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chapter two Presentation: Oratory and Law Drafts h in january of 63, M. Tullius Cicero seized the opportunity of his inaugural speech as consul, a formal occasion shared with other newly elected officials , to denounce a recent land bill sponsored by the tribune P. Servilius Rullus and his colleagues. Over the next few weeks three more public speeches followed , two later published among the triad called De Lege Agraria, in which Cicero aired in eloquent detail the faults of the lawmaker and his bill.1 In high relief throughout these public orations is the essentially open and civic character of lawmaking: a crowd of Romans assembled purposefully from Rome’s thirty-five tribes; the elected officeholder, flanked by other senators, addressing them from the Rostra; in view of everyone a posted text of the bill under debate; and, above all, the oratory. Sitting at the heart of the lawmaking process in the public meeting (contio ), Cicero’s orations against Rullus’s proposed land scheme furnish the richest source we have for exploring the presentation of law to the Roman people by their political leaders, our focus in this chapter. De Lege Agraria 2 and 3, together with the Pro Lege Manilia of 66, form the longest and most complete set of public speeches addressing the merits of public law proposals among the many small fragments of such speeches by Roman orators preserved by ancient recorders.2 Furthermore, they are the only extant speeches that address a long 62 and complex law draft.3 Cicero’s public denunciation of the rogatio Servilia serves to remind us of the degree to which tradition, power, social position, personal characteristics, and oratorical skills underlay the functioning of the lawmaking process as late as 63, nearly the end of our period of interest. It underscores also the singularly complex understanding of the various facets of lawmaking common among the participants on all levels and articulated by political leaders in their presentation of the law. Given the well-honed skills needed to draft and promulgate a public law proposal, to orate at length about the proposal, and to engage a Roman audience in the give-and-take accompanying the public lawmaking process, it is understandable that not all eligible officeholders chose to propose law. That a significant number of officeholders did nonetheless propose public laws and that a significant number of other senators and elected officeholders plunged eagerly and effectively into the public debate raises questions about the purposes served by such a high level of face-to-face interaction. Throughout the entire lawmaking process—from generating and drafting a proposal to displaying the draft to going before the people to support or undermine the proposal and finally to convening the people in the appropriate assembly to vote—all political leaders tried to do the same thing: get the approval of the Roman people as measured in the majority vote of the assembled tribes. Oratory like Cicero’s public speeches on the Rullan land proposal focused intently on the crucial role of the Roman voter and indeed on the role of everyone present on the particular occasion of the speech. Some in the audience came as prospective voters, others as vitally interested listeners; some hoped for guidance from the speaker, others hoped to influence the eventual outcome by the weight of their collective desires. Clearly, as conveyed in public orations and law drafts, the presentation of law required not only a high level of knowledge and involvement from Rome’s political leaders but an ability to stir the hearts and minds of the Roman people. rogatio servilia agraria At the end of 64, the tribune P. Servilius Rullus and several colleagues promulgated a proposal of law instituting a colonization scheme involving land purchase and distribution in Italy and the provinces. The prospective colonists, numbering in the many thousands (five thousand in the colony at Capua alone), would be drawn initially from citizens without land and later from the discharged soldiers of the legions under Pompey’s command, still under arms in Syria in late 64. The land to be colonized and distributed included privately owned land in Italy as well as the small amount of remaining public property (ager publicus) Presentation 63 in Italy, the ager Campanus and ager Stellas, the only public property of the Roman people left in Italy, and land in the provinces that was Roman by right of bequest or conquest.4 The complex arrangements for the selection and purchase of lands...

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