The Strategy of the Pro Caelio

A close reading of the Pro Caelio makes plain that the prosecution in this case made use of much the same kind of topical material about old-

[25] For the meaning of scurra, see Corbett, "Scurra"; Ramage, Urbanitas, 30–31. Scurrae are called urbani assidui cives by Plautus (Trin. 202).

[26] Cf. Cic. Verr. II.2.7: ea patientia virtus frugalitasque est ut proxime ad nostram disciplinam illam veterem, non ad hanc quae nunc increbruit.

[27] Even in the late first century B.C. it is estimated that three-quarters of the free population and half of the slave population were still rural. There had, however, been a marked decline in the numbers of the free peasantry and a huge growth in the population of the city of Rome. For a good general description of Roman society of the period written from a sociological perspective, see Wood, Cicero's Thought, 14–41.

fashioned virtue and contemporary urban vice that had served Cicero well in the Pro Roscio Amerino .^[28] At the time of the trial M. Caelius Rufus was twenty-five years old, a sophisticated young man about town, familiar both with the legal skirmishes of the Forum and with the social moves of the smart set residing in the fashionable neighborhoods of the Palatine.^[29] Just as Cicero had done in the Pro Roscio, Caelius's opponents had depended heavily on a probabile ex vita argument, supporting charges of sedition, assault, attempted murder, and murder by a demonstration of the immorality of Caelius's disreputable life in the city.^[30] The seventeen-year-old prosecutor Atratinus, apparently with some embarrassment, accused the defendant of lewd behavior and used Caelius's support for Catiline in the consular elections for 62 B.C. to strengthen the charge. If such a strategy by the prosecution was successful, part of this success was owed to Cicero himself, who in the Catilinarian orations had created a vivid picture of the upper-class supporters of the conspiracy, in whom disloyalty to the Republic was wedded to moral corruption.

Atratinus's fellow prosecutors had evidently gone even farther in their attack on Caelius's morals. Cicero complains that the prosecution had droned on endlessly about "love affairs, adultery, . . . dinner parties, revelries, concerts," and the like (35). Herennius Balbus had used the supposedly decadent life of the defendant as a springboard from which to launch a passionate disquisition on the general corruption of

[28] Recent studies of the speech include Classen, "Ciceros Rede für Caelius"; Stroh, Taxis und Taktik, 243–303 (with bibliography, 312–13); Wiseman, Catullus, 62–69; Gotoff, "Cicero's Analysis"; Craig, "Reason, Resonance, and Dilemma"; May, Trials of Character, 105–16; Ramage, "Strategy and Methods." A starting point in scholarly analysis of the speech has always been Heinze's "Ciceros Rede Pro Caelio ." While a number of its conclusions concerning the unity of the speech are now dated, Heinze's work contains powerful, and still valid, insights.

[29] For a hypothetical reconstruction of Caelius's career and character based on the available evidence, see Wiseman, Catullus, 62–69; Austin, Pro Caelio, v–xvi.

[30] Gotoff, "Cicero's Analysis," reminds us that we have only Cicero's description of what his opponents said, and this description is a crucial part of the orator's effort to persuade his audience of Caelius's innocence. As Gotoff and others (e.g., Leeman, Stroh, Classen) have affirmed, everything in a Ciceronian speech was "rhetorical"—that is, intended to serve the ultimate goal of persuasion.

the age and the immorality of contemporary youth.^[31] This technique of "generalizing the case" was one of Cicero's own greatest strengths, and he remarks with tacit humor that if he too had only to inveigh against the wickedness of seduction, adultery, wantonness, and extravagance, daylight would surely fail him before he had finished (29). Although the topic of Balbus's diatribe was not specifically a comparison of the corruption of the city with the innocence of the country, this comparison is nevertheless implied by his subject matter. As noted above, since the Roman past was stereotypically viewed as a simple, rustic age, untainted by materialism or urban sophistication, any attack on the immorality of the present (30: temporum vitia ) and praise for the virtue of the past carried with it implicit approval of the mores of the country and indictment of those of the city.

This leads us to consider what strategies were open to Cicero in responding to this aspect of the prosecution's attack. In the Pro Roscio he had defended a man who was "accused" of never going to dinner parties; now he was to speak on behalf of one who was guilty of "never refusing a dinner invitation" (27). Since his opponents had apparently praised the old-fashioned morality of bygone days and attacked the corruption of contemporary urban life, we might well expect Cicero to respond by exploiting the opposite side of the topos: that is, by ridiculing the outmoded standards of the rustic past and praising the more relaxed and sophisticated mores of contemporary Rome. As will be seen, this is a strategy that indeed appears at certain points in the Pro Caelio .

