Pro Marcello (For Marcellus)

Pro Marcello is the speech of thanks Cicero gave in the senate in 46 BC, after Julius Caesar, victorious in the civil war, agreed at the senate's request to pardon Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Marcellus, consul in 51 BC and one of Caesar's fiercest opponents, was living in exile at Mytilene. The occasion moved Cicero to break the public silence he had kept since Caesar's victory.

Cicero begins by explaining why he now speaks after a long silence, and praises Caesar's mercy as a greater achievement than his conquests. Caesar's victories in war, he says, were shared with his soldiers and with fortune, but his clemency belongs to him alone; in sparing his defeated opponents he has conquered victory itself. Those who fought against him acted from mistaken judgement, not from wickedness, and his pardon frees them from guilt. Cicero compares the two kinds of victory, and later urges Caesar to devote himself to restoring the state, rejects his remark that he has lived long enough, and promises that the senate will guard his life.

The speech is short, elaborate and carefully balanced, and its sincerity has been debated: it can be read as gratitude, as flattery, or as advice to a dictator. Marcellus was murdered at Piraeus on his way home in 45 BC.