IV - THE PRO CLUENTIO OF CICERO

Summary

The motive of Cicero's professed change of opinion.

Cicero himself, according to Quintilian, 2. 17. 21, said that in the defence of Cluentius he had thrown dust in the eyes of the judges; and as eight years before the delivery of the speech he had appeared as a strong advocate of the attack on the senatorial iudicia which followed the iudicium Iunianum, there can be no doubt that he really believed throughout that the agitation of 74 b. c. was justified by the facts of the case. I do not know whether any attempt has been made to explain his professed change of opinion. In the following remarks I hope to make it probable that political considerations had a great deal to do with the matter. Cicero has been too hastily charged with inconsistency in the earlier part of his career. A careful examination of the facts will shew, I think, that there was a method in his changes. His politics are those of the ordo equester, whose interests he, as himself belonging to it, naturally made his own. The death of Sulla in 78 b. c. gave to this important body the hope of recovering something of the position which they had held from the time of the Gracchan to that of the Sullan constitution; and in 74 b. c. an opening was given them (in the corruption of the senatorial iudicia) for an attack on the dominant position of the senate.