In the famous character impersonations (prosopopoeiae ) of the central section of the work Cicero speaks in the voice of several personae who represent the strict morality of the past, and he carries off these impersonations in such a way as to lead his audience ultimately to reject the moral viewpoint represented by each as inappropriate to the present age. He first asks Clodia, on whose desire for revenge against her former lover he has claimed the prosecution depends, whether he should deal with her "gravely, harshly, and in the old-fashioned way" or "gently, mildly, and urbanely" (33: severe et graviter et prisce . . . an remisse et leniter et urbane ). Choosing the former, he summons from the grave the

[31] On what Balbus may have said, see Drexler, "Zu Ciceros Rede," 21; Reitzenstein, "Ciceros Rede für Caelius," 32; Austin, Pro Caelio, 78; Wiseman, Catullus, 73–74; and especially Gotoff, "Cicero's Analysis," 127–31, who provides us with a useful corrective to overambitious attempts to recreate the accuser's speech on the sole basis of Cicero's characterization of it.

austere persona of Appius Claudius Caecus, censor of 312 B.C. , in order to rebuke Clodia. We learn from Quintilian that Cicero mimicked the sound and carriage of an irascible old man as he upbraided Clodia not simply for her scandalous public adventures but even for having had contact with any man other than her own relatives or those of her dead husband.^[32] Raising the possibility that so forbidding a personage might turn his censure against Caelius as well, Cicero then dismisses the "harsh and almost boorish old man" (36: senem durum ac paene agrestem ) and promises to deal more "urbanely" (36) with Clodia, whereupon he assumes the voice of her brother Clodius, who advises his sister against making a fuss over a lover who had kicked the traces.

In the second part of this series of dramatic personae Cicero addresses Caelius himself. Here, as in the first part, the orator alternates a strict with a lax moral viewpoint. The sentiments expressed by the "iron fathers" drawn from the plays of Caecilius are as rigid and unyielding as those put in the mouth of Claudius Caecus. As the latter had demanded to know how Clodia should have formed any connection with a man unrelated to her, so the Caecilian father demands to know why Caelius would not have fled from proximity to a woman of questionable virtue (37). And, just as the speech of Claudius Caecus was followed by one marked by a stark alteration in moral tone, so the "unendurable" fathers of Caecilius are here followed by the indulgent, city-dwelling father of Terence's Adelphi, who speaks in forgiving words (38).

The disagreeable personae created in these paired sections—Appius Claudius Caecus and the type of the rigid fathers of Roman comedy—are, at least obliquely, a means by which Cicero may question and even poke fun at the moral standards championed by the prosecutor. It is not surprising, therefore, that the section of the speech in which these stern patriarchs appear is immediately followed by one in which Cicero argues that the unbending moral standards of the rude past are inappropriate to the present and that indulgence ought especially to be granted to the behavior of the young (39–43). Despite his earlier assertion that he would refuse to seek refuge from the charges by pleading the excuse of Caelius's youth (30), this is exactly what he does. Here we find the orator claiming that the almost divine virtue of the heroes of the past was no longer to be found; that the Greeks, who at one time at least celebrated virtue in their writings if they could not practice it in their

[32] Quint. 3.8.54; 12.10.61. See the discussion of prosopopoeia in Austin, Pro Caelio, 90–91.

lives, now taught that the wise did all for the sake of pleasure; that nowadays the individual who rejected all pleasures would be thought by most—if not by Cicero—to be cursed by the gods (42). The section ends with Cicero's plea to his listeners to "leave behind this road now deserted, neglected, and closed off by branches and brambles" (42). He asks them, instead, to grant a measure of freedom to youth and to observe a mean in pursuit both of pleasure and of virtue, neither allowing reason always to prevail nor allowing the desire for pleasure to recognize no limits.

There is much art in the way Cicero questions antique morality in these passages. We have only to remember the fate of Erucius in the Pro Roscio to realize that any sustained attack on the simple and strict mores of the past would have been a dangerous strategy. Cicero had prevailed in the earlier speech chiefly because he was able to convince the jury that the conviction of the innocent Roscius would have represented the acceptance of the violence and corruption of recent times, while Roscius's acquittal would be an affirmation of the simple Roman virtues of earlier days. It would have been shocking indeed if in the Pro Caelio Cicero seemed to be excusing the corruption of his own time and belittling the qualities that had made Rome great. Both his role of pater patriae, voted him by the Senate for his stern defense of the state during the Catilinarian crisis, and that of mentor to the young Caelius would have prevented him from pursuing such a strategy.^[33]

Cicero, therefore, wishes to make it appear that the prosecution had championed not simply the higher ethical standard once common but a radical and uncompromising version of that standard, scarcely possible of attainment at any time. For this reason he has not summoned from the past figures like Scipio Aemilianus or Gaius Laelius to represent this ethical viewpoint—men who, according to tradition, balanced their devotion to their country with enjoyment of the pleasures of literature, philosophy, and friendship. Rather, he has called up the daunting figure of Appius Claudius Caecus, a model of rigidity even in his own day. The "almost boorish" (36) Claudius appears impossibly archaic, in the description both of his appearance and of his mores. And Cicero uses him to imply that only such a man—or a Camillus, a Fabricius, or a Curius—was capable of living the kind of life the prosecution demanded of Caelius. In like manner Cicero has carefully chosen as representatives of

[33] Craig, "Reason, Resonance, and Dilemma," sees Cicero's use of the dilemma in this speech as another useful means of indirect attack.

this point of view the "iron fathers" (37) of comedy, those hard-bitten old rustic patriarchs who function in the plays as objects of ridicule rather than of respect. The orator goes on to equate this rigid moral standard with that held by those who practiced Stoic philosophy: both are said to have rejected all pleasures and devoted themselves solely to virtue. Cicero's tone throughout—humane, liberal-minded, experienced—is familiar from the Pro Murena, another speech in which he had used humor to disarm the moral seriousness of his opponent. In the earlier speech the orator's commonsensical approach to the challenge of living an honorable life in a naughty world had made an attractive alternative to the priggish and unrealistic Stoicism of Cato the Younger; similarly, in the Pro Caelio, Cicero labels this "ideal" life of unwavering seriousness and high moral purpose impossible of attainment for the majority of men.

