Pro Caelio

The Pro Caelio is one of the most famous speeches of the obtained rhetorician, statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero. As Marcus Caelius Rufus speech in defense of them was held on April 4, 56 BC. The charges were: riot, theft, the murder of the Alexandrian diplomats Dio and the acquisition and the use of poison against Clodia, his former lover. The main charge is to the political violence, the murder of Dio.

Presumably, the prosecution of Publius Clodius Pulcher Clodias brother, an opponent of Cicero, is introduced. Cicero, the Caelius action is revenge a scorned woman, and it may additionally vilified Clodia cleverly.

Was particularly difficult Cicero's work by the fact that he had to make the forum for feast of Magna Mater his speech, so that the jury of the court were forced to leave the games turn out to feast. So he created a kind of game for his hearing by the members of the trial in classical Roman dramatic figures, such as the naive young lovers stereotyped. Furthermore, he used a number of rhetorical stylistic device to the interest of the audience to keep, for example, a monologue about the view of relatives Clodias and even a satirical pantomime Caelius deeds to represent their alleged nullity. Cicero distracted with these tricks of the prosecution so that Caelius was acquitted.

It is suspected that Gaius Valerius Catullus Carmen 49 possibly wrote to thank Cicero that he had not mentioned him in the trial of Clodia, which should be as widely believed the same person as in Catullus' Lesbia.