Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 to 43 BC)
Cicero was what the Romans called a ‘new man’, meaning his family had no history of holding office and so qualifying for the senate. Yet he rose to become one of the most eminent Romans of his time, the leading advocate of his day and a key political player, first in preventing the Catiline conspiracy to overthrow the state in 63 BC, and then in the increasingly fraught political atmosphere which led up to the outbreak of civil war between Caesar and Pompey in 49 BC.
But more than that, Cicero wrote a huge amount, across a range of genres (speeches, books on philosophy, politics, oratory, political pamphlets) an extraordinary amount of which has survived. As well as his formal publications there survive some 1,000 letters written by or to him, which were edited and published by his beloved freedman and secretary, Tiro, after his death.
The high point of Cicero’s life was the Catiline conspiracy in 63 BC, a massive co-ordinated conspiracy to overthrow the state in a mix of plebeian revolutionary and military coup. Cicero was responsible for identifying and arresting the ringleaders in Rome, then having them summarily executed.
When civil war came Cicero agonised over which side to choose but thought it his duty to stick with the supporter of traditional values, Pompey, against Caesar who had brought his army of Gaul across the river Rubicon to enter Italy illegally.
In the confused situation after Caesar was assassinated in March 44, Mark Anthony emerged as one of the key players but Cicero thought him completely unsuitable for public office or leadership and so wrote a series of vitriolic articles against him. This was to cost him his life for when Anthony made peace with his main opponent, Caesar’s adopted son Octavian, in 43, each of the parties made a list of opponents they wanted ‘liquidated’ and top of Anthony’s list was Cicero. Hired killers were sent to find him and cut off his head. Cicero made a career out of his fine, forceful prose style, but in the end it got him killed.
Warner’s introduction
In the Penguin paperback edition of six Roman biographies, titles The Fall of the Roman Republic, each life is preceded by a short one-page introduction by the translator, Rex Warner. These don’t introduce or focus on the subject i.e. Cicero in this case, so much as frankly assess Plutarch’s shortcomings as a biographer. So in the case of the Life of Cicero Warner points out that Plutarch:
- makes no attempt to depict the problems facing a novo homo or new man
- or to explain why Cicero alone of the new men of his generation rose to such giddy heights
- fails to mention the chief problem facing Cicero upon his election as consul for 63 BC, namely that his candidature had received support from both Pompey (most powerful man in the populares interest) and his opponents among the aristocracy or boni
- is careless and inaccurate in his account of Cicero’s quarrel with Clodius
- completely ignores the complex political background of the 50s
- fails to understand Cicero’s policy after Caesar was assassinated, which was to use the young Octavian to rid the state of Anthony, before dumping him (Octavian) and trying to restore the Republic – a strategy which conspicuously failed
On the plus side Plutarch:
- had access to Cicero’s own works about his consulship and speeches and letters on the subject, none of which have survived, so his references to them are an invaluable source
- gives some examples of Cicero’s inability to stop himself making witty quips which often offended people
The life
(1) Cicero’s parents. cicer is Latin for chickpea so some Romans thought his surname absurd but Cicero stated he wanted to make it honourable and famous.
(2) His mother’s nurse had a vision saying he would grow up to be a ‘blessing to Rome’ and as a boy he staggered his peers and other parents with his brilliance. As a teenager and young man he developed a reputation as the best poet in Rome, though this had been eclipsed by Plutarch’s time by the giants who came after him (Virgil, Horace, Ovid et al).
(3) He did a brief stint of military service under Lucius Cornelius Sulla in the Social War but then concentrated on studying with orators and philosophers. A young man named Roscius was angry that his father had been murdered via one of Sulla’s proscriptions and his house cheaply sold off to an ex-slave named Chrysogonus. When he made a fuss Sulla had him charged with murdering his own father. Cicero’s friends persuaded him that representing Roscius in court would kick start his career as a lawyer so he did and Roscius won his case. Cicero, though, was worried about Sulla’s anger and diplomatically went to Greece for two years to study with philosophers and orators (79 to 77 BC).