Cicero faced another danger in questioning the moral standards of the past and arguing in favor of the more relaxed mores of the sophisticated present, one that can be readily understood by noting the way in which he was able to exploit an aspect of the prosecution's attack on Caelius. In seizing the moral high ground and excoriating Caelius for his immoral life-style, the prosecution had made themselves vulnerable to the counterattack by Cicero that the same arguments might be used to challenge the credibility of Clodia, whose life had likewise been a continuous round of "trips to Baiae, beach parties, dinner parties, revelries, concerts, musical entertainments, and boat parties" (35). And if Cicero was clever enough to understand that the sword that the prosecution wielded could cut both ways, he was also clever enough to understand that the arguments he might use in favor of a more lenient moral code of behavior could be used to excuse Clodia's actions as well those of Caelius. It should be kept in mind that Cicero's attempt to undermine Clodia's credibility in this speech was as important to its success as was his attack on Chrysogonus in the Pro Roscio . Both the foreign-born freedman and the emancipated widow were vulnerable targets; each would fill the role of bête noire, whose unmasking by Cicero would supposedly prevent the unjust conviction of an innocent victim. Cicero had, therefore, to couch his justification of Caelius in such a way as not to imply a justification of Clodia as well (and, conversely, to insure that accusations of Clodia's immorality could not also be used to blacken Caelius's name).

His escape from these difficulties is clever if not admirable. Since a straightforward attack on Clodia's morals might have led to uncomfort-

able questions about the consistency of Cicero's own ethical standards in defending Caelius's behavior, the orator executes the moral condemnation of Clodia for the most part through indirection, ridicule, and sarcasm.^[34] As a result of Cicero's use of comic personification and his frequent recourse to double entendres, sly hints, and suggestive jokes, the jury is made to feel that they demonstrate their wide experience of the world and high degree of sophistication by recognizing Clodia as a meretrix, despite her wealth and nobility. In addition, Cicero is able to rely throughout the speech on a familiar double standard in arguing that Caelius's actions were innocuous, while Clodia's deserved condemnation. Since love affairs with prostitutes had traditionally been permitted to young men, but similar affairs were forbidden to women of any age, the orator is able to claim that Caelius's youthful indiscretions were within the bounds of acceptable behavior, even when judged by the strictest of standards, while at the same time suggesting that Clodia's actions cast her beyond the pale of polite society, even when these actions were viewed by the more relaxed standards of the present. The argument is both neat and cynical: Caelius's liaison with Clodia was morally excusable for the young man provided she was a meretrix, and she proved herself to be a meretrix by engaging in this and similar affairs.^[35]

In the Pro Caelio, then, Cicero avoids falling into the trap of simply making use of a predictable response to the defense's exploitation of the theme of past virtue and contemporary vice. While he questions the moral standards of the past, he does so in large part indirectly—that is,

[34] For the holiday atmosphere that made this kind of attack appropriate, see especially Geffcken, Comedy in the Pro Caelio, 1–8; May, Trials of Character, 115. For Clodia's vulnerability to attack, see Wiseman, Catullus, 52–53. For references to Clodia in connection with images of hiding and concealment, see Ramage, "Clodia," and "Strategy and Methods," 2–3, 6–8. Most scholars have not doubted the essential accuracy of Cicero's picture of Clodia; but see Dorey, "Cicero, Clodia and the Pro Caelio "; Skinner, "Clodia Metelli." I have argued elsewhere ("Personality and Power," 214) that one reason for Cicero's indirection in his attack on Clodia lay in his desire to avoid giving offense to powerful members of the Claudian gens . His efforts at diplomacy may be observed in his politic letters to Ap. Claudius Pulcher, Clodia's eldest brother (Fam. 3.1–13).

[35] For further discussion of this strategy, see Stroh, Taxis und Taktik, 279–91. Classen, "Ciceros Rede für Caelius," 78–85, gives a particularly incisive account of how Cicero turns the attack on Caelius's morals against Clodia. The technical term for this strategy, also employed in the Pro Roscio, is relatio criminis .

by the comical and unattractive personae he chooses to represent these standards. In addition, he makes his audience understand that he rejects the mores of the past as a standard for the present only in their most unrealistic and rigid form, and goes on to argue that with the exception of such "semidivine" individuals as a Claudius Caecus Romans had always allowed young men to indulge in the innocuous pleasures of life.