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

by Anthony Everitt

Perhaps some of these demonstrations on the road were engineered, but they revealed a deep well of support for the young pretender. In Naples he was met by Balbus and went on to his stepfather’s villa at Puteoli.

Young Octavian’s appearance on the scene turned the political situation on its head. His growing popularity with the army and the Roman masses had the effect, as intended, of detaching Antony from the Senate, for it compelled him to outbid his new rival as a loyal supporter of Caesar’s memory.

For the time being the newcomer was little more than a nuisance and the Consul called him dismissively a “boy who owes everything to his name.” However, the popularity of that name in the army and among the urban masses soon made him a force to be reckoned with.

When Octavian asked Antony to make over the moneys promised in the Dictator’s will so that he could pay out the various bequests, the Consul coolly responded that the funds belonged to the state and had, in any event, been spent.

The atmosphere in Rome grew tense and uneasy. Antony’s popularity slid and he enlisted the services of veterans to keep public order.

Many moderates in the Caesarian camp, including the following year’s Consuls-elect Hirtius and Caius Vibius Pansa Caetronianus, now agreed with Cicero that open hostilities were approaching.

The conspirators’ position was becoming increasingly uncomfortable and a conference was called in Antium to consider the situation. Cicero was invited to attend.

Without revealing his source, Cicero passed on Hirtius’s advice that Brutus should not leave Italy. A general conversation followed, full of recriminations about lost opportunities. Cicero remarked that he agreed with what was being said, but there was no point in crying over spilled milk.

He then launched into a reprise of all his familiar views (“nothing original, only what everyone is saying all the time”): Antony should have been killed alongside Julius Caesar, the Senate should have met immediately after the assassination and so forth. He was doing exactly what he had just criticized the others for, and no doubt at much greater length.

“Nothing in my visit gave me any satisfaction except the consciousness of having made it,” Cicero concluded.

It would have been out of character if he had not delayed acting on his decision, and for the next month he nervously pondered the best route to take.

The Macedonian legions being brought back to Italy by Antony would land at Brundisium, so he had better avoid the place. He worried that people might blame him for running away, but if he promised to return for the new year when Antony’s Consulship would have finally ended, surely that would pacify his critics?

Despite his anxieties, Cicero insisted to Atticus that his underlying frame of mind was firm.

He attributed his calmness to the “armor-proofing” of philosophy and it is evidence of Cicero’s creativity that he continued producing a flood of books and essays, including his treatise for Marcus, Duties.

He monitored Octavian’s activities with interest and suspicion. “Octavian, as I perceived, does not lack intelligence or spirit,” he remarked to Atticus in June. “But how much faith to put in one of his years and name ...

He found it shocking that Brutus’s Games were advertised for “July,” the new name in honor of Julius Caesar that had replaced the month of Quintilis.

The Republican Sextus Pompey, who had survived the disaster at Munda, was running a fairly successful guerrilla war in Spain and it was thought he might march his forces to Italy against Antony.

On the domestic front, young Quintus wanted to get back into Cicero’s good books.

He claimed to have quarreled with Antony and to have decided to switch his allegiance to Brutus. Cicero did not believe a word of it. He asked Atticus: “How much longer are we going to be fooled?” More credibly, Quintus had apparently used his father’s name without permission in some dubious financial transaction.

AS he was getting nowhere at a distance, Quintus decided to spend some days with Cicero at Puteoli and see what persuasion in person could achieve.

He wanted an introduction to Brutus, which his embarrassed uncle could not decently refuse. Also he was anxious for a family reconciliation and Cicero wrote Atticus a dissembling letter in which he pretended to be convinced that the young man’s reformation was sincere.

At long last, on July 17, Cicero set sail for Greece from his house in Pompeii in three ten-oared rowing boats.

AS he boarded, he was, of course, already having second thoughts. A long sea voyage would be fatiguing for a man of his age. (He was now 62.) The timing of his departure was unfortunate, for he was leaving peace behind him with the intention of returning when the Republic would very probably be at war.

The little flotilla sailed at a comfortable speed down to Syracuse, from where it would set out west across the open sea. But a southern gale blew the boats back to the toe of Italy.

The story was that disorder on the streets of Rome and Octavian’s ceaseless efforts to gain the public-relations initiative were shifting the Consul’s policy again.

