Let us begin by looking at some of the common political dirty tricks. Writing from Rome to his old school chum Atticus in 54 B.C., ten years after his own campaign, Cicero shows the depths to which the Roman political system had sunk: consules flagrant infamia, he says, "the consuls are ablaze with scandal" [ad Att iv.17]. He informs Atticus that the Senate is holding a closed session to inquire into charges of misconduct on the parts of the individual candidates, causing magnus timor candidatorum, "great fear among the candidates." It all started when one of the candidates did not--as the saying goes--stay bought. Gaius Memmius got up in the Senate and read out an agreement that he and his fellow candidate Domitius had made with the present consuls to pay them a large sum of money for suborning witnesses in the event of their own election. Shades of the Watergate Tapes! (Or one might think of Linda Tripp’s infamous personal bugging of her friend’s intimate conversations or someone with a mind for scandal will remember a certain blue dress.) The agreement was not even verbal as such things ought to be, but recorded in full, with the sums of money and the names of the conspirators, drafts on the bank were produced in evidence along with reams of other documents. No White House adviser had managed to reduce the incriminating paper trail so that there was no opportunity to claim "I was out of the loop," or "not to the best of my recollection." The disclosure, Cicero says, totally ruined Memmius himself. Three of the candidates, he continues, are sure to be prosecuted: Domitius by Memmius, Messalla by Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and Scaurus by Triarius or Lucius Caesar. So it goes....

Continuing to comment on the sleaze-factor in government, in another letter written shortly after this one, Cicero says flatly, Candidati consulares omnes rei ambitus, "all the candidates for the consulate are up on charges of bribery" [ad Att. iv.18], but, he adds cynically, they will all be acquitted, and in future no one will ever be convicted of any charge but murder.

It was common practice to get up a prosecution of one’s fellow candidates on charges of corrupt campaign practices. Even the vague threat of such a prosecution can be helpful (as Cicero’s brother Quintus hints) in making one’s opponents uneasy. But the candidate should be careful not to appear to be planning a court case.

Since our city is most corrupt, writes Quintus, in its tendency to forget good character and moral worth when bribery enters the picture, you should remember that you of all people can put the fear of prosecution into your competitors: let them know that you are watching them closely...But I do not mean that you should appear to be getting a case together, but only to gain your goal more easily through their terror of a prosecution. (com. pet. 55)

This advice was sent to Cicero by his brother in the year of his candidacy (64 B.C.), but the following year as consul, Cicero defended one of the winners for the next year on just such a charge. The speech, pro Murena has survived and is an especially fine source for election procedures and a delightful example of Cicero’s wit in a winning case.

Murena, after his election, was prosecuted by the upstanding Marcus Cato, who would, if he were alive today, be a leading member of the moral majority, and by Servius Sulpicius who had been an unsuccessful candidate competing with Murena. The speech makes it clear why a candidate should not be seen as intent on prosecuting competitors while he is running for office. While Servius, a member of the legal profession, was getting his case together, everybody voted for Murena as the stronger candidate, the one more interested in winning the election than in prosecuting his fellow candidates. Addressing Servius, Cicero says in effect "I told you so!" Petere consulatum nescire te, Servi, persaepe tibi dixi! "I have told you time and again, Servius, that you do not know how to run for the consulate" [pro Murena, 43]. Cicero claims that he gave Servius the advice during the campaign that intimidation and threats may look brave, but that they really turn people off. They make the voters think that you have given up the hope of getting elected and are acting out of envy or sour grapes. Campaigning is a subtle art: sed aliud tempus est petendi, aliud persequendi, "there’s a time for campaigning and a time for going to court" [pro Murena, 43].

Some scholars find Quintus’ advice unclear, but anyone who pays even the least attention to modern politicking will appreciate the subtle distinction between intimidation and outright attack. Innuendo is much more effective than open accusation, which often backfires. In the year that ended with George Sr. defeating Michael Dukakis when the democratic field of candidates was known as the "Seven Dwarfs" Gore’s attack on the other height-challenged individuals got him nowhere. Dukakis had to apologize when his office was found to have leaked damaging video-tapes that showed Beiden in the very act of plagiarizing a British Labour party statesman’s childhood memoirs. Bush did not make any points when he attacked Mrs. Dole. This year all sides have promised to take the high road and avoid maligning each other personally. That will be done by the soft money contributors and through subliminal (or subliminable?) messages: Rats! Otherwise it would be a really dull campaign.