(4) The philosophers Cicero studied under and doctrines he came to favour, namely the New Academy. He worked hard at public speaking, taking lessons from some of the best practitioners in Greece and Asia (Minor).
(5) After Sulla died (in 78 BC) Cicero returned to Rome (in 77) and almost immediately made an impact as a lawyer and speaker. How painstakingly he studied elocution and delivery. He had a quick wit and turn of phrase but often carried it too far and acquired the reputation of being malicious.
(6) Appointed quaestor to Sicily at a time of grain shortages. Won over the natives for being ‘careful, just, and mild’. He brilliantly defended some young men charged with corruption and cowardice but, on returning to Rome, was disappointed that nobody had heard of this great triumph. ‘his excessive delight in the praise of others and his too passionate desire for glory remained with him until the very end, and very often confounded his saner reasonings.’
(7) He trained himself to remember the names of people and places. He secured the conviction of Verres for corruption in Sicily. Plutarch gives some examples of Cicero’s ready wit:
- verres is the Roman word for a castrated boar, so when a freedman named Caecilius, who was suspected of Jewish practices, wanted to push aside the Sicilian accusers and denounce Verres himself, Cicero said: “What has a Jew to do with a Verres?”
- Verres had a son who had the reputation of being little better than a prostitute so that when Cicero was accused by Verres of effeminacy he reploed, “This is the kind of language you should be saving for your son at home”
- The leading lawyer Hortensius appeared for Verres and received an ivory sphinx as his reward so that when Cicero made an oblique reference to Hortensius and the latter declared that he had no skill in solving riddles, Cicero was able to reply, “Really? Despite having a sphinx in your house.”
(8) The Sicilians remained grateful for his good governance and when Cicero was made aedile (69) sent him so much food and livestock Cicero used it to lower food prices in Rome.
An assessment of Cicero’s many properties, legacies and the dowry he received with his wife. He wasn’t rich and often didn’t take fees for his legal work. He ate lightly and took regular exercise and was always conscious of his health.
(9) He was elected praetor in 66 and heard many law cases. The case of Licinius Macer and Cicero’s wisecrack to Publius Vatinius. His supervision of the case of Caius Manlius, a close supporter of Pompey’s.
(10) Now Plutarch comes to Lucius Sergius Catalina who came to represent the various elements in the city which wanted to overthrow the state. Plutarch echoes Sallust’s claims that Catalina corrupted all those around him with loose living, and that he created a cabal of conspirators by committing a human sacrifice and making them eat the flesh. His lieutenants raised mobs in Etruria and Cisalpine Gaul. Corruption and greed had undermined morale, as had the growing gap between rich and poor. Only a spark was needed to ignite this tinderbox.
It was against this backdrop that both optimates and populares were prevailed on to vote Cicero consul for 63 BC.
(11) In fact Cicero’s election owed a lot to the fact that Cataline himself stood for election and Cicero was a candidate both factions could agree on to keep Cataline out.
(12) Cicero faced a problem straightaway which was agitation by the tribunes of the plebs to set up a committee of ten with extraordinary powers, thus upsetting the constitution. Cicero managed to get this proposal rejected in the senate with some careful speeches. He got the other consul, Gaius Antonius, sent to govern Macedonia, leaving the management of Rome in his hands.
(13) Cicero’s career proved that politicians should use charm and eloquence to promote the good.
(14) Catiline now planned to take matters into his own hands before the return of Pompey from the East. His main supporters were people who had benefited from the disruptive times of Sulla, both nobles and soldiers. They wanted more anarchy and disruption. Catiline allied with Manlius, a soldier under Sulla. Cicero stood in the next consul elections, for 62, but Cicero called him to the senate and cross questioned him in front of everyone about rumours of a conspiracy. Cicero appeared at the hustings wearing armour under his toga and with a heavy bodyguard to alert the people that his life was in danger and this helped Catiline lose the consulship for the second time.
