Cicero: Pro P. Sulla Oratio

Book excerpt: In 62 BC, the year after his suppression of Catiline, Cicero delivered Pro Sulla, a successful defence of P. Cornelius Sulla, the nephew of the dictator, on a charge of participation in the Catilinarian conspiracy. This edition, which contains a new text together with introduction, commentary and appendices, is the first full-scale scholarly treatment of the speech. The text takes account of Gulielmius' reports of the missing portion of the Erfurtensis manuscript, recovered by Dr Berry and published as a preliminary to this edition in 1989; a complete collation is provided of this and the other principal manuscripts. The introduction includes a reassessment of Sulla's guilt and Cicero's undertaking of the case, and also considers issues such as the prose rhythm of the speech and its publication. The commentary discusses history, text and syntax as well as rhetoric and style.