Cicero The Advocate

This is the first book in English to take Cicero's forensic speeches seriously as acts of advocacy, i.e. as designed to ensure that the person he represents is acquitted or that the person he is prosecuting is found guilty. It seeks to set the speeches within the context of the court system of the Late Roman Republic and to explore in detail the strategies available to Roman advocates to win the votes of jurors. The volume comprises a substantial introduction, fourteen chapters by prominent Ciceronian scholars in Britain, North America, and Germany, and a final chapter by a current British Appeal Court judge who comments on Cicero's techniques from the point of view of a modern advocate. The introduction deals with issues concerning the general nature of advocacy, the Roman court system as compared with other ancient and modern systems, the Roman "profession" of advocacy and its etiquette, the place of advocacy in Cicero's career, the ancient theory of rhetoric and argument as applied to courtroom advocacy, and the relationship between the published texts of the speeches as we have them and the speeches actually delivered in court.