Titans of History

CICERO

106–43 BC

There was a humanity in Cicero, a something almost of Christianity, a stepping forward out of the dead intellectualities of Roman life into moral perceptions, into natural affections, into domesticity, philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty …

Anthony Trollope, in the introduction to his Life of Cicero (1880)

Cicero was a supreme master of the spoken word whose stirring calls in defense of the Roman republic finally cost him his life. In his own day he was uncontested as Rome’s finest orator, a statesman whose devotion and loyalty to the republic was unquestioned. He was also a man of exceptional intellect and refinement who has exerted an enduring influence on Western civilization.

In spite of being a novus homo (“new man”)—none of his ancestors had attained the highest offices of state—Marcus Tullius Cicero went on to become one of Rome’s leading statesmen. A brilliant youth who studied under the best minds of the day, he entered the law as a route to politics. He rose swiftly and was renowned for the brilliance of his mind and his dazzling oratorical skills.

Cicero was never troubled by false modesty, but the Roman people generally shared his high opinion of himself. An outsider to the patrician-dominated political system, he won election to the highest offices of state, in each case at the earliest permitted age. In 63 BC, after reaching the pinnacle of political preferment, the consulship, he quickly established himself as a national hero. Discovering the Catiline conspiracy, a patrician plot to overthrow the republic, Cicero successfully swayed the senate into decreeing the death penalty for the conspirators, trouncing Julius Caesar in debate in the process. When he announced their execution to the crowds with just one word, vixerunt (“their lives are done”), Cicero was hailed with tumultuous rapture as pater patriae—“father of the country.”

In the space of a few sentences he could move juries and crowds from laughter to tears, anger or pity. Using simple words he could expose the heart of a complex matter, but if required he could befuddle his audience with rhetoric, winning cases by, as he put it, “throwing dust in the jurymen’s eyes.” His renowned declaration “Civis romanus sum” (“I am a Roman citizen”) has come to encapsulate the defense of a citizen’s rights against the overbearing power of the state. Cicero’s highly distinctive speaking style transformed the written language. His ability to layer clause upon clause while maintaining his argument’s clear line became the model for formal Latin.

A century after Cicero’s death, Plutarch eulogized him as the republic’s last true friend. In a time of civil unrest Cicero harked back to a golden age of political decorum. Idealistic yet consistent, he was convinced that virtue in public life would restore the republic to health. Refusing to be involved in political intrigue that might undermine the system, he rejected Caesar’s offer to join him in the so-called First Triumvirate of 60 BC. Cicero played no part in Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, but he seized on the end of his dictatorship to vigorously re-enter politics. Over the following months, taking his lead from the renowned Athenian orator Demosthenes, Cicero delivered the Philippics, a series of fourteen coruscating orations against the tyranny of Caesar and against his faithful henchman Mark Antony. It was a magnificent, if ultimately forlorn, cry for political freedom.

After Caesar as dictator had encouraged the staunch republican to refrain from politics, Cicero turned to philosophy to keep himself amused. As a youth he had been tutored by the famous Greek philosophers of the day. His knowledge, as broad as it was deep, was unmatched in Rome. Cicero’s treatise on the value of philosophy, Hortensius, was practically required reading in late antiquity. St. Augustine credited it as instrumental in his conversion. The early Catholic Church deemed Cicero a “righteous pagan.”

Cicero introduced to Rome the Greek ideas that formed the basis of Western thought for the next 2000 years. His works have sometimes been criticized as derivative, but he laid little claim to originality in his treatises. “They are transcripts,” he wrote to a friend. “I simply supply words and I’ve plenty of those.” It is a remarkably humble statement for a man who made such an extraordinary contribution to Western philosophy: he translated Greek works, invented Latin words to explain hitherto untranslatable concepts, and elucidated the main philosophical schools. His vast discourse amounted to an encyclopedia of Greek thought.

In the end, Cicero’s inability to hold his tongue proved his undoing. When Octavian, Caesar’s adopted son and the future Augustus, learned of Cicero’s remark about him—“the young man should be given praise, distinctions, and then disposed of”—it spelled doom for the orator. Octavian, Mark Antony and Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate shortly afterward, and Cicero was declared an enemy of the state. Pursued by soldiers as he halfheartedly fled Italy, Cicero was brutally murdered, his head hacked off, and the hand with which he had written the offending speeches displayed in the Roman forum.

“There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier,” Cicero reportedly said to his assassin, “but do try to kill me properly.”