(15) Catiline begins organising his men in Etruria into cohorts and legions. Three of the top men in Rome came for a meeting at Cicero’s house, Marcus Crassus, Marcus Marcellus, and Scipio Metellus. Crassus had received an anonymous letter saying the time of blood was approaching and to flee the city. Cicero convened a meeting of the senate at daybreak and distributed the other letters Crassus had to their intended recipients. They all contained identical details of a plot. When the senate then heard that Manlius was mustering forces in Etruria it passed a law placing management of the city entirely in Cicero’s hands.
(16) Catiline orders conspirators Marcius and Cethegus to go to Cicero’s house and murder him. But one of them had told his lover Fulvia all about it and she warned Cicero who wouldn’t give the men admittance. Later that day Cicero convened the senate again and Catiline himself appeared in person to defend himself but no-one would sit near him. When he tried to speak he was shouted down whereupon Cicero ordered him to leave town, which he did with 300 followers and the fasces, symbol of a power he did not rightfully possess. He joined Manlius, they raised standards and had about 20,000 men under arms.
(17) Catiline’s agent in the city was Cornelius Lentulus, of noble birth but low living, who had been expelled from the senate. As well as greed and corruption Lentulus was influenced by prophecies that he would become Rome’s next ruler.
(18) Lentulus wasn’t taking half measures. His plan was to kill all the senators and as many of the other citizens as they could, burn down the city and spare no one except the children of Pompey; these they were to hold hostage pending a reconciliation with Pompey who was said to be on his way back from the East. A night was set for the great conflagration.
Enter two ambassadors from the Gaulish tribe of the Allobroges. The conspirators approached these and played on their grievances and claims of bad government by the Romans. They gave them letters to their senate as from Catiline asking their support in the coming revolution. Plutarch describes how Cicero contrived to seize the ambassadors, the letters and a conspirator sent to accompany them to their country, with the help of the Allobroges themselves.
It is notable that Sallust’s account of this sequence of events is much more clear and logical and persuasive than Plutarch’s, which is vague and confused.
(19) So next morning Cicero assembled the senate again and read out the letters and interrogated the conspirators. Caius Calpurnius Piso backed up the accusations and then report came that a huge cache of weapons had been found at Cethegus’s house. Them, granted immunity, the conspirator accompanying the Allobroges gave them complete details of the conspiracy. Lentulus and the other conspirators were convicted, relieved of their offices and placed under house arrest.
Plutarch then described Cicero leaving the senate, going to the house of a friend and deliberating what punishment to administer. He was reluctant to execute them because of the kindliness of his nature, because he didn’t want to seem to be abusing his power, because many were very well connected. But if he was lenient and let them live, he risked jeopardising the state. Anything less than death would probably only encourage their surviving collaborators.
(20) Cicero’s wife Terentia was supervising an annual religious ceremony at his house and a sign appeared to them:
The altar, it seems, although the fire was already thought to have gone out, sent forth from the ashes and burnt bark upon it a great bright blaze.
Terentia came to Cicero and advised against mercy and for the extreme penalty, as did his brother and a philosopher he consulted.
Next day there was yet another meeting of the senate to debate punishment and all the senators spoke for death until it came to Caesar.
(21) Caesar spoke eloquently for clemency and the prisoners to be imprisoned. Cicero’s friends supported this because it exposed Cicero to less censure. But then Cato the Younger spoke and a) cast suspicion on Caesar and b) angered and inflamed the senate and persuaded them to vote for death.
Sallust’s account of all this is infinitely more interesting, subtle and powerful.
(22) Cicero went with the senate to fetch the conspirators for they had been placed under supervision in various houses. One by one they were fetched, marched through the forum to ‘the prison’ and put to death. At the end of the day Cicero walked through the streets to his house with the people ‘calling him the saviour and founder of his country.’ The lengthy passage in Sallust which describes Catline’s behaviour after the punishment of the conspirators in Rome, his rallying of forces with Manlius and their extended military campaign which ended with losing a battle to the loyalist legions of two generals is all glossed over by Plutarch in a sentence:
For most of those who had flocked to the standard of Catiline, as soon as they learned the fate of Lentulus and Cethegus, deserted him and went away; and Catiline, after a conflict with his remaining forces against Antonius, perished himself and his army with him.
