Cicero

Roman orator and rhetorician

• Born: January 6, 0106
• Birthplace: Arpinum, Latium (now Arpino, Italy)
• Died: December 7, 43 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Formiae, Latium (now Formia, Italy)

With courageous and principled statesmanship, Cicero guided Rome through a series of severe crises. While he was not able to save the Republic, he transmitted its political and cultural values in speeches and treatises that became models of style for posterity.

Early Life

Marcus Tullius Cicero (SIHS-ur-oh), the elder son of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Helvia, was born a few miles from Arpinum, a small town in Latium, southeast of Rome. Long established in the district, his family had, like many other Roman families, a rather undignified source for its name: Cicer is Latin for chickpea, or garbanzo. According to one story, “Cicero” originated as the nickname of a wart-nosed ancestor. The Tullius clan was of equestrian, or knightly, rank—that is, they were well-to-do but their members had never served in the senate. Cicero was to be the first in the family to attain nobility as a magistrate.

Centuries earlier, Arpinum had been a stronghold of the Volscians in their unsuccessful struggle to avoid subjugation by Rome. For nearly one hundred years before Cicero’s birth, however, the people of Arpinum had enjoyed full Roman citizenship. Cicero took pride in his local origins as well as in his Roman citizenship, and he sometimes referred to his “two fatherlands.” His description in Cato maior de senectute (44 b.c.e.; On Old Age, 1481) of the slow, well-regulated growth of Arpinum’s figs and grapes suggests the influence of his birthplace on his politics at Rome: He was a lifelong defender of order and gradual change, an enemy of both mob violence and aristocratic privilege.

Cicero’s first exposure to learning came through the papyrus scrolls in his father’s library at Arpinum. While still very young, both Cicero and his brother, Quintus, showed such zeal to study philosophy and oratory that their father took them to Rome to seek the best instruction available. This move to Carinae Street in the capital, coinciding with his father’s retirement from active life, presented young Cicero with an opportunity to excel academically and advance socially.

Latin literature had yet to come into its own. Early Roman poets such as Livius Andronicus and Quintus Ennius simply did not compare well with Homer, and the educators of the day made heavy use of Greek poetic works to teach elocution and rhetoric. One of Cicero’s teachers was the Greek poet Aulus Licinius Archias, who had gone to Rome in 102 b.c.e. and whom Cicero afterward credited with having sparked his interest in literature. Cicero adapted the cadences of Greek and Latin poetry to his original orations, developing a complex but supple rhetorical and literary style that became a standard for his own time and for the Renaissance, fifteen hundred years later. In retrospect, however, Cicero faulted the education of his youth for not teaching how to obtain practical results through rhetoric—a problem he set himself to solve through legal studies.

In 89 b.c.e., at age seventeen, he interrupted these studies to serve on Rome’s side in the Social War, a rebellion by Rome’s Italian allies. His brief role in this disastrous ten-year conflict aroused in him a lifelong hatred of military service. He became more convinced than ever that his success would lie in progressing through the prescribed sequence of public offices, as it had for his models at the time, the orators Lucius Licinius Crassus and Marcus Antonius Creticus (grandfather of Marc Antony). He continued to study rhetoric and also resumed his legal studies under Quintus Mucius Scaevola, the augur (priest of the state religion), who had been consul some twenty-eight years previously.

Life’s Work

Among Cicero’s important achievements was a series of celebrated orations in connection with legal cases. His oratorical skills aided him in the pursuit of public office and helped secure his place in history as the savior of Rome.

Cicero launched his career as an orator and advocate in 81 b.c.e., during the dictatorship of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Under that regime no one’s life was safe; to become conspicuous through forensics was especially dangerous. Not only did Cicero confront this risk, but from his earliest cases onward he also often bravely opposed the established leaders. Pro Quinctio (81 b.c.e.; For Publius Quintius, 1741), his first speech in a court of law, had little importance in itself; in taking on this case, however, Cicero pitted himself against the leading advocate of the day, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus.