The co-prosecutor in the Murena case was Cato, a man of irreproachable character and one who had not run for office that year. He had announced before the election that he would bring charges of bribery against whoever won. But the winner with Murena was Decimus Silanus, Cato’s brother-in-law. Cato’s hard- nosed Stoicism went only so far. When it came to family even Cato could compromise and so he accused only Murena.

In his speech for Murena, Cicero mocks Cato’s immoderate Stoicism and surprises his audience with the revelation that even the fierce old Cato was milder-mannered than his latter-day namesake [pro Murena 66]. The old Cato, as censor, had a man thrown out of the Senate for kissing his wife (his own, not Cato’s) in public–good thing Al Gore isn’t a senator anymore. Cicero won the case by cheerfully laughing it out of court. As far as the charge itself was concerned, he glosses over that little detail, which was the best that could reasonably be done, since there is little doubt that the allegations were true.

The most common campaign dirty trick was concerned with ambitus, literally "a going around" or canvassing for votes. Personal contact with the electorate was the rule. But propaganda was dubious and among the laws de ambitu is one forbidding propaganda outside the city of Rome. Corruption in politicking increased and with it more laws were enacted to try to curb it. As Tacitus says of the period, "when the Republic was most corrupt, it had the most laws." Cicero himself put through a campaign law during his stint as consul, the lex Tullia de ambitu, which forbade anyone’s putting on a public show for two years before his candidacy. Public shows were a very popular form of bribery, like our own "election-year largesse": promises of tax cuts or improvements in Medicare.

The laws on bribery were in vain, however heavy the penalties. Loop-holes could always be found. A common deterioration of ambitus, or "going around", was going around distributing large sums of money to the tribes or giving dinners to whole tribes.

Though originally legitimate geographical divisions, like wards or districts, tribes came to be Gerrymandered in such a way that the whole constantly-expanding urban population (with its great influx of foreigners, freedmen, and destitute ex-farmers and soldiers) was enrolled in only four urban tribes, throwing the balance of power into the hands of the land-owners (and their dependants) in the 31 rural tribes outside the city.

To be generous to one’s own tribe seems to have been acceptable, but not to others. But in the speech for Murena, Cicero shows us a loop-hole in the law. One’s friends could make the gifts in one’s behalf! Laundering of political contributions is nothing new. And if Cicero took his brother’s advice in his own campaign, he too was guilty of this infraction. For Quintus, in advising Marcus to make sure that his generosity is widely publicized, suggests that he and his friends give frequent banquets to the tribes and even to the people at large (com. pet., 44).

My learned opponent, says Cicero in the speech for Murena, has suggested that spectacles were given to whole tribes and that large crowds were invited to dinner. But, gentlemen of the jury, this was by no means done by Murena. It was carried out in the customary fashion and in moderation, by his friends. [pro Murena, 72].

The prosecution also complained about the large following Murena had, to which Cicero’s retort was doce mercede: "prove that they were paid to do it and I will admit it was a crime" [70]. Cicero proceeds to turn this rather shady practice into a political virtue in this eloquent plea to the prosecutors:

Men of small means have only one way of deserving and repaying favors to our order: this service of attending us in our campaigns.... Do not, Cato, steal this function from men of the lower economic strata. Leave for those whose aspirations rest entirely in our hands, something of their own that they can give us. If they have nothing but their votes, the little people--even if they exercise their suffrage--have no influence.

What Cicero is suggesting here is true: the Romans elected their consuls and praetors (and censors) in the comitia centuriata (the Roman people voting by "centuries", originally military divisions). This was never a democratic institution, even though the whole citizen body voted in it. What was undemocratic about it was that the centuries voted by class. There was no such thing as one man, one vote. The people were divided according to wealth into classes in such a way that in the early period the Knights (or Equites) plus the first class formed a majority if they voted for the same candidate. And all the votes of each century went to the candidate who won the majority of that century, something like our electoral college. The result is that the Equites and the first class could elect the consuls by themselves and the other classes would not even have to bother to vote. Think of the networks announcing the winners before the polls out west have even closed.

