by Horatius Piscinus on Sat Mar 01, 2003 10:31 pm
Salve
This story I have mentioned before; it is found in Pliny Nat. Hist. 27.4:
"If the sexual parts of a female are touched by aconite (monkshood), death ensues on the same day. Aconite was the poison that Marcus Caelius accused Calpurnius Bestia of using to kill his wives in their sleep. Hence that famous, bitter peroration of the prosecution denouncing the defendent's finger."
I think three wives were involved in this particualar contention, but the trial was not about the murders. There were three trials of a Calpurnius Bestia by a Marcus Caelius, but to which Pliny refers I am not certain. One book refers it to the trial of Lucius Calpurnius Bestia who was consul of 111 BCE, blamed for the Roman defeat by Jugurtha the following year, and subsequently tried. The tribune-elect in 62, also called Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, who was implicated by Cicero as one of the Catalina conspirators along with Cethegus and Lentulus, was related to the consul Bestia. He was either his son or possibly his grandson.
The most likely case involved here, however, and the one so indicated by Erich Gruen, is that of the aedilis Lucius Calpurnius Bestia who was Cicero's friend. This Bestia worked with tribunes to bring Cicero back from exile in 57. In 56 came a series of trials against Cicero's advocates, first against Milo in January. Bestia had run for the praetorship in 57 and was one working to restore Cicero. He was arraigned in ambitu on 11 Feb 56 by Marcus Caelius Rufus on a charge of bribery in that campaign. Cicero defended Bestia and won an acquittal in this first case. Then Bestia's son Lucius Sempronius Atratinus charged Marcus Caelius with plotting to poison Clodia. Cicero defended Marcus Caelius in Pro Caelio Rufo, where he made his infamous character assassination of Clodia, sister of Cicero's personal enemy Clodius Pulcher. Marcus Caelius then charged Bestia a second time and won a conviction; Bestia being sent into exile. This was a very volatile year in the courts, with all kinds of wild accusations being made between the partisans of Cicero and Clodius. Elections of that year were delayed until the following July 55. The peroration mentioned by Pliny was probably made in this last trial of Bestia, Marcus Caelius making the same charge of poisoning lovers as was made against him, only three times over.
So were the charges true and was Bestia a serial killer? Probably not. The accusation seems to have been politically and personally motivated, and was used only in a manner to defame Bestia, much as Cicero had defamed Clodia by inuendo.
Vale
Moravius Piscinus
M Horatius Piscinus
Sapere aude!