Archias: poet, immigrant, citizen
What did it mean to be a Roman in the 1st century BC?
Deporting the undocumented
In 65 BC, the tribune of the plebs Gaius Papius authored a law for the expulsion of all non-Roman citizens from Rome. All those who could not prove to be citizens could be prosecuted and deported.
One of these men was Archias, a poet born in Antioch, Syria. Archias had lived in and around Rome for about 40 years, since he was 18, but in 63 BC he was accused of not being a citizen. The prosecutor wanted him deported under the new lex Papia.
Archias, in response, claimed that he had become a citizen 25 years earlier. But the official records had been destroyed in a fire. Archias’s case wasn’t a slam dunk.
Cicero took the case and represented Archias in the trial. Pro Archia (In defense of Archias) is one of the shortest of his surviving, complete speeches. It is famous for being a passionate defense of poetry and literature. But reading it at the end of 2025, one can’t help thinking about the current U.S. discourse around heritage, identity, and citizenship.
Cicero won, and Archias was not deported. What convinced the jury—a group of upper middle-class and upper-class Romans—that Archias was or deserved to be a citizen? What did it mean to be a true Roman citizen in 63 BC?
Checking the boxes; and the two patriae
Cicero gives logical priority to the technicalities of the law. It’s the first argument he makes (unsurprisingly, given that this is a trial). He tries to show that Archias complied with the substantive and procedural requirements under the lex Plautia Papiria.
From a legal standpoint, Cicero says, this is enough to consider the case closed. A citizen is whoever has acquired formal citizenship by checking all the boxes.
Note that Archias was technically a Roman citizen because he had previously become a citizen of Heracleia, a Southern Italian town which was an ally of Rome and whose citizens received Roman citizenship in the aftermath of the Social War (under the lex Iulia). This is a classic example of how Rome used citizenship to build and manage political alliances. Rome’s empire was a vast and diverse state, including hundreds of different communities. Citizenship, as a concept, was inevitably stratified. Italians (and, later, provincials) were Roman citizens but also citizens of their local community.
Elsewhere, Cicero gave this phenomenon a famous label. There are two fatherlands (duae patriae), he wrote in the De Legibus, one by nature (birthplace) and one by citizenship (or by law). Cicero himself was born in Arpinum, a town 60 miles south-east of Rome. He had two patriae: Arpinum by nature, Rome by citizenship.
The two fatherlands were not equal. The patria civitatis, the Republic, must come first in affection and obligation. At the same time, the birthplace remains genuinely sweet and dear, and Cicero frames it as nested inside the larger fatherland. Roman citizenship was a device to govern diversity.
Poetry and citizenship
So, Archias checked all the formal boxes; therefore, he was a Roman citizen. First and foremost, Roman citizenship was a legal status, defined more by inclusion in Roman civil law and liability to civic burdens than by bloodline or a creed.
Cicero’s argument could end here. But it doesn’t. Cicero wants to convince the jurors that Archias is a citizen but also that if he weren’t a citizen, he should be made one. Archias deserves to be a citizen because he is a great poet.
Cicero proposes several arguments in support of this thesis. He argues that poetry is good for oratory (and oratory is good, of course, for the Republic). Poetry is also enjoyable in itself, not only instrumentally. Poetry is good popular entertainment. Poets are “saints,” because they have received a special gift from the gods. Etc.
There is also a communal, public dimension in Cicero’s speech. Poetry has a civic function, and Archias, Cicero argues, with his poetry cast glory on the Roman people. He wrote a poem on the third Mitridatic War, which celebrated not only Lucius Lucullus (one of the main Roman commanders in the war and Archias’s patron) but the Roman people as a whole.
Finally, an important theme of the speech is that many illustrious Roman citizens trust Archias personally. For all these reasons, Cicero says, Archias deserves to be a citizen.
Becoming a citizen
We should not torture history to make it relevant for current political debates.1 But the following question is legitimate: Cicero talks about law and poetry. But what about heritage or values or customs?
For obvious reasons, Cicero did not mention Archias’s “heritage” at all: it could only hurt his case. But Cicero won, which means he didn’t need that argument to persuade a jury of Roman citizens.
Interestingly, Cicero did not mention creeds or culture, either. There is no talk of Archias’s assimilation to Roman customs and culture. Archias is a Greek. He was born elsewhere and therefore had another, “natural” fatherland. He belonged to a different culture. Yet, he was a true Roman.
Sure, Archias was not just any foreigner. Cicero characterizes him as the quintessential “Greek intellectual,” a familiar and reassuring stereotype.2 It is remarkable, however, that Roman jurors would be reassured by a foreign stereotype and accept it as a reason to recognize the romanitas of Archias.
There is no doubt, however, that Cicero depicts Archias and his poetry as useful to Romans and the Republic. At the end of the day, in Cicero’s speech, Archias’s moral claim to citizenship does not depend on family trees, customs, language, or even values. It depends on poetry. Rome is a better place because of people like Archias. Because of poets and their pursuits.
These pursuits sharpen youth and charm old age; they grace good fortune and, in hard times, provide both refuge and consolation. They delight us at home and never burden us abroad; they sit up with us at night, journey with us, and take to the fields with us.
Robert Gordon wrote that “lawyer’s history… is—indeed, usually must be—tortured history.” Let’s try to limit the amount of torture.
In other speeches, Cicero did not refrain from xenophobic arguments. For example, in Pro Flacco, he distinguished the “good” Greeks—the European Greeks of Athens, Lacedaemonia, Achaea, Boeotia, and Thessaly—from the bad, untrustworthy Greeks—the Greeks from Asia.