By the end of the second century B.C.E., there had been some democratic reforms: the Equites no longer had the praerogativa (the right of voting first) and the first class was reduced in numbers of centuries; property values were lowered and the currency devalued. But the centuriate assembly remained a class structure to the end: a century chosen by lot from the first class held the praerogativa and these votes were announced before the others had a chance to cast their ballots, no doubt influencing uncommitted votes from other centuries. The importance of the praerogativa is shown in a letter of Cicero to his brother (ii.15.4) on the scandalous campaign of 54 B.C. Ambitus redit immanis, "bribery", he says, "has come back in enormous proportions. Never has it been so great...and I’m not exaggerating." It seems that Memmius and the consuls formed a coalition with Domitius and made a public proclamation that they would pay 10,000 sesterces to the parerogativa. Thus, in the pro Murena Cicero is asserting that the only way an average citizen could get actively involved and have a say in the political system was by actively supporting the candidate of his choice in his campaign.

Bribery never was curbed: in the late Republic, even the old sodalitates (or guides, originally formed among members of the same trade or cult) were used primarily to distribute bribes on a large scale. Q. Cicero points out to his brother that he has four of these unions under an obligation to him; and he advises him to make the most of them and get out of them what they owe him. And Quintus takes the cheerful attitude that bribery is not the decisive factor in any election: there are always some centuries that remain uncorrupted.

Another election abuse, even worse than bribery, was the intimidation of the electorate through violence. Naturally every candidate wanted to have large crowds (of sectatores or "followers" to accompany him when he made his rounds -- we call these campaign workers and volunteers). But, although sectatores were not in themselves illegal, sometimes the candidates went too far and hired gangs to escort them: to pay one’s supporters was illegal, but it had to be proved (as Cicero points out in the speech for Murena). In 52 B.C. in another infamous election, both Clodius and Milo gathered private armies to coerce the voters. Generals could use their armies to make threats and such a thing may be inferred from Cicero’s mention of the army’s being in town to vote for Murena. In 55 B.C. Pompey used his army to run the opposing candidates and their followers off the voting field. The loyalty of the armies to their leaders during the campaign was to have an undesireable side effect for the continuation of the republic.

One of the most dramatic tales of abuse of the electoral process through vis or violence is told by Cicero--and here it is the potential victim who gives the theatrical touch to the crime which took place during Cicero’s consulship. Cicero narrates in the pro Murena, the events of Catiline’s second campaign. While Servius was threatening a prosecution, Catiline made a formal announcement that he would in effect overthrow the government.

Disturbed by these actions [of Catiline], says Cicero, and because I knew that the conspirators, armed with swords had been led into the campus [the Campus Martius where the elections were held] by Catiline, I went down into the Campus with a strong guard of strong men, and wearing a broad and conspicuous breastplate: not so much to shield me (for I knew that Catiline aimed not for the side or the mid- section, but for the neck and head), but so that all good men would notice, and when they saw their consul in fear and danger, they would run to his aid [pro Mur. 5.2].

The sight of their portly consul sporting his spear-proof vest apparently worked: the conspiracy was nipped in the bud, and by the end of Cicero’s year as consul, Catiline and his campaign workers were off the political scene forever.

Other political crimes were the old stand-bys of ballot-box stuffing and false counts of the votes which were taken care of by officials called custodes and diribitores, men of the upper classes who consistently looked after their own interests. [Such practices are legendary from the old days of machine politics, and none so colorful as the old Daley machine in Chicago, where loyal Democrats were assured a kind of immortality, being allowed to continue voting for the party ticket long after they were dead and buried. Charges of such abuse also plagued Clinton who was accused of lowering the standards for naturalization so that more new citizens, notoriously democratic, would be able to vote.]

A favorite crime to accuse one’s opponents of just before the elections was repetundae (the misappropriation of public funds, especially graft and extortion in the provinces). Though there were many laws de repetundis, which tried to curb the practice, it was so profitable to enrich oneself at the expense of the subject peoples that it was impossible to stop it. This was the crime for which Lucius Sergius Catilina (or Catiline) was on trial in 65 B.C. Catiline was being prosecuted by Publius Clodius for misappropriation of public monies while he was propraetor in Africa. [This was the same Clodius who was to become Cicero’s bitter enemy and to engineer Cicero’s year of exile and the same Clodius who broke into Caesar’s house dressed in women’s clothing; he was also brother of Catullus’ girlfriend]. Catiline’s trial is alluded to in two letters of Cicero dated in 65 B.C. while he was mapping out his own campaign. In the first letter he writes to Atticus [ad Att. 1.1]:

Catiline is certain to be one of my competitors, if the judges decide that the sun does not shine at noon!

