Pro Caelio (For Caelius)

In April 56 BC the young politician Marcus Caelius Rufus, a former pupil of Cicero, was prosecuted for public violence. The charges, heard during the Megalensian games, when the courts were otherwise closed, included involvement in the murder of the Alexandrian envoy Dio and an attempt to poison Clodia, the sister of Cicero's enemy Publius Clodius. Cicero, speaking last for the defence, turned the trial into an attack on Clodia herself.

He begins by asking why a trial is being held on a holiday, defends Caelius' family and character, and argues that slander is not evidence. Caelius' association with Catiline is explained by Catiline's seductive, contradictory character. He brushes aside the political charges, leaving the murder of Dio to others, and identifies the real force behind the case: the 'Medea of the Palatine', Clodia. In a famous passage he summons her ancestor Appius Claudius the Blind from the dead to rebuke her, then lets her younger brother speak in the manner of a smart young man about town. He pleads for some licence for youth, praises Caelius' hard work, and then takes the two charges, the gold supposedly borrowed from Clodia and the poison. He tells the story of the poison's handover at the Senian baths as a farce, mocks the witnesses who hid there, raises the death of Clodia's husband Metellus, and ends with an appeal on behalf of Caelius' father.

Caelius was acquitted. The speech is witty, theatrical and full of social detail, and is often read alongside Catullus, whose Lesbia is commonly identified with Clodia.