(23) Describes the enmity against Cicero of those who resented his power, most notably Caesar and how they tried to interfere with the oath-taking required at the end of Cicero’s consulship. But how Cato defended him and got the people to declare him Father of the Country.
(24) In subsequent years Cicero made himself unpopular by endlessly going on about Catiline and Lentulus and how he had saved the state. That said, he was generous in his praise of great thinkers of the past (Plato, Aristotle) and used his influence to protect and promote contemporary philosophers and orators.
(25) Another selection of Cicero’s witty quips, often at the expense of the very powerful. For example:
He gained great applause by an encomium on Marcus Crassus from the rostra, and then a few days afterwards as publicly reviled him, whereupon Crassus said: “What, did you not stand there yourself a day or two ago and praise me?” “Yes” said Cicero, “exercising my eloquence by way of practice on a bad subject.”
(26) Plutarch shares another dozen or so examples of Cicero’s witty sharp retorts causing offence and creating enemies, not least Crassus on the eve of the latter setting out for Syria (November 55). Jokes comparing people to slaves or for being ugly or dissolute. Funny but wounding, and creating many enemies.
(27) More examples:
When Faustus, the son of the Sulla (who was dictator at Rome and placarded many people for death) got into debt, squandered much of his substance, and placarded his household goods for sale, Cicero said he liked this placarding better than his father’s.
(28) The story of young Publius Clodius Pulcher dressing himself up as a woman in order to get into the house of Caesar’s wife, Pompeia, during the women-only religious ceremony in order to seduce her. Clodius got lost in the big house, was spotted by a maid who alerted all the women of the house who barricaded the doors against him. Caesar divorced Pompeia and had an action for sacrilege brought against Clodius.
(29) Cicero gave evidence Clodius at least in part because of his wife’s enmity towards Clodius’s sister who she thought had designs on Cicero. But he was a bad man. Witnesses came forward to claim Clodius had had sex with all three of his sisters. Despite all this Clodius was acquitted due to extensive bribery.
It was about this affair that Caesar made his famous quote that he didn’t divorce his wife because he believed her guilty of adultery, but because ‘Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.’
(30) Having escape conviction, Clodius was elected tribune of the plebs in 58. It never ceases to amaze me how a) very small a pool of educated nobles there appeared to be, so that the same names go round and round offices and positions, in these narratives and b) how often they took each other to court, and c) how even obvious crooks with terrible reputations got elected. The other thing is how like a school playground ancient Rome seems to have been, with everyone currying favour with everyone else, and wanting to be in everyone else’s gang, and telling takes and bullying and bribing each other.
Clodius set about making himself popular by passing laws in the people’s interests, had large provinces allotted to the consuls, organised the poor into political clubs, and formed a big bodyguard of armed slaves.
Plutarch states that the three most powerful men in Rome at this time were Crassus, Caesar and Pompey (without mentioning anything about the triumvirate; does this indicate it was a label given by later historians?).
Plutarch’s account is incorrect in many details. For example, he says that Cicero lobbied for a post with Caesar setting out for Gaul but was talked out of it by Clodius who suddenly came onto him as his new best friend. Warner says Caesar offered him the post and Cicero rejected it. Plutarch says the rejection made Caesar cross and he turned against Cicero and also persuaded Pompey against him. See what I mean by the politics of the school playground. And now Cicero began to be vulnerable to his behaviour during the Catiline conspiracy in that he had eminent Roman nobles put to death without a formal trial.
Cicero puts on modest clothes, grows his hair and went about the streets as a supplicant of the people but Clodius now had control of street gangs and got them to catcall Cicero and pelt him with mud and stones.
(31) Although the senate and many young people supported Cicero, Clodius surrounded the senate house and menaced the senators and it began to look like Cicero would have to flee to protect himself. Cicero appealed to Pompey who he had helped at numerous points in the past; but Plutarch says Pompey was now married to Caesar’s daughter and so took his side and avoided Cicero (again Plutarch fails to mention the triumvirate).
Cicero consulted with many friends who gave conflicting advice, but in the end he decided to leave the city and set out one night on foot planning to head for Sicily.
