Pro murena

Abstract

The speech in support of L. Licinius Murena was delivered under similar circumstances to the previous one and thus its argument in many respects displays the same strategic features. The theme is electoral bribery, obtaining votes illegally for the consular elections in the comitia centuriata. Cicero’s aim was to focus as little as possible on the evidence which proved that Murena defeated his greatest rival Servius Sulpicius, the legal scholar, through electoral malpractice. Cicero’s argument applies two distinct heuristic strategies to persuade the jury about the innocence of his client. In the first strategy he presents an elaborate comparison of the two main candidates, Murena and Sulpicius, which is based on weighing the relative likelihood of winning the election. The second strategy is formally an ad hominem argument attacking the Stoic views of M. Porcius Cato, the most influential member of the prosecution team. The argument on the rigidity of Cato’s views appears wholly irrelevant today, yet it serves the important purpose of weakening the credibility of the prosecution, which could prevail through Cato’s moral superiority.