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• Born: 6 January 106 B.C.
• Birthplace: Arpinum (now Arpino, Italy)
• Died: 7 December 43 B.C. (assassination)
• Best Known As: Roman statesman who stood up to Marc Antony

Name at birth: Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cicero was the greatest speaker among the many famous statesmen of ancient Rome. He practiced law and studied philosophy in Greece before holding a rising sequence of important jobs in the Roman Empire. In 64 BCE he became Consul, the highest office in Rome. As Consul he won fame for his orations against Cataline, the head of a secret conspiracy to seize the government. Always a staunch supporter of the Republic, Cicero was eventually forced from office by his enemies, and when Julius Caesar consolidated his power in 48 BC, Cicero went into political retirement. During this time he wrote his famous essays on happiness, on old age, and on friendship. Upon Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE, Cicero returned to public life and delivered a series of scathing speeches (the "Phillipics") against Marc Antony. This proved to be Cicero's undoing: when Antony took power in a triumvirate with Octavian and Marcus Lepidus, Cicero was declared an outlaw and killed by Antony's men in 43 BCE.

After Cicero's death, his head and right hand were taken to Antony, who had them placed on public view on the rostrum where Cicero had made many of his famous speeches.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) was Rome's greatest orator and a prolific writer of verse, letters, and works on philosophy, politics, and rhetoric that greatly influenced European thought.

Cicero was born on Jan. 3, 106 B.C., at Arpinum near Rome, the elder son of a wealthy landowner. At an early age Cicero saw military service during the Social War (90-89), but he managed to avoid involvement in the civil wars that followed. He wanted to follow a career in politics and decided first to gain a reputation as an advocate.

Cicero's first appearances in court were made during the dictatorship of Sulla (81-80). In one case, while defending Sextus Roscius of Ameria on a trumped-up charge of murder, he boldly made some outspoken comments on certain aspects of Sulla's regime, and in 79 he left Rome to study in Rhodes. By 76 Cicero was back in Rome, where he married Terentia, whose family was wealthy and perhaps aristocratic. In 75 he held the office of quaestor, which brought him membership in the Senate, and in 70 he scored his first great success, when he prosecuted Caius Verres for gross misgovernment in Sicily. As Verres was defended by the leading advocate of the day, Quintus Hortensius, Cicero's success in this case won him great acclaim and considerably helped his political career.

In 69 Cicero held the office of aedile and that of praetor in 66, in which year he made his first major political speech in support of the extension of Pompey's command in the Mediterranean. During the following years he acted as a self-appointed defender of that general's interests. When Cicero stood for the consulship of 63, he reached the highest political office at the earliest legal age, a remarkable achievement for a complete outsider. His consulship involved him in a number of political problems which culminated in the conspiracy of Catiline.

Disillusion and Exile

In the years after his consulship Cicero, politically helpless, watched Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus form the dictatorial First Triumvirate. Cicero refused offers to become a fourth member of this alliance, and his publicly expressed dislike of the violent methods Caesar employed in his consulship (59) led to Cicero's exile to Macedonia. There he lived for 16 months in abject misery, until the efforts of his friends secured his recall in August 57 B.C.

During the next 8 months Cicero tried to separate Pompey from his partners, but early in the summer of 56 Pompey brusquely ordered Cicero to stop his efforts. For the next 4 years he was largely out of politics, devoting himself to writing and occasionally emerging to defend (inconsistent behavior on his part) various supporters of the Triumvirate.

In 51 Cicero was sent off to govern Cilicia for a year. He was a conscientious and unusually honest administrator, but he was bored by the whole business and hated every moment of his absence from Rome. He finally returned in December 50 B.C., too late to be able to do anything to stop the outbreak of war between Pompey and Caesar. He accepted a commission from Pompey but did little for him, and when Pompey left Italy, Cicero stayed behind.

After Pompey's death Cicero took no part in politics and devoted himself to writing works on philosophy and rhetoric. Apart from his increasing dislike of Caesar's autocratic rule, Cicero's life was made unhappy during these years by domestic sorrows. In the winter of 47/46 he divorced Terentia after 30 years' marriage, and in the following summer he was deeply grieved by the death of his much-loved daughter Tullia.

Second Triumvirate

Cicero was not involved in the conspiracy against Caesar, though he strongly approved of it, and after the assassination he took a prominent part in establishing a compromise between Antony and the conspirators. But before long he concluded that Antony was as great a menace to liberty as Caesar had been. During the winter of 44/43 with a series of vigorous speeches, the "Philippics," he rallied the Senate to oppose Antony in concert with Octavian. But Octavian, having seized power at Rome by force, reached an agreement with Antony and Lepidus to set themselves up as a three-man dictatorship. They started by proscribing many of their enemies, and among the first names on the list was that of Cicero. He could perhaps have escaped, but his efforts were halfhearted, and in December 43 B.C. he met his death at the hands of Antony's agents with courage and dignity.

As a politician, Cicero was ultimately unsuccessful, since he was not able to prevent the overthrow of the republican system of government. Devoted to peace and reason, he lived in an age when political power depended more and more on sheer force. Moreover, he was blind to many of the defects of the republican system and did not realize how much it failed to meet the real needs of the provincials and even of the poorer citizens of Italy and Rome itself.

The Speeches

The texts of 57 speeches have survived, though 2 or 3 are not complete, and Cicero delivered at least 50 more, nearly all of which were published but have since been lost. As Cicero normally edited and polished his speeches before publication, we do not have the text of what he actually said, but in most cases a more or less close approximation.

