BMCR 2009.04.39: Saylor Rodgers on Lintott, Cicero As Evidence: A Historian's Companion

Andrew Lintott, Cicero As Evidence: A Historian's Companion.
Oxford/New York:  Oxford University Press, 2008.  Pp. x, 469.  ISBN
9780199216444.  $130.00.

Reviewed by Barbara Saylor Rodgers, University of Vermont
([email protected])
Word count:  2999 words
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Preview (http://books.google.com/books?id=t4-dIAXbOS4C)

In his preface, Andrew Lintott states that his intent is not to write a
biography of Cicero, nor a history of the late Republic. Yet in some
ways he has missed his own mark, for the work is more than advertised.
Lintott concentrates upon Cicero's texts -- speeches, letters,
rhetorical and philosophical works (omitting the early De Inventione)
-- and in the process describes the orator's professional and political
progress and what is known of his experiences and his reactions to
those from 81 to 43 BCE. The book has four parts and eight appendices,
all chronologically ordered; as it happens, chronological arrangement
usually fits a thematic discussion of the kinds of cases Cicero argued
as an advocate. The defense of Sex. Roscius and the oration in support
of the Manilian law receive separate treatment in the first two
appendices and thus do not interrupt what falls out as a neatly
thematic approach to the speeches. Whatever the reader is looking for
is probably here: legal history, political negotiation, and especially
a juxtaposition of epistles with speeches, literary productions, and
external events.

Part A (Reading Cicero) has three chapters to introduce the kinds of
analysis possible and address some of the basic questions that all who
consult Cicero must ask. In the first chapter Lintott uses two letters
and two orations as examples. His discussion of Att. 1.1 on the
elections and Att. 1.16 on the Bona Dea trial show that historians
often miss out on the more important issue(s), e.g., maintaining
balance in his relationship with Atticus, and that the account of
Clodius' trial is an unsatisfactory source except for how Cicero felt
about it. Two of the orations after his return, Red. Sen. and Red. Pop.
-- the latter, Lintott argues, was prepared but not actually delivered
yet valuable as an example of how Cicero was projecting himself --
treat the same themes in different ways, as the oration to the people
was meant to preserve an image of Cicero devoted to the public interest
rather than to personal feuds. Lintott next discusses the extent to
which letters and speeches accurately represent what Cicero wrote or
said; Cicero had no time to edit the letters, which we can accept are
genuine as to what was sent. It is almost obligatory in works on Cicero
to address the authenticity of the orations, especially in light of the
work of Humbert and Stroh.[[1]] Nearly every oration is a special case,
and while Humbert was sometimes wrong, he was sometimes also right, and
raised questions that one may not ignore. Lintott's treatment is
balanced and reasonable. Chapter III offers a variety of examples of
the orator's ability to misrepresent or even lie in the interest of his
case, including a false narratio in Mil., untrue statement of ignorance
in Sull., allegations about the vadimonium in Quinct.. Cicero's lack of
complete honesty is more subtle in Caecin., Leg Agr. 2., Clu., Red.
Sen., Sest. (more about all these in later chapters). Lintott
demonstrates that one must be wary of reading anything in Cicero's
orations out of context, yet even the less honorable arguments are of
interest to historians and biographers, for various reasons.

Part B (Reading Oratory) progresses chronologically with cases arranged
by type: financial litigation, repetundae prosecution, repetundae
defense. While historians may be anxious to get into politically
juicier territory, there is much to be learned from these examples of
civil litigation: about relations of moderately wealthy landowners and
Cicero's connections to these elements, his able legal thinking when
necessary, his ability, evident from his first case, to obfuscate and
omit. In Chapter IV Lintott makes two very good points in his
discussion of Quinct.: that publication indicates that Cicero may well
have had a success and that his arguments in Quinct., as in Q Rosc. and
Caecin. later, hew closely to the legal interpretation, and thus this
is an earlier date for the 'rise of the Roman jurist'.[[2]] In
discussion of Q Rosc. Lintott offers a new solution and suggests that
Fannius may have neglected to get from Roscius a revised sponsio, thus
allowing the actor to stand on firm legal, if not moral, ground. The
sixth chapter (Property and Violence: The Pro Tullio and Pro Caecina)
displays Cicero's legal ingenuity, his ability to distract and
reinterpret, and a greater facility in bringing politics into civil
disputes, as he had done earlier in Quinct. As in the two earlier
cases, the clients are wealthy landowners of equestrian status or
below. Lintott notes Cicero is revealed as a legal expert in Caecin.
and does not seem to mind displaying his knowledge; again we see Roman
jurisprudence as it develops.