Perhaps, after all, Antony was believed to think, his best bet would be to return to the March 17 settlement and align himself with moderate, antiwar Caesarians and the Senate.

Cicero also learned, to his dismay, that people were commenting adversely on his absence. Atticus was having second thoughts too and, although he had endorsed Cicero’s original plan to spend some time in Athens, now took him to task. Cicero decided to abandon the expedition.

Unfortunately, the Republicans had been tempted by a false dawn. Caesar’s father-in-law, Piso, who Cicero still believed had connived at his exile and whom he consequently loathed, launched a fierce attack on Antony at the August Senate meeting.

In fact, the idea had probably never been seriously viable. Octavian, or his advisers, was too canny to allow a complete breach with his competitor.

Dealing with Antony was a balancing act: on the one hand the two were rivals for popularity with the army—that is, for Caesar’s political succession, for whoever controlled the legions in the last analysis controlled Rome.

At a personal level the two men had little in common. Antony, who was twenty years older than Octavian, was a playboy.

He probably had no long-term strategy and seems not to have been particularly interested in avenging the Ides of March. He would react vigorously if prodded but preferred to live and let live. By contrast, Octavian had a colder personality and, although he told no one about it, intended to pursue the conspirators to the end.

Hopes of compromise dashed, Brutus and Cassius had finally made up their minds to abandon Italy, although their precise intentions after that were unclear.

Servilia had evidently fulfilled her promise to work behind the scenes to get the corn commissions canceled and they had again been awarded new provinces, but they did not go to them. Instead, Brutus settled in Athens in the province of Macedonia where, hoping that the political situation would improve, he waited for as long as possible before determining whether or not to recruit an army.

Cicero’s return to Rome on August 31 echoed the excitement and applause of his return from exile thirteen years earlier. The crowds that poured out to meet him were so large that the greetings and speeches of welcome at the city gates and during his entry into the city took up most of a day.

It would be wrong to exaggerate Cicero’s influence, for he commanded no divisions, but his significance can also be undervalued. Perhaps he undervalued it himself; his letters show him to be much preoccupied with the preservation of his public standing, but they convey little awareness of his authority and influence.

That autumn a combination of factors conspired to give him real political influence for the first time since his Consulship. This was partly because he was one of the few senior statesmen o...

AS Brutus had recognized when he called out Cicero’s name at Pompey’s theater, he stood for the best of the past, the old days and the old ways. People were beginning to fear a new breakdown of the fragile Republic and Cicero was the one man who...

But the most important factor was the change which seems to have taken place in his personality.

He showed a new ruthlessness and clarity, as if iron had entered his soul. Perhaps it was simply that by the standards of the age Cicero was an old man and felt he had little to lose. Perhaps his immersion in philosophy had made him clearer about what was important and what could be jettisoned.

In any case, step by step, he let himself be drawn towards the center of events and, to the surprise of those who knew him well, Brutus above all, showed himself willing to use unscrupulous and even unconstitutional methods to achieve his ultimate g...

Hirtius

Pansa

Antony was furious. During the debate he launched an outspoken attack on Cicero, threatening to send housebreakers in to demolish his home on the Palatine.

On September 2, in the Consul’s absence, the Senate was reconvened and Cicero responded to the onslaught with the first of a series of speeches against Antony. He later nicknamed them his “Philippics” (after the Athenian orator Demosthenes’ speeches against Philip of Macedon) in a letter to Brutus, who for the time being was impressed by Cicero’s new firmness and replied that they deserved the title.

Avoiding personal insults and using studiously moderate terms, he followed up Piso’s criticisms a month earlier of Antony’s unconstitutional activities and fraudulent use of Julius Caesar’s papers. It was a well-judged add...

The Consul well understood the threat it posed to his position and spent a couple of weeks in his country villa working up a counterblast. At a Senate meeting on September 19 he delivered a comprehensive onslaught on Cicero, who cautiously stayed away: he dissected his career, blaming him for the “murder” of Catilina...

Cicero settled safely in the countryside, where he spent the next month preparing the second of his Philippics, a lengthy, colorful but in the end unappealing invective against Antony, in which he reviewed the Consul’s life episode by episode.

At about this time, Cicero learned that an old friend of his, Caius Matius, whom he nicknamed Baldy, was annoyed by some critical remarks he had reportedly made about him.

In a carefully composed letter, Cicero defended himself but made it clear that he did think Caesar had been a despot.