Opinion: Cicero’s Rome, political violence, and a warning for America

On April 8, 52 BCE, Cicero rose to give a speech in the Roman Forum defending Titus Annius Milo, a prominent politician accused of murdering his political rival, Publius Clodius Pulcher. I have turned to Cicero’s speech frequently in the past decade as I have tried to understand how threats of political violence — and now, murders and attempted murders of political figures — have infused American political life.

I used to puzzle over Cicero’s defense of Milo’s murderous violence, thinking it reflected poorly on the orator’s otherwise unassailable dedication to republican values. But today, as we struggle to make sense of the escalating political violence in our own times, the dominant emotion I see in Cicero’s words is fear; the dominant message, a pointed warning about fear’s corrosive effect on citizens and foundering civic institutions.

Cicero’s defense of Milo capped an extraordinary few months in Roman history. Milo and two other men had spent the previous year locked in a violent, corrupt campaign for the consulship, republican Rome’s highest office. Clodius, who was running for the lower office of praetor, ordered his supporters to fight against Milo, a political rival. The fighting among gangs supporting the candidates became so intense that the consular elections could not be held. The Roman state entered the calendar year of 52 BCE with no consuls, a situation roughly equivalent to the U.S. beginning a year without a president.

Two and a half weeks later, Milo and Clodius — both accompanied by supporters — encountered each other on the road out of Rome. The first century CE rhetorician Asconius describes what happened next. Milo’s gladiator bodyguards began scuffling with some of Clodius’s followers and, after “Clodius looked back threateningly at the disturbance,” one of the gladiators “transfixed him with a javelin.”

He was taken to a nearby tavern for medical treatment but, “as soon as Milo learned that Clodius was wounded,” he “ordered that he should be thrown out of the tavern” — and so the “skulking Clodius was dragged forth, finished off with many blows.” His corpse was found on the side of the road.

Asconius explains that Clodius’s wife Fulvia then deliberately “increased public anger at the deed by displaying his wounds and lamenting uncontrollably” outside their house. A mob soon dragged Clodius’s “nude and sandalled corpse to the forum…so that its wounds might be seen.” Opponents of Milo made inflammatory speeches designed to transform the divisive and violent Clodius into a political martyr. The crowd, stirred up, carried Clodius’s body into the senate house and set it on fire, cremating their champion while immolating the home of an institution they felt supported his rivals.

The burning of the senate house, the symbolic seat of government, was a step too far for most Romans. Elected officials enlisted the powerful general Pompey to raise an army to bring order — “to see to it that the Republic suffered no harm.” Milo was put on trial for Clodius’ murder, and a Clodian ally was charged with inciting the senate house fire. The idea was to punish members of both factions and restore faith that courts, not street battles, might again regulate Roman politics.

The scene on April 8, the day of Milo’s trial, gave little hope that his prosecution would end the political violence. Intimidation and physical threats loomed. The trial took place in a Forum scarred by the fire set by Clodius’ enraged supporters. “Shops had been shut across the city,” Asconius later wrote, and Pompey “posted guards in the Forum and at all approaches to it” while stationing himself and a detachment of soldiers less than 100 yards from the trial.

The pro-Clodius crowd allowed the prosecutors to present their case but, when Cicero rose to defend Milo, Asconius writes, “he was greeted by yells from Clodius’ partisans, whom not even fear of the soldiers standing around could restrain.” Cicero was terrified, and he cut his remarks short. Marcus Junius Brutus, the future assassin of Julius Caesar who was supposed to give a second speech defending Milo, never even began speaking. Milo, unsurprisingly, was convicted.

Not long afterward, Cicero published an expanded version of the defense speech he had hoped to give. What struck me in the past is how Cicero, who loathed Clodius and was happy to see him die, defended Milo’s role in the murder as a necessary action because the state could not restrain Clodius’ violent tendencies. That argument always seemed to me to be a sign of hypocrisy, or at the very least poor judgement, from Cicero, who elsewhere wrote that no Republic could survive amidst political violence.

But Cicero’s speech reads very differently to me today as I’ve observed Americans react to political violence here. I now wonder if Cicero’s defense might be better understood as a cautionary tale about fear. The speech’s very first words are: “Although I am afraid,” and they introduce a sentence in which Cicero says that he will nevertheless force himself to speak because “fear is an unseemly condition in which to begin a speech.” The next sentence notes the necessary presence of troops “to prevent violence,” but nonetheless, says Cicero, “even my immunity from fear cannot but have a touch of fear in it.”

Cicero goes on to depict Romans “quaking with dread,” as misinformation and rumors created an atmosphere of distrust.  He tells the jury to “lay aside any fears they may find in themselves” because of the presence of Clodius’ supporters or because they suspect that Pompey might use his soldiers to force them to vote to convict Milo. He mentions how senators were terrified that Milo may have been carrying a hidden dagger, and how rumors spread that a mob had placed the house of Julius Caesar under siege. He describes how even Pompey may have felt fear after some drunken slaves “confessed that they had been part of a plot to murder” the general.

Cicero knew that this widespread fear was a symptom of a larger problem. I can see that, now, when, addressing Pompey in his speech, he asked: “Who does not understand that everything, everywhere in the Republic that is ailing or enfeebled has been put in your charge so that you might, by these weapons, bring it relief and support?” But Cicero and many other Romans knew that this was a false hope.

At the same time that he published his defense of Milo, Cicero was working on another text, On the Republic, in which he emphasized that a state dominated by the fear of one citizen’s overwhelming power might “seem as if it was at peace” because “men feared each other.” But, if this balance of terror tipped even slightly, the state would fall back into violence.

Standing in the Forum that day, Cicero knew, but did not explicitly say, that all it would take to shatter this balance of fear was a figure who was either confident or desperate enough to challenge Pompey. This is because more violence, more weapons, cannot replace the security that strong state institutions offer. 

This points to a problem we share with Cicero’s Rome. We have allowed many of our political institutions to become enfeebled, and we have collectively become afraid as they fail to protect our rights, jobs, property, and lives. Like the Roman senators who called on Pompey in 52 B.C.E., some Americans are tempted to seek naked displays of power in order to calm the fear we feel as these institutions fail.

Cicero tells us that these displays of force, both by those representing the state and by those seeking to disrupt its functions, will only increase our fear. True stability cannot be imposed spectacularly from above. It comes instead from the mundane faith people have that the state in which they live functions well enough to protect them, their property, and their families.

Let’s learn from Rome and fight to protect the impartial legal, economic, and political structures that have made our society strong. The fear that consumed Cicero’s generation does not have to consume our own.

Edward Watts is a historian at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The Romans: A 2,000 Year History and Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny. He also hosts the YouTube channel Rome’s Eternal Decline. This was written for Zócalo Public Square, an Arizona State University media enterprise.