Ciceron Orestiada PDF

Ramus 45 (1) p.45–73 © Aureal Publications 2016.
doi:10.1017/rmu.2016.2
CICERO’S USE OF AESCHYLUS’ ORESTEIA IN THE PRO MILONE
Adriana Brook
Early in the Pro Milone, Cicero’s defence of Titus Annius Milo on trial for the
murder of Publius Clodius Pulcher,1 the orator presents a list of exemplary figures
from Roman history whose deeds offer parallels for Milo’s alleged crime.
Though these men murdered political enemies, they were nonetheless considered
justified in their actions by their Roman peers.2 In emphatic and memorable last
place in this list is an example drawn not from Roman history but from Greek
tragedy:
itaque hoc, iudices, non sine causa etiam fictis fabulis doctissimi homines
memoriae prodiderunt, eum qui patris ulciscendi causa matrem necauisset
uariatis hominum sententiis non solum diuina sed etiam sapientissimae
deae sententia liberatum.3
(Cic. Mil. 8)
And so, members of the jury, it is not without reason that even in fictional
tales the most learned men have passed down to tradition that the man who
had killed his mother for the sake of avenging his father, even though
mortal opinion was divided, was absolved of the crime not merely by a
divine decision but by that of the wisest goddess.
Cicero here makes an obvious reference to Aeschylus’ Oresteia. In this fifth-

century Athenian trilogy, Orestes kills his mother Clytemnestra in vengeance
I am immensely grateful to many people for the help and advice they offered as I was preparing this
article: Erik Gunderson, Debra Nousek, Jarrett Welsh, Nathan Gilbert, and, certainly not least, the two
anonymous Ramus readers.
1. On the events leading up to and including the trial of Milo see especially Gruen (1974), 150-55,
292-309 and 337-50, and Crook, Lintott and Rawson (1994), 403-11, 504f. and 529. Asconius’ com-
mentary on this speech is also very helpful and believed by scholars to be reasonably trustworthy,
especially by comparison with Cicero’s tendentious account of events (Lewis [2006], 234-36).
Ruebel (1979), drawing heavily on Asconius, offers a careful chronological reconstruction of the cir-
cumstances of Milo’s conviction and exile, offering sometimes even a day-by-day account. Tatum
(1999), 234-42, surveys the same events from the Clodian perspective. The extensive bibliography
compiled by Craig in May (2002), organised by speech, is an excellent starting point for those
wishing to explore the modern scholarship on this speech in greater detail.
2. Mil. 7f. The list includes Marcus Horatius, who slew the three Curiatii and his own sister;
Publius Nasica, who led the mob that killed Tiberius Gracchus; Servilius Ahala, who killed
Spurius Maelius; Lucius Opimius, who assassinated Gaius Gracchus; Gaius Marius, who cut down
the revolutionaries, Saturninus and Glaucia; and finally Cicero himself, who sentenced the Catilinarian
conspirators to death.
3. The Latin text of the Pro Milone here and elsewhere in this paper is taken from Clark (1918).
45
ADRIANA BROOK
for her slaughter of his father Agamemnon and, despite his open confession, he is
ultimately acquitted of this crime in an Athenian courtroom presided over by
Athena. Milo, too, Cicero insists, deserves a full pardon for his avowed crime.4
Cicero introduces his allusion in such a way that the salient details likening
Milo’s case to Orestes’—just acquittal after confessed homicide—are transparent
even for an audience that could not identify the Oresteia specifically. It is perhaps
for this reason that I have not been able to find any modern scholarship that
presses this reference for meaning beyond its immediate and obvious contextual
relevance. I contend, however, that the choice of Orestes as an analogue for Milo
allows the orator to exploit a rich series of parallels throughout the speech
between the circumstances surrounding Milo’s trial and the story told by Aeschy-
lus in the Oresteia, parallels that support Cicero’s rhetorical strategy for convin-
cing his audience of Milo’s guiltlessness. This early reference to Orestes, far from
a mere throwaway mythological detail to gratify a well-read audience, allows
Cicero to alter his audience’s fundamental perception of Milo’s crime by high-
lighting the similarities not only between the defendants, Milo and Orestes, but
also between the victims, Clodius and Clytemnestra. By sustained comparison
of the historical case and Aeschylus’ mythological one, Cicero intimates to his
reader that Milo’s acquittal is the only reasonable outcome.
I say ‘reader’ because the Pro Milone we have is the version of the speech that
was disseminated after the conclusion of the trial. Tasked with defending an
essentially indefensible client,5 Cicero had not been able to secure the acquittal
of Milo, who was convicted and banished to Massilia in spite of his patron’s
efforts. The notional audience of the speech we have, therefore, is not jurors,
but rather those reading the speech as it circulated ex post facto with knowledge
of the outcome of the trial.6 This reading audience included Milo himself, to
whom Cicero sent the revised speech (D.C. 40.54), and probably, in the first
4. The Oresteia, of course, comprises the Agamemnon, Choephori and Eumenides, and covers the
events from just before Agamemnon’s return to Mycenae from Troy until the conclusion of Orestes’
trial on the Areopagus. While the principal parallel that Cicero seeks to establish between Orestes and
Milo, namely legal exoneration for a confessed crime, is covered by the events of just the final play in
the trilogy, my analysis will include all three plays. Part of my contribution to the discussion on this
topic is the assertion that Cicero draws connections not only between Milo and Orestes but also
between Clytemnestra and Clodius. The full characterisation of Clytemnestra depends on details
from all three Aeschylean plays.
5. For myriad reasons, Milo had fought a losing battle. To name only a few of those reasons, one
could cite the well-known enmity between Milo and Clodius; Milo’s suspicious decision to emanci-
pate the slaves with him at the time of the murder (presumably so they could not be forced to testify
against him under torture); Pompey’s enactment of a new lex Pompeia de ui, apparently directed
against Milo specifically (though Pompey maintained a position of scrupulous neutrality throughout
the trial); Pompey’s concomitant decision to change the format of Milo’s trial, giving less time for the
defence speeches and presenting (the mostly anti-Milonian) witness testimony first; the interference of
the Clodiani with the trial proceedings; and, not least, the fact that Milo had confessed to the crime.
See n.1 above.
6. On the relationship between the original speech and the published speech see Settle (1963),
Steel (2005), 116-21, Fotheringham (2006), 63f., 63 n.4 and 64 nn.1-3, Tzounakas (2009), 140f.
and 140 n.55, and Fotheringham (2013), 10-13.
46
instance, to Cicero’s politically influential friends and acquaintances at Rome.7

As I will show, Cicero could certainly have trusted such readers to know both
Greek tragedy and its Roman adaptations well enough to appreciate fully the allu-
sion he makes.
That the Pro Milone we have was read and not delivered strengthens the like-
lihood that its literary allusion influenced readers’ interpretation of the speech. A
reader could peruse parts of the speech more than once, rereading passages of
interest as many times as he wanted to, and might even refer back to earlier sec-
tions. Even if Cicero’s readers were not so diligent, at the very least, written rather
than oral presentation would have allowed them to slow down or pause to reflect
on elements of the speech when they wished rather than necessarily absorbing the
speech at the pace of its delivery. Such an audience, presumably subject to fewer
distractions than the jurors of the original courtroom, would have been especially
receptive to literary references and more likely to pick up on them when they
occurred, a fact of which Cicero must have been aware.8
The written rather than performed nature of the Pro Milone also raises ques-
tions about Cicero’s persuasive goals in the speech since its professed aim, the
acquittal of Milo, was no longer possible. Through the circulation of the
revised speech, Cicero may have been attempting to advocate for Milo’s
pardon and recall, influence the outcome of subsequent trials related to Milo’s
case, negotiate his own position in the fraught political climate of Rome in the
late 50s BCE, supersede the unsuccessful original speech to rehabilitate his repu-
tation as an advocate, or perhaps even get in a final venomous jab at Clodius to
which Cicero’s arch-enemy could not reply.9 As interesting as such speculation
is, however, my goal here will be confined to assessing the ways in which
Cicero’s appeal to Aeschylus’ Oresteia contributes to the conclusion that Milo
7. On the way in which Cicero’s works were circulated during his own lifetime, see Murphy
(1998), who stresses the personal connection between Cicero and his first readers and, also, the pol-
itical importance and authority of Cicero’s chosen reading audience. While Murphy is most interested
in the circulation of Cicero’s philosophical works, he offers compelling epistolary evidence that the
political speeches circulated in a similar way by reference to a letter to Atticus about the Pro
Ligario (Att. 13.12.2). Of course, once the Pro Milone left Cicero’s hands it could have been given
to any number of third parties, but I will focus on the first readers Cicero had in mind when he dis-
seminated the speech.
8. My emphasis on the reading of this speech does not discount the speech’s many ‘performative’
qualities. Even a reading audience would have been attuned to the performed nature of forensic oratory
and would have had the courtroom setting with its own dramatic characteristics clearly in mind. As
Fotheringham (2013), 2, puts it, the fiction that the published speech was one with a specific
context of delivery in spite of the fact that it was clearly never delivered ‘is a fiction so consistently
upheld that it is worth taking seriously; in other words, it is worth considering these texts, and the
techniques employed in them, as representative of the kind of persuasive discourse that would have
been delivered in the original context’. Primarily, however, I will consider this speech as a written
document as it was sent to Milo and other acquaintances of Cicero’s at Rome in the immediate after-
math of the trial.
9. See Melchior (2008), Tzounakas (2009), 140f., and, especially, Steel (2005), 116-31, for dis-
cussion of Cicero’s purpose in circulating a new version of the speech.
47
ADRIANA BROOK
ought to have been acquitted in spite of what actually happened in the trial. What-
ever other intentions Cicero may have had when he circulated the speech, these
goals all embrace the exoneration of Milo.
In making an argument about a sustained tragic analogy in the Pro Milone, I do
not intend to suggest that the dramatic elements of Cicero’s speech constitute the
only or even necessarily a primary rhetorical strategy. Rather, I suggest only that
we cannot ignore the broader implications of Cicero’s early reference to the Ores-
teia when assessing the ways in which the published Pro Milone attempts to per-
suade its reading audience that Milo should have been acquitted. Cicero’s speech,
in its content and, to some extent, in its style, repeatedly calls attention to the simi-
larities between the substance of Milo’s trial and the tragic story of Orestes and
Clytemnestra. Drawing on the myth as it was presented in both Greek tragedy
and its Roman Republican adaptations, Cicero manages his audience’s perception
of both Milo as defendant and Clodius as victim and so justifies the murder
retrospectively.
1. Cicero and the theatre
Cicero’s deep familiarity with both Greek and Roman theatre is well known
and supports my arguments about a sustained analogy between the Oresteia
and Milo’s story. A bilingual, that is, Greek and Latin, education that included
exposure to the classics of Greek literature was de rigueur for the upper
classes of Republican Rome, including Cicero.10 He was working and writing
in a cultural context that used examples lifted from Greek epic and tragedy as
a kind of intellectual shorthand in political and philosophical discussion.11
Dozens of references to Greek tragedy in the Ciceronian corpus leave no doubt
as to Cicero’s familiarity with the plays of the three Attic masters: Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides.12 Cicero studied these plays in the original Greek as
a student, producing both faithful translations from the Greek and looser adapta-
tions of the agones using rhetorical language appropriate to a Roman context.13
While there is no evidence one way or the other as to whether Cicero ever pro-
duced a translation of any part of the Oresteia, the fact that he did translate
large sections of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Unbound for the Tusculan Disputations
10. Rawson (1985), 9-11, and Fantham (2013), 55-57.

