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

by Anthony Everitt

He brandished his dagger, shouted for Cicero by name and congratulated him on the recovery of freedom. The

It was almost as if the assassination had been staged especially for him—as a particularly savage benefit performance. What

whole consisting of two indivisible aspects: an active principle (God) and that which it acts on (matter). Man’s duty was to live an active life in harmony with nature;

Always be the best, my boy, the bravest, and hold your head high above the others. It was a text that had inspired Alexander the Great and, once Homer appeared on their curriculum, many Roman boys were equally impressed, among them Marcus Tullius Cicero. Years later he told his brother that the lines had expressed his “childhood dream.” He

showing cracks, so that even the mice have moved elsewhere, to say nothing of the tenants. Other people call this a disaster, I don’t even call it a nuisance.… Heavens above, how utterly trivial such things appear to me! However, there is a building scheme under way … which should turn this loss into a source of profit.”

Every time I make a speech I feel I am submitting to judgment, not only about my ability but my character and honor.

Relatable

Cicero was nothing if not a genius at character assassination. “And just look at the man

Doubtless many citizens of Arpinum took the trouble to travel to Rome to vote for their local boy. The fact that he was a New Man meant that the outcome would not have looked at all certain.

He sought out and rediscovered the lost grave of Archimedes, the great scientist and geometer,

reminder that his thirst for recognition was redeemed by an endearing sense of the ridiculous. “I was filled with the notion that the Roman People would fall over themselves to honor and promote me,” he recalled. He arrived at the seaside resort of Puteoli at the height of the tourist season and had his nose put out of joint when an acquaintance asked if he’d just come from Rome and what was the news. No, Cicero replied, he was on his way back from his province. “Of course,” said the man,

been in Africa.” No, Cicero observed huffily, Sicily.

Meals would begin with a gustatio or taster—honeyed wine and canapés. The main courses featured a varied diet of meats—chicken, turbot, boar and (a special delicacy) sows’ udders and vulvas. Fattened game, fowl and pigs were the height of luxury. Finally came dessert, for which only the lightest food was served—not only fruit but also shellfish.

but the real drinking began once the food had been cleared away. This was the commissatio—a ceremonial drinking competition at which goblets had to be drained in a single gulp.

This was the time for conversation and debate, which might last well into the evening, and was the Roman equivalent to the Greek symposium.

(there was a Latin word for it, lucubrare—to work by lamplight).

he took the view that an advocate’s task was to win, not to uncover the truth.

A Senator once referred to him in a speech as “every woman’s man and every man’s woman”

Iconic

“I imagine you have heard that P. Clodius, the son of Appius, was caught dressed up as a woman in C. Caesar’s house at the national sacrifice and that he owed his escape alive to the hands of a servant girl—a spectacular scandal.

La magali de roma

in which he gave a devastating exposé of the “Medea of the Palatine” or, in Caelius’s phrase, “that ten-cent Clytemnestra.”

The moment

You [Mark Antony] assumed a man’s toga and at once turned it into a prostitute’s frock. At first you were a common rent boy; you charged a fixed fee, and a steep one at that. Curio soon

turned up, though, and took you off the game. You were as firmly wedded to Curio as if he had given you a married woman’s dress. No boy bought for lust was ever as much in his master’s power as you were in Curio’s. How many times did his father throw you out of his house? How many times did he set watchmen to make sure you did not cross his front door? And yet under cover of night, driven by lust and money, you were let in through the roof tiles.

ate

ten years on he kept Cicero, who would forgive a lot for a good joke,

Cicero nust have been a lot of fun

Silver-tongued among the sons of Rome, the dead, the living and the yet unborn, Catullus, least of poets, sends Marcus Tullius his warmest thanks: —as much the least of poets as he a prince of lawyers.

Uwu

“You bought a mansion,” Clodius sneered. “One might think he was saying I had bought a jury,” Cicero riposted.

AS SO often in his career, Cicero let his sense of humor do serious damage to his prospects.