(32) As soon as it was confirmed he had fled Clodius had a law passed formalising Cicero’s exile. Many people helped him on his journey but Plutarch mentions two Sicilians who had benefited from his help in the past who now spurned him, particularly the praetor of Sicily, Gaius Virgilius, who told him not to come there.
So he crossed Italy to Brundisium on the Adriatic coast and set sail for Albania and so on into Greece. Cicero became depressed in exile, contradicting all his claims to be a Stoic philosopher, and Plutarch makes a well-phrased point:
Public opinion has the strange power of being able, as it were, to erase from a man’s character the lines formed there by reason and study; and, by force of habit and association, it can impress the passions and feelings of the mob on those who engage in politics, unless one is very much on one’s guard and makes up one’s mind that in dealing with what is outside oneself one will be concerned only with the practical problems themselves and not with the passions that arise out of them.
(33) In his absence Clodius burned down his villas and his house in Rome and erected on the site a Temple to Liberty. He tried to auction the properties but no-one would buy them. When Clodius then turned his ire on Pompey, the latter had a change of heart and regretted acquiescing in Cicero’s flight. The senate went on strike and refused to ratify legislation. Street violence escalated till tribunes were wounded in the forum and Cicero’s brother was wounded (57 BC).
Another tribune, Titus Annius Milo decided to stand up to Clodius and brought forward legislation to have him prosecuted. Pompey occupied the city with troops and drove Clodius out then summoned the citizens to vote on letting Cicero return. It was carried unanimously, the senate wrote to thank all the cities which had offered Cicero hospitality and decreed his houses in Rome and the country should be rebuilt at public expense.
This is the behaviour of children, isn’t it? No adequate reason is given for all these changes of attitude among ‘the people’ – and what of Pompey’s ignoble and inconstant shilly-shallying?
After 16 months exile Cicero returned in triumph, crowds turned out to welcome him, in Rome even Crassus turned out, at the bidding of his son Publius who was a big fan.
(34) Soon as Clodius was out of town Cicero went to the capitol with a crowd and tore down and destroyed the tablets which recorded Clodius’s laws. Which caused controversy.
(35) With casual abruptness Plutarch then tells us that Clodius was killed by Milo (18 January 52 BC) or more precisely by his entourage in an affray on a road outside Rome. Milo was promptly charged with murder and hired Cicero to be his defence attorney but Plutarch goes on at great length about how nervous Cicero was, giving other examples of his timidity, specially as Pompey provided soldiers to surround and protect the court so as to prevent intimidation by Clodius’s gangs. Milo was convicted and went into exile in Massilia.
(36) In 53 BC, after the death of Publius Crassus in Parthia, Cicero was elected augur (proposed by Pompey and the lawyer Horntensius).
In 51 he was appointed governor to the province of Cilicia and went with great reluctance, because he thought it was his duty. He ruled with great fairness, reducing crushing interest rates, overseeing trials fairly, his home open to all petitioners. Plutarch describes the correspondence with young Marcus Caelius Rufus who asked him to send panthers to take part in games he was organising and Cicero’s reply that there were no panthers in Cilicia, letters which, amazingly, we can still read. After a year he returned to find Rome in the distemper which augured civil war.
(37) As Warner says, Plutarch gives no explanation at all of either the triumvirate, how it was set up and ruled throughout the 50s, nor of its collapse after Crassus’s death in Parthia in 53 and Pompey’s wife’s death in 54, and the growing sense that the two most powerful men, Pompey and Caesar, were engaged in a rivalry to the death.
Instead Plutarch leaps straight into Cicero’s efforts to mediate between both men who he knew well. Very casually and superficially the narrative suddenly leaps to Cesar invading Italy and Pompey precipitately fleeing Rome (49 BC). Plutarch relies heavily on Cicero’s letters as he cites the ones in which he begs Atticus for advice on what to do and then admits it (‘So much for the evidence of the letters.’). Cicero is insulted when Caesar writes to him through an intermediary rather than directly.