11. Goldberg (2007), 572, and Fantham (2013), 53f. Kaimio (1979), 195-315, speaks more gen-
erally about the place of the Greek language and Greek texts in Roman society and the role of Greek as
a cultural language for Rome’s educated elite.
12. The evidence that Cicero was familiar with the Greek texts of Euripides and Sophocles is par-
ticularly strong. See, for example, Holford-Strevens (1999), 227-32, Sutton (1984), 35, and Wright
(1931), 83-93.
13. Spaeth (1931), 501-03, Wright (1931), vii and 93, Jocelyn (1967), 25f., and Fantham
(2013), 61.
48
makes it likely that Aeschylus’ much more famous chef d’oeuvre was also famil-
iar to Cicero in the original Greek.14
Of course Cicero was also deeply familiar with the Roman theatre of his own
time both as circulated scripts and as live performance. While his correspondence
attests to the fact that he regularly attended the theatre,15 his philosophical and
theoretical texts in particular are replete with quotations and examples drawn
from Republican tragedies based on Greek models.16 Cicero’s own wide expos-
ure to Republican theatre leads him to assume a similar familiarity among his
readers. For example, in the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero expects his reader
to be able to fill in missing lines from Ennius’ Andromache without mentioning
the author or title: scitis quae sequantur (‘you know what follows’, Tusc. 3.44).17
One indication of Cicero’s wide acquaintance with the theatre and his convic-
tion that his audience shared this familiarity is his use of theatrical tropes in his
oratory. Most notably, Cicero’s rhetorical use of comic themes has often been
observed, particularly in the Pro Caelio, where the features and disposition of
comic stock figures are ascribed to the major players in the trial for the
purpose of characterisation.18 Scholars have been more hesitant to identify
tragic tropes in Cicero’s oratory, possibly because the fragmentary state of
Republican tragedy makes it more difficult to identify what constitutes a
‘typical’ tragedy or tragic figure.19 In the case of Cicero’s use of the Oresteia,
however, the fact that the allusion Cicero employs can be securely traced back
14. See Tusc. 2.23-25. While it has been suggested that these lines are quoted from an Accian
adaptation rather than translated directly from Aeschylus, Herington (1961) persuasively argues
that, in context, these can only be Ciceronian translations from the Greek. See also Jocelyn (1973),
83-85 and 98-111, who discusses this same passage in the Tusculan Disputations. While Jocelyn
emphasises that Cicero appears to have been translating with the intent to amplify the aspects of
the original text that best suited his philosophical purposes in situ (and therefore these translations
should be treated sceptically as a way of reconstructing lost Aeschylean verses), he too argues that
there is every reason to believe that Cicero was translating from the original Greek. As to Cicero’s
familiarity with the Oresteia, while there is no conclusive evidence that Cicero was familiar with
the Greek text of the trilogy (though the Pro Milone itself certainly lends weight to the case),
Wright (1931), 81, cites Q. fr. 3.4.6 in which Cicero describes Quintus Scaevola as Ἄρη πνέων (lit-
erally, ‘breathing Ares’) and suggests that Cicero may have been thinking of the language of the
Chorus at Aesch. A. 375f. (ἄρη / πνεόντων). If so, this offers support for Headlam’s conjectural
reading, followed by Page, of this textual crux.
15. E.g. Fam. 7.1.2f.
16. To offer just one example, at Orat. 152-56 Cicero rattles off quotations from multiple tragedies
of Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius and Accius to illustrate a point about sound effects in Roman verse. See
also Jocelyn (1967), 4, and Goldberg (2000), 55.
17. See Wright (1931), vii, Goldberg (2000), 52, and Fantham (2013), 29.
18. On comic tropes more broadly see Hughes (1997) and Dumont (1975). Regarding Cicero’s
employment of comic types in the Pro Caelio, Geffcken (1973) provides the seminal argument, but
see also Dumont (1975), 425f., Axer (1980), May (1988), 105-15, Gotoff (1993), 292f., Leigh
(2004) and Goldberg (2005), 92-96. On the Pro Roscio Amerino see Vasaly (1985). On the Pro
Roscio Comoedo see Dumont (1975), 429f.
19. Giomimi (1961), Gotoff (1993) and Dyck (1998), 253, identify isolated elements of Republic-
an tragedy (style, characterization, themes) in some sections of Cicero’s oratory, but none of them
makes the case for the kind of sustained dramatic analogy that I identify in the Pro Milone.
49
ADRIANA BROOK
to an original and complete Aeschylean text obviates the need to identify standard
tropes and character types in Republican tragedy.
In addition, there is ample evidence that Cicero believed that oratory could be
improved not only by the use of theatrical content, but also by the use of theatrical
style. While it is true that, in some instances, Cicero shares the widespread Roman
disdain for the low social status of the actor, his oratorical theory insists repeatedly
that good orators and good actors make use of the same performative and rhetorical
techniques to affect and persuade their audiences.20 In sum, there is strong evi-
dence to suggest that Cicero was both capable of and inclined to incorporate the
tragic content and theatrical style that I have identified in the Pro Milone.
2. Cicero’s readers and the theatre
My argument relies not only on Cicero’s theatrical expertise but also on that of
the notional reading audience of the published Pro Milone. Such Roman readers
would have been widely exposed to the theatre. In the approximately two centur-
ies between the introduction of Roman theatre and the publication of the Pro
Milone, the number of days in the calendar for performance had increased signifi-
cantly and scripts began to circulate broadly.21 These Roman plays were, in some
sense, imported from Greece and, even if they were not translated word-for-word,
they at least followed closely the myths, plots, characters and often even dramatic
conventions that had been established by the poets of fifth-century Athens.22 One
piece of evidence that such Greek precedents were well known in Rome is that
Plautus expects at least some portion of his theatre audience for the Rudens to find
a reference to Euripides’ Alcmene meaningful.23 More specific to Cicero’s social
circle, a growing number of aristocrats in the late Republic were translating, adapting
and even composing tragedies of their own based on Greek models, including, in
Cicero’s social circle, his own brother Quintus.24 There is every reason to believe
that Cicero would have expected those to whom he entrusted the revised Pro
Milone, including Milo himself, to be well acquainted with Greek tragedy.
20. References to the affinities between acting and public speaking abound in all three treatises on
the theory of rhetoric. See, for example, de Orat. 1.18, 1.118, 1.128, 1.130, 1.228. 1.251, 3.27; Brut. 6,
116, 290; Orat. 74, 109. Cicero extends the comparison to public office, advising his brother Quintus
to conclude his third year of service as propraetor in Asia just like the third act of a play, as a good
actor or poet would (Q. fr. 1.1.42, 46). On Cicero’s generally positive attitude to the use of theatrics
in the courtroom, see Hall (2014), 26-33.
21. Goldberg (2005), 127-31.
22. For a history of the evolution of Roman theatre see Boyle (2006), 27-159. For briefer com-
ments on the relationship between Roman plays and the Greek models they emulated, see Jocelyn
(1967), 23 and 28, Kaimio (1979), 276-79, Dupont (1985), 22 and 115, and Manuwald (2010), 21.
On the practice of translation more generally and Roman attitudes to translation, including
Cicero’s, McElduff (2013) offers a good recent discussion.
23. See Jocelyn (1967), 7. The reference is to Pl. Rud. 83-88.
24. Dupont (1985), 326, Beacham (1991), 126, Goldberg (1996), 270f., Goldberg (1997), 168f.,
and Boyle (2006), 145. On Quintus’ tragedies, see Q. fr. 3.5.7.
50
It is also important to understand that readers of Cicero’s Pro Milone, beyond

