Pro Milone - Content of The Speech

Content of The Speech

Throughout the duration of his speech Cicero does not attempt to convince the judges that Milo did not kill Clodius, but that the killing of Clodius was committed lawfully in self-defense. Cicero even goes as far as to suggest that the death of Clodius was in the best interests of the republic. Clodius as a tribune was a popularist, a populares leader of the restless plebeian mobs that plagued the political scene of the late Roman Republic. Possibly Cicero's strongest argument was that of the circumstances of the assault: its convenient proximity to Clodius' villa, and the fact that Milo was leaving Rome on official business (nominating a priest for election in Lanuvium). Clodius, on the other hand, had been distinctly absent from his usual rantings in the popular assemblies (contiones). Milo was encumbered in a coach, with his wife, a heavy riding cloak and a retinue of harmless slaves (though his retinue also included slaves and gladiators as well as revellers for the festival at Lanuvium, to whose presence Cicero only implicitly refers). Clodius, however, was on horseback, without a carriage, his wife or his usual retinue but with a band of armed brigands and slaves. If Cicero could convince the judges that Clodius had laid a trap for Milo, he could postulate that Milo murdered out of self-defense (Roman law at the time had no distinction between murder and manslaughter). Not once does Cicero mention the possibility that the two met by chance (which was the conclusion of both Asconius and Appian).

Clodius is made out repeatedly in the Pro Milone to be a malevolent, invidious, effeminate character; craving power and organizing the ambush on Milo. In his speech Cicero gives Clodius a motive for setting a trap: his realization that Milo would easily secure the consulship, and thus stand in the way of Clodius' scheme to attain greater power and influence as a praetor. Fortunately, there was plentiful material for Cicero to build this profile, such as the Bona Dea incident in 62 BC; involving Clodius stealing into the abode of the Pontifex Maximus of the time, Julius Caesar, during the ritual festival of the Bona Dea, to which only women were allowed. It is said that he dressed up as a woman in order to gain access and pursue an illicit affair with Pompeia, the wife of Caesar. Clodius was taken to the law courts for this act of great impiety, but escaped the punishment of death by bribing the judges, most of whom had been poor (according to Cicero, who was the prosecutor during the case). Earlier in his career Lucullus had accused Clodius of committing incest with his sister Clodia, then Lucullus's wife; this too is often referred to in order to blacken Clodius's reputation.

Milo, on the other hand, is perpetually depicted as a 'saviour of Rome' by his virtuous actions and political career up until that point. Cicero even goes as far as to paint an amicable relationship with Pompey. Asconius, as he does with many other parts of the Pro Milone, disputes this fact, claiming that Pompey was in fact afraid of Milo, "or else pretended to be afraid", staying in the upper parts of his property in the suburbs and employing a constant body of troops to keep guard. His fear was attributed to a series of public assemblies in which Titus Munatius Plancus, a fervent supporter of Clodius, stirred up the crowd against Milo and Cicero, casting suspicion upon Milo by shouting that he was preparing a force to destroy him. However, in the view of Plutarch, a 1st century AD writer and biographer of notable Roman men, Clodius had also stirred up enmity between Pompey and himself, along with the fickle crowds of the forum he controlled with his malevolent goading.

The early part of the refutation of the opposition's arguments (refutatio), contains the first known exposition of the phrase silent enim leges inter arma ("in times of war, the laws fall silent"). This has since been rephrased as inter arma enim silent leges, and was most recently used by the American media in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. At this point in the speech this phrase is integral to Cicero's argument. In the context of the Pro Milone the meaning behind the phrase remains the same as its use in contemporary society. Cicero was asserting that the killing of Clodius was admissible so long as it was an act of self-defence; postulating that in extreme cases, where one's own life is immediately threatened, violence without proper regard to the laws is justifiable. Indeed, Cicero goes as far as to say that such behaviour is instinctive (nata lex: "an inborn law") to all living creatures (non instituti, sed imbuti sumus: "we are not taught through instruction, but through natural intuition"). This argument of the murder of Clodius being in the public interest is only presented in the written version of the Pro Milone, as, according to Asconius, Cicero did not mention it in the actual version delivered.

The speech also contains the first known use of the legal axiom res ipsa loquitur, albeit in the form res loquitur ipsa, (literally "the thing itself speaks" but usually translated as "the facts speak for themselves"). The phrase was quoted in an 1863 judgment in the English case Byrne v Boadle and became the tag for a new common law doctrine.