Pro Milone
Cicero refers to this incident throughout the Pro Milone by implying that there was greater general indignation and uproar at the burning of the curia than there was at the murder of Clodius.
[2] The violent nature of the crime as well as its revolutionary repercussions (the case had special resonance with the Roman people as a symbol of the clash between the populares and the optimates) made Pompey set up a handpicked panel of judges.
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.
[5] Clodius is made out repeatedly in the Pro Milone to be a malevolent, invidious, effeminate character who craves power and organises the ambush on Milo.
[6] 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.
[8] 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.
It 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.
Indeed, Cicero goes as far as to say that such behaviour is instinctive (nata lex:[11] "an inborn law") to all living creatures (non instituti, sed imbuti sumus: "we are not taught [self-defence] through instruction, but through natural intuition").
Pompey had been made sole consul in Rome during the violent troubled times after the murder but before the legal proceedings against Milo had begun.
Despite its failure to secure an acquittal, the surviving rewrite is considered to be one of Cicero's best works and is thought by many to be the magnum opus of his rhetorical repertoire.
Throughout his speech, Cicero explicitly seems to follow his own rhetorical guidelines published in his earlier work De Inventione, but on occasion, he subtly breaks away from the stylistic norms to emphasise certain elements of his case and use the circumstances to his advantage.
As example, he places his refutation of the opposition's arguments (refutatio) far earlier in the speech than is usual, and he pounces on the opportunity for a fast disproval of the plethora of evidence collected over the first four days of the trial.
Irony is omnipresent in the speech, along with continual appearances of humour and constant appeals to traditional Roman virtues and prejudices, all of the tactics designed solely to involve and persuade his jury.
The charge of vis (violence) against Milo not only suited a logical and analytical legal framework, with evidence indicating a specific time, date, place and cast for the murder itself, but also generally concerned actions that affected the community.
That allowed Cicero ample maneuvering room to include details of the fire in the curia as well as the attack on Marcus Lepidus' house and the Bona Dea incident.
[citation needed] Milo, having read the later published speech whilst in exile, joked that if Cicero had spoken that well in court, the former would "not now be enjoying the delicious red mullet of Massilia".