However, five speeches against Verres were never delivered but were written by Cicero to present material not used in court; the "Second Philippic" is a political pamphlet cast in the form of an imaginary speech; and Pro Milone represents what Cicero would have said in Milo's defense in 52 if he had not been flustered by a hostile mob into making a poor and ineffective speech.

The corpus of the extant speeches is impressive both for its bulk and its quality. It is hard not to be impressed by their vigor, by their variety of tone, and above all by the lucidity with which Cicero could present a complicated series of facts. Of the forensic speeches, Pro Cluentio (66) is the longest and most complicated, but it gives a vivid picture of life in a small Italian town. The much shorter Pro Archia (62) is notable for its sincere and eloquent defense of a life devoted to literary pursuits, and Pro Murena (63) is an excellent example of Cicero's ability to win a case by disregarding the basic facts and concentrating with charm and wit on such irrelevancies as the Stoic beliefs of one of the prosecutors. Of the political speeches, although the "Catilinarians" are the most famous, the 14 "Philippics" are probably the finest, because in them Cicero was concentrating all his energy and skill with a directness that he did not always achieve.

The Dialogues

Nearly all of Cicero's works on philosophy, politics, or rhetoric are in dialogue form, though Cicero had little of Plato's dramatic instinct for the genre. They are written in that elegant and sonorous Latin prose of which Cicero was such a master. Several are devoted to ethics, religion, or other philosophical subjects, but they cannot be regarded as original contributions to philosophy, for Cicero himself acknowledged, "I provide only the words, of which I have a very large stock." Nevertheless, they are extremely valuable because in them he reproduced the theories of many of the leading Greek philosophers of the post-Aristotelian schools, such as the Stoics and the Epicureans, whose own works have not survived.

Among the more attractive are the short essays on friendship and old age, De amicitia and De senectute (both 44). Of the longer works, the most important are probably De finibus (45), a systematic discussion of ethics; De natura deorum (45), a hastily written and disjointed but valuable survey of contemporary religious beliefs; and De officiis (winter 44/43), a treatise on moral duties.

Another group is concerned with political theory, especially De republica (54-51), of which barely one-third is extant, and De legibus, started in 52 but perhaps never completed. These works also are to some extent based on Greek ideas, but the theoretical basis is reinforced by the Roman practical genius for the art of government and Cicero's own considerable experience of politics.

In the works on Cicero's own art of rhetoric there is a similar blend of Greek theory and Roman practical experience. The most important are De oratore (55), which is basically a discussion of the training of the ideal orator but takes in many aspects of the art of speaking, such as humor; Brutus (45), which contains an account of Roman oratory of great historical importance, with sketches of nearly 200 speakers; and Orator (45), in which Cicero discusses the different styles of oratory and various technical aspects of rhetoric, including a detailed examination of prose rhythms.

The Poetry

In his youth Cicero wrote a quantity of verse, none of which has survived, and he won a considerable reputation as a poet. In later years he composed a short epic on the great soldier Marius and a longer poem on his own consulship. Of such poetry, only a few scattered lines have been preserved, in one or two cases because they are so very bad. We do have, however, several hundred lines of the Aratea, a translation of a poem on astronomy by the Alexandrian poet Aratus, and a number of shorter passages also translated from Greek originals. It is clear that Cicero had little real poetic inspiration but was a highly competent craftsman who did much for the development of the dactylic hexa-meter in Latin, and metrical analysis suggests that in this respect Virgil owed as much to him as to any other poet.

The Letters

The collection of Cicero's letters is undoubtedly the most interesting and valuable part of all his enormous literary output. It includes nearly 800 letters written by him, and nearly another 100 written to him by a wide variety of correspondents. The two major collections are the letters Ad Atticum in 16 books, and Ad familiares, also in 16 books, published by his freedman secretary Tiro. This latter set includes practically all the letters written to Cicero. There are also two smaller sets, three books of Ad Quintum fratrem and two books of Ad M. Brutum, both the remains of what were at one time larger collections. Other sets of letters to his son Marcus, to Julius Caesar, to Octavian, and to others have all been lost. The surviving letters belong mainly to his last years; there are only 12 dating before his consulship, while over a quarter of the collection were written in the last 18 months of his life.

Some of the letters are as carefully composed as the speeches or dialogues, but most of them, especially those to his brother or to close friends like Atticus, have a spontaneity which is often lacking in the more calculated prose. In these intimate letters Cicero uses a very colloquial style, with frequent use of slang, ellipse, diminutive forms, and words or phrases in Greek.

But however rapidly they may have been written, Cicero never loses his instinctive sense of style, and their combination of immediacy with stylishness makes them some of the most attractive reading in the whole of Latin literature, quite apart from the fascination of their subject matter, for they cover an immense range of topics. But above all, they give an incredibly vivid picture of Cicero himself: his vanity, his facile optimism and equally exaggerated despair, his timidity and his indecisiveness, but also his energy and industry, his courage, his loyalty, and his basic honesty, kindliness and humanity. Thanks to his letters, we can know Cicero as we know no other Roman, and with all his faults he was a man worth knowing.

