further information about his family Cicero’s rhetorical education http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/romansc/p/032110ClodiusPulcher.htm Explore an accessible and practical guide to the key points of Cicero’s education in rhetoric, closely based on Cicero’s own reports