This is the first book in English to take Cicero's forensic
speeches seriously as acts of advocacy, i.e. as designed to ensure
that the person he represents is acquitted or that the person he is
prosecuting is found guilty. It seeks to set the speeches within
the context of the court system of the Late Roman Republic and to
explore in detail the strategies available to Roman advocates to
win the votes of jurors. The volume comprises a substantial
introduction, fourteen chapters by prominent Ciceronian scholars in
Britain, North America, and Germany, and a final chapter by a
current British Appeal Court judge who comments on Cicero's
techniques from the point of view of a modern advocate. The
introduction deals with issues concerning the general nature of
advocacy, the Roman court system as compared with other ancient and
modern systems, the Roman "profession" of advocacy and its
etiquette, the place of advocacy in Cicero's career, the ancient
theory of rhetoric and argument as applied to courtroom advocacy,
and the relationship between the published texts of the speeches as
we have them and the speeches actually delivered in court. The
first eight chapters discuss general themes: legal procedure in
Cicero's time, Cicero's Italian clients, Cicero's methods of
setting out or alluding to the facts of a case, his use of legal
arguments, arguments from character, invective, self-reference, and
emotional appeal, the last of these especially in the concluding
sections of his speeches. Chapters 9-14 examine a range of
particular speeches as case studies--In Verrem II.1 (from Cicero's
only major extant prosecution case), Pro Archia, De Domo Sua, Pro
Caecina, Pro Cluentio, Pro Ligario. These speeches cover the period
of the height of Cicero's career, from 70 BC, when Cicero became
acknowledged as the leading Roman advocate, to 49 BC when Caesar's
dictatorship required Cicero to adapt his well-tried forensic
techniques to drastically new circumstances, and they contain
arguments on a wide range of subject-matter, including provincial
maladministration, usurpation of citizenship rights, violent
dispossession, the religious law relating to the consecration of
property, poisoning, bribery, and political offences. Other
speeches, including all the better-known ones, are used as
illustrative examples in the introduction and in the more general
chapters. An appendix lists all Cicero's known appearances as an
advocate.
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