Further Reading

Cicero's major works and his correspondence are available in English translation. The best brief account of his career and personality comprises the essays by H. H. Scullard, T. A. Dorey, and J. P. V. D. Balsdon in T. A. Dorey, ed., Cicero (1965), a rather uneven collection of studies by various authors. Of the numerous longer accounts, Torsten Petersson, Cicero: A Biography (1920), is balanced and reliable, and H. J. Haskell, This Was Cicero (1942), is very readable and generally sensible. R. E. Smith, Cicero the Statesman (1966), concentrates on the political side of his career and, though generally reliable on facts, is not very profound and is perhaps too favorable to Cicero. David Stockton, Cicero: A Political Biography (1971), is a straightforward account of Cicero's public career. Hartvig Frisch, Cicero's Fight for the Republic (1946), is an extremely detailed discussion of the last stage of Cicero's career. There is a good brief discussion of Cicero as a philosopher in H. A. K. Hunt, The Humanism of Cicero (1954).

For Cicero as an orator and for Roman rhetoric generally, S. F. Bonner, Roman Declamation in the Late Republic and Early-Empire (1949), and M. L. Clarke, Rhetoric at Rome (1953; rev. ed. 1963), should be consulted. The best account of the history of Rome in Cicero's lifetime is in H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero (1959; 2d ed. 1964), and a more detailed account is in T. Rice Holmes, The Roman Republic and the Founder of the Empire (1923).

(106-43 bc) Roman jurist and political theorist. His De finibus (On the purposes of human life) might be said to have laid foundations for a political philosophy. De officiis (On duty), a moral treatise, bears on political behaviour. De legibus (On laws) is positivist: it deals with natural and sacred laws, law courts, and the rulings of magistrates. De re publica (The Republic) does deal with political philosophy in a utopian way. There is satirical criticism of forms of government; a model state (the Roman state idealized); the ideal politician (the best among the good). The basis of government is justice and harmony among the people (res populi). In a crisis there should be a sole ruler, who would rule constitutionally, not for remuneration or fame, but for immortality.

To find Cicero's real political philosophy we must turn to his life and speeches. He was born into a wealthy but not noble family. He was the greatest Roman orator, part barrister and part politician. He was guided by the notion of constitutionality, the rule of the senate, and the consensus of all good people, not the rule of the optimates (aristocrats), much less of a self-appointed triumvirate, such as established itself in 62 bc. He agreed to a single leader in time of crisis, but not at other times or permanently. In 31 bc, after the battle of Actium, Octavian became sole ruler of the Roman empire. So ended Cicero's dream of senatorial constitutional rule.

— Cyril Barrett

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1. Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106–43 BC, Roman orator and statesman.

1. Early life, 106–64 BC. Cicero was born on 3 January 106 at Arpinum (Arpino) some 110 km. (70 miles) south-east of Rome, the elder of two sons of a wealthy eques, the family being distantly related to the general Gaius Marius. His early promise suggested a career as advocate and politician, and he was sent to Rome to study law under the two great lawyer-politicians of the day, the Scaevolas (3 and 4), as well as philosophy under Philo, the former head of the Academy at Athens, and Diodotus the Stoic. At the age of 17 Cicero saw military service in the Social War, serving under Pompeius Strabo, the father of Pompey the Great, whose acquaintance Cicero probably made at this time. Throughout his life Cicero was to remain a supporter of Pompey, seeing him as the one man who could save Rome from external enemies and internal lawlessness while preserving the republican constitution. Also serving under Strabo was the young Catiline (see 2 below). During the turbulent eighties Cicero completed his forensic education. His earliest surviving speech is Pro Quinctio of 81, a complicated partnership case; the result is unknown, but we know that the opposing advocate was Hortensius, the greatest orator of the day. Cicero's reputation was established in the following year (80) by his successful defence of Roscius of Ameria (Pro Roscio Amerino) on a charge of parricide. Both speeches had a political aspect; in the latter Cicero courageously attacked Sulla's powerful freedman Chrysogonus. At this point (79) Cicero left Rome to spend two years abroad to improve his health and pursue his studies under the Greek masters of rhetoric and philosophy. At Athens he studied with another young Roman, Titus Pomponius Atticus, who was to become his lifelong friend and, since Atticus spent most of his life away from Rome, his most valued correspondent (see 7 below). In Rhodes Cicero visited Posidonius, the great scholar and Stoic philosopher.

At about this time, either before he left for Greece or soon after his return in 77, he married his wife Terentia. Perhaps to this period after his return belongs his defence of his friend the comic actor Roscius (Pro Roscio comoedo). In 76 he was elected quaestor at the minimum age (of 30), as with every subsequent office he held, and so qualified for membership of the senate, remaining a member until his death. He served his quaestorship (75) at Lilybaeum (Marsala) in west Sicily; after his return to Rome in 74 he never willingly left Italy again (but see 4), refusing provincial governorships both after his praetorship and after his consulship. In the next few years he was occupied with legal work in the courts, particularly on behalf of the equites, through which he gained wealth and eventually political support. His reputation was unshakeably established in 70 with his brilliant prosecution of C. Verres, the corrupt governor of Sicily from 73 to 71, at the request of the Sicilians. Verres was defended by the famous Hortensius, but the latter was never called upon to speak: after Cicero's first speech for the prosecution (actio prima) Verres threw up the case and retired into exile in Massilia (Marseilles). Cicero's immense labours in gathering evidence for this case were not to be wasted; he published as well as his first speech the five long sections that were to comprise the actio secunda (‘second stage’ of the trial), and they made his reputation as Rome's leading advocate and fearless opponent of corruption.

In 69 Cicero became aedile, and in 66 praetor at the minimum age of 40. In this year he delivered in public assembly his first purely political speech, Pro lege Manilia, in which he supported, against strong optimate opposition, the proposal of the tribune Manilius that Pompey should be appointed to the command of the war in the East against Mithridates. In this Cicero was to some extent motivated by self-interest: it would be invaluable to his political ambitions to have the backing of the powerful Pompey. His other important speech of this year was Pro Cluentio, a forensic masterpiece in which he successfully defended the rich eques Cluentius on a charge of poisoning his stepfather.