mere exposure to the shared theatre tradition of Greece and Rome, lived in a
society in which public life and theatrical spectacle were inextricably linked.
Religion, politics, warfare and law all found theatrical expression in elaborate
funerals, electoral campaigning, triumphal processions and, indeed, in histrionic
courtroom speeches.25 The relationship between theatre and public life was bi-
directional, in that Romans not only incorporated elements of theatre into their
public activities, but also regularly saw the public and political world reflected
in dramatic productions, connecting tragic events and characters with the
events and characters of contemporary Rome.26 This is a phenomenon of
which Cicero was certainly well aware; indeed, much of our evidence for it
relies on Cicero’s testimony.27 If we take Cicero as our guide, it seems that the
Roman citizens of the Late Republic were not merely capable of seeing the pol-
itical in theatrical productions but, in fact, were disposed to do so as a matter of
course.
In Republican Rome, a symbiotic relationship existed between the non-fiction-
al world of politics and the fictional world of the stage; these spheres were often
entangled in the realm of public discourse and were mutually influential.28 The
Ciceronian corpus reflects an awareness of the ability of these analogous per-
formative spheres to inform and enrich each other and this principle, I argue,
underlies the reference to Aeschylus at the beginning of the Pro Milone. Even
if some of Cicero’s apparent confidence in the shrewd perceptiveness of the
Roman people as a whole is rhetorical bluster, it seems quite reasonable to con-
clude that some of Cicero’s more extravagant claims apply, if not to all Romans,
25. See Dupont (1985), 19-34, Gruen (1992), 183-222, and Boyle (2006), 3-7.
26. Cicero gives many examples of his apparent conviction that theatre audiences were fully aware
of the political implications of the plays they witnessed: the actor Diphilus’ attack against Pompey’s
dictatorial behaviour in an unknown play at the Apollinarian games of 59 BCE (Att. 2.19.3); Clodius’
taunting by the cast of Afranius’ Simulans in 57 BCE (Sest. 117-18); Aesopus’ celebration of Cicero’s
recall from exile by the interpolation of lines from Ennius’ Andromache into Accius’ Eurysaces at the
Ludi Apollinares of 57 BCE (Sest. 120-23); and, finally, Brutus’ desire to earn political goodwill by
the presentation of Accius’ Brutus at the Apollinarian games that took place mere months after the
assassination of Caesar in 44 BCE. Brutus’ political opponents substituted the ostensibly less politic-
ally charged Tereus of Accius but this failed to prevent the crowds from voicing their adamant support
for Brutus’ actions (Att. 16.2.3, Att. 16.5.1, Phil. 1.36). For discussion on all of these moments of pol-
itically charged theatre see Wright (1931), 5-9, Dunkle (1967), 155, Dumont (1975), 25, Dupont
(1985), 120f., Beacham (1991), 159f., Bartsch (1994), 73-75, Dumont and François-Garelli (1998),
113, Goldberg (2000), 50f., Stärk (2000), 127-30, Champlin (2003), 316, Erasmo (2004), 91-99,
and Boyle (2006), 152-55.
27. Most overtly at Sest. 106, where Cicero tells his audience that meetings, assemblies and public
entertainments (including theatre) offer the best barometer of public opinion, providing an occasion
for the unfettered expression of the sentiment of the populus Romanus. Att. 14.3.2, Att. 16.2.3, and
Att. 16.5.1 display a similar attitude. On the phenomenon see Abbott (1907), Wright (1931), 7f.,
Dumont (1975), 424, Dupont (1985), 119-22, Nicolet (1988), 361-72, Bartsch (1994), 72-75, and
Goldberg (2005), 123f.
28. Which Erasmo (2004), 4f., calls ‘competing realities’. See also Dupont (1985), 24, Goldberg
(1997), Fantham (2002), 363, and Connolly (2007), 198-236, on the general crossover between
onstage and offstage realities.
51
ADRIANA BROOK
at least to the much smaller circle of politically savvy and well-educated friends
to whom he entrusted the revised text of the Pro Milone.
3. The dramatic style of the Pro Milone
While all oratory is to some extent theatrical because it is a performed genre,

