In Utramque Partem

The picture of the world that emerged from Ciceronian rhetoric was never simply black or white but was both black and white. That is, strong statements of the positive aspects of a place are often balanced at other times and in other speeches by equally strong statements in which the negative aspects of the same place are demonstrated. This was to be expected, in light of the varying exigencies of times and subjects, of the training in speaking in utramque partem designed to anticipate the arguments of one's opponent, and of the existence of commonplaces providing negative and positive positions on the same subject. This was also to be expected when we keep in mind that the orator was attempting to respond to his audience's prejudices about the world, and when we remember that the Roman audience of the late Republic had no single vision of reality. Like all of us, they were capable of entertaining various, often mutually inconsistent ideas about places and the people in them.

The necessity for such reversals of position, as well as the embarrassment they might cause, is referred to in the Pro Cluentio . Here the prosecution had read out a statement from an earlier case in which Cicero implied that his present client had been guilty of bribing a jury. Cicero defends himself by arguing that since any given speech of an advocate reflected the requirements of a specific case rather than his private opinions, consistency should not be expected.^[45] In spite of this statement it

[45] Cicero goes on to deflect attention from his own contradictory statements by recalling an incident in which L. Licinius Crassus, one of the greatest orators of the preceding generation, had been forced to listen to an opponent reading out passages from speeches he had made on two separate occasions, in one of which he had attacked the Senate, while in the other he had warmly praised it (Clu. 140). On the ethical question of defending the guilty, see Cic. Off. 2.51. Cicero cites no less an authority than Panaetius on the need sometimes to maintain the plausible rather than the true. On Cicero's blurring of the concept of decorum in the Stoic philosopher, see Neumeister, Grundsätze der forensischen Rhetorik, 59—60. As a philosophical Skeptic, Cicero was uninclined to assume that humans possessed the ability to discover the ultimate truth about their world; his experience, emotions, and intellect revealed to him not a single, unvarying Truth but rather a variety of competing truths.

would be incorrect to assume that the orator's ability to argue both sides of an issue signals that one or both of his positions must have been divorced from his privately held thoughts and opinions. The capacity to adopt attitudes that, from a logical standpoint, were mutually exclusive was one Cicero not only exploited in his audience but discovered in himself as well. Surely when Cicero came to devise a strategy for the defense of Roscius he drew not only on the commonplaces of rhetoric but on his own deep attachment to the rural countryside and to the life of the old municipal towns—an attachment best illustrated by the introductory passages of the second book of the De legibus, which are filled with his delight in the sights and sounds of his native Arpinum.^[46] Similarly, Cicero's celebration of the urban environment in the Pro Caelio was at once a rhetorical strategy intended to manipulate the feelings of his audience and at the same time the autobiographical expression of a man whose attachment to the city was so intense that he seemed unable to conceive of any meaningful existence outside of Rome.^[47]

It should also be remembered that arguing in utramque partem was not only an important part of the training of a young orator; it was also intimately related to the philosophical technique for determining truth advocated by the "New Academy," to which Cicero acknowledged allegiance. According to Carneades and his followers, it was impossible for an individual to decide what was true in an absolute sense; conditional truth, however, could be rationally determined by setting forth arguments on either side of an issue and weighing their comparative validity. Of the two sides, that which appeared more probably true might be assented to as true for all practical purposes. This skeptical calculus was so close to the exercises of rhetorical training that Cicero called this system of philosophy one "that gives birth to fluency in speaking" (Para. 2: quae peperit dicendi copiam ).

In addition to demonstrating Cicero's adeptness in exploiting two contrasting points of view vis-à-vis the rural and the urban environ-

[46] See above, pp. 30–33.

[47] Cicero may have admired the Stoic courage of a Rutilius Rufus, who after his notoriously unjust conviction lived out his life in exile, but he himself proved incapable of emulating this discipline of mind. Cicero's letters from exile are rivaled only by the exilic poetry of Ovid as a record of despair.

ments, the Pro Roscio and the Pro Caelio show Cicero's ability to identify himself with two very different clients.^[48] In the earlier speech, delivered at a time when the orator was still relatively unknown, he was able to adapt his own persona to that of the defendant. He therefore depicted himself, like Roscius, as a man of limited talent and few resources, struggling against the overwhelming power and influence of his opponents.^[49] By the date of the Pro Caelio, however, Cicero was a man of authority, influence, and—at the moment—wide popularity. In the speech, therefore, he uses his own public image as the model on which to form the persona assigned to Caelius. In reality Caelius seems to have been an ambitious, even ruthless young man of few scruples, but in the speech his background, training, dedication to oratory, political loyalties, and devotion to the Republic are claimed to mirror Cicero's own.^[50] Caelius's infatuation with Catiline, like his affair with Clodia, is depicted as a youthful error within a life otherwise devoted to the same goals and ideals as those of Cicero, and Caelius's willingness to prosecute Antonius and Bestia against Cicero's advice is likewise portrayed not as an action separating the two men in principle but as proof of the ambition and spirit of the younger man.^[51] In the peroration Cicero, pledging that Caelius will never deviate from the principles that have guided his own life, goes so far as to ask the jury to base their judgment of Caelius on their assessment of his own services to the Republic (77: promitto hoc vobis et rei publicae spondeo, si modo nos ipsi rei publicae satis fecimus, numquam hunc a nostris rationibus seiunctum fore ). Again, as in the case of Cicero's treatment of the rural and urban environments, this plea is "rhetorical" in that its raison d'être was to induce

[48] See May, "Rhetoric of Advocacy," and Trials of Character, passim.

[49] Cicero claimed to be a man of little talent (Rosc. Am. 1, 5, 9, 59) who could speak without fear only because of his youth and lack of authority (Rosc. Am. 1, 3, 9, 31).

[50] For Caelius, see Vell. Pat. 2.68.1; Macrob. Sat. 3.14.15; and above, p. 173 n. 29.

[51] Cicero makes even this a point of identity by confessing that he himself had almost mistaken Catiline's true nature (14). For connections between the orator and Caelius, see 4–5 (both equites ); 6 (similar municipal background); 9–10, 72 (Cicero as mentor to the young Caelius); 18 (Caelius's move to the Palatine in part motivated by a desire to be close to Cicero's house); 44–47 (description of a life devoted to oratory); 77, 80 (shared political principles); 78 (implicit comparison: unjust harrassment of Cicero by Clodius's adherents and unjust prosecution of Caelius instigated by Clodia).

the jury to acquit Caelius. But without denying this rhetorical intent, we may observe that Cicero has judged that the most effective strategy for making the defendant acceptable to his audience was to construct Caelius's persona in his own image.

Evidently Cicero did not misjudge his audience in pursuing this strategy, for Caelius was indeed acquitted. The glory of this victory, however, would be short-lived, as the surge of power and popularity Cicero experienced in the years immediately following his return from exile in 57 B.C. would soon subside before the renewed amicitia among Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey and the subsequent dissolution of the state into chaos, violence, and, ultimately, civil war. Thus the Pro Caelio would be Cicero's last great victory until the death of Caesar signaled the beginning of the final act in the orator's political and oratorical career.