Cicero - Anthony Everitt [34]
Cicero warmly approved of Sulla’s ends but not his means; he believed that the Dictator had won “a disreputable victory in a reputable cause.” He was greatly relieved when order was restored. It meant not only that the constitution had survived but that at long last it was safe to return to the Forum and launch his career at the bar. He was twenty-five years old.
We do not know how the inexperienced advocate won his first briefs. Almost certainly his family’s clientela network was put to work and cases were found that for one reason or another were unattractive to more senior lawyers. His first extant speech dates from 81; it was a defense of a certain Publius Quinctius, who had become embroiled in a complicated dispute with his dead brother’s business partner about the ownership of a cattle farm in Transalpine Gaul. Cicero was noticed as a promising newcomer; but while his voice was powerful, it was harsh and untrained and he strained it from overuse.
All his life he suffered from first-night nerves. He acknowledged:
Personally, I am always very nervous when I begin to speak. Every time I make a speech I feel I am submitting to judgment, not only about my ability but my character and honor. I am afraid of seeming either to promise more than I can perform, which suggests complete irresponsibility, or to perform less than I can, which suggests bad faith and indifference.
On at least one occasion he is known to have broken down completely. He would work up and polish his speeches after delivery and publish them in a form which may sometimes have been substantially different from the original versions. A few times he published speeches that had never been delivered at all.
Malicious critics drew an unkinder picture. A contemporary attack on Cicero’s method in 43 (as reported, perhaps invented, by an imperial historian) is knockabout invective and not to be taken too seriously, but it has a ring of truth.
Why, you always come to the courts trembling, as if you were about to fight as a gladiator, and after uttering a few words in a meek and half-dead voice you take your leave.… Do you think anyone is ignorant of the fact that you never delivered those wonderful orations of yours that you have published but wrote them all out afterwards, like craftsmen who mold generals and cavalry leaders out of clay?
In 80 the case arose that made Cicero’s reputation. He must have hesitated before taking it on, for it touched on corruption in the Dictator’s entourage. Famous legal names had declined to have anything to do with it, fearful of Sulla’s well-known vengefulness. It took some courage for the timid young orator to accept the brief.
His client was one Sextus Roscius, who was accused of having murdered his father. It was the first trial of a capital offense since the proscription. The story Cicero presented to the jury threw a sharp light on the impact that high events in the capital had had on the lives of ordinary people. Roscius’s father, a well-to-do farmer, had paid a visit to Rome during the previous summer or autumn. One night, walking back from a dinner party, he was set upon and killed near some public baths. His son, meantime, was at their home at Ameria, a hill town to the north of Rome, looking after the family estate.
A long-standing feud existed between the victim and two fellow Amerians. According to Cicero, one of the pair happened to be in Rome and immediately sent a messenger to the other with the news of Roscius’s father’s death. This man passed the information to Chrysogonus, a powerful freedman and favorite of Sulla, then encamped with his army a hundred miles north of Ameria. A simple but effective plot was devised to get hold of the substantial Roscius estate.
The proscription lists had been closed on June 1, 81 BC, but Chrysogonus arranged for Roscius’s father’s name to be entered on it retrospectively, despite the fact that he was a well-known