During the years from 66 to 63 Cicero gradually moved away from his earlier reformist position and moved closer to the position of the conservative optimates, while men like Publius Crassus, Julius Caesar, Gaius Antonius, and Catiline (the last two Cicero's rivals for the consulship in 63) propagated schemes for radical social reform.

2. 63–62 BC: Cicero's consulship. In the elections of 64 Cicero, a novus homo, a ‘new man’ with no advantages of birth, stood for the consulship of 63 and came top of the poll, consul prior, at the earliest permissible age, 42, suo anno, ‘in his own year’. His candidature was successful partly because the optimates were alarmed by the revolutionary inclinations of Catiline, who might otherwise have been their candidate. His colleague in the consulship was Gaius Antonius, an ally of Catiline. As consul in 63 Cicero delivered the speeches De lege agraria (or Contra Rullum), arguing successfully that the legislation proposed by the tribune P. Servilius Rullus to bring about the distribution of land was fraudulent. The speech Pro Rabirio of the same year was in defence of an elderly eques charged by the popular party (at the instigation of Caesar; see also LABIENUS) with having killed, thirty-seven years before, the tribune Saturninus after the senatus consultum ultimum had been passed by the senate. The prosecution was in fact questioning the validity of such a resolution and drawing popular attention to the possibility of its abuse. The trial was abandoned, but Cicero was clearly seen to be a moderate conservative, in opposition to Caesar and the popular party who had brought about the prosecution. At the elections held in 63 for the consulship in 62, Catiline was again a candidate, and the natural leader of those desperate for much-needed economic reform. Again he was defeated. He seems to have hoped for some sort of aid from Cicero's colleague Antonius, but Cicero won over the latter by offering him the governorship of the more profitable province of Macedonia instead of Cisalpine Gaul. Catiline saw that his only chance of success lay in the violent seizure of power. Cicero discovered his plans and, having convinced the senate of the imminence of an uprising followed by a massacre at Rome, persuaded them to pass the senatus consultum ultimum. He still had no firm evidence against Catiline, however, and when he addressed the senate on 8 November 63 in the most famous of all his speeches, his first In Catilinam, Catiline was present. Immediately afterwards Catiline left Rome. His departure was followed by Cicero's exposition of events to the people on 9 November (his second speech In Catilinam), and the arrest of five prominent citizens, who were leading conspirators in treasonable correspondence with envoys of the Allobroges (a Gallic tribe), on 2–3 December. In a third speech Cicero explained the new developments to the people. The fourth was delivered in the senate (5 December) on the question of the punishment of the prisoners, a speech of studied impartiality. The consul designate Silanus proposed the death penalty; Caesar proposed life imprisonment, a novel penalty in Roman law. Marcus Cato spoke powerfully in favour of the death penalty and carried the senate with him. Cicero had the sentence carried out at once. He never doubted that he had saved the state from grave danger, and he wrote of his action in prose and verse, both in Latin and in Greek (see 8 below). During this crisis Cicero found himself called upon to defend (and did so successfully) the second consul designate, L. Murena, on an ill-timed charge, brought by Marcus Cato, of bribery in the elections (see PRO MURENA).

3. From 62 to Cicero's banishment in 58. Cicero never forgot, nor allowed anyone else to forget, the glory of 63, and Marcus Cato saluted him as ‘father of his country’ (pater patriae). But the legality of the execution of the arrested conspirators (who had been denied a trial) was soon questioned by the popular party. Cicero thought that he could bring about a union of all sound and respectable men of property from both the senatorial and equestrian classes, his concordia ordinum, ‘harmony between the orders’, but by the end of 61 it became clear that this was a delusion. In 62 he had delivered two speeches, Pro Sulla and Pro Archia. At the end of that year Publius Clodius, who later emerged as a powerful popular leader, was detected while in disguise as a woman at the (female) mysteries of the Bona Dea, and prosecuted. Although he obtained an acquittal by bribery, his attempt to set up an alibi was defeated by the evidence of Cicero, who thereby incurred Clodius' hatred. Also at the end of the year Pompey returned from the East to Italy. The jealousy and hostility of the senate frustrated his political ambitions, but when Caesar returned from his governorship of Spain in 60 and was about to enter on his consulship in 59, he and Pompey formed a political alliance with Crassus, called in modern times ‘the first triumvirate’. It appears that Caesar made advances to Cicero with a view to including him in the alliance, but Cicero could not reconcile himself to Caesar's unconstitutional attitude and bravely but unwisely adopted a course of opposition. Cicero's only surviving speech of this year (59) was Pro Flacco, a defence on a charge of extortion in his province of one of the praetors of 63 who had effected the arrest of the Catilinarians. In it he took the opportunity to appeal to popular sentiment in his own favour. When Caesar renewed his overtures and Cicero again refused, Caesar seems to have allowed Clodius to get his revenge. As tribune for 58 Clodius brought in a bill aimed at Cicero, proposing to outlaw anyone who had put Roman citizens to death without trial. Cicero found himself without any obvious support; he therefore yielded to Clodius' threats and left Rome for exile in March 58.