the Pro Milone seems to be composed with particular emphasis on dramatic qual-
ities that support Cicero’s early reference to the Oresteia. While some of these fea-
tures of the speech could perhaps be explained away as mere overlap between the
kinds of rhetorical effects that make both oratory and drama animated, engaging
and striking, the cumulative effect of such features in the Pro Milone plays an
important role in supporting Cicero’s insistence that his readers must view the
story of Milo and Clodius through the lens of that of Orestes and Clytemnestra.29
Cicero’s early focus on vision in the Pro Milone sets up Milo’s trial as a spec-
tacle in its own right and prepares his readership for the theatrical reference that
follows. Consider, for example, just the opening sections of Cicero’s oration:
…tamen haec noui iudici noua forma terret oculos qui, quocumque inci-
derunt, ueterem consuetudinem fori et pristinum morem iudiciorum
requirunt…non illa praesidia quae pro templis omnibus cernitis…nec
eorum quisquam, quos undique intuentis, unde aliqua fori pars aspici
potest, et huius exitum iudici exspectantis uidetis…
(Mil. 1-3, excerpts)
…nevertheless, the new form of this new trial frightens my eyes, which,
wherever they fall, seek out the conventions of the forum and the ancient
custom of trials…these troops whom you see in front of all the temples…
not one of those whom you see watching from every side, from where any
part of the forum can be seen, and whom you see looking forward to the
outcome of this trial…
This brief segment contains more visual cues than is typical in the openings of
other Ciceronian speeches.30 This emphasis on vision and spectacle is maintained
29. In suggesting that the Pro Milone partakes in many of the characteristics of theatre, I am cog-
nisant of Axer’s (1989) comments on the ways in which modern scholars have overused the theatrical
metaphor in discussions of Cicero’s oratory, particularly the way in which aspects of any kind of
public display are argued to be specifically ‘theatrical’ in a way that is vague and ultimately unillu-
minating. While I am sympathetic to Axer’s argument that the Pro Milone may also be tapping
into the imagery of gladiatorial spectacle (Axer [1989], 308-10), I still assert that the overt theatrical
allusion at the beginning of the play justifies the kind of analysis I attempt here.
30. Fotheringham (2013), 113, notes the unusually strong visual emphasis in the first sentence of
the speech. A casual survey reveals that a great many Ciceronian speeches begin with no visual cues at
all and that those that do have visual cues like those in the Pro Milone typically have only one or two
(Sest., Vat., Man., Phil. 7, and Phil. 12), not the extensive list highlighted here. There are other
52
throughout the speech by Cicero’s use of visual metaphors, asking the jurors to
allow the light of truth to shine forth (Mil. 6, 61), for example, and by abundant
use of verbs formed on the stem spect- (Mil. 3, 11, 15, 16, 24, 49, 52, 53, 70, 74,
85, 90, 95, 101, 103). As Dupont suggests, ‘Savoir convaincre à Rome, c’est
savoir faire voir’,31 and Cicero certainly seems to espouse this principle. Reinfor-
cing these visual cues are imperatives that demand the reader’s attention: atten-
dite (Mil. 23, 79) and adeste (Mil. 4, 77). These imperatives, characteristically
used to direct the attention of the theatre audiences of Republican comedy, accen-
tuate Cicero’s dramatic style in this speech.32 These attention-drawing features,
introduced early in the Pro Milone and sustained throughout, support the Aeschy-
lean reference in section 8 by invoking the atmosphere and sense of spectacle
found in the theatre.
Such theatrical framing underpins dramatic vignettes that unfold within the
larger structure of the speech. In great visual detail and with a keen eye for char-
acterisation and tableau-painting, Cicero describes, for example, Clodius hiding
under a staircase in fear of Milo (Mil. 40), and Milo dramatically tearing off his
toga in a Senate meeting to prove that he is not carrying a concealed weapon
(Mil. 66). The most vividly described scene in the speech, however, referenced
on multiple occasions and with the strongest thematic links to Aeschylus, is
Cicero’s account of the meeting between Clodius and Milo on the Via Appia
on the night Clodius was killed. The most extensive and detailed description
of this night occurs, unsurprisingly, in the narratio (Mil. 28-29). Cicero here
purports to offer his readers an unobstructed view of Clodius’ ambush.
The narratio is replete with detailed imagery used to characterise both Milo
and Clodius and heighten the sense of dramatic spectacle.33 Cicero offers a
speeches whose openings make reference to sight but not in the immediate, literal sense of the Pro
Milone, referring instead to metaphorical vision: seeming (Balb.), foresight (Arch.) or hindsight
(Rab. Post.). As for the opening of the Pro Caelio, perhaps the most overtly theatrical of the other
speeches, which we might expect to follow similar principles to those in the Pro Milone, it focuses
on the faculty of hearing, not sight. The Pro Milone seems to be unique among Cicero’s speeches
in the way it insists that its readers visualise what is happening from the beginning.
31. ‘Knowing how to convince in Rome is a matter of knowing how to make people see’ (Dupont
[1985], 29).
32. In comedy: attendite: Ter. Hec. 28, Eu. 44 and Ph. 24; adeste: Pl. Am. 151, Poen. 126, Trin. 22,
and Ter. An. 24, Ph. 30, and Hau. 35. Of course, Cicero uses these imperatives elsewhere in his
oratory. However, with the exception of the second speech in the second Verrine actio, which contains
five instances of attendite, and the third speech which contains ten, the other speeches that make use of
these theatrical tags use them only once or twice by comparison with the Pro Milone’s four (cf. Agr. 2,
Agr. 3, Caec., Ver., Ver. 1, Ver. 4, Ver. 5, Clu., Sul., Marc., Phil. 2, Phil. 12, Phil. 13). Without putting
too much weight on a feature that may simply be a function of the fact that oratory and theatre are both
genres that succeed by drawing attention, this reinforces the notion that Cicero was attempting to gen-
erate a sense of spectacle in the Pro Milone. It is tempting to speculate that since the second Verrine
actio was never delivered, much like the published version of the Pro Milone, the greater frequency
with which Cicero uses these imperatives was, in some way, intended to compensate for his inability
to provide his audience with an animated delivery.
33. Innocenti (1994) offers a useful perspective on this kind of vivid description. While her test
case is Cicero’s Verrine orations, much of what she says applies to the Pro Milone as well. Innocenti,
with reference to theoretical remarks elsewhere in the Ciceronian corpus and in other ancient rhetorical
53
ADRIANA BROOK
description of Milo and Clodius before the attack, which tendentiously portrays
Milo as the harmless traveller and Clodius as the scheming highwayman. In her
analysis of this scene, Berger notes that style artfully reinforces content. Clodius’
unencumbered mobility is emphasised through asyndetic, anaphoric statements.
However, while each aspect of Milo’s travelling provisions corresponds to one
of Clodius’, the congestion of adjectives and adverbial phrases in the description
of Milo on the road emphasises the slow, encumbered train of followers accom-
panying him.34 This vivid description, as Cicero later tells his reader, is intended
to reinforce Milo’s innocence and Clodius’ guilt, specifically because it allows
the audience to visualise the action so clearly:
si haec non gesta audiretis, sed picta uideretis, tamen appareret uter esset
insidiator, uter nihil mali cogitaret, cum alter ueheretur in raeda paenula-
tus, una sederet uxor.
(Mil. 54)
If you were not listening to the things that happened, but you could see
them painted for you, then it would still be clear which of them was the
plotter and which had no thought of evil, since one of them was carried
in a wagon and wrapped in a travelling cloak with his wife sitting
beside him.
In addition, the intrusion of the present tense in Cicero’s otherwise past tense nar-
ratio, implying that the author is visualising the scene in his own mind’s eye as he
describes it, encourages his reader to do the same, reinforcing the impression of a
scene played out in front of an audience.35
One detail of this visual description is especially emphasised by Cicero and
deserves further scrutiny. Cicero goes to unusual lengths to call attention to
Milo’s travelling cloak, his paenula. In the narratio he takes the time to
mention that Milo, before setting out, calceos et uestimenta mutauit (‘changed
his clothes and shoes’, Mil. 28), much as an actor dons a costume before arriving
onstage. He also specifies twice in the following description that Milo is wearing
a paenula (he is paenulatus, Mil. 28, and jumps from the wagon reiecta paenula,
treatises, shows how Cicero’s use of vivid description, particularly the cue to visualise, is usually cal-
culated to attract attention to a certain part of the speech, arouse sympathy or indignation for the char-
acters involved, and suggest both candor and full disclosure (see especially 374-78). All of these
effects are created in Cicero’s vivid description of the confrontation on the Via Appia.
34. Berger (1978), 44f.
35. The present tense occurs when Clodius first confronts Milo, obuiam fit ei Clodius (‘Clodius
confronts him’, Mil. 28); when Milo begins to defend himself, fit obuiam Clodio (‘he confronts
Clodius’, Mil. 29); when Clodius’ men abruptly launch their attack, statim complures cum telis in
hunc faciunt de loco superiore impetum: aduersi raedarium occidunt (‘Immediately, a great many
men with weapons make an attack on him from higher ground; they come into the path of the carriage’,
Mil. 29); and when Clodius’ servants begin to slaughter Milo’s, caedere incipiunt eius seruos (‘they
begin to kill his slaves’, Mil. 29).
54
‘with his cloak thrown back’, Mil. 29). In the recapitulation of this scene, Cicero
again emphasises Milo’s cloak, that he is paenulatus and cum paenula inretitus
(‘wearing a travelling cloak’ and ‘entangled by a travelling cloak’, Mil. 54).
However much this cloak would have impeded Milo in the event of an
ambush, it is no more cumbersome than a large train of performing slaves or
the presence of Milo’s wife, aspects of Milo’s description that are emphasised
much less than the cloak. The care that Cicero takes each time he recounts this
scene to remind his reader that Milo was paenulatus, therefore, appears to be
motivated by more than a desire to strengthen his argument from eikos.36
Instead, I suggest that Cicero may be playing with the vocabulary of theatrical
genre in order to heighten the theatricality of his vivid description of the
ambush on the Via Appia and so reinforce his imperative to the reader to consider
the encounter between Milo and Clodius as a scene in a tragedy.
By the late Republic the generic terms for different kinds of theatre that had
originated in the third century were widely used.37 These were the fabula palliata
(comedy in Greek dress), fabula togata (comedy in Roman dress), fabula crepi-
data (mythical tragedy in the Greek style), and fabula praetexta (plays dramatis-
ing events from Rome’s legendary-historical past). In light of the fact that all of
these genres were named for articles of clothing, Cicero’s emphasis on Milo’s
paenula—a piece of costumery that had not yet been claimed explicitly by the
Republican theatre—may suggest, with a wink to the reader, that the events on
the Via Appia might be understood as a new kind of theatre introduced by
Cicero to his public. Asking his reader to view the events of history (usually pre-
sented in a praetexta) through the lens of a mythological comparison (usually pre-
sented in a crepidata), Cicero implicitly creates a new theatrical genre for the
‘drama’ he presents in this speech: the fabula paenulata. The two occurrences
of paenulatus in the Pro Milone represent the first attested use of this adjective,
which otherwise is used only a handful of times by later authors (TLL 10.1.70.74-
10.1.71.12). It is at least possible, then, that Cicero coined an adjectival form of
paenula to suit his specific argumentative goals in a speech in which his carefully
constructed account blurs the lines between mythological and historical
storytelling.
Even small details in the speech reflect Cicero’s blending of genres. Take, for
example, the emphasis that Cicero places on the location of the ambush, the Via
36. Though this is certainly part of it, as Dyck (2001), 127f., argues. In this piece, Dyck surveys
Cicero’s use of details about clothing to characterise (both positively and negatively) the Roman
figures he discusses in his forensic speeches. Cicero’s inclusion of these details, Dyck suggests,
relies on the Roman belief, which can be traced all the way back to Homer, that external signs
reveal inner virtues and vices. Hall (2014), 61f., discusses the relevance of the fact that Milo did
not wear mourning clothes (sordes) at this trial as he had when on trial in 56 BCE. He interprets
this as an effort on Milo’s part to adopt a consistently defiant stance and communicate his staunch
conviction that he had done nothing wrong in killing Clodius. Hall does not mention Cicero’s
emphasis on the paenula.
37. See Boyle (2006), 11-13, and Manuwald (2010), 2-5.
55
ADRIANA BROOK
Appia, which is mentioned no fewer than six times in the speech (Mil. 14, 15, 18,
37, 57 and 91). Although it has little obvious bearing on Milo’s actions, Cicero
goes to great lengths to inform his readers that Clodius’ illustrious ancestor,
Appius Claudius Caecus, built the roadway almost as if, Cicero remarks, he
intended to provide a place for his descendants to commit their brigandry (Mil.
17). In fact, Cicero continues, Clodius has already fulfilled that expectation, mur-
dering M. Papirius on the Via Appia (Mil. 18), while his vicious attack against
Milo is a continuation of the pattern. The noble Appius Caecus’ unwitting insti-
gation of his descendant’s murderous actions obviously offers a much tamer
example of family causality than the unstoppable vengeance that drives the Pelo-
pidae.38 However, in the context of a speech that makes explicit reference to the
House of Atreus, Cicero’s emphasis on family continuity might nonetheless have
prompted some readers to discern a suggestion that Clodius was at the beginning
of a cycle of crime that had the potential, had Milo not stopped it, to rival the
crimes of Atreus and his kin.39 In fact, Cicero signals the correspondence
between history and myth explicitly: nunc eiusdem Appiae nomen quantas tra-
goedias excitat! (‘now what tragedies that same name Appia evokes!’, Mil.
18). Cicero’s ‘fabula paenulata’ encourages the reader to interpret Clodius’ his-
torical crimes through the lens of mythological inevitability. Cicero’s dramatic
blend of myth and history implies that Milo, like Orestes, was not merely justified
in killing the person he killed but somehow predestined to do so.
Later sections of the Pro Milone, like the narratio, also convey Milo’s story in
a way that evokes the stage, though they achieve their character not through vivid
description, as we find in the sections describing the events on the Via Appia, but
rather through prosopopoeia and tragic lament.40 In the second half of the speech,
Cicero takes on the role of Milo himself and is thereby able to allow his defendant
to appeal to the audience directly even though the actual Milo would have been
silent during the delivery of the speech and, more importantly, living in exile in
Massilia by the time Cicero’s readers had access to a published copy. Cicero, by
adopting the other man’s persona, is able to play the part of Milo just like an actor
on the stage. As Milo, Cicero laments Milo’s misfortunes (Mil. 69), condemns a
long list of Clodius’ crimes (Mil. 72-75), celebrates Milo’s role as saviour of
Rome (Mil. 77), imagines his imminent unjust exile (Mil. 93-94), contemplates
38. Though Craig (2004), 209f., is right to point out that the main thrust of Cicero’s comment is to
contrast Clodius with his ancestor, not to suggest in any way that he is emulating Appius Caecus’
wickedness.
39. Cf. Clark (1895), 16, who notes that Cicero speaks of plural monumenta maiorum in section 17
(even though the reference is only to a single ancestor, Appius Caecus) in order to heighten the rhet-
orical effect of his assertion.
40. Melchior (2008), 287 n.2, points out that Cicero can more correctly be said to be using sermo-
cinatio at the end of the speech and not prosopopoeia, the difference being that the former is typically
used for those still living, while the latter is defined, more correctly, as words spoken adopting the
character of somebody who is dead. As Melchior herself notes, however, prosopopoeia is commonly
used to describe both scenarios and I have chosen to use this term to reflect the majority of scholarship
that touches on this issue.
56
the future glory of his name (Mil. 98) and magnanimously accepts his undeserved
banishment (Mil. 104). These instances of prosopopoeia heighten the impact of
Milo’s words, making them stand out as markedly theatrical and performed in a
text whose performed quality readers might otherwise begin to forget. The same
effect is achieved in section 99 where Cicero stages a dialogue between Milo and
himself: haec tu mecum saepe his absentibus, sed isdem audientibus haec ego
tecum, Milo (‘these were often your words to me when these jurors were not
here, but here are mine for you, Milo, as the same men listen’, Mil. 99). Rather
than simply speaking as Milo’s advocate, Cicero constructs a performance
within a performance, intensifying the impact of his written words by the
unusual rhetorical trick of assuming the role of ‘Cicero’.41
The words that Cicero speaks as Milo make abundant use of the figures of
speech common to Republican tragedy, insofar as these can be reconstructed
on the basis of the existing fragments, particularly from Ennius onward. These
include alliteration and assonance, homoeoteleuton, polyptoton, repetition, paral-
lelism, anaphora, antithesis, metaphor and, more generally, high emotional tone
complemented by strong, concrete imagery.42 Unsurprisingly these are the same
rhetorical techniques commonly found in oratory at the moments of greatest
excitement, tension and emotion. Examples of these devices can be found
throughout the moments of prosopopoeia in the latter half of the Pro Milone.
Take, for example, the first time that ‘Milo’ speaks in the speech:
uides quam sit uaria uitae commutabilisque ratio, quam uaga uolubilisque
fortuna, quantae infidelitates in amicitiis, quam ad tempus aptae simula-
tiones, quantae in periculis fugae proximorum, quantae timiditates. erit,
erit illud profecto tempus…cum…et amicissimi beneuolentiam et grauis-
simi hominis fidem et unius post homines natos fortissimi uiri magnitudi-
nem animi desideres.
(Mil. 69)
You see how changeable and unstable is the course of life, how wandering
and wavering is fortune, how many acts of betrayal there are in friendships
and how suited are these pretences for our time, how many desertions
there are of those closest to us in times of danger, and how many acts
of cowardice. There will soon be a time, there will…when…you may
long for the kindness of the greatest friend, the loyalty of the sincerest
man, and the magnanimity of the bravest man unique among men.
41. Cf. Hall’s discussion of the use of lament in the peroratio ([2014], 89-97), in which he
observes that Cicero has to bring himself into the drama or else risk undermining Milo’s resolute
and accepting stance by making him too much the object of pity. At the moment where the audience
would usually be called upon to pity the defendant’s family, Cicero instead asks them to pity his own
brother and children, who will be devastated if Milo is not acquitted (Mil. 102).
42. See Boyle (2006), 63-66, 90-96 and 113-15, and Erasmo (2004), 20, 34-36 and 46.
57
ADRIANA BROOK
Milo’s speech begins with much alliteration of ‘u’ sounds. This is followed by a
triple anaphora of the word quantae, a tricolon in decrescendo to sharpen the
impact of the last item in the list, timiditates. Immediately next comes the repe-
tition of erit, an emotional hiccough in the delivery of this line. Finally, the
passage ends with homoeoteleuton of the masculine genitive singular, strength-
ened by the fact that all three adjectives are superlatives.
The same literary and sound effects are also found in Cicero’s own lament for
Milo, delivered in high tragic style in the final sections of the speech (Mil.
92-105). Here, too, Cicero makes use of alliteration43 and homoeoteleuton44 as
he raises the emotional temperature in the peroratio. He also uses both exclam-
ation45 and the rhetorical question46 to suggest his own heightened emotion.
While these are all features that can be found in both rhetoric and theatre, and
while none of these features is strictly necessary for Cicero’s analogy between
Milo and Orestes to work, the concentrated presence of these histrionic elements
does help to reinforce and sustain the early reference to Aeschylus’ Oresteia by
encouraging the reader the see Milo’s story as a kind of tragedy.
4. The Pro Milone and the Oresteia
All of these dramatic qualities sustain Cicero’s early reference to the Oresteia
throughout the speech, supporting my claim that the orator is not offering a casual
literary ornament but rather a programmatic introduction of a set of themes and
especially characters that will bolster his defence of Milo. This rhetorical strategy,
as I have said, is by no means the only one present in the speech. However, I will
show that the rhetorical implications of Cicero’s Aeschylean reference are much
more extensive than has been noticed before, suggesting that this should be taken
into account when scholars assess the rhetorical virtues of the Pro Milone.
43. E.g. O me miserum! O me infelicem! (‘How wretched, how luckless am I!’, Mil. 102).
44. E.g. O terram illam beatam quae hunc uirum exceperit, hanc ingratam si eiecerit, miseram, si
amiserit! (‘O blessed land, which will receive this man; how thankless she is, if she will cast him out;
how wretched if she will lose him’, Mil. 105).
45. E.g. O me miserum! O me infelicem! (‘How wretched, how luckless am I!’, Mil. 102) and O di
immortales! (‘Immortal gods!’, Mil. 104). Cf. Ennius’ Andromache fr. XI or Hecuba fr. III. (Here and
throughout the numbering of tragic fragments follows that of Ribbeck [1897]). It is worthy of note
that, while the phrase o di immortales (or the more or less equivalent exclamation pro di immortales)
is very common in Cicero’s speeches, o me miserum and o me infelicem, both markedly histrionic, are
unique to the Pro Milone.
46. E.g. quid respondebo liberis meis qui te parentem alterum putant? quid tibi, Quinte frater, qui
nunc abes, consorti mecum temporum illorum? (‘What answer will I give to my children, who think
you a second father? What answer will I give to you, my brother Quintus, who stayed with me in those
terrible times, though you are now away?’, Mil. 102) and quodnam ego concepi tantum scelus aut
quod in me tantum facinus admisi, iudices, cum illa indicia communis exiti indagaui, patefeci,
protuli, exstinxi? (‘What great crime did I envisage, or what great crime did I take on, members of
the jury, when I hunted out, laid bare, brought forward and eradicated those traces of shared destruc-
tion?’, Mil. 103). Cf. Ennius’ Andromache fr. IX.
58
Of course, the first and most obvious parallel established by the reference to
Aeschylus is that between Milo and Orestes. Even before Cicero refers to the
Oresteia, he takes care to establish that Milo’s trial is something new and prece-
dent-setting. In his first sentence, he introduces his speech as part of a noui iudici
noua forma (‘a new shape of a new kind of trial’, Mil. 1), and soon thereafter
emphasises the importance of the outcome of Milo’s trial not just for Milo but
for Rome and all its citizens, now and in the future (Mil. 3). While some of
this patriotism is the familiar ubiquitous Ciceronian bluster, and while Milo
was indeed prosecuted in a novel way under the new lex Pompeia de ui,47
Cicero’s emphasis on the idea of a new kind of trial with lasting civic conse-
quences also specifically evokes the courtroom described in the third play of
Aeschylus’ trilogy, the Eumenides, when Athena gives instructions to the jury
before their vote:
κλύοιτ’ ἂν ἤδη θεσμόν, Ἀττικὸς λεώς,

