Murder trials - Cicero

Cicero was still in his twenties when he got Sextus Roscius off a charge of murdering his father and nearly sixty when he defended King Deiotarus, accused of trying to murder Caesar. In between (with, among others, his speeches for Cluentius and Rabirius) he built a reputation, which still stands, as the greatest orator of all time.

Cicero's clients generally went free. And, in vindicating men who sometimes did not deserve it, he left us a mass of detail about Roman life, law and history and, in two of these speeches, graphic pictures of the 'gun-law' of small provincial towns.