The Case for the Prosecution in the Ciceronian Era

Cicero's success as a defender was unequalled in late Republican Rome, a place where most trials routinely ended in conviction. This readable yet scholarly study does not focus on the genius of Cicero's sentence construction, instead it searches eleven defence speeches for clues to the arguments of the prosecutor which, in many cases, have been lost to history. The aim is to reconstruct Roman trials and Roman law whilst also highlighting Cicero's enormous skill in, usually but not always, extracting victory against the odds. Each speech has its own chapter and these are divided into cases of extortion, electoral malpractice, homicide and violence. Each extract is accompanied by an English translation. The book begins with a lengthy introduction to criminal prosecutions. It closes with lists of each defendant's crimes, a catalogue of witnesses and documents from Cicero's most famous trial as prosecutor, that of Verres.