Pro Plancio
The Pro Plancio, sometimes named as the Pro Cn. Plancio or the Planciana, was a speech given by the Roman lawyer and statesman Cicero in September 54 BCE. In the speech, delivered in the Roman Forum, Cicero defended, who had been elected as aedile the previous year, against a charge of electoral malpractice levelled by, one of his defeated opponents. The outcome of the trial is not known, though it is often suggested that Cicero won.
Plancius was prosecuted under the lex Licinia de sodaliciis, which criminalised the improper use of electoral associations ; the prosecution, conducted by Laterensis with the assistance of Lucius Cassius Longinus, appears to have offered little evidence that Plancius had specifically committed this crime, rather than more general electoral infractions. In the Pro Plancio, Cicero defends Plancius's character and asserts the legitimacy of his election, claiming that Laterensis had made his prosecution under the lex Licinia in order to benefit from its unusual process of jury selection, which advantaged the prosecution. Throughout the speech, Cicero emphasises his twofold friendship with Laterensis and Plancius, who had both assisted him during a period of exile in 58–57 BCE. The bulk of the speech deals not with the charges against Plancius, but with asserting his personal merits and those of Cicero himself.
The speech was described by James Smith Reid as "a thoroughly artistic handling of a somewhat ordinary theme". Cicero makes reference to works of early Latin literature, such as the poetry of Ennius, and to the philosopher Plato's Crito, and makes extensive use of the rhetorical technique of sermocinatio. Cicero edited and published the speech; it is known from sporadic references in classical literature and surviving papyrus manuscripts, but was relatively neglected by ancient rhetoricians in comparison to the rest of Cicero's speeches. However, it was widely copied in manuscripts from the early modern period, and was known to the fourteenth-century humanist Petrarch.
Background
The Pro Plancio was delivered in September 54 BCE, in the Roman Forum. In the speech, Cicero attempted to defend against a charge of electoral malpractice levelled by, whom Plancius had defeated in elections for the post of curule aedile, a junior magistracy with responsibility for public buildings and festivals. Plancius was defended by Cicero, probably in addition to Quintus Hortensius. Laterensis was, in turn, assisted by Lucius Cassius Longinus.Protagonists
Cicero
As consul in 63 BCE, Cicero had revealed the conspiracy of Lucius Sergius Catilina, a failed consular candidate who had attempted to seize power in a coup. On 5 December of that year, Cicero had Catiline's supporters in Rome executed without trial, a decision which was widely condemned. Cicero's political enemy, Publius Clodius Pulcher, passed a law as tribune in February 58 BCE condemning anyone who had executed Roman citizens without a trial. The law was seen as an attack on Cicero, who fled Rome into exile shortly after its passage; Clodius in turn secured a formal proclamation of exile against him in early April. Cicero's exile proved an enduring source of reputational damage to him, and he referred to it frequently in his subsequent speeches.After his return from exile in 57 BCE, Cicero's legal work largely consisted of defending allies of the ruling First Triumvirate and his own personal friends and allies; although he had opposed the triumvirate before his exile, he reversed his stance after Pompey and Caesar reconciled at the Luca Conference in 56. In that year, he defended his former pupil Marcus Caelius Rufus against a charge of murder. He subsequently defended, under the influence of the triumvirs, his former enemies Publius Vatinius and Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, which weakened his prestige and sparked attacks on his integrity. Luca Grillo has suggested these cases as the source of the poet Catullus's double-edged comment that Cicero was "the best defender of anybody".
Gnaeus Plancius
Gnaeus Plancius was a member of the equestrian class, the son of a tax collector from the Lucanian town of Atina. In 61–60 BCE, Cicero had represented an association of tax-collectors, including Plancius's father, in their attempt to reduce their financial obligations to the Roman state. The younger Plancius was a supporter of Pompey the Great, and in turn a protégé of Marcus Licinius Crassus: these two men, along with Julius Caesar, formed the triumvirate.When the exiled Cicero arrived at Dyrrachium in western Greece late in April 58 BCE, Plancius was serving as a quaestor on the staff of Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, the governor of Macedonia. Plancius travelled to meet Cicero, and took him to stay in his official residence in Thessalonica, where Cicero remained until the following November, at which point Plancius was soon to return to Rome following the appointment of a new governor, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. As Cicero later recounted their meeting in the Pro Plancio, Plancius took off his official insignia, put on mourning garb, and embraced Cicero, too overcome by tears to speak.