Discussion of Cicero's prosecution of Verres in Chapter VII offers much
of interest on the development of repetundae courts and their
procedures in Cicero's lifetime; both his speeches and Asconius are
good evidence for legal historians. After describing the history of the
case, Lintott notes changes in the law regarding final selection of the
accuser, after the divinatio, and time allowed to collect evidence from
abroad. There is much of interest here on the course of repetundae
trials after comperendinatio was introduced, on the length of time
(considerable in this case) that must have been consumed in hearing
witnesses. Lintott shows that although the second actio was not
delivered, there was a purpose to continuing the prosecution and
publishing the results. There are four aspects of interest to
historians: allusions to the text of the law, financial calculations,
lines of what was surely a standard defense, and the misery of the
allies, and concludes that one should be wary of using the Verrines as
evidence for Cicero's political beliefs, but they are a mine of
information for the repetundae court. In the next two chapters Lintott
addresses the defense tactics of repetundae (Font., Flac., Scaur.) and
violence (Corn., Rab. perd.) trials, in that order, describing how
criminal courts worked, the use and status of witnesses, typical
defense tactics and arguments. Some of the arguments that Cicero uses
on behalf of Flaccus -- that logical arguments are more important than
witnesses, and that one can discredit witnesses even before they appear
-- can also be used in purely Roman cases with Roman witnesses (Cael.
22 and 19-20, respectively), yet Lintott emphasizes that different
strategies were required in different courts. In the defense of
Cornelius, Cicero does not try to disprove allegations of the
defendant's use of extreme measures when he was tribune of the people
but, arguing from history, justifies the occasional use of violence in
the public interest. Lintott adduces the later De Or. for an exemplar:
Antonius' defense of Norbanus as Cicero describes it, and refers the
reader to the trial of Milo, where, he notes, it was logically
difficult to say that killing Clodius was in the public interest while
also arguing that the action came about by chance and was forced upon
Milo, and finds a better example in Rab. perd.. Following discussion of
the criminal process in the latter case, Lintott compares the defenses
of Cornelius and Rabirius for their value to Cicero and what his
arguments may or may not reveal of his political sympathies.

Part C (History in Speeches and Letters) offers a fusion of orations
and letters, beginning with Cicero's candidacy and the well-known issue
of his relations with Catilina and Antonius before mid-64, refusal on
good grounds to dismiss outright Q. Cicero's authorship of the Comm.
pet., and a fairly brief discussion of the orations against Rullus'
agrarian law. There is some unevenness in coverage of the Catilinarian
orations, going over every bit of the first speech -- perhaps because
that is required in view of the impromptu nature of the speech -- but
quite cursory of the second and third (noted as offering the best
narrative). Cat. 4, he argues, is a cento published afterwards, and
more useful as a font of themes that will figure later in Cicero's
political orations.

In Chapters XI-XIII Lintott assembles a variety of sources, primarily
letters and defense speeches, to piece together the years following
Cicero's consulship, his exile, and return. Many of the observations
are not novel, but the close inspection of almost every extant work is
valuable for its very comprehensiveness and frequent observations on
what one should note in reading Cicero and why. Lintott argues that
Cicero's frequent praise of himself arose not from a desire to brag but
in response to criticism, that Cicero's letters from 62 and following
are mostly about himself and his status as consular, although those to
Atticus focus on their relationship and what Cicero is trying to
accomplish with Pompey (who, Lintott argues, was no friend of Atticus),
that his notion of P. Clodius as another Catilina may have been a
self-fulfilling prophecy, that Cicero could have become a fourth member
of the gang of three but that he remained aloof for reasons that meant
much to him: to maintain his standing with the boni and because he
disliked Caesar's use of violence. There is exceptionally good
information about affairs at Rome in the letters after Cicero's return
from exile, especially in letters to his brother and to Lentulus
Spinther; Lintott carefully separates what one can then discern of the
difference between Cicero's public and private personae. In Chapter
XIII one will find descriptions of the close legal arguments Cicero
employed in Dom., an interesting statement on gratia and its limits (p.
192), the defense of Sestius and the observation that Cicero's point
about optimates throughout all ranks of society and all of Italy may be
original. While discussing Har. resp., Prov. cons. (distressing), Balb.
(not distressing), Pis., Lintott traces the variety of treatments given
Clodius, Gabinius, and Piso, while noting that as far as we can tell
using Cicero as evidence, the agreements of the conference at Luca were
revealed to the world at large only gradually.

