THE DISTRIBUTION OF POETIC QUOTATIONS IN CICERO'S EXTANT WORKS

It has often been remarked that Cicero's quotations of and references to poetry are far more copious in his rhetorical and philosophical writing than in his private letters and public speeches. Latin poetry and its subject matter decorate in quantity only a few of the speeches, namely the defences of Sextus Roscius Amerinus (80 b.c.) Marcus Caelius (56), Publius Sestius (56) and Rabirius Postumus (54), the prosecution of Caius Verres (70) and the senatorial denunciation of Lucius Calpurnius Piso (55). A speech defending a man of Greek birth who wrote verses contains the only two mentions of Greek poetry. In the letters to Pomponius (Atticus) literal quotations of the Greek poets abound, in those to Papirius Paetus and Trebatius Testa quotations of the Romans. Poetry in either language, however, is conspicuously rare in the letters addressed to other eminent senators and equestrians. What little survives of speeches and letters composed by other men during the period of the Republic suggests that there was nothing very unusual about Cicero's practice.

Less remarked has been the fact that the relatively few quotations of Latin poetry which do appear in the speeches and the letters are dominated by the dramatic scripts performed at the public festivals, particularly the versions of Attic tragedy made in the previous century, to the almost complete exclusion of the epic poetry of Ennius and the satires of Lucilius.