Clodius now carried a decree exiling Cicero by name and confiscating his property. Cicero's magnificent house on the Palatine was destroyed (and part consecrated to Libertas, ‘liberty’, an ironic touch by Clodius), and his villa at Tusculum badly damaged. He spent his exile in Macedonia, at Thessalonika in 58 with the quaestor Gnaeus Plancius, moving at the end of the year to Dyrrhachium. He was utterly crushed by his misfortune and consumed by self-pity. But Pompey lost little time in starting to bring about Cicero's recall, with the support of the tribune Milo, who employed violence as freely as Clodius.

4. 57–45. Cicero was recalled by a law of the people on 4 August 57 and reached Rome a month later, to an enthusiastic welcome. In the two speeches Post reditum (whose authenticity has been questioned) he thanked the senate and people for his recall. His speeches during the ensuing period arise out of his struggles to secure public compensation for the damage to his property (De domo sua and De haruspicum responso) and out of his support for those responsible for his recall. Thus in 56 he defended P. Sestius (Pro Sestio), a tribune who had exerted himself on his behalf, against a charge of rioting brought by Clodius. This speech, largely occupied with Cicero's own services and an attempt to rally aristocratic feeling against the triumvirs, contains some of the orator's finest passages. The speech In Vatinium was an attack on Vatinius, one of the witnesses, a supporter of Caesar's who had tried to get Sestius convicted. The speech Pro Caelio succeeded in obtaining the acquittal of a fashionable young friend, M. Caelius Rufus, on charges that included conspiracy to murder an Egyptian envoy and the attempted poisoning of Caelius' former mistress Clodia, the sister of Clodius (and almost certainly the ‘Lesbia’ of Catullus). The attack on Clodia herself is Cicero's most brilliant tour de force.

Cicero hoped that the political manœuvrings of 57 and 56, which took place against a background of increasing civil violence, would end in the break-up of the triumvirate, but in April 56 Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus renewed their political union and Cicero was forced to accept the situation and make his peace with Caesar, who always behaved with generosity towards him. Cicero's capitulation was evident in the speeches of 56, De provinciis consularibus (‘on provinces governed by consuls’) in favour of the prolongation of Caesar's command in Gaul, and Pro Balbo, a defence of the citizenship procured by Pompey for a rich Spaniard, Balbus, who was also a friend of Caesar's. In letters to his close friends Cicero reveals the blow that his pride has suffered. He had some satisfaction in speaking against his old enemy L. Calpurnius Piso (In Pisonem) when the latter had been recalled from the governorship of Macedonia largely as a result of Cicero's attacks on him in De provinciis consularibus (see above). In 54 he defended his friend Plancius, who had received him during his exile in Macedonia (see 3 above), on a charge of electoral corruption (Pro Plancio), and Rabirius, a partisan of Caesar, on a charge of extortion (Pro Rabirio Postumo) as well as M. Aemilius Scaurus, exgovernor of Sardinia, on a similar charge (of this speech we have only fragments). The worst humiliations came in 54 when, at the behest of the triumvirs, he was forced to defend his enemies, Vatinius for bribery (successfully), and (unsuccessfully) on a charge of extortion the hated Gabinius, who as consul in 58 had made no attempt to prevent Cicero's exile. He was mortified by his failure in 52 to defend Milo successfully when the latter was charged and condemned for the murder of Clodius, and had to content himself with sending to the exiled Milo the speech Pro Milone, perhaps the finest of all his speeches. It is an elaboration of the one he tried to deliver when he lost his nerve, presented as he was with a court room packed with Clodian supporters and the hostile soldiers of Pompey. Milo is said to have congratulated himself that it was not delivered, otherwise he would have been acquitted and never have known the excellent seafood for which Massilia (Marseilles) was already famous. In 53 Cicero was somewhat comforted by being elected augur.

During the 50s, as he withdrew from the collapsing world of republican politics, he found consolation in writing on philosophy and rhetoric, and arguing against his literary antagonists, who were principally Julius Caesar, Calvus, Marcus Brutus, and Asinius Pollio. By the end of 55 he had finished De oratore, a treatise in three books on rhetoric, designed to replace his early work on the same subject, De inventione (‘on invention’), written before he was 25; it was followed, perhaps in the late 50s, by a briefer essay on rhetoric, Partitiones oratoriae (‘divisions of oratory’), in which Cicero answers his young son's questions on the orator's craft. From this period also comes the De republica (of which we have only parts, including the Somnium Scipionis), and De legibus (‘on laws’), which seems to have been begun in 52, though it was not completed until 45 and was probably published after Cicero's death. There was to be a further outpouring of philosophical works between 46 and 44. Meanwhile Cicero was reluctantly obliged to govern the province of Cilicia from summer 51 to summer 50 under the new regulations of Pompey's law for the government of the provinces. He disliked leaving Rome but he carried out his duties honestly and efficiently, winning a victory over the brigands and returning to Rome with the fasces of his lictors wreathed in fading laurels. He found Rome on the brink of civil war, and when war did break out he left the city, with many of the senatorial party. Pompey had accepted the command of the republic's forces in Italy, but after he withdrew with them to Epirus in Greece Cicero was in the deepest trouble and perplexity. He decided to remain in Italy, and followed Pompey only at a later stage. After the defeat of the Pompeians at Pharsalus in the summer of 48 (at which battle he was not present because of illness), he returned to Italy. A period of anxious suspense was ended in 47 when Caesar came to Italy and the two were completely reconciled. At last Cicero could return to Rome.

At first he remained detached from public life, attending meetings in the senate but not speaking, regarded with suspicion by both sides. But he began to entertain the faint hope that when the civil war was finally over Caesar might perhaps set about restoring constitutional government. In 46 he delivered his first important speech for five years, Pro Marcello, a speech of thanks to Caesar for pardoning M. Marcellus who as consul in 51 had launched the attack on him which ultimately precipitated the civil war (see CAESAR 2); it contains a famous sentence, satis diu vel naturae vixi vel gloriae (‘I have lived long enough for the demands of nature or fame’). In 45 he spoke Pro Ligario, a defence of Q. Ligarius, tried as an enemy of Caesar, a speech whose eloquence is said to have moved Caesar to acquit the accused; and in the same year he delivered the speech Pro rege Deiotaro, defending the tetrarch of Galatia on a charge of attempting to murder Caesar. Shortly after Cato's death at Utica (Utique) in 46, Cicero, at Brutus' suggestion, wrote a panegyric on him, now lost. It displeased Caesar, who replied to it in a work, also lost, called Anticato.

In 46 Cicero divorced his wife of some thirty years, Terentia, and shortly after married Publilia, who had been his ward. In 45 his beloved daughter Tullia died, and Cicero was overwhelmed with grief. A famous letter of consolation (Epistulae ad familiares IV. 5) was written to him by the jurist Sulpicius. Publilia offended Cicero by her lack of sympathy, and this second marriage also ended in divorce. These personal blows were made harder to bear by Cicero's growing realization that Caesar was never going to attempt to restore the republican constitution, and he took what consolation he could in literary composition.

5. Philosophical and literary writings. Between 46 and 44 Cicero wrote Brutus, a history of Roman oratory, Orator, a picture of the accomplished speaker, and other works on rhetoric: the Topica (‘matters relating to commonplaces’), dealing with kinds of arguments, supposedly derived from Aristotle's work of the same name; De optimo genere oratorum (‘on the best kind of orators’, perhaps written in 52), of which only a part survives; a preface to his (lost) translations of the two Greek orations De corona of Demosthenes and Against Ctesiphon of Aeschines (this work may not be by Cicero). In 45 he wrote the Consolatio (‘consolation’) on the deaths of great men, a work (of which fragments survive) occasioned by the death of Tullia; Hortensius (now lost), a plea for the study of philosophy which greatly moved St Augustine; Academica, on the views of the Athenian ‘New’ Academy, and in particular of Carneades; and De finibus bonorum et malorum, on the different conceptions held by philosophers of the ‘chief good’. After these works he wrote during 45 and 44 Tusculanae disputationes (‘Tusculan Disputations’) on the conditions of happiness, the most intensely felt and expressed of all his philosophical works; De natura deorum, the views of different philosophical schools on the nature of the gods; De fato (‘on fate’, of which only fragments survive), a discussion of free will; the two charming essays De senectute and De amicitia; De divinatione, the examination of Stoic belief concerning fate and the possibility of prediction, published soon after Caesar's murder; and his last work on moral philosophy, De officiis, finished in November 44 and written for the edification of his son. It was altogether a wonderful output for two or three years.

As a philosopher Cicero claimed to be a follower of the ‘New’ Academy of Carneades which held that certain knowledge was impossible, and that practical conviction based on probability was the most that could be attained. But while his general attitude was that of the New Academy, he was an eclectic, that is to say he did not adhere to any one school, but picked from among the doctrines of the various Greek schools those which commended themselves to his reason; and in questions of morality he was inclined (e.g. in De finibus, the Tusculan Disputations, and De officiis) to accept the positive Stoic teaching. He believed in the existence of a divine being, and maintained that it is prudent to keep up traditional rites and ceremonies. Finally, in De fato he shows his belief in the freedom of the will against Stoic fatalism. He did not claim that his philosophical works were original but he popularized Greek thought and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary. The works De senectute, De amicitia, De officiis, the Tusculan Disputations, and the Somnium Scipionis (detached from the De republica which was ultimately lost) had considerable influence on the Fathers of the early Church. In the Middle Ages, when Cicero's political and oratorical works had yet to be rediscovered (see TEXTS, TRANSMISSION OF ANCIENT 8), these books were studied extensively, and handed on to the European world a knowledge of Greek philosophy which was not otherwise attainable.

6. The Philippics and Cicero's death, 44–43. When a heterogeneous collection of men, united only in their desire to put an end to despotic rule, murdered Caesar in 44, Cicero was not invited to join them, although he greeted the news with delight. For several months he remained aloof from politics, but he still ardently desired to see the restoration of the republic. When, after several months of confusion and perplexity, the political alignments were becoming clear, and Mark Antony had left Rome for Cisalpine Gaul to lay siege to the republicans under Decimus Brutus at Mutina, Cicero put himself at the head of what was left of the senatorial party. He gave full expression to his hatred of the Caesarian tyranny in fourteen orations against Antony which he entitled Philippics, after the patriotic speeches delivered by the Athenian orator Demosthenes against Philip II of Macedon. The First Philippic was in fact delivered to the senate on 2 September, before Antony left for Cisalpine Gaul; the Fourteenth Philippic—the last of all Cicero's surviving speeches—was delivered on 21 April 43. It celebrated the defeat of Antony at Mutina, but the rejoicing was premature. Cicero mistakenly believed that Octavian intended to destroy Antony, but instead Octavian marched on Rome with his legions to demand the consulship, and obtained it on 19 August 43. He then proceeded to make his peace with Antony, rescinding sentences outlawing the latter and Lepidus, and at the end of October all three met to agree on a three-fold division of power, the (second) triumvirate. They were to prosecute the war jointly against Brutus and Cassius in the East, money and land were to be obtained to satisfy their troops, and old scores settled by widespread proscriptions. On the first list sent to Rome Antony wrote Cicero's name. On 7 December 43 his soldiers caught Cicero in a not very resolute attempt to escape by sea, and he bravely submitted to execution. His head and hands were displayed on the Rostra in Rome.

7. Letters. Perhaps, ironically, to his detriment, Cicero is known to us more intimately than anyone else in the ancient world through his voluminous correspondence covering the period 68 to 43. Over 800 of his letters survive in which, with complete candour and mostly with little thought of publication, he recorded his moods and actions. The first we hear of publication is in July 44 when he writes about making a small collection of his letters to Tiro and Atticus (see also 1 above). Because he was closely involved in the politics of a momentous period in history, and wrote to correspondents of the most diverse political views as well as to members of his household, the letters are an invaluable historical source. They have come down to us in four collections, which include some letters from his correspondents, and comprise: those written to Atticus (Epistulae ad Atticum) between 68 and 43; those written to more than ninety other friends and relations (Epistulae ad familiares) published by Tiro; those to his brother Quintus (Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem; see (2) below) written when the brothers were separated, chiefly between 59 and 54; and twenty-five letters written to Marcus Brutus (Epistulae ad Brutum) all written in 43. There are no letters for the years of Cicero's consulship (63) or the preceding year.

8. Poems. Cicero's very early poetry has perished but there survive a large part of the Aratea (469 consecutive hexameter lines and some fragments) and his translation of the Phaenomena of Aratus, a Greek didactic poem; his philosophical works also contain snippets from Homer and the Greek tragedians in his own Latin version, and a few lines survive of an epic Marius. His famous poems were the autobiographical ones of self-glorification, the three books De consulatu suo (‘on my consulship’) written in 60, and, some five years later, three further books De temporibus suis (‘on my times’). Little has survived of them except a passage of seventy-two lines on his consulship and the two notorious lines which aroused the derision of his contemporaries for their jingling sound and boastful expression, cedant arma togae, concedat laurea laudi (or linguae) (‘Let arms submit to civil power, let military laurels yield to praise’ or ‘speech’), and o fortunatam natam me consule Romam (‘O happy Rome, born in my consulship’). Despite his poetic failings he furthered the development of the Latin hexameter and had some influence on Lucretius and perhaps Catullus.

9. Cicero's influence on literature and thought. Cicero was a man of great versatility of intellect. Lasting political success eluded him because of his support for what turned out to be a lost cause. His consulship in 63 was famous; he was a political force of whom serious account had subsequently to be taken by whoever aimed at controlling the political scene; his devotion to his country was selfless and never in doubt. But his immense success as consul left him with an exaggerated idea of what it was possible for him to achieve politically, and his enthusiasm for the restoration of the old form of the republic was sadly unrealistic; he was not able—nor was anyone—to deal with the serious economic and social issues which lay behind the politics of the day, and it is often said that he lacked judgement and constancy of purpose. His lasting greatness lies in his exceptional mastery of the Latin language. He was the greatest orator that Rome produced. In his prose treatises as well as in his oratory, he wrote in lucid and unaffected Latin and in a complex periodic style that was logical and coherent, rhythmical and sonorous. His prose became a model for later writers in Latin and helped to mould the style of many authors writing in the languages of modern Europe.

In his forensic speeches, mostly written for the defence, he was adept at selecting those aspects of a case on which he might speak to his client's advantage, at relating an engrossing narrative that furthered his cause, at rising to heights of emotion where appropriate, and at employing his considerable powers of wit, irony, and ridicule. He was unusual in being able to expound the theory of his art in a series of valuable treatises on rhetoric. He exemplified his own precept that an orator needed to have a wide knowledge by constant reading and study, especially of the Greek philosophers. Hitherto the Latin language was not adapted to expressing general philosophic ideas and lacked a suitable vocabulary. Cicero succeeded in expounding the Greek philosophical systems partly by introducing into Latin a range of new words to express the ideas. These ideas were not arid theories but, adapted to the Roman environment and Roman attitudes, underpinned Cicero's life as a practical man of action. Though ultimately suspending belief in the existence of gods he was, nevertheless, convinced of the essential rightness of the Stoic doctrine that all humans possessed a spark of the divine, which bound man to man and demanded that we treat each other with a common respect.

Cicero's reputation was somewhat eclipsed in the two centuries after his death; his views on rhetorical education had little influence, and Latin prose style tended to avoid Ciceronian fullness and balance in favour of what was striking and epigrammatic. His letters were probably published in the course of the first century AD but aroused no particular interest, nor was his philosophy much read. Some Christians saw him as a symbol of the pagan culture which should be rejected, but his good sense and his style ensured that he was studied by Christian apologists needing an acceptable language to express their beliefs to a pagan audience, and sometimes needing the arguments too. Those books that seemed to prefigure or echo Christian wisdom were especially favoured in Christian reading and education: Somnium Scipionis, De officiis, De amicitia, De senectute. From the early Middle Ages until the nineteenth century Cicero's influence on literature and ideas was profound. Renaissance scholars admired and imitated his language and style, but, more importantly, saw him as the ideal of civilized man, brilliant, humane, practical in the discharge of civic duties, and enjoying a refined leisure. Interest in his Latin style became less intense towards the end of the sixteenth century when taste turned to Seneca and Tacitus, and in any case the various vernaculars established themselves as respectable vehicles of composition, themselves much influenced by Ciceronian style. In England in the seventeenth century the language of John Milton and of the Authorized Version of the Bible show their indebtedness. The eighteenth century with its cool rationalism felt a special affinity to Cicero, and in France (and America) his freedom from dogma and his open-minded speculations struck a chord among aspiring revolutionaries. In the nineteenth century his reputation as a statesman collapsed; his philosophical writings too ceased to exert their previous influence and seemed unoriginal and excessively moralistic, and interest turned towards their Greek sources. Nevertheless, Ciceronian ‘humanity’ is still the ideal that lies at the base of much of modern civilization.

2. Quintus Tullius Cicero, 102–43 BC, younger brother of the orator ((1) above), an able soldier and administrator. He was praetor in 62, and governor of Asia 61–59, where he received from his brother two long letters of advice (Epistulae ad Quintum fratrem I. 1 and 2). He served as legate with Caesar in Gaul during 54–51, taking part in the invasion of Britain, and then joined his brother in Cilicia. He followed Pompey in the civil war, was pardoned after Pharsalus, and took no further part in public life. He and his son died in the proscriptions of 43. He had wide literary interests but his works do not survive, except for four letters to his brother. He married Pomponia, sister of his brother's friend Atticus.

3. Marcus Tullius Cicero, born 65 BC, only son of the orator ((1) above) and his wife Terentia. He was taken out to Cilicia with his father in 51. He fought with a squadron of cavalry in Pompey's army in 49/8, was pardoned after the battle of Pharsalus, joined Sextus Pompeius after Philippi, but took advantage of the amnesty after 39 to return to Rome. He was consul with Octavian for a brief period in 30; subsequently he governed Syria and after that we hear no more of him. An apologetic letter survives (Ad familiares XVI. 21) written by him to Tiro in response to letters from his father and Atticus which expressed displeasure at his idle life while a student in Athens. In it he gives a careful account of his reformed mode of life.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 BC) The Roman orator and statesman is philosophically important partly as a transmitter of Greek ideas in Latin, but also for the unity of philosophy and rhetoric that he sought to promote. Rhetoric enables the statesman, educated to wisdom by philosophy, to prevail by gaining the consent of a free citizenry. Cicero was an eclectic who had sympathy with Stoicism, the Peripatetics, and the scepticism of the Academy, but was opposed to the system of Epicurus. He exercised a considerable influence on thinkers of the Enlightenment, and notably on Hume.

(Marcus Tullius Cicero) (sĭs'ərō) or Tully, 106 B.C.–43 B.C., greatest Roman orator, famous also as a politician and a philosopher.

Life

Cicero studied law and philosophy at Rome, Athens, and Rhodes. His political posts included those of curule aedile (69 B.C.), praetor (66 B.C.), and consul (63 B.C.). He was always a member of the senatorial party, and as party leader he successfully prosecuted Catiline. Later he was unable to prove that he had legal sanction to execute five members of Catiline's group, and on the charge of illegality he was exiled (58 B.C.) by his personal enemy, Clodius. He was recalled by Pompey the following year and was hailed as a hero.

Strongly opposed to Julius Caesar, Cicero was a leader of the party that caused him to convene (56 B.C.) the triumvirate at Lucca. In 51 B.C. he was governor of Cilicia, and on his return he joined Pompey against Caesar. After the civil war Caesar forgave Cicero, and he lived in honor at Rome under the dictatorship. He did not take part in the assassination of Caesar, but he applauded it. He and Marc Antony were bitter enemies, and Antony attacked Cicero in the senate. Cicero replied in the First Philippic and the Second Philippic, in which he sought to defend the republic. When Octavian (later Augustus) took Rome, he allowed Antony to put Cicero's name among those condemned, and Cicero was put to death on Dec. 7, 43 B.C.

Works

To the modern reader probably the most interesting of Cicero's voluminous writings are his letters to Atticus, his best friend; to Quintus, his brother; to Brutus, the conspirator; to Caelius, another close friend; and to miscellaneous persons. They reveal more of Roman life and political manners than does any other source. His philosophical works, which are generally stoical, include De amicitia [on friendship]; De officiis [on duty]; De senectute [on old age], or Cato Major; De finibus [on ends], a dialogue on the good; The Tusculan Disputations; and De natura deorum [on the nature of the gods], an attack on various philosophies, especially Epicureanism.

Cicero's rhetorical works are of less general interest. De oratore, addressed to his brother, is a kind of handbook for the young orator; Brutus is an account of Roman oratory; and Orator is a discussion of the ideal orator. The most widely read of Cicero's works are his orations, which have become the standard of Latin. The most famous of these are the Orations against Catiline, on the occasion of the conspiracy, and the Philippics against Antony. Other famous speeches are Against Verres, On the Manilian Law, On Behalf of Archias, On Behalf of Balbus, and On Behalf of Roscius. Cicero's literary and oratorical style is of the greatest purity, and his reputation as the unsurpassed master of Latin prose has never waned.

Bibliography

See Loeb ed. of his works (28 vol., 1912–58); his letters (tr. 1969); studies by T. A. Dorey (1965), D. Stockton (1971), and D. R. S. Bailey (1972).

Quotes:

"Old age, especially an honored old age, has so great authority, that this is of more value than all the pleasures of youth."

"You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long."

"No one is so old as to think he cannot live one more year."

"There is no one so old as to not think they may live a day longer."

"Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end."

"Every stage of human life, except the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits; old age alone has no precise and determinate boundary."

See more famous quotes by Marcus T. Cicero