Catiline was certainly guilty, having taken advantage of his year in Africa to recoup his failing fortunes, but while under indictment, he could not run for public office. But in the next letter to Atticus [1.2], Cicero surprises us with this statement:

At this time we are thinking of defending our fellow- candidate, Catiline. We have the jury we want and the goodwill of the prosecutor.

In the trial he showed by his acquittal how great his power and influence are: if that can be called a trial; if that can be called an acquittal [in Toga candida].

The implication is that dirty tricks played a large part in that court decision. Quintus Cicero writes [com. pet. 10] in his Electioneering Handbook that Catiline came out of the trial as poor as certain members of the jury went into it.

One last political dirty trick is the coitio, or coalition of two candidates to block another. Usually this dubious practice amounted to the two candidates pooling their resources for more efficient bribery or intimidation. Two of Cicero’s fellow-candidates joined together to keep him out, Catiline and C. Antonius, relying (we are told by Asconius) on the firm support of Crassus and Caesar. Cicero himself was not altogether averse to cooperating with his opponents: in the second letter to Atticus just quoted, after saying that he might speak in Catiline’s behalf, he ads "I hope that if Catiline is acquitted, it will make us closer in the campaign, but if not, I will take it like a man." It could be that Cicero had in mind to defend Catiline with the same sincerity as Clodius was prosecuting him with, though Cicero did defend many a scoundrel in his time.

The "stop-Cicero" movement failed. Cicero was elected along with Antonius. Catiline was defeated, but he would try again the next year.

III Cicero’s Actual Campaign

From the middle of 65 to the middle of 64 B.C., Cicero was running for the consulate, the highest office in the Roman Republic, the high point of a Roman’s political career. Cicero’s consulate is well documented because he talks about it so much. He sincerely believed that he had saved the state from destruction by Catiline through his watchfulness and speedy action as consul. His campaign for office is also well documented from two of his letters to Atticus, from the pamphlet outlining campaign strategy addressed to him by his brother, and from one of his speeches (which survives only in quotations chosen for comment by Asconius, a first century historian), the oratio in Toga Candida, "in the white toga" so called because when the aspiring politician threw his hat into the ring, as it were, he wore a toga whitened with chalk (becoming a candidatus) to greet electors in the forum. Asconius tells us that Cicero had six competitors in his bid for the consulate:

Two patricians, Galba and Catiline

Four plebeians of whom two were nobles: Antonius and Cassius Longinus

and two other plebeian contenders whose families had held office before:

Cornuficius and Licinius.

Cicero was the only Knight [member of the Equites] to run that year.

The formal announcement of candidacy took place 24 days before the scheduled election, and from this time on the office- seeker (officially called a petitor) wore his whitened toga. The elections usually took place in July (though postponements were frequent). In the first of the two campaign-year letters to Atticus, Cicero tells how things stand about one year before the election. Cicero had clearly started his informal canvass for votes by this time and was planning to start his active bid at the elections of the tribunes when many rural Italians would be in town, even before the election of the consuls for 64. Cicero writes in July of 65 B.C., prensat unus Publius Galba, "only Galba is actively campaigning." But Galba was not getting much support: his problem seems to have been the familiar one of over-exposure (called in Latin praepropera prensatio "over-hasty campaign") coupled with what we would call soft-support. Or as Cicero puts it more maiorum negatur, "he is getting a resounding NO in the custom of our ancestors." What is more important to Cicero in this informal "poll" that Galba is taking is that those who are refusing to support Galba are implying that they have a prior commitment to Cicero, hinting, incidentally, that Cicero himself had been campaigning for some time before his official entry. Cicero is especially pleased with the psychological effect that Galba’s failure will have: he is hoping for a band-wagon effect when he himself is seen to be winning.

"It will do us good (or so we hope)," Cicero confides to Atticus, "when word gets around that we have the most friends." Friends and friendships were the heart of the political game, which was far less party-oriented than it is now.

The personal nature of the political process in Republican Rome is made abundantly clear in the Commentariolum Petitionis, which purports to have been written, in the form of a letter, by Q. Tullius Cicero to his brother Marcus early in the latter’s campaign.

I did not think it at variance with our mutual affection to write out for you those things which keep coming into my mind as night and day I ponder your campaign: not that you would learn anything new from it, but so that the things which seem disconnected and indefinite in everyday life might be gathered together in a logical outline and put into a single focus.

