Pro Sestio

Cicero starts the speech by speaking of the troubled nature of Roman politics in the 50s BC. He then defends Sestius' character and career, giving an overview of his good deeds for the community – such as during the Catilinarian conspiracy – and towns across Italy.{{sfn|Robb|2010|p=44}} He then gives an overview of his exile at the hands of his enemies: the tribune Publius Clodius Pulcher and the consuls of 58 BC (Aulus Gabinius and Lucius Calpurnius Piso). Associating his exile with the poor state of Roman politics – and justifying his departure in terms of preserving peace among the people – Cicero then discusses how Sestius opposed his enemies and supported Cicero's return from exile amid an unprecedented outpouring of grief for Cicero's fate.{{sfn|Robb|2010|pp=45–47}}

The core defence given for Sestius' organisation of a group of armed men is not to deny its happening but rather than justify it was necessary for the defence of his sacrosanct life as a plebeian tribune and of the state as a whole.{{sfn|Robb|2010|pp=52–53}} He further justifies this by noting the support for Titus Annius Milo (who also had such organised men) from the optimates and that application of the law had been wholly unsuccessful in bringing Clodius (known also to have such organised men) to trial.{{sfn|Robb|2010|pp=53–54}}

Answering a question as to who the optimates are, Cicero enters into a long aside, dividing politicians into two categories: those who seek the popularity from the crowd as populares and those who seek the approval of all the best men (whether they be senators, businessmen, or even freedmen).{{sfn|Robb|2010|p=55}} Cicero then defines the goal of the best men as "peace with dignity" ({{langx|la|cum dignitate otium}}), upholding public religion, the rule of law, the advice of the senate, the traditions of the Roman people and state, the good faith of the Roman people, and the defence of the state and its fiscal health.{{sfn|Robb|2010|pp=55–56}}

He then lambasts the populares as demagogues attempting to win popularity among a disorderly and temporary minority which does not have the interest of the whole community in mind.{{sfn|Robb|2010|pp=57–59, 60–62, 66–67}} To emphasise this point, Cicero associates the whole Roman people with the label optimates due to their opposition to the hired crowds around Cicero's enemies, contrasting Clodius from previous populares such as the Gracchi brothers who had won genuine popularity rather than merely hired it.{{sfn|Robb|2010|p=58}}

Cicero then continues by issuing a call for politicians to put the country before their own advancement. He then associates Sestius' actions to support him as a defence of the state. The argument that Cicero concludes on is essentially that Sestius should not be punished for two reasons. The first is that he was doing what upstanding citizens everywhere (Cicero's optimates) believed was necessary. The second is that Sestius' actions were themselves necessary, motivated by patriotism, to defend the state from a minoritarian mob.{{sfn|Robb|2010|p=64}}

{{see also|Optimates and populares}}

The modern division of Roman politicians into two types or parties, optimates and populares, in part emerges from Pro Sestio.{{sfn|Robb|2010|p=55}} Whether these modern labels denoted any real division which would have been comprehensible to a Roman audience is hotly debated;{{sfn|Corke-Webster|2020|p=100. "[T]wo-party view of optimates and populares that is the subject of heated academic discussion"}} there is, however, universal consensus that the two labels did not denote any political parties in a modern sense,{{sfn|Robb|2010|p=12. "It is now universally accepted that populares and optimates were not political parties or groups in the modern sense"}} with the common view that the terms reflected political tactics before the senate and people respectively.{{sfn|Robb|2010|p=12. "Perhaps the most commonly accepted modern view of a 'popularis' is Meier's: a politician... who adopted a particular political style, advancing his own affairs by using the people's assembly"}}

Robert A Kaster, in his 2006 commentary on the speech, renders the terms optimate and popularis as "best sort" and "popular", respectively. In his view, Cicero's rhetoric was directed mainly towards undermining Clodius and the accusers' claim to be expressing the will of the people:

{{quote|

The very move with which he begins – presenting the distinction between "popular" and "optimate", only to collapse it immediately – is ... a variation on a basic premise of many speeches before the assembled people in the late Republic: that the important distinction lay not between optimates and populares but between "true" and "false" populares – those who really had the people's interest at heart... and those who claimed to do so out of self-seeking motives...{{harvnb|Kaster|2006|p=34}}, supporting Morstein-Marx's ideological monotony thesis. See {{Cite book |last=Morstein-Marx |first=Robert |title=Mass oratory and political power in the late Roman republic |date=2004 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-511-48287-8 |mode=cs2}}.