Plancius was subsequently elected as a plebeian tribune in 56 BCE. He then successfully ran for curule aedile in 55 BCE, with Crassus's support, in an election that Lily Ross Taylor has described as "a travesty of Roman free institutions". The election results were declared void, following corruption and violence during the campaign, and the election repeated in 54: Plancius was again elected, alongside Aulus Plautius. His election as aedile made Plancius the first in his family to enter the senate. It is debated whether Plancius served as aedile in 55, or was due to begin his year of office when prosecuted in 54.
Marcus Iuventius Laterensis
Marcus Iuventius Laterensis was from an ancient noble family of Rome. He had served as a quaestor and proquaestor in Cyrene, where Michael Alexander judges that he was "more than usually upright" in his dealings. Christopher Craig has written that Laterensis's more elevated social background would have favoured his case, as ambitus trials customarily involved comparing the social standing of the respective parties.During Cicero's exile, Laterensis had protected his relatives who remained in Italy, and made petitions for Cicero to be recalled. Like Cicero, Laterensis had been an early opponent of the triumvirs – he had withdrawn his candidacy for tribune in 59 BCE, because those elected were obliged to swear to uphold the laws of Caesar. However, unlike Cicero, Laterensis had maintained this opposition: he used Cicero's change of sides to attack the latter's integrity during Plancius's case.
Prosecution
Laterensis made the prosecution a few weeks after the election of 54 BCE: the trial was held around the time of the ludi Romani, which took place in late August or early September. The prosecution was made under the lex Licinia de sodaliciis, a law put forward by Crassus in 55. As neither the prosecution speech against Plancius nor the text of the relevant law survive, the precise accusations made against Plancius are uncertain: Laterensis may have accused Plancius of forming an illicit coalition to secure his election, of giving or receiving bribes, or of several of these offences. The Pro Plancio is itself the main source of evidence for the terms of the lex Licinia de sodaliciis.The lex Licinia specifically criminalised organised bribery through the use of associations of supporters, categorising such conduct as ambitus infinitus. It also specified that the jury would be selected in a manner advantageous to the prosecution: while most trials allowed both the prosecutor and defender to veto any juror they considered unsuitable, trials under the lex Licinia required the prosecutor to nominate four voting tribes from which the jurors would be chosen, from which the defence could eliminate one. Laterensis's arguments appear to have generally been more appropriate to a trial for conventional ambitus than one de sodaliciis, and Cicero argued that he had only made his prosecution under the lex Licinia to benefit from its distinctive jury-selection procedure.
Plancius's case was the fourth that Cicero had defended on a charge de sodaliciis, after those of Gaius Messius and Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus in 54 BCE and of Marcus Cispius early in 56. Taylor has characterised the prosecution as politically motivated revenge: Laterensis was an ally of Cato the Younger, who had been elected as praetor for 54 and whose ally, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, had been elected consul. Catonian candidates had been defeated in the voided elections of 55, partly due to manoeuvring from the triumvirs Pompey and Caesar.
Aspects of the prosecution's speeches can be reconstructed through Cicero's responses to them in the Pro Plancio. He rebuts allegations made by Laterensis that Plancius had taken a male companion with him to Macedonia "in order to satisfy his lust", and that he had raped a female dancer. It can be inferred from Cicero's speech that Laterensis accused him of dishonesty, and of taking Plancius's case for self-interested reasons rather than out of genuine conviction. Cicero directly responds to this charge at length, and throughout the speech uses language intended to highlight his own straightforwardness and honesty, frequently contrasting the supposed urbanity and polish of the prosecutors, with the honest simplicity and rural unsophistication of Plancius's native Atina. Cicero also rebukes Laterensis for accusing him of faking tears to generate sympathy for Plancius. Kathryn Tempest has written that Laterensis and Cassius made a key strategy out of portraying Cicero as mendacious, and arousing the jury's anger against him; Laterensis seems to have portrayed himself, in contrast, as an honest and credible speaker able to reveal Cicero's tricks to the jury.