Letters of instruction that amount to self-help books are a commonplace in classical literature: Cicero himself wrote a companion piece to this one, addressed to his brother Quintus on how to be a good provincial governor (ad Q. frat. 1.1-1.2) with special advice on how to keep his temper and a second letter on how to clean things up on leaving office (1.2, esp.9) in which one piece of advice stands out: in modern terms, GET A PAPER SHREDDER! That is, Marcus advises his brother to clean up any matters that have not been taken care of and, pointedly, to destroy any documents that are inequitable, in bad taste, or insulting.

Furthermore, the period immediately preceding the candidacy of Cicero had produced rather a lot of laws regulating elections, so that Quintus could be thought of as a researcher for his brother in looking up and outlining the laws de ambitu that had recently been passed, and in preparing a campaign strategy that would keep within the letter of the law.

In closing the booklet, Quintus asks for his brother’s editorial advice, perhaps because he had in mind to publish the work as a general pamphlet on campaign strategy. One of the objections to Quintus’ authorship of the handbook is that his brother actually did say in later speeches some things that are remarkably similar to certain rhetorical passages in Quintus’ work. It could be that Cicero, rather than plagiarizing his brother’s work [although he would not have given it a second thought to do so], did in fact exercise his editorial discretion and added some brutally personal attacks against Catiline and Antonius, without which a handbook on politics could by no means be as perfect and complete as his brother wanted it to be.

One last point on the date and authenticity of the handbook seems most compelling. In it Catiline is taken as the most formidable opponent and much of the booklet deals with how to beat him. But events of history turned out otherwise. Asconius tells us that Cicero was elected unanimously, but that Antonius beat Catiline by several of the centuries. Now if the work were written after the fact, surely the loser Catiline would not have been the man to beat. It would be like writing a paper on how Bush could beat Haig if he really tried or telling Dukakis that Hart (remember him) was the man to beat. Whether or not Quintus wrote the book, whether or not Marcus ever read it, the little book tells us a lot about politics in this age.

To introduce his pamphlet, before getting into the nitty-gritty of campaign strategy, Quintus lists the considerations that must be kept constantly in mind: novus sum, consulatum peto, Roma est, "I am new, I seek the consulate, this is Rome." Marcus’ chief drawback was that he was a novus homo, a "new man": his family had not held national office before his generation: he was an outsider. During the third and second centuries a nobility of rich landowners of both patrician and plebeian ancestry had grown up. Families that had held the consulship formed this nobility: they were the political Establishment, the Rome-insiders. They managed to hand down the tradition of office from generation to generation within their own families and they were very effective in blocking a new man from gaining office. In the last 150 years of the Republic only ten "new men" reached the consulate; and in the last 45 years the monopoly of office which the nobles kept had grown tighter still. They so jealously guarded what they considered their prerogative, that between 93 and 48 B.C. the only novus homo to reach the consulate was the consul of 63 B.C., Marcus Tullius Cicero.

On the other hand, Cicero’s number one selling point, according to his brother, is his dicendi gloria, his fame as a speaker, which compensates for his being an outsider. Quintus’ advice is "act as if your whole career depended on every speech. In Rome, a big criminal trial was a great public spectacle and therefore an important political event, certainly as important as a presidential debate. It was, as Lily Ross Taylor points out, Cicero’s power to move and persuade an audience that allowed him to reach the consulate as the only new man of his generation.

Most of the Commentariolum Petitionis is devoted to campaign strategies: to gaining influential friends and getting out the vote. Quintus gives three reasons people have for supporting a candidate: benefits received, expectations of future benefits, and spontaneous personal attachments, and then advises his brother how to get the most out of the three groups. "See that you have a great many friends of all classes," for as Quintus points out, Cicero--even though he is a novus homo--already has whole groups committed to him: all the publicans (public contractors), practically the whole equestrian order, many municipalities, and men of all ranks who had been defended by Cicero in the courts. He also had a great many young nobles on his side. He should acquire more and bind the uncommitted. There is quite a lot of advice on getting the uncommitted vote: Quintus seems to think that Marcus can get practically all the voters who are not related by blood to one of the other candidates. In advising his brother of the importance of nobles, especially consulares (men who had held the consulate, sort of like "super delegates"), Quintus tells him to convince the nobles that his sympathies have always been with the optimates (the senatorial-authority party). Quintus suggests that Marcus clarify his position, by explaining that if he has ever seemed to take a popular stand on any issue, it was to win the favor of Pompey so as to have a powerful friend in the campaign. Such clarification of one’s political position as opposed to one’s personal stand on the issue is understandable to anyone with an ear for politics.

