Sectores, sicarii, proditores. L'accusa di complicità nelle proscrizioni sillane e i loci dell'invettiva politica tardorepubblicana

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some references of Cicero to the proscriptiones and to the propo- nents of ferocious executions, disposed by Silla in the aftermath of the victory over the Marians. They did not integrate simple occasions of moral disapproval against that period of barbarism (the dictatorship of Sulla and the proscriptiones), but they actually constitute typical arguments of the political invective in Rome at the end of the republican era, and realize the fundamental purpose of discrediting the opponent of faction. Those references indeed help to represent the political opponent as an enemy of the Roman republic (hostis publicus) and of the libertas of Romans; as a person out-law; as a pernicies, who is feared in every human society like corsairs, brigands, robbers. Consequently, next to the tyrant and criminal mon- ster model, another figure emerges in Cicero’s speeches: the figure of the sicarius et sector, who is involved in the killing of the proscribed and in the looting of large fortunes.