Self-Reference in Cicero’s Forensic Speeches

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines Cicero's references to himself in his forensic speeches. The explanation for such self-reference lies in the nature of the courts in ancient Rome and the tactics of the courtroom rather than any self-obsession on the part of Cicero. The key issue was how to talk about oneself without crossing the boundary of arrogance and boastfulness. Cicero justifies the concentration on himself in the usual way by claiming that the prosecution had started it by attacking him. The defence of Plancius shows just how far Cicero had travelled from the young advocate in the cases of Quinctius and of Roscius of Ameria, where he had to counter the greater influence of his opponents, to the wholehearted exploitation of his auctoritas in the defence of Sestius and of Plancius. This aspect of Cicero's advocacy has no modern parallel.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 16 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.