Friendship (amicitia) was the Republican Roman’s substitute for political party, for platform, and for program, although you may see the politicians of this era divided into two parties: the optimates who supported the status quo and the authority of the senate and the populares who tried to by-pass the senate and worked through the tribunes to please the people. Both were senatorial parties: only senators are ever said to belong to one side or the other. The optimates favored aristocracy: rule by the best men, themselves [the terms used to describe them as optimates (the best men) or boni (good men) are their own terms, used only by their partisans; they called their opponents "wicked men"]. Nor were the populares by any means united in a singular "popular" program (neither party had any organization): there were various factions under the leadership of individuals or coalitions (such as the one Catiline and Antonius formed to block Cicero), but the populares really aimed at one-man rule.

Sallust puts it best (Sallust had been a Caesarian and a popularis, but writing in his mature years he says):

For to put the truth in a nutshell, after that time, all those who attacked the state in the name of honor, some on the grounds that they were defending the rights of the people, others that the prestige of the senate might be maintained, though all were using as a pretext the public welfare, they were in reality working as individuals --pro sua quisque potentia certabunt--each for his personal advancement.

In the absence of a party machine or party organization at all, we do have the institution of political amicitia. That this is quite different from real friendship is made clear by Quintus in a few telling passages. For example: "the word friends has a broader application in a campaign than in the rest of life."

Cicero certainly understood this and acted upon it. In one of the letters to Atticus quoted earlier, he tries to extricate himself from a ticklish situation in which he had defended a rather shady character against Atticus’ uncle, a sour-tempered old goat who is not taking it like a gentleman. Cicero helped the culprit because he was a supporter of Cicero’s: "you know the game I am playing," he writes to his friend.

This is just the kind of thing Quintus is talking about when he says, "of course you should rely on old and trusted friendships primarily, but many expedient friendships can be acquired along the campaign trail itself: for all its bothers, the campaign does offer this benefit, which you cannot take advantage of in the rest of life: in a campaign you can honorably ally yourself in friendship to anyone you wish. If in everyday circumstances you were to make use of some of these people, you would be considered to act in bad taste, but if, in a campaign, you do not actively seek their support, you would appear to be a totally inadequate campaigner." Cicero, you may remember, gave some thought to a political friendship with Catiline: politics always has made strange bed-fellows.

Quintus further advises his brother to let his "friends" know that now is the time--if ever there is to be one--to repay any services he has done them in the past, reminding him that there is a large number of people whom he has saved from ruin. The gratitude of these people can be used as a lever of intimidation: their self-respect depends upon their supporting Cicero now. And, mind you, (he goes on) very small favors are enough to convince people to support a candidate.

Then there are the obligations of a candidate to his constituency. Offer your new "friends" the hope of personal advantage--knowing their names is not enough--let them know that a friendship with you is worth their while. Quintus shows some political sophistication in pointing out that those attached to Cicero by their expectations (as opposed to those committed because of past favors) are likely to be a more discriminating and exacting group: let them know that you are ready to help them, but also watch them carefully to make sure you are getting as much as you can from them. Know your campaign workers; set up local committees and get them to act like candidates in your behalf.

As far as campaign promises are concerned, it is better to lie than refuse. People want promises, especially those made lavishly. Be generous, even if your generosity does not filter down to the people, they like to hear about it. So render services to people, but make sure you get plenty of publicity for these services. As for your voluntary workers, accommodate your speeches to their reasons for supporting you, and let them believe that your present friendship for them will be carried over into a more intimate relationship after the campaign.

The point of the game is, after all, to get into office. The friendships that Q. recommends: energetic senators and knights and influential men from all orders; people of influence in the neighborhoods, leading members of the tribes, bigwigs in the colleges and unions, the municipal leaders, and prominent figures in the rural towns: these are the people who will be able to bring out the vote. Getting out the vote in ancient Rome would be an organization-man’s nightmare: there were six regular magistracies every year, chosen on different days, with frequent postponements, complicating the process. Voters lived all over Italy, but there was no absentee-balloting, so that they all had to come to Rome to vote. Cicero is advised to campaign assiduously: "nobody should be able to say that he has not been canvassed by you." We might think of the Pennsylvania and Florida strategies of the two major candidates: they made so many stops in the Keystone State that one pundit was heard to remark, "It’s as if we were electing the President of Pennsylvania.

