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Plutarch’s life of Cicero

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.

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Cataline’s War by Sallust (42 BC)

Cataline’s War

As far as we know this was the first of Sallust’s historical works, written in 42 BC (maybe). It’s shorter than The Jugurthine War, with 61 brief ‘chapters’, apart from the two longer chapters containing the famous speeches to the Senate of Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger (51 and 52).

Summary

(Chapters 1 to 4) Introductory meditation on the importance of mind and reason in human affairs. Animals only have their bodies but humans have Mind and Reason and so should make the most of them. Sallust combines this insistence on Reason with the claim that human societies have declined: if only they were all and everywhere ruled by virtus or ‘mental excellence’, but in fact:

sloth has usurped the place of industry, and lawlessness and insolence have superseded self-restraint and justice…Thus the sway is always passing to the best man from the hands of his inferior.

Men who merely serve their bodies eat and sleep their way through life, leaving no trace, like cattle. Of ‘wakened’ men, some serve by deeds, some by words, and Sallust says that, of the latter, he considers writing history a particularly eminent achievement of the mind.

Sallust tells us that when he was a young man he was ambitious for public life, only to discover that ‘shamelessness, bribery and rapacity held sway’. But when he quit public life he didn’t want to rusticate but to use his mind. So he resolved to fulfil ‘a cherished purpose’ which worldly ambition had distracted him from, and to write a history of the Roman people, or at least portions of it. He was attracted to the Catiline conspiracy due to the extraordinary nature of the crime. So much for the Introduction.

(5) The character of Lucius Sergius Catilina, know in English as Catiline. From the start he had ‘an evil and depraved nature’. ‘Reckless, cunning, treacherous…violent in his passions.’ His disordered mind ever craved the monstrous, incredible, gigantic.’

But, importantly, it wasn’t his character alone which condemned Catiline – it was the fallen nature of the times which allowed such a character to flourish. This is a kind of dialectical theory: events are formed by a combination of bad individual character and the lax nature of the society which lets it flourish. Catiline is the result of the combination of bad character and ‘the corruption of public morals’.

(6 to 7) A digression on the founding of Rome: Aeneas, Romulus and Remus and then the city’s growth, the doughty quality of its warriors, alliances with other tribes. At first kings ruled wisely, but when corruption (inevitably) crept in and monarchy degenerated into ‘a lawless tyranny’, then the Romans created the system of paired consuls (in 509 BC according to legend). The aim was very consciously to prevent one person from ever having absolute power and the arrogance which goes with it. This freedom bred brave fighting men who competed fiercely with each other to win glory (7).

(8) He makes the point that Athens’ fame is greater than her deeds really warrant because she had educated men to write timeless histories about her achievements.

(9) He gives a laughably idealised view of ‘the good old days’ when upstanding morals, harmony and justice ruled and greed was unknown and the Romans ruled by ‘kindness’. When Romans were ‘lavish in their offerings to the gods, frugal in the home, loyal to their friends’.

(10 to 13) But then Rome grew big and rich, and when she defeated Carthage (in 146 BC), Fortune grew cruel and intervened to confuse her affairs. Hence the lust for money and power, the two roots of all evil.

Finally, when the disease had spread like a deadly plague, the state was changed and a government second to none in equity and excellence became cruel and intolerable.

(11) Sulla set a bad example. All men began to rob and pillage. The army was demoralised by the luxury of the Eastern nations they conquered. They learned to pillage homes and temples.

(12) Riches and greed made them lose their modesty and chasteness. Look at the temples of our forefathers, adorned with piety; compare them with the vast palaces of the modern nobles, overflowing with pillaged loot.

(13) The super-rich of his day (meaning Lucullus and Pompey) have carved waterways through mountains to feed their fishponds and build villas jutting out over the sea. Indulgence of all passions: men who dress as women, women who sell themselves. Gluttony.

(14) This, then, was the corrupt setting in which Catiline flourished. The wantons, gluttons, gamesters and criminals that he attracted. And if he did know anyone honest, they quickly became corrupted by his company.

(15) Catiline had many affairs. Lastly he is thought to have murdered his stepson in order to marry Aurelia Orestilla. Some say it was guilt at this which hastened his conspiracy.

(16) Catiline set up a veritable school of corruption for young men. Finally he conceived the idea of overthrowing the government for two reasons: 1. he was hugely in debt 2. a large number of veterans of Sulla’s wars had burned through their spoils and property and were ready for war. There was no army in Italy, Pompey being away in Syria. So he had motive and opportunity.

(17) From June 64 onwards Catiline sounds out likely co-conspirators. Sallust gives a list. Many said Marcus Crassus was connected, out of his rivalry with Pompey.

(18 to 19) The so-called First Conspiracy of Catiline 66 BC. A number of desperate men coalesced round Gnaeus Piso and a plan to assassinate that year’s consuls and overthrow the Senate. The date for action was set for January, then February, 65 but nothing came of it.

(19) Crassus who knew Gnaeus Piso was a desperate man had him sent as praetor to Hither Spain. In the event Piso was murdered by his own cavalry in Spain, though whether he was cruel and unjust to the locals and his own men, or whether Pompey put them up to it, who knows.

(20) Back to 64 BC and Sallust has Catiline give a (presumably largely fictional) speech to the conspirators. Sallust has him characterising the ruling class of Rome as rich and tyrannical and he and his conspirators as yearning for freedom and himself as a humble servant to be used for their liberation. Demagogic rhetoric.