(38) Eventually Cicero abandons Italy and sails to join Pompey. He meets Cato who promptly tells him he has made a mistake and ought to have stayed in Italy without taking sides and made himself useful whatever the outcome. Good point. Cicero made himself unpopular by openly saying he regretted coming, criticising Pompey’s strategy and making his usual tactless remarks. As above, Plutarch then gives half a dozen examples of Pompey’s witty barbs.
(39) After Caesar defeated Pompey at Pharsalus (9 August 48) Cato, who had control of the fleet, offered command to Cicero as an ex-consul. But Cicero turned it down and refused to have anything more to do with the cause, something that made Pompey’s son and friends threaten his life.
Cicero sailed to Brundisium and waited there for Caesar to finish other operations and land there. Then with great trepidation he went to see him. To his relief Caesar welcomed him, walked and talked with him and treated him as an honoured guest, praising his eloquence and writings. a) Caesar comes over as an attractive character b) he was also a writer and so maybe appreciated Cicero’s specialness.
He gives an account of Cicero giving a speech defending some associate of Caesar’s and moving so skilfully from emotion to emotion that Caesar’s body literally trembled and he dropped his papers. And the modern read asks themselves: Can anything like that possibly ever have happened or is it an almost fairy tale level of simple-mindedness.
(40) Plutarch describes the way that, after Caesar assumed power, Cicero dropped politics and the law and devoted himself to philosophy and writing, translating works of politics, ethics and philosophy, translating Greek terms into Latin for the first time. He stuck to his country estate at Tusculum, only rarely visiting Rome. He praised Caesar as required.
(41) Plutarch tells us Cicero planned to write a history of Rome but never found time. He divorced Terentia in 46 BC claiming she didn’t support him in his exile and didn’t look after their daughter. But critics mocked the way he promptly married a young woman named Publilia and claimed it was because she was rich and Cicero needed to pay off his debts. Then in 45 his beloved daughter Tullia died young. He was prostrate with grief.
(42) Plutarch mentions Cicero’s Philippics against Anthony in passing and skates even more lightly over the assassination of Caesar, simply saying Cicero had no part in it. Days after the killing Anthony addressed the senate arguing to preserve the peace and Cicero followed with a long eloquent speech arguing for an amnesty. But when the people saw Caesar’s body carried through the forum and saw his blood-stained toga and listened to Anthony’s speech they went mad with rage and seized torches and attacked the houses of the conspirators who had, sagely, already fled.
(43) Anthony began to fear Cicero was once again becoming a power in the state. He was tempted to accompany the new governor of Syria but the consuls pleaded with him to stay in Rome and support the state. He said he’d retire to Athens till they came into office and set off in July 44.
But then news came of a shift in the situation with the arrival in Rome of young Octavian, adopted heir of Caesar, in April 44. This prompted Anthony to shift his strategy, deciding to seek the support of the senate. Cicero was suddenly invited back and returned accompanied by cheering crowds etc (is this taken from his own self-serving letters?). But when Anthony invited him to a meeting Cicero, scared, refused to go, which threw Anthony into a fury.
(44) Then middlemen brought Octavian to Cicero and they negotiated a deal: Cicero would use his influence and powers of oratory on Octavian’s behalf and Octavian would use his money and soldiers to protect Cicero. Characteristically, instead of political analysis, Plutarch takes half a page to tell us that Cicero had a dream foretelling the next ruler of Rome in which he saw young Octavian very vividly, and met him as a boy and teenager and always took care to be polite. Well, if remotely true, that care now bore fruit.
(45) Cicero’s friendliness with Octavian was criticised by Marcus Junius Brutus, who thought it was self-serving. Warner adds a note repeating his idea that Cicero’s plan was to use Octavian to rid the state of Anthony, then replace Octavian himself.
Plutarch says Cicero’s power reached its height. He had Anthony expelled from Rome then sent the two consuls to fight him. Octavian persuaded the senate to award him the power and insignia of a lictor. Octavian defeated Anthony at the battle of Mutina 21 April 43 at which the two consuls were killed and their armies joined his. Now he was the most powerful man in Rome and the senate feared for the old constitution. So Octavian shrewdly met with Cicero and asked him to arrange for them both to be elected consuls, then he would submit to his older colleague. Who was using who?