"The next point," says Quintus, "is more difficult and more suited to the times than to your character: what you cannot do, either refuse graciously, or better yet, do not refuse: the first is the course of a good man, the other of a good candidate!" And Q. continues with the words of wisdom of one Gaius Cotta, in ambitione artifex, "a real maestro in the field of electioneering," who used to say that "unless the request conflicted with his duty, he used to promise his service to everybody, but give it to those in whom it would be best invested. In this way he would refuse no one--though he did not always have to make good on his promises; because if one accepted only those obligations which one could be sure to perform, one’s house would never be full... But (he continued) if your refuse you are certain to make more enemies and these immediately, since there are always more people who ask for your help than ever actually need to use it. So, it is better to have some of the people angry with you some of the time in the street, than all of the people angry with you all of the time at home: especially since they are much more angry with those who refuse than with those who have good reason for not being able to carry out what they have promised, but would gladly do it if only they could."

With such a campaign strategy, a man would barely need a platform. But one of Cicero’s opponents, the notorious Catiline, did have a platform, a platform to be sure with only one plank in it, and that plank quite abhorrent to the creditor class (of which Cicero was a member along with all other people of influence). But Catiline’s program brought him much support from the populous debtor class: the plank in Catiline’s platform was TABULAE NOVAE "clean slates," the abolition of all debts of which Catiline himself had a great many. Although he had cleaned up in Africa, he had just undergone a costly trial.

A powerful and stirring speech, addressed to his supporters, is reported by Sallust (this speech is actually from Catiline’s second campaign, but it gives a picture of his program):

But my resolution is rekindled more and more each day when I consider under what conditions we will have to live if we do not regain our freedom now! For our state has betrayed its power and its rights into the hands of a few powerful men: to them kings and potentates pay tribute, to them nations and peoples pay taxes. All the rest of us, good men and brave, make up a mob, without influence, without rights, pushed out by those who would live in terror of us, if the state were not in its death throes. In their hands is all the wealth and power; theirs it is to give to whom they please. To us they have left danger and defeat, criminal prosecutions and poverty. How long, how long are we to endure this? Rise up then! To the victors go the spoils-- riches, honor, glory are ours for the taking! These things I hope I shall accomplish with you as your consul, unless I deceive myself and you are more ready to be slaves than to rule.

Although Cicero did have a program once he got into office (his concordia ordinum, an alliance of interest between the senate and the knights against the popular demagogues, which turned out to be absolutely ineffectual), during the campaign itself, Cicero does not attack Catiline’s policy. Instead he attacks Catiline. As Quintus had advised, "stir up scandals about your rivals." And he even gives a few forceful hints of the kinds of things to use against Catiline and Antonius. And so, making use of the tried and true tactic of muck-raking Cicero attacked Catiline’s character in a fiery speech delivered to the senate a few days before the election in 64. Parts of the speech in which Cicero accused Catiline of every crime he could think of including mass murder have survived, among them this attack:

With whores and every outrage he has polluted himself; he is bloody from butchering and slaughtering; he has robbed the allies; he has done violence to our laws and courts of justice.

Why should I mention that you have raped a whole province. I dare not tell how you conducted yourself there, since you were acquitted. Rather I am to suppose that the Roman Knights perjured themselves, that the testimony of a most honest state was false, that Quintus Metellus Pius lied, that all Africa lied ... You are a fool, Catiline! Not to understand that in that judgment you were not acquitted, but reserved for a more severe judgment, for a greater punishment!

This is good stuff and it was effective: apparently no one was concerned with keeping the campaign at a high level. As Ronald Syme says, "the nobles knew their man: they voted in Cicero to keep out Catiline."

I conclude with three pieces of advice given by Quintus Cicero to his brother Marcus which may sound all too contemporary:

1. The people are taken in more by looks and words than by actual benefits and the facts.

2. Make sure that your whole campaign is plena pompae (a good show), brilliant, splendid, pleasing to the people, and that it have the utmost visibility (speciem) and prestige (dignitatem).

3. And, finally: "above all else you must see to it that the hope of the state rests in you; but still, in petendo res publica cappessenda est neque in senatu neque in contione, in seeking office, it is necessary, whether speaking before the senate or to the people, not ever, ever to talk about the issues."