Pro Caelio

The Pro Caelio is one of the most famous extant speeches by the rhetorician , statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero . As a defense speech for Marcus Caelius Rufus it was given on April 4, 56 BC. . Chr held. The charges included: riot , theft , the murder of the Alexandrian diplomat Dio and the acquisition and use of poison against Clodia , his former lover. The main charge is the political act of violence, the murder of Dio.

Presumably, the indictment was brought by Clodia's brother Publius Clodius Pulcher , an opponent of Cicero. Cicero portrays the Caelius complaint as the revenge of a despised woman, and he skilfully denigrates Clodia.

Cicero's work was made particularly difficult by the fact that he had to take his speech to the forum for the banquet of the Magna Mater , so that the jury of the court was forced to cancel the games for the festival. So he created a kind of game for his hearing by transforming the members of the main hearing into classic Roman dramatic characters such as B. stereotyped the naive young lover. He also used a number of rhetorical stylistic devices to keep the audience interested, for example a monologue about the view of Clodia's relatives and even a satirical pantomime about Caelius' deeds, in order to represent their alleged nullity. With these tricks Cicero distracted from the prosecution, so that Caelius was acquitted.

It is believed that Gaius Valerius Catullus may have written Carmen 49 to thank Cicero for failing to mention him in the trial of Clodia, who is widely believed to be the same person as in Catullus Lesbia .

Web links

Wikisource: Pro Marco Caelio - Sources and full texts (Latin)