Pro Cluentio

Pro Cluentio is a speech by the Roman orator Cicero given in defense of a man named Aulus Cluentius Habitus Minor, addressed to the judge Gaius Aquilius Gallus.

Oppianicus the Younger was the heir-presumptive to Dinaea's estate, recently enlarged after the deaths of two of her sons, Gnaeus Magius and Numerius Aurius, in the Civil Wars between Marius and Sulla.

[2] When the news of M. Aurius's death in Gaul reached Larinum, the relatives of Dinaea raised such an outcry that Oppianicus fled the town and took refuge in one of Sulla's camps.

Cluentius the Elder had fallen victim to the Sullan proscriptions and the widowed Sassia then fell in love with her son-in-law Melinus and forced her daughter to divorce him so that she could marry him herself.

According to Quintilian, Cicero afterwards boasted that he had pulled the wool over the judges' eyes (se tenebras offudisse iudicibus in causa Cluenti gloriatus est, Institutio Oratoria 2.17.21; the context is in discussion of orators who say false things not because they are themselves unaware of the truth, but to deceive other people).

Cicero's spirited defence in Pro Cluentio presents an insight into the life in Larinum in 66 BC, and also provides an image of a ruthless woman which has lasted for more than two thousand years.