πρώτας δίκας κρίνοντες αἵματος χυτοῦ.
ἔσται δὲ καὶ τὸ λοιπὸν Αἰγέως στρατῷ
αἰεὶ δικαστῶν τοῦτο βουλευτήριον.48
(Eu. 681-84)
People of Attica, you who are judging the first trial for spilt blood, hear
now my decree. This council of judges will always belong to the people
of Aegeus in the future.
Because Cicero insists on the importance of Milo’s trial by reference to the cir-
cumstances that surround Orestes’, his readers are primed to receive the reference
to the Oresteia before it occurs and this, perhaps, would have strengthened the
force of the allusion.
Even without this setup, however, those with even a glancing familiarity with
the Oresteia, particularly its final play, would immediately note a few obvious
parallels when Cicero introduced his allusion. Both Milo and Orestes, for
example, confess freely and openly to the crimes for which they are on trial.
On Milo’s behalf, Cicero emphasises again and again that Milo, so far from
denying that he slew Clodius, candidly accepts responsibility for the crime
(Mil. 7, 15, 23, 29, 30, 57, 81). On trial at Athens, Orestes, too, humbly and
without guile confesses to Athena, ἔκτεινα τὴν τεκοῦσαν, οὐκ ἀρνήσομαι
(‘I killed my mother, I will not deny it’, Eu. 463). So many moments of bald con-
fession in the Pro Milone might seem out of place in a defence speech but for the
fact that Cicero makes this position a key part of his rhetorical stance. Like
Orestes, Milo can openly confess to the murder because it was fully justified.
47. See n.1 above.

48. The Greek text of the Oresteia here and elsewhere in this essay is adapted from Page (1972).
59
ADRIANA BROOK
Orestes’ exoneration in Aeschylus supports Cicero’s policy of (ostensible)

honesty and implies that the outcome of Milo’s trial ought to be the same.
Another more subtle comparison between Milo and Orestes concerns the
fact that both men are presented as having committed murder with divine sanc-
tion. In the case of Orestes, the divine instruction is very explicit. Apollo, in
the opening scenes of the Eumenides, says to Orestes, καὶ γὰρ κτανεῖν σ’
ἔπεισα μητρῷον δέμας (‘I persuaded you to slay your mother’, Eu. 84) and con-
firms this not only by later repeating his assertion to the Furies (Eu. 203) but also
by acting as Orestes’ defence counsel in the trial at Athens. Milo, of course, can
claim nothing so specific as oracular instruction let alone a divine advocate.
However, Cicero is careful to suggest that Milo’s part in the death of Clodius
was aligned with the will of the gods, even that Milo was acting as an instrument
of the gods.49 Just as Orestes undertook to slay his mother because of an oracle
from Apollo, Milo saved the Republic because the gods cast a maddened Clodius
in his path with the intent that Milo should put a stop to Clodius’ impieties
(Mil. 89). It is perhaps in order to suggest some divine involvement in the
murder of Clodius that Cicero emphasises repeatedly that Milo was travelling
the Via Appia on that night because he was en route to install a priest at Lanu-
vium (Mil. 27, 45-46). Milo’s pious activity, by implication, aligns his deeds
against Clodius with the will of the gods. Of course, this alone is not enough
to suggest a comparison with Orestes; however, in the context of the rest of
the speech with its numerous and more overt comparisons, the divinely inspired
aspect of Milo’s actions serves to reinforce the larger picture.
Beyond the obvious parallels between these men, there is good reason to
believe that Cicero felt confident that his readers would know the details of the
Orestes myth necessary to understand the full implications of the reference.
Orestes seems to have been a favourite example of Cicero’s, used to illustrate
many different concepts: madness, especially guilt-inspired madness (Pis. 46-47,
Tusc. 3.11), justifiable homicide (Inv. 1.18-19, [Cic.] Rh. Her. 1.17, 25-26), the
wickedness of parricide (S. Rosc. 66-67) and friendship, focusing on Orestes’ rela-
tionship with Pylades (Fin. 1.65, 2.79, 5.63; Amic. 24). In texts written for court-
room audiences as well as texts distributed to smaller private audiences, including
the published Pro Milone, Cicero often refers to Orestes without any compunction
to explain the context or the details of his story. In De Inuentione Cicero is expli-
cit about this, introducing Orestes as peruulgato (‘very well-known’, 1.18) and so
in need of no introduction.
49. See Dyck (1998), 235-39, who argues that Cicero highlights both the Bona Dea scandal and
the sacrilege of the location of Clodius’ villa on Mount Alba to emphasise Milo’s role as an instrument
of divine retribution. Drawing on ideas found in Euripides’ Bacchae and Naevius’ Lycurgus, Dyck
suggests that Cicero may be appealing to the tragic trope that the gods cause those they wish to
destroy to go mad, an idea in line, perhaps, with the madness of Clodius’ ambush of Milo on the
Via Appia. By contrast, Vielberg (1995) describes the speech’s focus on religious language in
order to appeal to a jury composed principally of optimates and convince them that Milo was
acting as a divine instrument in service of their own divinely sanctioned political agenda for Rome.
60
Cicero’s apparent confidence in his readers’ familiarity with the details of the
Orestes myth seems, on balance, to be justified. Of course, the most obvious
and most likely place that such readers would have encountered Orestes was
in the theatre and we will return to the question of Republican drama below.
However, complementing the world of theatre was the well-known mytho-reli-
gious tradition at Rome that had Orestes travel to Rome via Magna Graecia
after his escape from Tauris with Iphigenia.50 Orestes is firmly linked with the
cult site of Diana at Aricia, very close to Rome, and was assimilated as the
founder of the rites of the rex nemorensis in the sacred grove at Nemi.51 His
bones and possibly ashes, once located in this sanctuary, were, according to trad-
ition, later moved from the temple of Diana and buried outside the temple of Saturn
in the city of Rome itself, right beside the forum in which Cicero defended Milo.52
While it is unlikely that the bones had been moved as early as 52 BCE—Green
posits a date of 31 BCE53—their location in the nearby sanctuary at Aricia with
its close ties to Rome would certainly have bolstered the prominence of the
figure of Orestes at Rome, supporting Cicero’s case.
Indeed, so popular and well-known was Orestes that many scholars believe he
was embraced as a mythical analogue for Octavian and the vengeance he took on
the assassins of his adopted father, Caesar. Some interpret this as a deliberate
strategy of self-promotion on Octavian’s part, while others see it as a mythical
paradigm applied to Octavian by enemies wishing to highlight his impiety.54
For my purposes, the implications of the comparison are less important than
the confirmation this anecdotal evidence provides that, a mere two or three
decades after Milo’s trial, the Romans appear to have been entirely comfortable
assimilating a public figure to the mythical persona of Orestes. This was, perhaps,
an extension of the practice of Roman aristocrats of the late Republic, presumably
including those to whom Cicero would have given the published Pro Milone, of
tracing their ancestry back to Greek gods and heroes like Orestes.55 There is every
reason to believe that Cicero’s reading audience would have been quite comfort-
able with Cicero’s invitation to view Milo’s situation in light of the myth of
Orestes.
50. Delcourt (1998), 61 and 66f., Petaccia (2000), 93-95, and Green (2007), 185f. and 201-05.
51. Delcourt (1998), 67f., Petaccia (2000), 95-103, Champlin (2003), 309, Green (2007), 45-47,
185f. and 201-07.
52. Wiseman (1988), 66, Hölscher (1991), 165f., Delcourt (1998), 68 and 71f., Petaccia (2000),
104-06, Champlin (2003), 309, and Green (207), 41-47.
53. Green (2007), 41-45, suggests that the most likely date for the transfer of the bones was imme-
diately after the Battle of Actium, when they would have been appropriated by Octavian as a symbol
of healing after the civil war.
54. For positive associations see Hölscher (1991), 164-68, Delcourt (1998), 68-71, and Green
(2007), 44f. and 271-75; for negative associations see Dewar (1988) and Dewar (1990). Champlin
(2003), 310, shows both sides of the coin: ‘One can see the danger in the choice, and the daring:
Orestes was not only a murderer but a matricide and temporarily a madman. Yet in choosing him
as a model, Octavian simultaneously portrayed and justified his revenge of his father in mythological
terms, acknowledged his pollution in the deaths of Roman citizens, and claimed purification.’
55. See Wiseman (1974).
61
ADRIANA BROOK
Cicero’s reference to the Oresteia has been widely recognised as establishing a

