Prosecuting Flaccus
Cicero shows perhaps uncharacteristic regard for the opposing counsel by calling him "the son of the best sort of man" and "a good young man, from a respectable background, and eloquent," but emphasizes his youth by repeatedly referring to him as an adulescens, the usual term in the Late Republic for a young man not yet having entered the cursus honorum or political career track. The implication is that the prosecution is an attempt to boost his career. Laelius appears to have had a strong and well-presented case, and yet:
| “ | The more conscientiously Laelius performed his duties as prosecutor, the more Cicero mocked him as a young man goaded by an irrational passion to cause the ruin of a model Roman noble. The more carefully the prosecutors managed the case down to the last detail, the more Cicero implied that the need for such management showed that it was an inherently bad case. | ” |
Laelius presented the Greek and Jewish witnesses at the trial, while his co-counsel, C. Appuleius Decianus, handled Roman citizens who had been living abroad. One of the accusations brought by Laelius was that Flaccus had tried to bribe Decianus. Cicero impugns Laelius's witnesses by their ethnicity.
Although Macrobius later records Flaccus's guilt, the former governor was acquitted. Flaccus may have won the case because of bias, but a general awareness of his guilt is indicated by his failure to advance to the consulship, an achievement that would have been expected from his family history.
Read more about this topic: Decimus Laelius