Cicero’s Pro L. Murena Oratio AMERICAN PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION TEXTS AND COMMENTARIES SERIES Series Editor Sander M. Goldberg Sallust’s B ellum Catilinae , Second Edition J. T. Ramsey A Commentary on Demosthenes’ P hilippic I: With Rhetorical Analyses of Philippics II and III Cecil Wooten Cicero’s Pro L. Murena Oratio Elaine Fantham Cicero’s P ro L. Murena Oratio Introduction and Commentary by Elaine Fantham 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © 2013 by the American Philological Association All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fantham, Elaine, author. Cicero’s Pro L. Murena oratio / Elaine Fantham. pages cm — (American Philological Association texts and commentaries series) ISBN 978-0-19-997453-5 1. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Pro Murena. I. Title. II. Series: American Philological Association texts and commentaries series. PA6279.M8F36 2013 875 ′ .01—dc23 2013021156 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Contents Acknowledgments vii Map 2 Introduction: Pro Murena 3 Pro L. Murena Oratio 33 Commentary 83 Appendix: R elated Texts 197 Bibliography 219 Index of Persons and Places 223 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments After writing three commentaries on Latin poets I thought I knew how and what to write about Cicero’s Pro Murena , a speech I have always loved. But I hadn’t taken on board all the disciplines necessary to do justice to Cicero’s wit and manipulation of argu- ment (and facts!) so as to make the speech enjoyable to modern students who are far more sophisticated in political thinking, but rather less comfortable in Latin than I was at their age. Any student interested in modern democratic politics in North America or the United Kingdom will recognize how little the standards of career- ists have changed or improved. This commentary would never have reached the press without the unstinting and tactful-but-truthful help of two distinguished scholars and good friends, Bob Kaster and Sander Goldberg, at different stages. I owe them an immense debt of gratitude for the labor and judgment they applied to making it a better piece of work and, I hope, a better teaching tool. In addition I had most useful help and advice from Kevin Lawson, whose recent experience of teaching introductory and in- termediate Latin to university students alerted him to the kind of grammatical comment that would be appropriate; Kevin also read meticulously through my draft text, and I am most grateful to him. I was also able to benefi t from the detailed reports and sugges- tions of the series’ referees, Bob Cape and Jon Hall, both experts in Ciceronian rhetoric, and Francis X. Ryan’s scrupulous and helpful comments on senatorial careers and procedure. I hope I have done justice to their suggestions; any errors per- sisting are my own, whether inadvertent or perverse. Elaine Fantham May 2012 This page intentionally left blank Cicero’s Pro L. Murena Oratio