The following year, in Pro Roscio Amerino (80 b.c.e.; For Sextus Roscius of Ameria, 1741), Cicero defended a young man accused of parricide by Chrysogonus, a favorite of Sulla. After the father of Roscius was murdered, Chrysogonus had fabricated a charge to get the dead man’s name on Sulla’s list of proscribed citizens—those banished from Rome for certain offenses. By law the property of a proscribed person, dead or alive, was put up at auction; Chrysogonus wanted to buy the dead father’s property cheaply. He later conspired to make Roscius appear responsible for the murder. It was a bold and dangerous step to reveal in a public speech this evil scheme of Sulla’s favorite. However, Cicero resolutely undertook the defense of Roscius and carried it off so effectively that his reputation was immediately established. Suddenly his services as advocate were in great demand, and Cicero sought to capitalize on this trend by publishing some of his forensic speeches.

Apparently Sulla bore Cicero no ill will; in any case, the dictator abdicated in 79. The next two years, however, Cicero spent away from Rome, studying philosophy and oratory in Greece and Rhodes under Molo, who had also taught Julius Caesar. During this period, Cicero regained his health; it was also during this time that he formed the great friendship of his life, with Titus Pomponius Atticus, to whom he would address some of his best-known letters.

In 77, Cicero returned to Rome and married Terentia, the daughter of a well-to-do and socially prominent family. He was old enough to campaign for quaestor, or financial officer, the first rung of the public-office ladder. Elected at the minimum age of thirty in 76, Cicero served in Sicily and distinguished himself in office by sending large supplies of grain to the capital in a time of near famine. In gratitude, the senate admitted him to membership.

Meanwhile, Cicero continued to offer his services as orator and advocate, as Roman law prescribed an interim between terms of service as a magistrate. In 70 came another noteworthy event in his career: his impeachment of Gaius Verres, governor of Sicily from 73 to 71. Most provincial governors pursued a policy of extortion to enrich themselves, but Verres had been uncommonly greedy and cruel. Having spent two months preparing a painstakingly well-documented case, Cicero prosecuted Verres so vigorously that the defendant’s legal adviser—the same Hortensius whose primacy Cicero had challenged ten years earlier—gave up the defense, and Verres went into voluntary exile.

Cicero’s skill as a speaker in public trials was an important factor in his election to public office, especially because he was not from one of Rome’s leading aristocratic families. He won by a landslide the office of aedile (roughly, superintendent of public works) in 69. Two years later, he was chosen praetor, or judicial officer, and in 63 came the supreme honor: election as consul, Rome’s chief executive. Two consuls were elected each year, and Cicero’s colleague in office, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, was politically insignificant. Essentially, he allowed Cicero complete control during what became a year of crisis.

First, Cicero felt compelled to oppose a bill that ordered the distribution of state-owned land to the poor. The real significance of this particular bill lay in the powers it accorded to a commission that would be appointed to implement it. Sponsoring the bill were two wealthy aristocrats, Crassus and Julius Caesar. Cicero, a professed “man of the people,” soundly defeated the measure but at the cost of appearing to be an ally of the moneyed, landowning classes, while Caesar seemed a champion of the masses.

An aristocrat was similarly responsible for the next crisis, the Catilinarian conspiracy. After losing several bids for high office, Catiline, in desperation, began plotting a coup. He recruited popular support by promising to cancel all debts and proscribe the wealthy if he came to power. When Catiline tried to enlist a group of tribal delegates from Roman Gaul, however, they informed Cicero, who arranged that they should be arrested while carrying incriminating letters from the plotters. The evidence was incontrovertible, and Cicero called for summary execution.

This bold move proved a serious mistake that almost destroyed Cicero’s political career. Roman law provided that no citizen should be put to death without the privilege of final appeal to the people. Cicero, in his fourth Catilinarian oration, held that those who had plotted against their country were no longer citizens and thus had lost the right of final appeal. Despite the danger to the Republic—Catiline’s supporters outside Rome were virtually in a state of rebellion—Cicero pressed for an arbitrary interpretation of the law. He had the power to do so, for in October, because of the crisis, the senate had practically given him dictatorial power. Catiline escaped but was soon killed in the battle that finally ended the conspiracy. Cicero prevailed on the senate to pass the death sentence on the other ringleaders. Thereafter, he was hailed as a savior and “father of the fatherland.” Nevertheless, there were to be reprisals.

