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

by Anthony Everitt

Quintus was betrayed by servants. His son was either with him or within reach: according to one account, he found a hiding place for his father and, when tortured to reveal its whereabouts, did not utter a syllable.

AS soon as Quintus was told about this, he came out into the open and gave himself up. Each man begged to be killed first.

During the civil war both father and son had tried in their different ways to extricate themselves from Cicero’s clouded fortunes, but they had been unable to escape his ruin. The brothers had been reconciled, at least on the surface, and, whatever their disagreements about Julius Caesar, they both unhesitatingly backed the last surviving defenders of the Republican cause. Young Quintus was a clever but unsympathetic figure. However (if we can believe the story of his last days, as recounted by late sources), it is touching to see him behave for once with courage and unselfishness.

He is reported to have said, rather grandly: “I will die in the country I have so often saved.”

The surviving accounts differ in detail but they all agree on Cicero’s bravery.

Pomponia, despite the fact that she and Quintus were divorced, expressed her

feelings more vigorously. Antony handed the freedman Philologus over to her; she forced him to cut off his own flesh bit by bit, roast the pieces and eat them.

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“So died Cicero, a man born to save the Republic. For a long time he defended and administered it.

day did not pass when it was not in someone’s interest to see him dead.”

our eyes Cicero was a statesman and public servant of outstanding ability.

the preeminent orator of his age, if not of any age. In a society where politicians were also expected to be good soldiers, he was preeminently a civilian and this makes his success all the more remarkable. That his career ended in ruins and that for long years he was a bystander at great events was not due to lack of talent but to a surplus of principle.

Cicero’s weakness as a politician was that his principles rested on a mistaken analysis. He failed to understand the reasons for the crisis that tore apart the Roman Republic. Julius Caesar, with the pitiless insight of genius, understood that the constitution with its endless checks and balances prevented effective government, but like so many of his contemporaries Cicero regarded politics in personal rather than structural terms.

he was a temperamental conservative caught in the nets of a revolution.

In that sense, his greatest gift to European civilization was the man himself—rational, undogmatic, tolerant, law-abiding and urbane.

Tiro apparently lived a long life, spent on his smallholding in Campania, and devoted himself to his master’s memory. He wrote a biography of Cicero, published the notes for his speeches and may have assembled a collection of his sayings and witticisms.

Marcus loved his father and defended his name. He fought at Philippi and served under Sextus Pompey, but then made his peace with the triumphant Commissioners. He was pardoned in 39. The drinking that

had worried Cicero when Marcus was a student in Athens became a lifelong habit. He was reported to down nine or ten pints at a session and once when drunk he threw a goblet at Augustus’s greatest general, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Fortunately, he inherited his father’s administrative competence (and, apparently, his sense of humor). Augustus seems to have liked him: he was appointed Augur (according to Appian, “by way of apology for Cicero’s sacrifice”) and in 30 he served as Consul...

“In this way Heaven entrusted to the family of Cicero the final acts in the punishment of Antony.”

Terentia lived to the great age of 103 and took a third husband.

“An eloquent man, my child, an eloquent man, and a patriot.”

Catullus, Odes, trans. Peter Whigham, Penguin Classics, 1966.

Cicero, Letters to Atticus and to His Friends, ed. and trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Penguin Classics, 1978.

Selected Political Speeches, trans. Michael Grant, Penguin Books, 1969. ———, Works, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Florence Dupont, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, Basil Blackwell, 1992.

H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero, Routledge, 5th ed., 1982.