Part D (History and Ideas) encompasses nearly half the book, commencing
with the very long and varied chapter on Cicero's search for otium;
Lintott begins by showing how Cicero was writing, in a variety of
forms, to insure his memory. Combined here are letters to Lucceius
(Cicero to posterity), Lentulus Spinther (Cicero in the present and his
new political alignment), the defense of Plancius, De Oratore and De Re
Publica, defenses of Gabinius, Rabirius Postumus, Milo, and more
letters, especially to Atticus. The interest of Planc. for the
historian lies in reaction of the boni to Cicero's new stance, and of
Cicero's evident discomfort at charges from Laterensis. Lintott
discusses the implications of the settings of De Or. and Rep., the
former  "an apparently, but deceptively, more secure and civilized
world before the Social and Civil Wars" (p. 226), the latter in a more
stable past; he elucidates parallels in De Or. to Cicero's world and
choices in his own career, while he fairly but briefly describes the
scholarly controversy over Cicero's puzzling rector in Rep.. Political
change occurred as Cicero worked on Rep. with Pompey at the center, yet
there are few letters to help; in what is part summation of primary
sources and recourse to secondary, he works through the political
issues of 51-50. He also offers reasonable grounds for Cicero's
decision to defend Gabinius and argues rightly that the secondary
sources are mistaken in their account of a feeble defense of Milo.
Especially of interest is his citation of Att. 7.1.4 as the only
evidence that Cicero was involved in diplomacy between Caesar and
Pompey during Pompey's third consulship, before Milo's trial on 4
April.

The account of Cicero's governorship embraces the many developments of
that crucial year in an efficient combination of narrative and
analysis; the letters are naturally the main source, and Lintott argues
that Cicero's assertions of his integrity mask a reasonable fear of
being prosecuted for repetundae and the difficulty of satisfying both
provincials and tax-collectors. The recurrent themes are that Caesar's
first consulship was the tipping point (Lintott notes that later
historians often concurred), that Pompey might not win a conflict and
even if he did the result would not be pretty, and especially that
Cicero believed that Caesar had a valid legal right to run for consul,
thus Cicero would have expected Caesar to have room for negotiation.
Treatment of Cicero's anguished deliberations is relatively brief in
Chapter XVI. Lintott's detailed scrutiny of Cicero's letters, combined
with information from Caesar, Appian, and Plutarch, makes very clear
how difficult the negotiations were and how close accommodation must
have seemed on more than one occasion. Clear also are how little moral
speculation or historical analogies were able to help Cicero choose;
the observation that "Atticus must have wearied of his agonized
deliberations, as most modern readers seem to do" (p. 298) is close
enough to the truth.[[3]]

The chapter on Caesar's dictatorship is many-faceted; Lintott calls the
Brutus a funeral laudatio for both the dead and the republic, notes
historical and political parallels to De or., and believes it ends with
an encrypted message to Brutus on tyrannicide. He asks, not the only
time in the book, how Cicero survived Sulla's return in the Eighties.
This is not a question that had occurred to me, for despite the family
connections, Cicero himself and his father were not important enough
(and perhaps not rich enough) to proscribe. There were other
connections as well, especially with Scaevola, as Lintott shows when
arguing where Cicero's sympathies must have tended, yet it might be
well not to discount some other influence, even that of Q. Roscius. In
discussion of the three Caesarian orations, often described as command
performances, Lintott argues that Marc. was delivered on impulse and
written up afterwards; he rejects Dyer's thesis[[4]] of a hidden agenda
in Marc. although does regard Deiot., at least in part, as figured
speech. There is clear delineation in this chapter of how things had
changed and kept changing, although Cicero remained important as a
patron for others, and maintained a good if wary rapport with Caesar,
devoted himself to philosophical studies but also to his new friends,
and maintained active correspondance with many, both those welcome in
the new order and those who were not.