parallel between Milo and Orestes. However, I would now like to explore a pos-
sibility that, to my knowledge, has not yet been recognised, namely that the
logical extension of Cicero’s comparison of Milo and Orestes is the correspond-
ing comparison of Clodius and Clytemnestra. As with Orestes, Cicero does not
name Clytemnestra explicitly; however, the figure of Clytemnestra is clearly
evoked in Cicero’s reference to Aeschylus.56 This early allusion to Clytemnestra
allows Cicero to exploit thematic similarities between Orestes’ victim and Milo’s
arch-enemy throughout the Pro Milone in order to strengthen his arguments jus-
tifying Milo’s actions. Three characteristics of Clytemnestra associated particu-
larly with her presentation in the Oresteia are emphasised in Cicero’s
descriptions of Clodius. By drawing attention to the fact that both Clodius and
Clytemnestra exhibit bestial qualities, both transgress gender norms and both
threaten the living as reanimated ghosts, Cicero invites his audience to arrive
at the same conclusion about Milo’s murder of Clodius as Athena does in the
matter of Orestes’ murder of Clytemnestra.
In his famous trilogy, Aeschylus makes Clytemnestra’s animal qualities a
prominent feature of her characterisation. His vocabulary for her includes
μισητῆς κύνος (‘hateful bitch’, A. 1228), ἀμϕίσβαιναν ἢ Σκύλλαν (‘two-
headed snake or Scylla’, A. 1233), and λέαινα συγκοιμωμένη / λύκῳ (‘lioness
who sleeps with a wolf’, A. 1258f.), a clear reference to her illicit affair with
Aegisthus. Agamemnon is described as dying ἐν πλεκταῖσι καὶ σπειράμασιν /
δεινῆς ἐχίδνης (‘in the twisted coils of a terrible viper’, Ch. 248f.), while
Electra asserts that she and Orestes have inherited from their mother a mind
like a λύκος…ὠμόϕρων ἄσαντος (‘a savage and ungentle wolf’, Ch. 421). The
Agamemnon and Choephori in particular also play with the verb λάσκω, with
its secondary meaning of ‘howling’,57 to reinforce Clytemnestra’s bestial
nature (A. 614, 1427, Ch. 35, 39).
With this Aeschylean model in the background, what might otherwise appear
to be offhand invective in fact strengthens the persuasive power of the tragic com-
parison at work throughout the Pro Milone. Cicero three times refers to Clodius
as a belua (‘beast’, Mil. 32, 40, 85)58 and Clark comments that Cicero may be
56. qui patris ulciscendi causa matrem necauisset (‘the man who had killed his mother for the sake
of avenging his father’, Mil. 8).
57. LSJ II gives the various uses of this verb to describe animal noises including precedents with
which Aeschylus was very likely familiar (Hom. Il. 22.141 and Od. 12.85, Hes. Op. 207 and possibly
h.Merc. 145). Granted, all of these earlier uses of λάσκω to connote animal noises, as noted in LSJ,
occur only in the perfect tense, while Aeschylus’ use of this verb to describe Clytemnestra is either
present, imperfect or aorist. Nonetheless, in the context of the rest of the imagery used to describe Cly-
temnestra, it seems unlikely that a theatre audience would be dissuaded by something as minor as verb
tense from finding further reinforcement of the bestial theme.
58. This is not the only speech in which Cicero refers to Clodius as belua (cf. Har. 5 and Sest. 16),
though it is the only speech in which Cicero does so as many as three times. Elsewhere in the Cicero-
nian corpus, belua seems to be part of a fairly generic vocabulary of invective used to refer to Cicero’s
political enemies: Verres at Ver. 5.109; Gabinius at Prov. 15; Piso at Pis. 1 and 4 and Red. Sen. 14; the
62
suggesting animalistic savagery by his choice of the verb pauit to depict Clodius’
insatiable rage.59 In addition to reinforcing the larger suggestion that the trial over
Clodius’ death ought to yield the same result as the trial over Clytemnestra’s
death, namely the acquittal of the accused, Cicero’s description of Clodius as
an animal downplays Milo’s transgression in committing murder. Like
Orestes’ victim, Milo’s is in some sense subhuman and guilty of animalistic vio-
lence, rendering the crime less serious.
The suggestion that Clodius’ murder ought to be viewed in light of the myth-
ical murder of Clytemnestra also raises the issue of gender. This is not merely
because a male victim is assimilated to a female one, though this is certainly
part of the effect that Cicero’s comparison achieves. Cicero capitalises on this
aspect of his comparison of Clodius to Clytemnestra when he attributes
Clodius’ failure to kill Milo to a lack of manliness: cur igitur uictus est?…
quia, quamquam paratus in imparatos Clodius, ipse Clodius tamen mulier inci-
derat in uiros (‘Why was he overcome?…because, although Clodius, prepared,
attacked those who were unprepared, nonetheless that very Clodius, a woman,
attacked men’, Mil. 55).60 Clodius, Cicero implies, shares Clytemnestra’s
womanly physical weakness.
The Aeschylean parallel also implies more specifically, however, that Clodius,
like Clytemnestra, habitually acts outside of the normal and accepted parameters
of his gender. Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra is a woman who famously bends gender
norms. In the opening scenes of the Agamemnon, for example, the watchman
describes Clytemnestra’s ἀνδρόβουλον…κέαρ (‘heart that plans like a man’,
A. 11). Clytemnestra is also known for taking on the masculine and dominant
role in her affair with Aegisthus; she and her paramour are described in the Choe-
phori with the words δυοῖν γυναικοῖν (‘a pair of women’, Ch. 304) with the clear
implication that Clytemnestra, as it were, wears the pants in their relationship.
While Clytemnestra does exhibit the cunning and deceit characteristic of many
female figures from mythology, and tragedy specifically, when faced with immi-
nent death at Orestes’ hands she does not react like a typical tragic heroine by
lamenting or pleading but instead demands δοίη τις ἀνδροκμῆτα πέλεκυν ὡς
τάχος (‘Quick, somebody give me a man-slaying axe’, Ch. 889).
By comparing Clodius to Clytemnestra, Cicero attributes the transgressive
character of this well-known tragic protagonist to Milo’s enemy. Cicero makes
use of the villainous gender-bending example of this famous tragic figure to
Catilinarian conspirators at Sul. 76; and, most emphatically, Antony in many of the Philippics (3.28,
4.12, 6.7, 7.27, 8.13, 10.22, 12.26, 13.5 and 22). My contention here is by no means that belua should
always be taken as a mythological reference in Cicero, even when applied specifically to Clodius.
However, in the context of the Pro Milone with its programmatic reference to Aeschylus at the begin-
ning, I think that these particular examples of belua can be interpreted within the play’s larger network
of literary references.
59. Mil. 3. See Clark (1895), 3.
60. Cf. Mil. 89: ut homo effeminatus fortissimum uirum conaretur occidere (‘that an effeminate
man tried to kill the strongest man’).
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ADRIANA BROOK
discredit Clodius and diminish the sense of outrage at his murder. Clodius was, of
course, particularly vulnerable to attacks on his masculinity because of his own
personal history, having narrowly escaped conviction for infiltrating the rites
of the Bona Dea disguised as a woman in 62 BCE.61 This infamous scandal is
alluded to three times (Mil. 72, 86, 87) amongst other more oblique hints at
Clodius’ effeminacy and lack of sexual propriety.62 The early comparison of
Clodius to Clytemnestra sets Cicero up to assimilate him to this transgressive
woman throughout the speech and thus suggest that Milo’s crime can be
deemed as pardonable as Athena deems Orestes’ to be.
A final aspect of the sustained comparison between Clodius and Clytemnestra
relies on the more general emphasis on the visual in Cicero’s speech to liken the
hypothetical threat of Clodius’ return from the dead to Clytemnestra’s own
ghostly appearance in the opening scene of the Eumenides, in which she spurs
on the Furies to pursue Orestes (Eu. 94-139). This frightening Aeschylean depic-
tion of a vengeful Clytemnestra returned from the dead lends tragic weight to
similar scenes describing Clodius in the Pro Milone. In section 79, for
example, Cicero says to his audience:
fingite animis—liberae sunt enim nostrae cogitationes et quae uolunt sic