(46) But as soon as Octavian was elected ‘suffect’ consul i.e. completing the time of a consul who had been killed, on 19 August 43, he paid no further attention to Cicero who realised he had been used. Instead Octavian went into alliance with Anthony and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and divided up the government as though it were a piece of property. They drew up a list of 200 men who needed to be executed and Cicero’s name was on it. Anthony refused to join the alliance unless Cicero was killed and Lepidus backed him. The idea was each would sacrifice someone close and dear to them. On the third day Octavian gave in and agreed to Cicero’s murder. Homo homini lupus est.
(47) Cicero was at his country estate with his brother when he heard the news. They set out immediately for the coast with a view to joining Brutus in Macedonia. Plutarch wrings the scene for all the emotion he can, with the brothers frequently stopping their litters to condole each other in floods of tears etc. Eventually Quintus decided he had to return home because he had set out with no money. A few days later he was betrayed by his servants and murdered.
Cicero was carried to Astura where he found a ship which carried him down the coast but then he landed and began to head back to Rome, uncertain and afraid. He contemplated going to Octavian’s house and committing suicide on the hearthstone so as to draw down a curse on it, but then decided to return to the sea and go to Caieta where he had a villa.
Characteristically Plutarch intensifies the mood by describing an ill omen when a flight of crows rose up into the air and flew towards Cicero’s boat as it was being rowed ashore. But he made it to his villa in safety.
(48) The murderers had arrived. They found the villa and broke the doors down only to be told by one of Cicero’s servants that he had left by a secret path which wound down to the sea. The centurions intercepted his litter and Cicero with dignity stretched out his neck allowing them to murder him. At Anthony’s orders they cut off his head and the hands which had written the virulent addresses against Anthony known as the Philippics (and which Plutarch has told us absolutely nothing about).
(49) The head and hands were carried to Anthony in Rome who was organising an election. He cried out ‘let there be an end to proscriptions’, then had them nailed over the ships’ battering rams which adorned the Rostrum in the forum.
Gruesome
For some reason Plutarch, here, right at the tragic end of this great Roman figure, bolts on a macabre anecdote which trumps the Cicero hands and head one. He claims that the servant who told the centurions about Cicero’s getaway path was caught and handed over to Cicero’s bother’s wife (Pomponia) who forced him to cut off his own flesh bit by bit and roast it, and then to eat it!
This, indeed, is what some of the historians say; but Cicero’s own freedman, Tiro, makes no mention at all of the treachery of Philologus.
So why does Plutarch? Don’t you think the inclusion of this gruesome anecdote, which isn’t even accepted by the best witness, tells us everything you need to know about Plutarch’s audience, around 100 AD? I.e. its appetite for the gruesome and the macabre, along with melodramatic omens, prophecies and dreams, trumps any interest in responsible analysis and interpretation.
That said, the last two sentences reveal a taste for the sentimental which resonates to this day:
I learn that Caesar, a long time after this, paid a visit to one of his daughter’s sons; and the boy, since he had in his hands a book of Cicero’s, was terrified and sought to hide it in his gown; but Caesar saw it, and took the book, and read a great part of it as he stood, and then gave it back to the youth, saying: “A learned man, my child, a learned man and a lover of his country.”
Moreover, as soon as he had finally defeated Antony, and when he was himself consul, he chose Cicero’s son as his colleague in the office, and it was in his consulship that the senate took down the statues of Antony, made void the other honours that had been paid him, and decreed besides that no Antony should have the name of Marcus. Thus the heavenly powers devolved upon the family of Cicero the final steps in the punishment of Antony.
Rex Warner’s introduction to the Penguin edition emphasises and implicitly praises Plutarch’s commitment to artistry, to creating biographies as carefully crafted as paintings. OK. But the obvious consequence, which Warner, to be fair, points out, is that: a) many of these ‘effects’ pandered to the debased taste of 1st century imperial Romans and b) led Plutarch to focus on the sensational and sentimental aspects of his subject matter while skating over or omitting important historical, political and social issues which we’d desperately like to know more about.
Books & Boots 