Pro Cluentio

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pro Cluentio is a speech by the Roman orator Cicero given in defense of a man named Aulus Cluentius Habitus Minor, who was accused of murdering his stepfather, Oppianicus the Elder.

Cluentius, from Larinum in Molise, was accused in 66 BC by his mother of murdering his stepfather. The mother, Sassia, had an unsavory reputation. She had married three times. On the first occasion she had married Aulus Cluentius Habitus, the father of her son. The son was known as Aulus Cluentius Habitus Minor. At one point she had fallen in love with her daughter's husband. She forced the daughter to divorce the young man and then she married her former son-in-law. From this point, the majority of the speech concerns the crimes and death of Oppianicus: his multiple murders, his attempt on Cluentius's life, Cluentius' successful prosecutions of his assistants and Oppianicus himself without bribery, and Oppianicus' death, ascribed by the prosecution to Cluentius.

Sassia was sufficiently powerful that it appeared that her son would be convicted of patricide, despite having found no direct evidence for her son's alleged murders in several torture sessions (quaestiones). However the son appealed to Cicero, the great orator, to undertake his defence. Cicero's strategy was to vilify Sassia and her dissolute lifestyle. He was so successful that the young Cluentius was absolved of the charges. In the process the reputation of Sassia was completely destroyed.

Cicero's spirited defence in Pro Cluentio presents an insight into the life in Larinum in 66 BC, and also provides an image of a ruthless woman which has lasted for more than two thousand years.