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Introduction 25
based on speeches Cicero made on November 991 and December 3, 63, both
conveying important political news to the citizenry and rallying public sup-
port behind the consul; the Post reditum ad Quirites (Speech of Thanks to the
Citizens), an address of September 5, 57 (probably92 ) thanking the People
for the law that had restored Cicero from exile; and the Fourth and Sixth
Philippics, delivered on December 20, 44, and January 4, 43, mobilizing
popular enthusiasm for Cicero’s last great crusade, the civil war against Mark
Antony.
A potential problem that cannot be shirked, however, is the fact that the
speech as originally, orally delivered and its published, written version were
by no means the same thing. Cicero’s speech in defense of Milo in 52 bc is
at best an idealized version of what Cicero would have said had the Clodian
crowd not ruined the speech with its interruptions; the five books of the actio
secunda against Verres (like the Second Philippic) were never even delivered,
since the defense forfeited the case after Cicero’s opening statement, yet they
were still fully “written up” as if they had been, complete with imaginative
dramatizations of the reactions of the defense to the author’s overpowering
oratory. These are, of course, special cases whose “counter-factual” status
was known to ancient critics and whose idealized fictionalization took in
no one. But even the normal sort of published version of a speech actually
delivered in roughly the same form, length, and circumstances, cannot
be taken to be a verbatim record of a rhetorical event. Orators typically
wrote down speeches after the event, drawing on very recent – but highly
trained – memory as well as written-out portions (especially openings) and
Assembly (rather than the tribes, as has been supposed from reference to the rostra at §25: see below,
chap. 2, n. 93). Work published since Tyrrell’s study does not, it seems to me, overturn these points:
Liou-Gille 1994 presumes, without new argument, the validity of the generally discredited notion
that the speech belongs to an appeal; Alexander 1990: no. 221 follows the reconstruction of the
case as one involving only a fine, but with hesitation; while the elaborate hypothesis of Primmer
1985: 9–14, 25–49 contradicts perduellionis reo in Cic. Pis. 4 (chap. 6, n. 100), and the supposed
inconsistency between Cicero’s pride in his performance (attested by his publication of the speech,
as well as the just-cited passage) and Dio’s version of the conclusion of the matter (by Metellus’
dissolution of the centuriate assembly: 37.27.3) may simply be a choice of emphasis (Dio’s well-
known anti-Ciceronianism is invoked by Primmer himself: p. 28). Final day: Rab. perd. 5. See too
Gruen 1974: 279, n. 69; on the procedure of iudicia populi, see Santalucia 1998: 84–88; Lintott 1999:
152–53.
91 Accepting the “traditional” dating of Cat. 1 (Nov. 8): see, however, now Berry 1996: 236–37, in favor
of the alternative date one day earlier.
92 Cic. Att. 4.1.5. The date, strictly, is only that of the preceding Post reditum in senatu; but it is almost
certain that this speech was delivered immediately upon adjournment of the senatorial meeting at
which its “twin” was given (Nicholson 1992: 126–28). Cf. Phil. 3–4 and 5–6, with chap. 7, nn. 23,
24. The alternative possibility, which Nicholson advances hesitantly, is that it was delivered on the
actual day of Cicero’s arrival, before the senatorial speech, in keeping with the primacy of the debt
to the People (Red. pop. 1–5); it is certainly unthinkable that Cicero failed to thank the People in a
contio (the final possibility Nicholson raises).

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