Clodius’Contio de haruspicum responsis

AbstractThis chapter has two parts. The first offers an imaginative reconstruction, in English, of a no longer extant contional speech by Publius Clodius Pulcher, delivered prior to Cicero’s own surviving speech De haruspicum responsis (‘On the responses of the haruspices,’ Spring 56 bc). This reconstruction is based on fragments derived from the Ciceronian oration, supplemented by examples of anti-Ciceronian invective drawn from other ancient sources. The second part offers a detailed analysis of the language and rhetoric of the Clodian fragments of the speech, situating each into a hypothetical line of reasoning based on Cicero’s own argument and on recent political and religious events. At least seven fragments from Clodius’s contio are identified, none of which appears in Malcovati’s Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta Liberae Rei Publicae.