Audience Expectations and Persuasion in Cicero’s
Pro Roscio Amerino

Christopher P. Craig (University of Tennessee)

Cicero’s earliest criminal defense speech, his pleading for Roscius of America on a charge of murdering his father in 81 BCE, depends in part upon a strategy of antikategoria (Quintilian IO 7.2.9 & 18-25; 3.10.4), accusing the chief movers of the prosecution, Magnus and Capito, of themselves being behind the murder. The orator’s case seems coherent at first blush. But on closer reading, scholars from Linke in the nineteenth century to Alexander and Dyck in the current decade have rightly found the argument for the guilt of Magnus and Capito unconvincing. How then does Cicero manage to advance this specious argument so successfully before his original jury?

This paper will demonstrate that Cicero’s argument is effective for a Roman jury in part because he uses the educational background of his audience in order to manipulate them. Both for the original jury of senators and for his initial readership, we may fairly suppose that Cicero’s audience is part of the socio-economic élite, and has been exposed to élite education in public speaking. A central part of that rhetorical education is knowledge of the arguments that are to be expected in criminal pleadings, and that are preserved for us in Cicero’s own youthful treatise De Inventione, as well as in the contemporary anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium.

With the aid of a handout, I will demonstrate how Cicero’s treatment of Magnus and Capito, especially at §§82-123, satisfies these educated rhetorical expectations. The paper will focus especially upon the canonical indignatio that Cicero levels against Capito in §§ 111-117. I will extract from the handbook literature seven hallmarks of an indignatio and demonstrate the presence of all of these in this passage. I will then argue this passage, by completely satisfying in both its content and its placement the educated audience’s rhetorical expectations, provides an effective distraction from the weakness of Cicero’s argument. This sleight of hand allows the orator to draw his final conclusion about Capito’s guilt (§118) from a warrant that is emotionally moving, apparently orthodox, and largely devoid of factual foundation.

The paper can be delivered effectively in 15 minutes.