Oratio Pro A. Licinio Archia Poeta
M. Tulli Ciceronis

Introduction

   "The case of Archias, though not a public one, yet had its origin in the politics of the time. The aristocratic faction, suspecting that much of the strength of their opponents was derived from the fraudulent votes of those who were not citizens, procured in B.C. 65 the passage of the Lex Papia, by which 'all the strangers who possessed neither Roman nor Latin burgess-rights were to be ejected from the capital.' Archias, the poet, a native of Antioch, but for many years a Roman citizen, a friend and client of Lucius Lucullus, was accused in B.C. 62, by a certain Gratius, under this law, on the ground that he was not a citizen. Cicero, a personal friend of Archias, undertook the defence, and the case was tried before the brother of the orator, Quintus Cicero, then praetor.
   It was a very small matter to disprove the charge and establish Archias' claims to citizenship. The greater part of this speech, therefore, is made up of a eulogy upon the poet and upon poetry and literature in general. It is, for this reason, one of the most agreeable of Cicero's orations, and perhaps the greatest favorite of them all."
-- From "Introduction to Pro Archias", Select Orations and Letters of Cicero, ed. J.B. Greenough, G.L. Kittredge, Ginn & Co.: Boston, 1902.

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