Publius Clodius Pulcher, a favorite of Caesar and a private enemy of Cicero, introduced a bill to exile anyone who had put Roman citizens to death without the right of public appeal. Cicero was not named, but the measure was clearly aimed at him. His attempts to block it failed, and in 58, stricken with grief, he was forced to leave Rome. Clodius and his followers tore down Cicero’s house in Rome and persecuted Terentia.

Cicero was recalled to the capital, however, after eighteen months. Perhaps as a reaction to Clodius’s excesses, the people gave Cicero a hero’s welcome. His house and wealth were restored, and Caesar courted him as a potential ally. Cicero’s dream at this time, however, was to save the Republic by detaching Pompey the Great from the First Triumvirate. Caesar and Pompey did indeed fall out, but the breakup of the triumvirate did not save the Republic. During the years between 57 and 51, Cicero lived in retirement and concentrated on philosophical and rhetorical studies and the writing of treatises in these fields, works in which he articulated the political and moral philosophy he had tried to exemplify in his life. In 51, sick of living in ignominious luxury, he leaped at the opportunity to govern the province of Cilicia as proconsul. Unlike most provincial governors, he was a just, sympathetic administrator, sincerely desirous of improving the lot of the Cilicians, who had been severely exploited by his predecessors.

Cicero never forgave Caesar for putting an end to the Republic, though he took no part in Caesar’s assassination in 44. Afterward, he expected to see the Republic restored, but he soon came to fear Antony as a second Caesar. When the Second Triumvirate was formed by Antony, Octavian (later Augustus), and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Cicero and other defenders of the old Republic were proscribed. Antony’s supporters hunted down Cicero and killed him in Formiae, Latium, on December 7, 43. To disgrace him, Antony had his head and hands mounted on the Rostra at Rome.

Significance

It was for his political acts that Cicero most wanted to be remembered, and, having acted courageously and decisively at certain critical moments—notably during the Catilinarian conspiracy—he was viewed in his own time as the savior of Rome. Nevertheless, Rome as Cicero knew it—the Republic—could not be saved. Though Cicero did often set an example of personal courage for his contemporaries, his more lasting value is in having articulated the political and moral ideals of the Roman Republic at the very moment when their realization was no longer possible. Through his writings, Cicero also helped to shape the form and style of a literature that was just coming into its own. In his orations and philosophical essays, he showed that the Latin language could be employed with the same grace and elegance as Greek. Though his philosophical reasoning was seldom profound, it adequately served his avowed practical purpose—in literature as in life—of helping humanity find a way of life and a consistent purpose. By recording the ideals of republican Rome, Cicero may have ensured their availability in other times when their realization would be more feasible.

Bibliography

Bailey, D. R. Shackleton. Cicero. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972. Provides a detailed biography of Cicero and discusses his writings in the context of his life. Part of the Classical Life and Letters series.

Cicero. Letters of Cicero: A Selection in Translation. Compiled and translated by L. P. Wilkinson. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968. Provides translations of Cicero’s important letters from the year after his consulship to the end of his life, with an informative introduction.

Everitt, Anthony. Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician. New York: Random House, 2002. Places Cicero’s life and career amid the context of the political intrigue and civil unrest of the Roman Republic.

Mackail, J. W. Latin Literature. Edited with an introduction by Harry C. Schnur. New York: Collier Books, 1962. Contains a chapter with literary evaluations of Cicero’s forensic oratory, political philosophy, philosophy, and epistolary prose. Includes a bibliography.

May, James M. Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric. Boston: Brill Academic, 2002. This volume of history and criticism includes bibliography and index.

Sihler, Ernest G. Cicero of Arpinum: A Political and Literary Biography. 1914. Reprint. New York: Cooper Square, 1969. A classicist’s approach to the study of Cicero’s life and character. Special emphasis is placed on Cicero’s writings.