(21) When they press him to be more specific, Catiline offers his listeners ‘abolition of debts, the proscription of the rich, offices, priesthoods, plunder, and all the other spoils that war and the license of victors can offer’. The most interesting idea is the way he revived memories of Sulla whose second dictatorship was a time of state-sanctioned murdering, plundering and looting.

(22) Sallust reports that people say that Sallust then bound the conspirators to him by passing round ‘bowls of human blood mixed with wine’. This implies the blood came from somewhere so, a human sacrifice (?).

(23) Quintus Curius, a man guilty of many shameful crimes whom the censors​ had expelled from the Senate because of his immorality, boasts to his mistress Flavia about this big important conspiracy he’s involved in, and then Flavia blabs to others. The rumour spreads and motivates many nobles to support Cicero for the consulship (elected in 64 to hold it in 63 BC).

(24) Cicero’s election alarms Catiline who intensifies his efforts: he stockpiles weapons at strategic locations. Men borrow and the few women supporters prostitute themselves to raise money. Catiline plans to win the city slaves to his side then set fire to Rome.

(25) The character of the leading woman accomplice, Sempronia, a gifted, well-educated woman who was immoral and unchaste, ‘had often broken her word, repudiated her debts and been privy to murder.’

(26) Despite all this, Catiline stood for the consulship for the following year, 63. Soon after taking up his consulship (i.e. January 63) Cicero got Quintus Curius to reveal the conspiracy to him. Cicero surrounds himself with a bodyguard. The day of the election comes and Catiline fails to be elected consul, making him all the more desperate.

(27) Catiline sends conspirators to various key locations, plans fires, calls a second conference of conspirators and identifies Cicero as their main obstacle.

(28) Gaius Cornelius, a knight, and Lucius Vargunteius, a senator, offer to pay a formal call on Cicero and then kill him. Curius blabs this plan to Flavia, who tells Cicero, who then makes sure not to be at home to visitors the next morning i.e. the time of the planned assassination visit.

Meanwhile, the Catiline emissary Manlius in Etruria works on various constituencies:

  • the general population, ripe for revolution because of penury and resentment at having lost their lands under Sulla
  • brigands of various nationalities
  • some members of Sulla’s colonies who had been stripped by prodigal living of the last of their great booty

(29) Cicero presents details of the plot before the Senate which takes the extreme step of awarding him extraordinary powers.

(30) Lucius Saenius reads a letter from Faesulae, stating that Gaius Manlius had taken the field with a large force on the twenty-seventh day of October. Rumours of subversive meetings, transportation of arms, and insurrections of slaves at Capua and in Apulia. The Senate sends generals to these locations and offers rewards for information, that gladiators be mustered and a watch kept at key points in Rome.

What all this really brings home is the consequences of not having an independent police force which acts for the good of the state but instead having to rely on the mustering of specific cohorts of troops under ad hoc leaders or generals. Far more unreliable and uncertain.

(31) Am atmosphere of fear and anxiety spreads across Rome. Catiline decides to face it out and comes to the Senate on 3 November when Cicero delivers a brilliant speech against him. Catiline makes a speech declaring his nobility and honesty and slurring Cicero as a low-born immigrant. But he is shouted down by the Senate and yells back that he will put out his own personal fire through a general conflagration.

(32) Catiline sneaks out of the city that night to join Manlius and his forces in Etruria, leaving behind conspirators to recruit more to the cause.

(33) Gaius Manlius sends a delegation from his army to Marcius Rex with a message which Sallust quotes in full, justifying the rebels as simply seeking their own safety and freedom from impositions.

(34) Quintus Marcius replies that the rebels must lay down their arms and put their case to the Senate. Catiline sends letters to nobles claiming that everything was slander by his enemies and he was leaving for exile in Massilia in the best interests of the state.

(35) But he sent a very different letter to Quintus Catulus, which is quoted in full. He claims to be: ‘Maddened by wrongs and slights, since I have been robbed of the fruits of my toil and energy and was unable to attain to a position of honour’ and so taking up arms on behalf of the poor and oppressed everywhere.

(36) Catiline arrives at Manlius’s camp and distributes arms. When it hears this the Senate declares Catiline and Manlius traitors and gives a deadline for the other conspirators to surrender. But none do and Sallust is moved to wonder at the obstinate wickedness of men who wanted to ruin Rome at the height of its peace and plenty, a plague of wickedness.

(37) Sallust reflects that Rome was like a cesspool which attracted the poorest, meanest elements, and this huge throng of the poor were roused by Catiline because they had nothing to lose and longed for change. Again, the insurrection of Sulla is mentioned as a time when poor or mediocre men suddenly saw their fortunes transformed. Poor labourers from the country hoped for better things. And men of the party opposed to the Senate wished for anyone else in power. In other words, there’s quite a list of disaffected groups which Catiline appealed to.

(38) Since the restoration of the tribunes of the plebs powers (Sulla took them away in 81, Pompey restored them in 70 BC) many populist rabble rousers had arisen who promised the people anything in order to get into power. But then Sallust is just as critical of many nobles who defended the Senate but for their own selfish reasons.

(39) Pompey’s restoration had left the rich, the few, with more power – control of the consulship, the provinces, the army and the law courts. Sallust thinks this power might have been destabilised in Catiline’s conflagration allowing a Great Man to take advantage of the situation. He doesn’t name names but probably means either Crassus or Caesar. Throughout the crisis Lentulus worked to gain supporters for the conspiracy from all classes.

(40) