Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician

by Anthony Everitt

The civil war was conclusively over. The human price had been high, for it has been estimated that 100,000 Roman citizens had lost their lives since the opening of hostilities in 49. No one was left in the field for Caesar to fight. His leading opponents were dead. The Republic was dead too: he had become the state.

By agreement with Balbus and Oppius, Atticus suggested that Cicero write a letter of advice to Caesar, in which he could return to the theme of the restoration of the constitution. Cicero obediently attempted a draft and, out of courtesy and caution, showed it to the two confidential agents before sending it off.

They thought it too outspoken and counseled a revision. On May 25, Cicero informed Atticus that it would be better not to write anything. He was relieved to have extricated himself because it now occurred to him that Ca...

Cicero no longer entertained hopes that the Republic would be restored and moved gradually from collaboration to opposition.

It was becoming common knowledge in the Dictator’s circle that, despite the end of the war, he had no intention of settling permanently in Rome; he had decided that the continuing Parthian threat should be addressed once and for all. So he would soon be marching off on another military campaign.

Also, perhaps, the deep depression from which Cicero was emerging had hardened him and made him less inclined to compromise. Tullia’s death and the quarrels in his family circle meant that old ties had loosened and that he could follow his own wishes.

A by-product of this more explicit disillusionment with the present state of affairs was the cooling of Cicero’s friendship with Brutus.

In June, Dolabella, with whom Cicero was still friendly, paid a visit and reported some new scandal concerning young Quintus.

In August Quintus, now back in Italy after the Spanish campaign, fell out with his mother. For this reason he needed to have a house of his own and his father wondered whether to vacate his own home to make room for him.

But Quintus was still doing his best to blacken his uncle’s reputation and was now busy criticizing his father as well. Cicero told Atticus that, according to Hirtius, he “is at it constantly, especially at dinner parties.

The two brothers were on rather better terms than they had been and the problematic youth may have helped bring them back together.

Cicero was in the money again—he had just learned of a substantial legacy from a wealthy banker—and, after settling his own debts, he planned to make over the surplus, apparently as a loan, to his brother. This was a remarkably generous gesture after their bitter quarrel and a further illustration of Cicero’s inability to bear a grudge.

When Atticus had an idea he seldom let it rest. He continued to press his friend to write to Caesar and at last Cicero yielded.

A gap in the correspondence with Atticus follows for nearly three months, but it seems that Cicero was on superficially good terms with Caesar again.

Towards the end of the year Cicero made a short speech on behalf of Deiotarus, King of Galatia, who was alleged to have plotted Caesar’s assassination during the civil war.

The case was heard in the accused’s absence behind closed doors in the Dictator’s house. Caesar cast himself as judge and jury. Cicero combined compliment with candor (he commented adversely on the irregularity of the judicial procedure), a mixture that usually pleased his listener.

In December, Caesar toured Campania, perhaps visiting veteran colonies, and called on Cicero at his house in the seaside resort of Puteoli.

What was intended as a friendly gesture was, in fact, a massive inconvenience for a reluctant host. The Dictator turned up on December 18 with no fewer than 2,000 soldiers, who camped out in the open.

Caesar spent the morning alone till one o’clock, apparently working on accounts with Balbus. Then he went for a walk on the beach and took a bath an hour later.

Some bad news about his Prefect of Engineers was brought in, but the expression on Caesar’s face did not change. Once his skin had been oiled at the end of his bath (as was the custom), he took his place at Cicero’s dinner table.

The year was ending on a modestly contented note. Not only was Cicero’s relationship with Caesar ostensibly in good repair, but harmony of a sort was breaking out on the domestic front.

It seemed that the difficult, hostile teenager was beginning to settle down into an ordinary Roman young-man-about-town with debts, who realized that it would be in his interest to be on good terms again with his disappointed family.

Whether or not Quintus acted as he said he would is unknown, but there is no subsequent reference to a wife in the fragmentary surviving documentation.

By now, Cicero had become less volatile than he had been in the past.

He met the challenges and misfortunes that faced him with determination. In politics he made up his mind about the regime with fewer of his usual doubts and nervous questionings. Criticism did not bother him as much as it had once. He still reacted passionately to events and was no less self-absorbed, but he had learned to control himself.

Family estrangements troubled him and he had nearly been broken by Tullia’s death, but he had struggled with all his might to regain his emotional balance. Tempered by the fire, ...

