The Crime

Hello.

My name is Andrew. Sell it.

I'm a lecturer in classics at Jesus College at the University of Oxford,

and I'm going to give a short series of lectures on Cicero's Pro Malone.

Now. The first thing I want to talk about

is the crime in question.

What's the crime at the centre of this, uh, this speech this road is delivering?

On the 18th of January 52

BC

to politicians who were running for election in Rome

bumped into each other on the Appian Way.

A fight broke out

and one of them was killed.

Now the skirmish

was between two men.

Titus Manlius, Milo

and Publius Claudius. Pull care.

Milo was running for the council ship

and Claudius for the partnership.

These two men had a long history of animosity,

which I'll get into talking about later in this

series. Um, what were they doing on the road?

Claudius was going out to inspect some building work he was doing on his estate.

By the side of the road

is the road that was built by his great

ancestor appears Claudius caucus appears Claudius the blind.

He was going off to inspect that a large a large mansion he was building on

the side of the road of Villa was

being constructed properly by the numerous hired hands,

burly slaves he had, uh, purchased to help him build this.

Milo was setting out

to appoint a dictator,

which is a sort of priest, Um,

at his hometown of Linux VM.

Exactly what happened to cause this fight is the

central contention at the heart of Cicero speech.

So we've got numerous versions

going around which we're going to investigate

in the course of this lecture series.

Suffice it to say

that Milo was victorious in the fight. Claudius was the dead man at the end of it.

When news was brought to Rome,

Claudius supporters began to riot When his body was returned to Rome.

It was thrown into the Senate house to be cremated, burning down

the courier,

the house in which the Senate sat.

The rioting that followed brought the city of Rome to

a standstill.

No public business could be transacted. No elections could be held.

And a general state of emergency was declared

the great General Gnaeus Pompey the great,

whom you might remember from Cicero's speech about his command of

the method Attic war in the day in Perry Oh,

nei Pompeii

Magni was put in charge of bringing things back under control.

He was given the unique position of the sole

consul ship sort of dictatorial role in Rome.

In order to make sure that, um, affairs could be brought to heel.

Among various pieces of legislation he passed,

one was creating a special court in which Milo could be held.

Milo was to be tried under the Lex Pompeo

TV on public violence, violence that was contrary to the interests of the state.

75 jurors were appointed to try this.

Um, and Cicero was appointed as Milos defence counsel.

So this murder has taken place in January

of 52 BC

By April, the trial is ready to get started.

Under Pompey's new court, they're going to be four days of trial

for the first three days.

Witnesses are brought in on either side to account for what's happening.

Cicero has,

um,

vestal virgins from a shrine near where the murder has taken

place to come in and speak in favour of Milo.

Um, Claudius has numerous attendance from his train.

Come in to argue that Milo was the man who began this fight

on the fourth day we reached the speeches. Appiah's Claudius

Pool care Claudius nephew delivers the first speech whipping up

the crowd who was gathered around to watch this trial,

Um,

stirring up hatred against the man who

had killed the popular politician Publius Claudius.

Cicero

is given the last word in the case.

He stands up to deliver his speech, the pro Maloney in a last ditch effort

to attempt to save the man who killed his great enemy, Publius Claudius.

In the end, Cicero lost this case.

He lost by a single vote, and Milo went off into exile.

Eventually, Cicero published this speech,

the last judicial speech he would ever deliver.

And what we're going to do in this series of

lectures is to analyse what's special about this speech.

Why does this speech serve as such a perfect climax to Cicero's 2030 year career?

Speaking in the courts