Cui Bono

A few nights ago I accidentally saw a B.B.C.2 dramatisation of a famous 80 B.C murder trial in the Roman Forum. Now why the venerable B.B.C. chose to make this at this moment in history is anybody's guess. I have a very good guess. Cui Bono, even then in the Republic, was a political proverb and became from this trial a legal expression. For the uninitiated (Classics instruction continues to shrink) it means Whose Benefit or more literally To Whom The Good. The defence attorney, the ambitious youthful but homo novus (born on the wrong side of the tracks) Cicero won the case and by his rhetorical skills established for Western posterity a milestone.

You notice I used the term rhetorical which is, in common English parlance, a sneer and guileful word. That is not the case in the more civilised Mediterranean languages. In classical Greek and Latin it ideally means something very close to what George Orwell advocated language usage. The linguistic capacity to make your language mean exactly what you want it to communicate.

In the Classical world, where the technocrat was practically non-existent, the rhetorical skills – and therefore the rhetorician – were paramount in all public life. In this famous trial, Roscus v Erucius, there is no State Prosecutor Office, no forensic evidence, not even witnesses. The fate of Roscus, on a capital and torture charge of parricide, rested solely on the balance between the rhetorical skills of Cicero and the prosecutor Erucius. So it, ironically, was a court case with reverberations of famous murder cases in my own country in my memory. Over here, in high publicity murder trials, the prosecutor's forensic evidence and sworn witnesses are corrupted and incomprehensible which makes them, for justice, even worse than useless.

I have, for some time, contemplated applying an intelligence and maturity test – gratifying, at least to me. There are some people I would like to confine to a room for one night, stripped of all entertainment and information specimens, except for a Penguin copy of the trial speeches of Cicero. The thought came to me when I was once chatting to an ex-Mongrel Mob member who talked about a book he had been reading. I was delighted to discover the book was indeed that.

Who, in that hermit room, would pick it up and read it? Who would be too prejudiced and small-minded to even start it? I would start first on our politicians. Helen Clark, Michael Cullen, and Winston Peters would. Don Brash would not. It is no coincidence that the white New Zealand-born male is not on the list of Cicero readers. The infuriating, loud-mouth woman in the library who disrupted this article would not. Her Maori male companion might. My parents would. I would. None of my brothers and sisters would. A nephew and a niece of mine would. The readers of Cicero are the ones where history has not ended.

In this Roman trial an historical landmark was established. A court to find out justice and innocence and guilt should impartially and without consideration of public position examine all parties. Who in the crime stood to gain? That party was likely to be the criminal if forensic evidence and sworn witnesses would not or could not be examined.

There was a time – even in my memory – when the people in the highest positions in Western countries were above suspicion in murder cases. Only people in high places in the pre-modern world might be complicit. I mean pre-modern in Western history and in the present so-called Third World. The Watergate case and since then exposure books have taught us we cannot escape our history and human nature so easily. That is why B.B.C.2, now so thoroughly tamed by the power blocs, chose in 2006 to dramatise the famous 80 B.C. Roman trial — Roscus v Erucius.