THE ARGUMENT

Archias was a Greek poet, a native of Antioch, who came to Rome in the train of Lucullus, when Cicero was a child. He assumed the names of Aulus and Licinius, the last out of compliment to the Luculli, and Cicero had been for some time a pupil of his, and had retained a great regard for him. A man of the name of Gracchus now prosecuted him as a false pretender to the rights of a Roman citizen, according to the provisions of the Lex Papiria. But Cicero contends that he is justified by that very law, for Archias before coming to Rome had stayed at Heraclea, a confederate city, and had been enrolled as a Heraclean citizen; and in the Lex Papiria it was expressly provided that those who were on the register of any confederate city as its citizens, if they were residing in Italy at the time the law was passed, and if they made a return of themselves to the praetor within sixty days, were to be exempt from its operation. However, the greatest part of this oration is occupied, not in legal arguments, but in a panegyric on Archias, who is believed to have died soon afterwards; and he must have been a very old man at the time that it was spoken, as it was nearly forty years previously that he had first come to Rome.