Cicero

106-43BCE

  • Statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer, academic

  • Father an equestrian

  • Age 15 – served under Pompey and Sulla in Social Wars

  • Educated well (Greek, Roman History, poetry, philosophy, Greek rhetoric)

  • Cicero very talented = attention

  • Left Rome to study in Greece (or avoid Sulla during Sulla’s purge?? – Plutarch)

  • Cicero returned to Rome as a lawyer

  • Early operations in law courts

  • 76BCE – Cicero 30 – elected quaestor


Early Career

  • Quaestor in Sicily

  • Returned to Rome & high profile lawyer

  • Quickly moved through political roles (quaestor, aedile, praetor, president of a Court, senator, then consul (63BCE)

  • Known as a strong defender of the courts

  • Thwarted a conspiracy led by Catilina to overthrow the Roman Republic

  • Cataline Conspiracy – attempt by Catilina to overthrow – he had failed to be consul twice and attempted to organize foreign forces to help him use violence to secure consulship – Cicero stopped this

  • Pater Patriae honour given for suppressing conspiracy (argument re. penalty noteworthy)

  • Beginning of rifts – did he gloat?


Exile

  • Cicero had been invited to join the first triumvirate

  • Rejected due to impact he thought it would have on the republic

  • Strong republican virtues – did not like unconstitutional limits on consuls, anything that threatened the republic, non-elected officials in roles of power

  • Clodius passed law – illegal to give shelter or food to anyone who executed a Roman citizen without trial (aimed at Cicero – Cataline consp)

  • Likely done with Triumvirate – worried Cicero would intervene/abolish all Caesar had done whilst he was Consul

  • Cicero ‘in mourning’ – abused

  • Finally took himself into exile

  • Whilst gone – Clodius took Cicero’s house/built temple

  • Struggled with depression

  • Exile revoked by Senate – all agreed except Clodius

Post Exile

  • Returned to cheering crowd

  • Re-entered politics & tried to change Caesar’s laws

  • Tried to work with Caesar to re-establish working relationship – encourages triumvirate

  • Conf Luca – alliance was too strong – Cicero changes his mind and no longer likes triumvirate

  • Cicero then overly positive in praise of Caesar in public – in senate – in letters

  • Ensured Caesar wasn’t stripped of Gaul

  • Begins to withdraw from politics – focus on writing & law (although maybe used by triumv?)-

    • ‘the best defender of anybody’

  • Flees Rome during Caesar’s march on Rome & goes to republicans in Macedonia

  • Cicero falls out with the Pompeians & returns to Rome

  • Not part of Ides of March – assassins believed he was sympathetic

  • Cicero becomes a popular leader during following instability