Pro Murena is one of Cicero's most enjoyable and interesting defences. In this speech, which is no less entertaining than Pro Caelio, Cicero neutralises the prosecutors' moral authority by politely assuring the distinguished lawyer Ser. Sulpicius Rufus that study of the law is a pointless activity, especially for someone with political ambitions, before informing the Stoic M. Porcius Cato that Stoics are cranks whose views should count for nothing in a Roman court of law. Murena was accused of obtaining his consulship for 62 b.c. illegally; and, in the particular circumstances of November 63, all Cicero essentially needed to do to secure his acquittal was to point out that his client was a successful soldier and that Catiline had supporters in the city, and was preparing to march on Rome.
The speech is one of the best ones to use for teaching purposes, and accordingly F. has written a pedagogical commentary aimed at students who have just learned Latin (in three years) and are embarking on their first complete Latin text (p. 3). The introduction covers the careers of the defendant and the prosecutors; electoral malpractice; the historical context; rhetorical figures; prose rhythm; the jury; and the text. There is nothing on the defence advocates, and F. does not mention that Murena's acquittal was unanimous (Flac. 98). There are misunderstandings and mistakes in the coverage of the history. Murena's father fought under Sulla, not Lucullus (p. 6). There was no chance of Catiline being made consul (not a suffect consul) after his departure from Rome because the senate had declared him a hostis (p. 10). Cicero did not seek to drive Catiline from Rome in the Second Catilinarian: Catiline had already left (p. 17). In the comitia centuriata, it was the number of centuries that counted, not the number of votes (p. 17). Autronius and P. Sulla did not go into exile in 66 (p. 18): if they had, how could they have been tried in Rome in 62, and how could there be a Pro Sulla dating from that year (a speech which has strong thematic connections with Pro Murena, but which goes almost unmentioned in this book)? There is no serious discussion of the charges (‘The actual charges … were pretty dull’, p. 23). As regards the publication of the speech, F. claims that Cicero did not include the speech in his consular corpus in 60 (Att. 2.1.3) because ‘this was “only” a judicial speech’ (p. 4); the more likely reason is that it had already been published. The coverage of rhetoric barely goes beyond figures. There is no schematic analysis of the speech. F. says ‘I will approach the analysis of Pro Murena through the conventional structure of ancient rhetorical manuals’ (p. 24), but does not then do so. There is nothing on periodic style. There are two paragraphs on prose rhythm, which give the false impression that rhythm is only found in particular parts of the speech such as the beginning and end (p. 29). The note on the text explains that F. reproduces A.C. Clark's OCT, which is dated on the same page both to 1905 and to 1908 (p. 31). F. declares that ‘there has been no new edition since Clark's Oxford Classical Text of 1905’, but in the same sentence acknowledges J. Adamietz's edition of 1989, saying that Adamietz ‘has made only very modest choices’ (p. 31). She would seem to be unaware of the editions of A. Boulanger (Budé, 1943), M.M. Peña (1956) and H. Kasten (Teubner, 1972).
The commentary reviews the argument and provides historical information, parallels for metaphors (including in Latin poetry) and grammatical help. It does not by any means comment on everything that requires explanation, and some sections receive rather few notes (a block of ten lines on the first page receives no comment). Ancient evidence is often lacking; for example, readers are told twice in two pages (pp. 106, 107) that there were only fourteen patrician families, but no source is given. (This is a problem in the introduction as well: F. writes, ‘We can date the trial of Murena and this speech from internal evidence’ [p. 5], but the evidence is not given.) Reference is made to points that Cicero had apparently already made in the first two Catilinarians (pp. 86, 154); but the written versions of those speeches date only from 60. Mention is made of Quintilian's praise of the partitio of the speech (p. 99), but neither the partitio nor any other part is identified. There is very little reference to secondary literature; D.R. Shackleton Bailey's conjectures are discussed (pp. 117, 162), but F. does not say where they can be found. On prose rhythm, esse videatur is twice said to have been Cicero's favourite clausula (pp. 136, 145). In fact, the esse videatur rhythm accounts for 6.4% of Cicero's clausulae, whereas the cretic-trochee accounts for 23.3% (on T. Zielinski's figures). The book has an appendix containing extracts from the Commentariolum Petitionis and from the Brutus (on Cicero's fellow advocates Hortensius and Crassus); a third passage, the letter of Mithridates from Sallust, Histories 4 is less obviously relevant. There is a bibliography and a two-page index.
The blurb claims that this is the first commentary on this speech in English, and that it is therefore long overdue. In fact, there are four previous English-language commentaries, all of which can be consulted with profit: G. Long (1856), W.E. Heitland (1874), J.H. Freese (1894) and C. Macdonald (1969). Surprisingly, perhaps, these are all still in print and available on Amazon. F. shows no awareness of any of them, or of a German commentary on §§ 19–30 of the speech by A. Bürge, Die Juristenkomik in Ciceros Rede Pro Murena (1974). She might have learned of some of these books from the annotated translation of the speech in the reviewer's Oxford World's Classics volume, Cicero: Defence Speeches (2000); but that is not mentioned either. F.'s commentary is in direct competition with Macdonald's, since Macdonald's too is aimed at students whose knowledge of Latin is not advanced. Macdonald provides considerably more help with the translation, and more than twice the number of notes, while also supplying a vocabulary at the back. F. on the other hand gives fuller historical information. Nevertheless, Macdonald was an expert on the history of the period, being the author of the 1977 replacement Loeb of the speech, and demonstrates a better grasp of the Catilinarian conspiracy and of the 60s generally than F. does. Macdonald's was the best Loeb edition of Cicero until quite recently (it also includes the closely related speeches In Catilinam I–IV, Pro Sulla and Pro Flacco), and is of a distinctly high standard. F. makes no mention of it.
It might be thought that these defects are of little significance, because the book is, after all, aimed at inexperienced Latinists. But the book has a strong sense of being under-researched. Inexperienced Latinists at university will want something fuller and more scholarly. School pupils, on the other hand, will be better served by Macdonald's edition, because it provides so much more help with the Latin.