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The great game was finally over. Holed up inside a remote citadel, Mithridates tried to poison himself, without success thanks to the physical immunity he had laboriously built up, and was forced to get a slave to stab

Dark

“I need 25 million sesterces just to own nothing.”

Buhu you whore

“As for our dear friend Cato,” he observed to Atticus while the land bill was being debated, “I have as warm a regard for him as you do. The fact remains that with all his patriotism, he can be a political liability. He speaks in the Senate as if he were living in Plato’s Republic instead of Romulus’s cesspool.”

am so utterly forsaken that my only moments of relaxation are those I spend with my wife, my little daughter and my darling Marcus.

go down to the Forum surrounded by droves of friends, but in all the crowds I cannot find one person with whom I can exchange an unguarded joke or let out a private sigh.

For most of his life Quintus was overshadowed by his more celebrated older brother, and every now and again he kicked against his lot and revealed a sore and irascible inferiority complex.

Quintus chose this moment to pick a quarrel with Atticus.

On another occasion Quintus ordered one of his lieutenants to burn two embezzlers alive and threatened to have a Roman eques “suffocated one day in smoke, to the applause of the province.”

For all his faults, he was an honest and sophisticated man, who read Plato and Xenophon, spoke Greek fluently and even wrote tragedies in his spare time.

Quintus

“When I notice how carefully arranged his hair is and when I watch him adjusting the parting with one finger, I cannot imagine that this man could conceive of such a wicked thing as to destroy the Roman constitution.”

Hes a thot but damgerous

Unfortunately, as his great crisis approached, Cicero was joined in Rome by Atticus and their correspondence stops.

we are to believe what he writes in his letters, he may have suffered something like a mental breakdown and seems to have attempted, or at least considered, suicide.

Atticus bore the brunt of his newfound agitations, receiving a constant flow of suggestions, instructions and criticisms without apparent complaint.

Real mvp

miss my daughter, the most loving, modest and clever daughter a man ever had, the image of my face and speech and mind.” She was living with her husband, Calpurnius Piso, a model son-in-law, who was a Quaestor in 58 but gave up his foreign posting to work for Cicero’s return.

Atticus very sensibly paid no attention to this unfair jibe and went on doing all he could to help, even offering to place his personal fortune, now much augmented by the death of an “extremely difficult” but extremely wealthy uncle, at Cicero’s disposal. This was a gesture of some significance for, with the confiscation of his property, Cicero’s financial affairs were in a very poor state. Cicero’s letters to Atticus are full of practical advice, complaints and queries.

The speech was little more than a list, larded with invective, of those whom he believed to have betrayed him, contrasted with praise for those who had helped secure his return. He described Gabinius, one of the two Consuls of 58 who had refused to lift a finger on his behalf, as “heavy with wine, somnolence and debauchery, with hair well-oiled and neatly braided, with drooping eyes and slobbering mouth.” AS for his colleague Calpurnius Piso, “talking with

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him is much the same as holding a discussion with a wooden post in the Forum … a dull and brutish clod … profligate, filthy and intemperate.”

Ate and left no crumbs

Cicero had some domestic worries to exercise him. His property was to be returned to him, but the question arose of compensation for the demolition of his house on the Palatine and of his country villas. He had been unable to work at the bar for a year and a half and was in urgent need of funds.

He lived from his work

but of their warm personal relations with Caesar despite political disagreements.

“In all the world Caesar is the only man who cares for me as I could wish, or (as others would have it) who wants me to care for him.” No

Caesar was a man of great charm and was fond of the sensitive, witty advocate; of course, he was also a hardheaded calculator and had every interest in using generosity to neutralize an opponent.

Quintus was a competent soldier and Caesar valued his services. At

there is no question that Quintus had a good war.

His death was perhaps the most influential act of his career, for it threw the spotlight on the relationship between Pompey and Caesar.

Tiro was the man who looked after confidential financial matters. Every month he chased up debtors and pacified creditors. He checked the management accounts of the steward Eros, which were sometimes incorrect. He negotiated with moneylenders on the not infrequent occasions when Cicero found himself embarrassed for ready cash.