The Pro Milone, Cicero's defence of Titus Annius Milo on a charge of murdering Publius Clodius, is notorious. Its vivid picture of factional rivalry and Clodius' death seems mendacious in the light of other ancient sources, especially Asconius' alternative account of the events. The speech, boldy arguing that the deed was done in self-defence and benefited the Republic, was admired in antiquity; but the speech delivered at the trial, when Cicero supposedly lost his nerve and certainly lost the case, was apparently different. Such disparities have contributed to the picture of a disingenuous Cicero.

Lynn Fotheringham's book is a contribution to a modern rhetorical explication of the text of Cicero's speech. I choose each of those words deliberately. F.'s approach is rhetorical, which is to say, not historical. In the first instance, she is concerned, not with political circumstances or the veracity of Cicero's claims (that is, standard history), nor with detecting marks of additions after the trial (that is, textual history), but with analysing the speech as a linguistic object. Accordingly F.'s point of departure is the text of the speech itself, examined for its own inner logic. Here, then, is a variant of New Criticism (cf. the ‘Close Reading’ of F.'s title), which begins from the internal properties of a text.

Any such analysis requires a method for choosing which properties deserve notice. F.'s method is indeed rhetorical, but not in the sense usual in classical studies, in which orations are examined against the standards of ancient rhetorical treatises and their prescriptions for structure, argument and style. F., though not eschewing traditional categories altogether, derives her method chiefly from discourse theory — from modern rhetoric, one might say. That field is, of course, vast; F.'s approach, though eclectic, draws ultimately on the systemic linguistics of Halliday, which holds that when variation within a language is possible, a particular choice may be meaningful and even purposeful.

F. chooses four such variable features to examine for their contributions to the structure and meaning of the speech: syntactic complexity; lexical families; shifts in speaker and addressee; and marks of shifts in topic. These four features — NB ordinary features and therefore sensible to native speakers — form the leitmotifs of the work. In the introductory essay, F. describes them and charts their variation; in a thorough set of indices she catalogues them; and in the commentary proper she traces them in individual sentences, throughout with an eye to the effect on the unfolding argument (a version of the ‘persuasive process’ approach to rhetoric). Thus, though the book is extensive, it is also focused, advocating and applying a method, less a commentary in the usual sense than an explication.

The method is applied in great (and sometimes cumbersome) detail; but it produces interesting results. Here are some. Attention to topic sentences and like strategies reveals that the claim of self-defence has more articulations than the claim that the public good was served — an attempt to make the argument seem clearer and more obvious? The claim of self-defence also has among the lowest levels of syntactic complexity — a similar attempt? Viewing the level of complexity across the whole speech reveals a steady rhythm of changes — suggesting a speech conceived of as a single whole, not patched together later? ‘Colourless’ words (relative pronouns, the copula, etc.) are very infrequent in §§72–5, the prosopopoiia in which Cicero speaks in Milo's voice — a mark of its distinct, higher tone?

But, as the question marks are meant to suggest, F. draws conclusions cautiously, out of an appreciation of the limitations of her method. Despite her interest in formal features, for example, she is careful not to assign any particular feature a fixed meaning (the complexity of a sentence, for example, might have iconic value, signalling a complex topic, but F. does not dogmatically assign such value to every complex sentence). Her method requires considerable detail, so other Ciceronian speeches are not compared. F. defines lexical sets etymologically rather than semantically and synchronically, which weakens her claims about their effects. These limitations — all of which F. herself acknowledges; hence my word contribution — may frustrate some; but they also invite readers to think through her method for themselves. And that (F. might have pressed the point) is also an invitation to see Cicero's very language as reflecting the contours of an ideological problem.

A broader focus might have enriched F.'s results. (Indeed, the commentary itself attests as much: F.'s analyses of the import of each section sometimes reflect conclusions reached not by her method proper but by readerly sensibility). For example, by F.'s measure syntactic complexity is greatest in the exordium. Such complexity could have easily been linked to the task that the handbooks assign to exordia: winning an audience's goodwill, for which the Isocratic, counterbalanced effect of many exordia was evidently felt appropriate. Likewise, the paucity of colourless words in the prosopopoiia — an effect also of high epic — has obvious links to the gravitas of the ‘grand style’. But I imagine F. hoped to inspire exactly such observations. The ultimate question that F. is contemplating is, how to read a Ciceronian speech? It is not an easy question, and this book does not answer it fully. But neither does it claim to, and for a patient and attentive reader F. does show some of what discourse analysis may contribute to the answer — and even to the terms of the question.