One explanation for Cicero’s new maturity lay in his phenomenal productivity as a writer. In 46, at the age of sixty, he started work on a succession of books which, taken together, represent one of Rome’s most valuable legacies to posterity.

Politics and war were the chief but not the only means by which a Roman could achieve status. Others were scholarship and literature. Leading figures such as Cicero’s friend the jurist Sulpicius could maintain their prestige by achieving an unrivaled knowledge of the law.

Cicero had already found poetry (when he was a young man), philosophy and research into the art of public speaking to be useful supports to his status as a public figure.

So he set about reasserting his reputation as an author. Despite all his other preoccupations, he wrote “from morning to night” (as he told Atticus), producing a flood of books and essays during the next three years.

Looking back near the end of his life, he observed: “I have written more in this short time since the collapse of the Republic than I did throughout the many years while the Republic stood.” He hoped his books would be of use to the young but noticed that it was the older generation which took most comfort from them.

Hortensius

Catullus’s closest friend, Caius Licinius Calvus.

Cicero’s young friend Caelius

Cicero felt that the time had come to rebut this fashion, partly because it contradicted his own views on oratory but also because he feared that if it got out of hand it would supersede his own achievements.

However, he made it clear that, by definition, public speakers had to attract the interest of the public. Here the Atticists failed because, however correct their Latin, they bored the listener. In the law courts “they are deserted not only by the crowds of bystanders, which is humiliating enough, but by their client’s witnesses and legal advisers.”

During the summer of 46 Cicero’s mind turned to questions of philosophy. After producing a squib on the Stoic ethical system, Stoic Paradoxes (Paradoxa stoicorum), Cicero committed himself to a much more ambitious enterprise. This was nothing more nor less than an attempt to give a comprehensive account of Greek philosophy in the Latin language.

In the book called Hortensius I advised my readers to occupy themselves with philosophy—and in the four volumes of the Academic Treatises I suggested the philosophical methods which seem to me to have the greatest degree of appropriate discretion, consistency and elegance.

This was followed by Conversations at Tusculum, also in five volumes, which expound the key issues we should bear in mind in our pursuit of happiness. The first volume deals with indifference to death, the second with how to endure pain, the third with the alleviation of distress in times of trouble and the fourth with other distractions which affect our peace of mind. Finally, the fifth book addresses the topic that is best calculated to clarify the nature of philosophy—that is, it demonstrates that moral worth alone is adequate to ensure a happy life.

Cicero is explicit that this corpus was an alternative to the public life from which he was barred. In Foretelling the Future, he wrote: “it was through my books that I was addressing the Senate and the people. I took the view that philosophy was a substitute for political activity.”

He had always believed that philosophy was an essential ingredient of a training in the art of public speaking and the collapse of the Republic was evidence of the failure by statesmen to apply moral values to their conduct.

The purpose of the Hortensius, to judge from its surviving fragments, was to establish the uses of philosophy.

It was cast as a debate set in the late 60s and the speakers were four leading personalities of the day, including Hortensius and Cicero himself. It contained defenses of poetry, history and oratory.

Hortensius attacked the inadequacies of many philosophers and launched a vigorous onslaught on aspects of Epicureanism. Cicero responded w...

The Academic Treatises (Academica) were started in autumn 46 and Cicero was still working on them the following summer. They were an epistemological inquiry which examined in greater detail than the Hortensius different theories of knowledge.

The Academic Treatises gave an extended account of the evolution of the doctrines of the Academy, the school of philosophy founded by Plato and developed over the centuries by his successors.

He also took the opportunity to justify his overall project by responding to two criticisms he put into Varro’s mouth: first, anyone seriously interested in Greek philosophy could look up the original authors and, second, the Latin language lacked the necessary technical terminology.

Posterity has largely justified this defense. While Latin has disadvantages (the lack of a definite article, for one), to some extent Cicero succeeded in widening its range.

The next dialogue in the series, On Supreme Good and Evil (De finibus bonorum et malorum), was composed more or less at the same time as the Academic Treatises.

The different chapters of the book, which has survived in its entirety, are given roughly contemporary settings: Cicero’s villa at Cumae in 50; Tusculum in 52; and then Athens during his grand tour in 79. Epicureanism and Stoicism are examined and rejected.