CICERO
2 CUM QUAESTOR LILYBAEO DECEDERET
A speech delivered toward the end of his term of office in 75 (MRR 2:98). Its publication is unusual, since it is neither a forensic nor a senate speech. If it is not a forgery,
2 T 1 Ps.-Asc. Arg. Div. Caec. 185.7St
Qui omnes [sc. Siculi], praeter Syracusanos ac Mamertinos, M. Tullium, illo tempore florentem defensionibus amicorum, ad accusandum descendere compulerunt, iam pridem illis necessitudine copulatum, quod quaestor in Sicilia fuisset praetore Sex. Peducaeo et quod, cum decederet, in illa oratione quam Lilybaei habuit multa his benigne promisisset.
2 WHEN HE DEPARTED LILYBAEUM
2 WHEN HE DEPARTED LILYBAEUM AS QUAESTOR (75 bc)
like The Day before He Went into Exile,1 it may have been circulated to publicize his activities this year, which had fallen on deaf ears at Rome (Planc. 64–65).
2 T 1 Pseudo-Asconius, Argument to Cicero, Divinatio in Caecilium
All of them [sc. the Sicilians], apart from the Syracusans and Mamertines, compelled M. Tullius, who at that time was successfully engaged in the defense of his friends, to undertake the prosecution [sc. of C. Verres, who had governed Sicily from 73 to 71]. He was bound to them by ties of long standing because he had been quaestor in Sicily during Sextus Peducaeus’ praetorship1 and because, on his departure, he had made them many kind promises in the speech he delivered at Lilybaeum.2
- 1Peducaeus was probably praetor in 77 and propraetor in 75 (MRR 2:88, 98), but the term is sometimes used loosely in this way; cf. Crawford 1994, 19n1.
- 2Unusually, Sicily had two quaestors at this period, one based at Syracuse, the other at Lilybaeum, to which Cicero had been assigned (MRR 2:98). It was the administrative center of the western part of the island that had been conquered from the Carthaginians; cf. Scramuzza 1937, 154; Pina Polo and Díaz Fernández 2019, 143–51. On Cicero’s continuing interest in the city, cf. Fedeli 1980.
- 1See Manuwald 2021, xl–xliii and 304–73 (text, translation, and commentary).