Abstract
Cicero’s description of the optimates, the best men of the political sphere, in the Pro Sestio—as those nec malis domesticis impediti (“unencumbered by domestic evils,” 97)—is a specific, directed reference to their sexually licentious, immoral lives (T.N. Mitchell believes that Cicero saw luxuria and licentiousness as part of the republic’s moral decline). Cicero’s audience would have concurred that such behavior was publicly reprehensible; as J.L. Butrica and Catharine Edwards discuss, lifestyles involving homosexuality and incest were looked down upon, their adherents disdained. To make this clear, as he begins a discussion of political classes, Cicero identifies his allies (men whom he has lauded as moral and self-sacrificial in both their public and private lives) with the optimates. In particular, he mentions their family history, fidelity, and household stability. In contrast, Cicero’s defamations of his enemies include accusations of adultery, debauchery, homosexuality, and even incest (see especially 18-21, 110-116). Traditional interpretations view mala domestica as a reference to poverty or financial trouble (M.A. Robb, Robin Seager, Ch. Wirszubski, and Neal Wood all suggest that to be an optimates, one must be wealthy and financially stable; W.K. Lacey suggests that this concept may include honesty or sanity, but does not pursue the idea any further, instead focusing on the classical understanding of the boni and improbi). Such an understanding, though perhaps seeming the obvious reading, is insufficient to account for Cicero’s description of his political enemies. Those men whom he excludes from the optimates are not poor or struggling, but wealthy aristocrats. Rather, by hinting at his opponents’ illicit vices and domestic disharmonies, he encourages his audience that their acquittal of Sestius will ally (and identify) themselves with the upstanding and moral optimates, spurning association with shameful sexual activity and proclaiming their private fidelity and family stability.