intuentur ut ea cernimus quae uidemus—fingite igitur cogitatione imagi-
nem huius condicionis meae, si possimus efficere ut Milonem absoluatis,
sed ita si P. Clodius reuixerit—quid uoltu extimuistis? quonam modo ille
uos uiuus adficeret quos mortuus inani cogitatione percussit?
(Mil. 79)
Imagine—for our thoughts are free, and they see what they wish to just as
we perceive what we see [with our eyes]—imagine, then, a picture of this
scenario of mine, namely if I could see to it that you would acquit Milo,
61. On the history of this event see Tatum (1999), 64-87. Dyck (1998), 224, offers the thought-
provoking observation that the so-called ‘battle of Bovillae’ is cast by Cicero as an inversion of the
events of the Bona Dea scandal. Then, a man intruded into the female sphere; here a woman attempts
to attack men.
62. And, of course, mention of the Bona Dea scandal also reminds Cicero’s audience of Clodius’
crime of adultery, a sexual crime of which Clytemnestra was also guilty. Craig (2004), 209-11, argues
that the ‘heavy-handed’ references to the Bona Dea scandal in this speech (including, possibly, veiled
references in sections 55 and 59) are meant to support Cicero’s argument that Clodius’ death repre-
sents a boon for the Republic. Cicero, Craig suggests, is more concerned to emphasise the dangerous
public and religious consequences of Clodius’ behaviour than any deviant activity he indulges in pri-
vately, which could account for the absence of vivid description of Clodius’ feminine garb and behav-
iour, as we find, for example, in the fragments of the In P. Clodium et Curionem, especially frr. 21 and
23 (see Geffcken [1973], 73-79 and 82-88, and Crawford [1994], 261-63). I would counter that the
references to the Bona Dea scandal can, in fact, accomplish both goals. That is, references to the
Bona Dea scandal can simultaneously represent Clodius as a danger to the values of Roman
society and, at the same time, as an effeminate weakling who was overcome by the manly Milo. Espe-
cially in conjunction with the other references to the Oresteia in this speech, the charge of Clodius’
effeminacy is as important as the emphasis on the public consequences of his more generally
impious behaviour.
64
but on the condition that P. Clodius should live again. Why are your
expressions alarmed? How might the living man affect you, when the
dead man has struck you with a mere thought?
Cicero similarly tries to frighten his audience with the prospect of Clodius’
ghostly return in section 91. The terrifying thought of the reanimated Clodius cor-
responds to the fearsome ghost of Clytemnestra.63 Clodius’ spectral presence in
the courtroom, brought on by Cicero’s evocative words, recalls the frisson of
horror generated by the appearance of Clytemnestra in the final play of the Ores-
teia. Just as the Athenian court could not ultimately side with such a monster (in
fact she is banished from the stage by Apollo never to return to the play), surely
the Roman court, Cicero suggests, must rule against Clodius as well.
In all of these ways, then, Cicero subtly but consistently maintains a close cor-
respondence between the characteristics of Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra and those he
attributes to Clodius throughout the Pro Milone. This analogy exists alongside
the more overt comparison between Milo and Orestes, two murderers who
openly confess to their crimes, having acted as instruments of divine will
against truly wicked enemies. Moreover, these analogies occur in a speech
which refers to a specific piece of theatre in its opening lines and contains both
formal and thematic features of drama more generally throughout. Taken
together, all of these aspects of the Pro Milone urge Cicero’s readers to conclude
that, just as Athena acquitted Orestes of all charges, Milo’s crime ought to have
been pardoned as well.
The parallels between the Oresteia and Milo’s murder of Clodius are, of
course, not perfect. While no kin relationship exists between Milo and Clodius,
the animus between Orestes and his mother is very much the culmination of gen-
erations of internecine strife. Also, while a key part of Cicero’s defence strategy
involves convincing the jurors that Clodius set a trap for the unsuspecting Milo,
Aeschylus’ trilogy displays an Orestes who plots to gain access to the unsuspect-
ing Clytemnestra through deceit. In the Pro Milone, Cicero goes to great lengths
to convince his audience that Milo had no reason to kill Clodius and yet Orestes
confesses openly that his crime was committed intentionally in vengeance for the
death of Agamemnon. Finally, Aeschylus’ tale of family revenge lacks the strong
sense of patriotism and nationalism with which Cicero infuses Milo’s actions.
Orestes’ crime is a crime of passion directed inward on a self-destructive
family unable to resolve its private problems until they are brought before an
impartial jury of Athenian strangers. Milo’s actions, by contrast, are shown by
63. While Clytemnestra is certainly the primary referent for Clodius throughout the speech, it
should be noted that Clodius is also assimilated to the Furies by Cicero’s consistent characterisation
of Clodius’ furor (see May [1988], 130), which is emphasised at many points throughout the speech
(Mil. 3, 14, 27, 32, 34, 35, 77, 78, 88, 91). Far from weakening the connection between Clodius and
Clytemnestra, the emphasis on Clodius’ furor and his affinity for the Furies who support Clytemnes-
tra’s cause strengthens Clodius’ characterisation as bestial, effeminate and ghostly.
65
ADRIANA BROOK
Cicero to have consequences far beyond the personal relationship between

Clodius and Milo.
In spite of these discrepancies, it is clear that Cicero felt that the allusion as he
presented it worked sufficiently well for his purposes. The analogy between the
key trial scene from the Eumenides and Milo’s own trial—each implicating a con-
fessed murderer fully deserving of pardon—is transparent, even for the reader,
whose existence is doubtful, not otherwise familiar with the myth of Orestes.
But, of course, there is every reason to believe that Cicero expected his readers
to be familiar with the myth. The question that remains to be addressed is to
what extent Cicero believed his readers familiar with the fine details of the text
of the Oresteia that I have just cited. While surely some in Cicero’s intellectual
circle were as conversant in Greek tragedy as Cicero himself, this is not the only
way in which Cicero’s readers might have become aware of the smaller points of
plot and characterisation to which the Pro Milone alludes. The evidence for
Republican adaptations of the Oresteia supports the case that Cicero’s readers
would have encountered aspects of Aeschylus’ trilogy performed in Latin.
Exposure to these plays, as much as to Aescyhlus’, would have primed Cicero’s
readers to pick up on the literary allusions woven into the arguments of the
Pro Milone.
5. Orestes and Clytemnestra in Roman Republican tragedy
Stories about the Pelopidae were hugely successful on the Roman tragic stage
and it is very likely that the first readers of the Pro Milone were familiar with the
myth of Orestes from the theatre even in the unlikely event that they had not
encountered it elsewhere.64 Few new tragedies were being produced by the
time of Milo’s trial in 52 BCE but revivals of older Republican plays were com-
monplace,65 and the fragments of the Republican tragedies that survive offer a
glimpse of the tradition in which Cicero was working. On the assumption that
Cicero had no single play in mind when composing the Pro Milone but rather
was working on the basis of a sense of his readers’ cumulative familiarity with
the myths of the House of Atreus as received from Aeschylus in the Republican
theatre, these plays confirm, in broad strokes, that Cicero could be confident that
his readers would have encountered both the story and the classic Aeschylean
characterisation of Orestes and Clytemnestra.
The oldest surviving fragments that may be relevant to Cicero’s project in the
Pro Milone come from the Aegisthus of Livius Andronicus.66 This play appears
to describe the events of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, the first play in the Oresteia,
including Agamemnon’s return from Troy with Cassandra (frr. I-VI) and his
64. See Jocelyn (1967), 284, and Petaccia (2000), 87 and 93.
65. Erasmo (2004), 51, and Boyle (2006), 145.
66. Ribbeck (1897), 1f.
66
murder at the hands of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra (frr. VII-VIII).67 Such a play
would presumably have addressed the characterisation of Clytemnestra so valu-
able to Cicero in vilifying Clodius. None of the extant fragments, however, sug-
gests that the play dealt with Orestes or his exoneration at Athens.
Another Latin adaptation of the Oresteia story that Cicero and his readers
probably knew in common is the Eumenides of Ennius.68 On the basis of the sur-
viving fragments of this play, it is at least possible that it reworked Aeschylus’
Eumenides.69 The play certainly showed Orestes’ trial and acquittal on the
Areopagus—the scene most relevant to Milo’s defence—probably in the pres-
ence of both Athena, as judge, and Apollo, as advocate (frr. I-IV). Whether or
not the play included an appearance of Clytemnestra as a ghost or characterised
her in any of the ways I have identified in Aeschylus’ Oresteia is uncertain.
However, Zimmermann’s discussion of these Ennian fragments in the context
of the larger Republican reception of the story told in Aeschylus’ Eumenides
(including both Virgil and Cicero) offers a helpful perspective. For Zimmermann,
Ennius’ version of the story of Orestes’ acquittal for the murder of Clytemnestra
celebrates Orestes as a champion of patria potestas and pietas in his chastisement
of a woman who failed to model the uirtus and pudicitia appropriate to a Roman
matrona.70 If this was indeed how Ennius’ Eumenides was received in
Rome, then Cicero may very well have found this play useful for characterising
Milo as saving the Republic and Clodius as transgressing gender-appropriate
boundaries.
A final playwright, Accius, has left fragments of three plays that concern the
myths of the House of Atreus. The Agamemnonidae,71 which picks up the story
after the events of the Oresteia, is unlikely to have had much influence on
Cicero’s comparison of Milo to Orestes in the Pro Milone. Accius’ Aegisthus,72
on the other hand, suggests that Clytemnestra is hardened (fr. V), hinting at a
broader masculine characterisation of Orestes’ mother which may have proved
useful to Cicero in his depiction of Clodius as soft. The fragments, however,
do not suggest that Orestes’ trial was included in the play.73 Finally, Accius’
67. Beare (1964), 29, Petaccia (2000), 87, and Boyle (2006), 30-33. Cf. however Erasmo (2004),
11f., who suggests that the model for this play could have been Sophocles’ (lost) Aegisthus as much as
Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.
68. Ribbeck (1897), 36f.
69. Jocelyn’s discussion of the fragments (Jocelyn [1967], 283-89) shows which lines of the Aes-
chylean play have been identified by previous scholars as corresponding to the Ennian fragments but
cautions that Ennius may have had other models as well. Others are less circumspect and readily iden-
tify Aeschylus as the primary model. See Beare (1964), 64f., Petaccia (2000), 88, and Zimmermann
(2000), 280.
70. Zimmermann (2000), 281-83.
71. Ribbeck (1897), 163.
72. Ribbeck (1897), 160f.
73. Petaccia (2000), 93, and Dangel (2002), 323f., both suggest that the primary model for this
play is Sophocles’ Electra, but that elements of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Choephori as well as
Euripides’ Electra may also have been incorporated. In any case, Aeschylus’ Eumenides seems to
play no part.
67
ADRIANA BROOK
Clytemnestra74 features Agamemnon’s return from Troy (frr. III-V), a disconso-

