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...there was no authentic freedom of speech under Caesar’s domination of Rome. The lack of such libertas inevitably raises suspicions that political speech cannot be taken as reflecting a speaker’s intentions, whether these doubts are founded or not. The process of interpreting a speaker’s intentions is unavoidably complicated, and not a simple matter of divining his voluntas from a text. We become suspicious readers dealing with ambiguities that exist on two registers: the intentions behind a particular orator’s words, and how the enigmatic Caesar might have interpreted those words.

John Dugan. Cicero and the Politics of Ambiguity: Interpreting the Pro Marcello, 2013.

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641895.003.0013