Abstract

Near the beginning of In Toga Candida, Cicero informed his audience of a private meeting between his two most serious competitors for the consulate and the managers of their campaigning funds. This meeting took place at the house of a nobleman whom Cicero did not name but to whom he attributed a signal notoriety in the practice of electoral corruption. Asconius offers a solution without hesitation: it was at the house of either Caesar or Crassus. He explains his choice: these two men were Cicero's most committed and influential opponents in his campaign for the consulate, and he has excellent evidence for their opposition: Cicero's own Expositio consiliorum suorum, no longer extant. The credibility or otherwise of this controversial work must be dismissed from any enquiry into the identity of the mysterious figure, however. Asconius, in naming the two alternative possibilities, discloses himself to be without authoritative evidence on the point. Nothing can have been said in De consiliis suis to identify the house, the meeting, or the notorious nobleman. Asconius' words reveal that his attempt at an identification is based on Cicero's assertion therein of an overt hostility to him on the part of both Crassus and Caesar during the campaign. His attribution of a covert ‘dirty tricks’ operation to one of them is no more than speculation.