Although Lintott rehearses in these final chapters much (but by no
means all) of what one might already have read, there is much to be
said for an excursion through the works, especially near the end of
Cicero's life, in tandem with letters written at the same time. One
does not ordinarily read these things in this way and it is worth
doing. For the last year and a half, Cicero's literary output was
extraordinary: many letters, the Philippics, philosophical works, all
examined in the eighteenth chapter. Especially of note is the
discussion of Cicero's correspondence with Matius, and the translation
of political experience and belief and notions of morality into the
philosophical works, in particular Am. and Off.

The last two chapters are the hardest to read for anyone who is fond of
Cicero. Lintott's close analysis of speeches and letters is a
remarkable achievement; put another way, one who does not read all of
the letters together to piece out the course of events and negotiations
should at least read chapters XIX and XX. Some highlights: the
evaluation of Phil. 2 and its message to others, Cicero's skepticism of
Octavian's assurances and motives for Cicero's support, when he did
support him, analysis of the rhetoric of Antony's letter and citing
Antony as source for much subsequent anti-Ciceronian invective, and a
balanced assessment of the importance of the Philippics to historians
and how and why Cicero's influence, although genuine, was not what one
might assume from the texts of the speeches. The many letters preserved
from 43 BCE show very clearly the role of the soldiers in forcing
action or inaction upon the several commanders. Lintott finds Plancus
untrustworthy although under considerable pressure -- here I missed
reference to Watkins' biography, a useful book that appears to be not
much known.[[5]] Cicero shows up well enough in these chapters, though,
and Lintott grants him a measure of common sense that other historians
may not, e.g., that the orator must have expected of Brutus and Cassius
a replay of Sulla's return from the east in 83. He rightly seconds
Shackleton Bailey, too, in the judgment that Ad Brut. 24 and 25 are not
authentic. He ends with an intriguing observation that in the final
crisis Cicero turned not to philosophical models but to the heroic, the
Iliad.

The first three of the eight Appendices address the interest of three
orations for historians: Rosc. Am., Leg. Man., Cael.. Discussions are
brief and to the point. In matters of detail I note that the Caecilia
Metella who protected Sex. Roscius is not necessarily the wife of App.
Claudius (cos. 79),[[6]] and that P. Antistius, killed with Scaevola
and two others on the eve of Sulla's return, is probably not the same
as the accuser (L. Antistius, perhaps) named in Rosc. Am. 89-90. In
Appendix 4, Lintott reaches no firm conclusion on the terminal date of
Caesar's command in Gaul, but elucidates how Cicero probably understood
it. The chronology of events after Caesar's murder (Appendix 7) is
valuable. The final Appendix is the Latin text and English translation
of Antony's letter to Cicero quoted in Phil. 13.22-48, minus Cicero's
commentary. It is a pity that the appendices are in chronological
sequence for this one reason, that Antony speaks last.

This book is a wonderful resource for the different periods of Cicero's
life, and the later chapters especially should be kept open to read
side by side with the letters and other sources: the narrative is often
as immediate as the letters without distracting details. For other
purposes, e.g., the financial litigation, repetundae courts, political
speeches, the book offers commentary that is necessary but not
sufficient, which stands to reason, as a full commentary on every
product of the orator's stilus would take many volumes.


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Notes:


1.   Jules Humbert. Les plaidoyers e/crits et les plaidoiries re/elles
de Cice/ron (Paris 1925); Wilfried Stroh. Taxis und Taktik. Die
advokatische Dispositionskunst in Ciceros Gerichtsreden (Stuttgart
1975).

2.   Citing B. W. Frier, The Rise of the Roman Jurists: Studies in
Cicero's pro Caecina (Princeton 1985).

3.   Yet see Peter Brunt, "Cicero's Officium in the Civil War," JRS 76
(1986) 12-32 for an equally sympathetic reading of the letters.

4.   R. R. Dyer, "Rhetoric and Intention in Cicero's Pro Marcello," JRS
80 (1990) 17-30.

5.   Thomas H. Watkins, L. Munatius Plancus. Serving and Surviving in
the Roman Revolution. Illinois Classical Studies, Supplement 7
(Atlanta, Georgia 1997).

6.   See most recently Patrick Kragelund, "Dreams, Religion and
Politics in Republican Rome," Historia 50 (2001) 53-95.