late Cassandra at Mycenae (frr. VI-VIII) and Clytemnestra apparently chastising
Electra for supporting Agamemnon’s act of violence but condemning hers (fr. X).
While this play seems to have much in common with Aeschylus’ Agamemnon,
there is no reference to the murder of Clytemnestra or to Orestes’ subsequent
trial at Athens. Moreover, scholars disagree as to whether Aeschylus was
Accius’ source for the story he tells in this play.75
The likelihood that the Clytemnestra nonetheless served as a point of reference
for Cicero is greatly increased by the fact that Fam. 7.1.2f. tells us not only that
the Clytemnestra was performed at the dedication of the Theatre of Pompey in 55
BCE, a mere three years before Milo’s trial, but also that Cicero himself was in
the audience for this specific performance.76 Cicero’s report to M. Marius about
the occasion is scathing: the actor’s voice failed him; the staging was lavish and
excessive; none of the other spectacles was worth seeing. However poor Cicero’s
opinion of the spectacle may have been, his letter offers a fixed point of reference,
confirming that he could expect his readers to have seen a play (or at least heard
about a play) recounting part of the Oresteia story only a few years before the
dissemination of his speech in defence of Milo.
Fascinatingly, if indeed Cicero was inspired by this performance to cast Milo as
an Orestes a few years later, he was not the only one to draw contemporary political
comparisons with Accius’ play. We might well speculate that Pompey, in whose
honour the festivities were held and who certainly had a say in which plays were
performed, chose the two plays for the occasion—the Equus Troianus and the
Clytemnestra—in order to draw himself on a level with the mighty Agamemnon.
These plays evoked his own foreign conquests and spectacular triple triumph of
61 BCE, respectively, by analogy with the exploits of the Mycenaean king. The
attempt certainly failed to impress Cicero, who reports in his letter to Marius his
utter lack of interest in the 3000 bronze bowls dedicated in the Equus Troianus
and the train of 600 mules paraded across the stage of the Clytemnestra. But
later reports confirm that the association between Pompey and Agamemnon
74. Ribbeck (1897), 161-63. Warmington (1936), 328, proposes that the Clytemnestra and the
Aegisthus might, in fact, be the same play. He points out that, while the lexicographer Nonius, to
whom we owe the survival of a number of tragic fragments, cites these as separate works, he is the
only source for fragments from the Aegisthus, while fragments of the Clytemnestra can be found in
several other writers. This is a tempting proposal, since it would mean that Accius’ single play
showed the events of the entire Oresteia to its Roman audience. Ribbeck (1897), 161, followed by
most subsequent authors, acknowledges the possibility but maintains that these titles represent two
different works of literature. As Dangel (2002), 232, points out, we know from mythological
sources that seven years separate the death of Agamemnon from the deaths of Clytemnestra and
Aegisthus and, while a long proleptic speech in a play about the former is certainly possible, it is
unlikely that a single play would stage the events of more than a single day.
75. Dangel (2000), 321f., argues that Accius’ main source is Aeschylus’ Agamemnon but that the
play probably also incorporates elements of Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Orestes. Warmington
(1936), 406, by contrast, suggests that Accius was not following Aeschylus but the same source later
followed by Hyginus (Fab. 117).
76. On this occasion see Erasmo (2004), 80-91.
68
established on this occasion was a lasting one and certainly not one favourable to
Pompey. The occasion was later recalled by Domitius Ahenobarbus, who scathing-
ly called Pompey Agamemnon, βασιλέα βασιλέων (‘king of kings’, Plu. Pomp.
67.3), criticising his tyrannical behaviour.77
While this anecdotal evidence offers no specific insight into Cicero’s use of
Aeschylean material in the Pro Milone, it does confirm that Greek myths per-
formed on the stage, and specifically the myths of the House of Atreus, were
part of an ongoing public discourse in which Roman public figures were assimi-
lated to Greek tragic ones. As we have already seen, Orestes was used not long
after the publication of the Pro Milone as a mythical analogue for Octavian. It
would be very surprising indeed if the use that both Octavian and his enemies
made of this mythical material did not rely on representations of Orestes on
the Republican stage. The surviving fragments of Republican tragedy, which
contain ample evidence for the popularity of the Oresteia story in the Roman
theatre, as well as evidence that it was not uncommon for public figures to be assimi-
lated to theatrical characters,78 support my claim that Cicero’s rhetorical strategy in
the Pro Milone relies on the assumption that his readers would easily perceive the
wider implications of the Aeschylean analogy he suggests. Cicero’s decision to
pair Milo with Orestes and, by association, Clodius with Clytemnestra, clearly fits
into a larger pattern of mythological borrowings in contemporary Roman political
discourse that drew on the presentation of Greek tragic material on the Latin stage.
6. Conclusion
The Pro Milone, then, in both style and content puts its readers in mind of the
theatre. Presenting the story of Milo and his trial as a fabula paenulata, so to
speak, that combines elements of both myth and history, the speech has many
77. For discussion on the connections between Pompey and Agamemnon at the dedication of his
theatre in 55 BCE and afterwards see Erasmo (2004), 85-91, Boyle (2006), 155-57, and especially
Champlin (2003), 296-305. If Cicero intended the readers of the Pro Milone to perceive an implicit
comparison between Pompey and Agamemnon, it would have been to cast Pompey in a negative
light. Pompey’s magisterial presence is felt throughout the speech and, while Cicero is careful not
to antagonise Pompey in any way, readers may be encouraged to perceive the tyrannical nature of
the new lex Pompeia de ui, which has often been interpreted as a nakedly hostile move against
Milo on Pompey’s part, or to remember the unease generated by Pompey’s unprecedented sole con-
sulship in 52 BCE (see n.1 above). Provocatively, Cicero’s analogy establishes Clodius as Pompey’s
close ally (wife) turned betrayer (murderer), which might have served Cicero’s political purposes in
demonstrating the danger Clodius represented to the Republic. If Cicero did intend to criticise
Pompey by means of a subtle comparison with Agamemnon in the Pro Milone, this is not a theme
that persists in his later writings. Cicero, without apparent criticism, refers to Pompey as a son of
Atreus when he declares his political preference for Pompey over Caesar in a letter from the end of
50 BCE, five years after the theatre dedication and a mere two years after Milo’s trial (Att. 7.3.5).
A possible implicit comparison between Pompey and Agamemnon in the Pro Milone represents a
promising avenue of investigation but, ultimately, it is one I have been unable to pursue in the
present essay.
78. Cf. n.26 above.
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ADRIANA BROOK
dramatic features of language and theme. These reinforce a sustained comparison

between, on the one hand, Orestes and Milo and, on the other hand, Clytemnestra
and Clodius, introduced by Cicero’s overt reference to Aeschylus’ Oresteia at the
beginning of the speech. The Ciceronian corpus makes it clear that Cicero was both
competent and inclined to construct this kind of extended theatrical comparison. As
for Cicero’s first reading audience, they could be counted on to be familiar with
Greek myth and comfortable finding references to political figures in the Greek
mythological characters they knew from the Republican stage. Whether they were
familiar with the Oresteia from an education similar to Cicero’s or from the many
Republican stagings of the stories of the Oresteia—performances as recent as that
of Accius’ Clytemnestra in 55 BCE—the readers of Cicero’s Pro Milone when the
published version circulated in the aftermath of the trial were not only capable of
picking up on Cicero’s extended dramatic allusion but disposed to do so. Cicero’s ref-
erence to Aeschylus in the Pro Milone, then, is far from casual, but actually represents
one among many elaborate rhetorical strategies simultaneously at work in the speech
to convince his readers that Milo should have been pardoned in the original trial.
Quintilian, in Book 5 of the Institutio Oratoria, offers a charming anecdote
about the tragedian, Accius:
aiunt Accium interrogatum, cur causas non ageret, cum apud eum in tragoe-
diis tanta uis esset optime respondendi, hanc reddidisse rationem, quod illic ea
dicerentur quae ipse uellet, in foro dicturi aduersarii essent quae minime uellet.
(Quint. Inst. 5.13.43)
They say that Accius, when he was asked why he did not plead cases since
his tragedies had such a strength for offering the best answers, responded
with the following reasoning: that in his tragedies people said what he
wanted them to say, but in the forum his adversaries would say what he
least wanted them to say.
After the death of his long-time adversary, Clodius, Cicero seems to have
achieved the ideal that escaped Accius, namely the ability to stage a courtroom
drama in which he had total control over what was said. By his clever manipula-
tion of tragic themes and tropes in the Pro Milone, Cicero is quite literally able to
cast Clodius as a vile Clytemnestra and, likewise, to cast Milo as the heroic
Orestes who slew her. In the trial, Cicero’s speech proved unsuccessful and
Milo was sent into exile for Clodius’ murder. But through the published
speech that circulated in the aftermath of the trial, Cicero continued to enjoy
the poetic licence to disseminate the tragic text that suited his own purposes.
Though the trial was over, the first readers of this speech became the audience
for Cicero’s own Republican Oresteia.
Lawrence University
adriana.e.brook@lawrence.edu
70
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Ramus 45 (1) p.45–73 © Aureal Publications 2016.

CICERO’S USE OF AESCHYLUS’ ORESTEIA IN THE PRO MILONE

Cicero here makes an obvious reference to Aeschylus’ Oresteia. In this fifth-

instance, to Cicero’s politically influential friends and acquaintances at Rome.7

1. Cicero and the theatre

10. Rawson (1985), 9-11, and Fantham (2013), 55-57.

2. Cicero’s readers and the theatre

It is also important to understand that readers of Cicero’s Pro Milone, beyond

3. The dramatic style of the Pro Milone

While all oratory is to some extent theatrical because it is a performed genre,

4. The Pro Milone and the Oresteia

κλύοιτ’ ἂν ἤδη θεσμόν, Ἀττικὸς λεώς,

47. See n.1 above.

Orestes’ exoneration in Aeschylus supports Cicero’s policy of (ostensible)

Cicero’s reference to the Oresteia has been widely recognised as establishing a

fingite animis—liberae sunt enim nostrae cogitationes et quae uolunt sic

Cicero to have consequences far beyond the personal relationship between

5. Orestes and Clytemnestra in Roman Republican tragedy

Clytemnestra74 features Agamemnon’s return from Troy (frr. III-V), a disconso-

dramatic features of language and theme. These reinforce a sustained comparison

Lintott, A.W. (1974), ‘Cicero and Milo’, JRS 64, 62-78.

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