timelets

...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

When Pompey and Caesar took opposite sides, he said, ‘I know from whom I flee without knowing to whom to flee.’

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0193%3Achapter%3D90%3Asection%3D14

Again: is it possible for us to doubt the prophetic value of lightning? Have we not many instances of its marvels?

--- Cicero, On Divination. Book 1:10.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Divinatione/1*.html