}}

The division of politicians presented at the start therefore is more a tendentious rhetorical device, meant to persuade the court jury that problems in the state are the result of unpopular minoritarian agitators.{{sfn|Steel|2007}} Contrasting the "popular" politicians of 56 BC with the actually popular politicians of the past like the Gracchi, the jury should not only reject arguments that the people demand a conviction but identify Sestius with the republic and the whole people, justifying acquittal.{{sfn|Kaster|2006|p=35}}

A similar presentation is given by Margaret Robb in her 2010 book Beyond Populares and Optimates, rejecting the idea of a division between populares and optimates grounded in political party, ideology, or political tactics.{{sfn|Robb|2010|p=11}} Instead, she compares Cicero's usage of the word popularis in Pro Sestio with that in Pro Rabirio perduellionis (a speech given in 59 BC). In the latter speech, Cicero argues that populares are those who defend the republic by vindicating citizens' rights. The usage of the word optimates in Pro Sestio, then, as a label for men defending the republic signals non-opposition. Populares in this speech is then only used semi-ironically to refer to men who claim themselves popular but, evidenced by their rejection by the Roman people in elections, prove merely failed demagogues.{{sfn|Robb|2010|pp=65–66}}

The opposite view, suggesting the label to refer to general groupings of politicians, emphasises Cicero's introduction contrasting "two categories of men who have wished to engage in politics... one of these categories wanted to be considered, and to be, populares [popular], the other, optimates [the best men]".Pro Sestio, 96, translated by {{harvnb|Yakobson|2017}}. This view argues that Sallust's descriptions of Roman politics show a factionalisation in late republican politics between two parts ({{langx|la|in duas partis}}) upholding the rights of the people and the authority of the senate, respectively, suggesting that the labels refer to those parts.{{sfn|Yakobson|2017}} Sallust, however, uses no such language. Whether this is because such use would be trite or because they would not have been recognisable labels for a Roman audience is debated.Compare {{harvnb|Yakobson|2017}} ("[Sallust], admittedly, does not use the terms... perhaps for stylistic reasons, in order to avoid a trite usage... it could not have helped [Cicero] to describe Roman politics in a way that his hearers would have found fundamentally unrecognisable") with {{harvnb|Robb|2010|pp=115–16}} ("modern models are based on the premise that populares and optimates were familiar political labels[;] if this is true, then Sallust chose to ignore... words which we have assumed to be common, everyday political labels").

The Pro Sestio was one of the classic pieces of Ciceronean prose, having by the ancient period been recognised as such and included in standard volumes of Cicero's speeches for rhetorical and oratorical study.{{sfn|Maslowski|1986|pp=v–vi, vii}}

There are a number of manuscript descendants of the original oration, which was likely delivered in the Forum somewhat differently from how it is recorded. There are three separate lines of transmission. The first are the P manuscripts, named for Paris, which was created in the mid-ninth century AD.{{sfn|Maslowski|1986|pp=viii, xxxviii}} From it, descends the B (named for Bern) manuscript.{{sfn|Maslowski|1986|pp=viii–ix}} The second is a hypothetical y manuscript from which the L manuscripts descend (written AD {{circa|860}} and named for Leiden), along with the G (11th century, named for the Gembloux Abbey), V, and N manuscripts.{{sfnm|Maslowski|1986|1pp=x, xii, xxxviii, 1|Maslowski|1993|2p=357 col. 2}} The V manuscript (for the Vatican) and N recension (published in 1778 at Paris from a number of Italian manuscripts) also document this lineage, filling in for missing leaves of the L manuscript.{{sfnm|Maslowski|1986|1pp=xii, xviii|Wellesley|1989|2p=36|Maslowski|1993|3p=357}} The third line of transmission is that of the H manuscript (named for the Harleian Library) which also dates to the 12th century, and was once owned by Petrarch.{{sfn|Maslowski|1986|pp=xii, 1}}

An arrangement of the manuscript stemma can be found in the 1986 Teubner edition,{{sfn|Maslowski|1986|p=xxxviii}} which mainly cited the P, L, G, and H manuscripts.{{sfn|Wellesley|1989|p=36}}

The standard Latin edition of the Pro Sestio is the 1986 Teubner, edited by Tadeusz Maslowski, superseding previous editions.See {{harvnb|Maslowski|1986}}. Another Latin edition – {{cite book |last=Reggiani |first=Renatus |title=M Tulli Ciceronis pro P Sestio oratio |location=Milan |publisher=Mondadori |year=1990 |mode=cs2}} – was poorly reviewed in {{harvnb|Maslowski|1993}}; other reviews (eg {{cite journal |last=Marcel |first=Delaunois |title=none |journal=Revue belge de Philologie et d'Histoire |year=1993 |volume=71 |issue=1 |page=154 |mode=cs2}}) also suggested usage of the Maslowski Tuebner. Standard translations include the 2006 translation and commentary by Robert A Kaster in the Clarendon Ancient History series and the 1958 Loeb Classical Library translation by Robert Gardner.See:

• {{harvnb|Kaster|2006}}. (Latin text following {{harvnb|Maslowski|1986}}.)
• {{harvnb|Gardner|1958}}. (Latin text following the 1904 Teubner by C F W Müller. {{harvnb|Gardner|1958|p=xii}}.)

The previous commentary to that of Kaster's was a commentary in 1889 by H A Holden. {{harvnb|Steel|2007}}.

• In Vatinium
• First Triumvirate

{{reflist|20em}}

{{refbegin|30em}}

• {{Cite book |last=Alexander |first=Michael Charles |title=Trials in the late Roman republic, 149 BC to 50 BC |date=1990 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=0-8020-5787-X |location=Toronto |oclc=41156621}}
• {{Cite journal |last=Corke-Webster |first=James |date=2020 |title=Roman history |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0017383519000287/type/journal_article |journal=Greece and Rome |language=en |volume=67 |issue=1 |pages=94–103 |doi=10.1017/S0017383519000287 |issn=0017-3835|url-access=subscription }}
• {{Cite book |title=Pro Sestio. In Vatinium |translator-last=Gardner |translator-first=Robert |isbn=978-0-674-99341-9 |publisher=Harvard University Press |series=Loeb Classical Library 309 |year=1958 |ref={{harvid|Gardner|1958}} }}
• {{Cite book |last=Kaster |first=Robert A |title=Speech on behalf of Publius Sestius |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=2JG3F10G9goC}} |date=2006 |publisher=Clarendon Press |location=Oxford |isbn=978-1-4294-9127-3 }}
• {{Cite book |editor-last=Maslowski |editor-first=Tadeusz |title=Oratio pro Publio Sestio |date=1986 |language=la |publisher=Teubner |isbn=978-3-11-095497-5 |location=Leipzig |doi=10.1515/9783110954975 }}
• {{Cite journal |last=Maslowski |first=Tadeusz |date=1993 |title=none |jstor=27691358 |journal=Gnomon |volume=65 |issue=4 |pages=356–359 |issn=0017-1417}}
• {{Cite book |last=Robb |first=M A |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=gf_IbwAACAAJ}} |title=Beyond populares and optimates: political language in the late republic |date=2010 |publisher=Steiner |isbn=978-3-515-09643-0 }}
• {{Cite book |last=Robb |first=M A |chapter=Optimates, populares |title=Encyclopedia of Ancient History |date=2018 |publisher=Wiley |doi=10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah20095.pub2 }}
• {{Cite journal |last=Steel |first=Catherine |title=Review of "Cicero: Speech on behalf of Publius Sestius" |url=https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2007/2007.07.26/ |year=2007 |journal=Bryn Mawr Classical Review |issn=1055-7660 }}
• {{Cite journal |last=Wellesley |first=Kenneth |date=1989 |title=none |journal=Classical Review |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=36–37 |doi=10.1017/S0009840X00270261 |issn=0009-840X}} (Review of {{harvnb|Maslowski|1986}}.)
• {{Citation |last=Yakobson |first=Alexander |title=optimates, populares |date=2017-08-22 |encyclopedia=Oxford Classical Dictionary |edition=Online |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.4578 }}

{{refend}}

• {{Cite web |title=Cicero: Pro Sestio |url=https://www.attalus.org/cicero/sestius.html |access-date=2025-06-02 |website=Attalus.org}} (Hosting the {{harvnb|Gardner|1958}} translation.)
• {{Cite web |title=M. Tullius Cicero, For Sestius |url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0020:text=Sest. |access-date=2025-06-02 |website=Perseus Digital Library |translator-last=Yonge |translator-first=C D |year=1891 }}

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Category:Orations of Cicero

Category:1st century BC in law

Category:Roman law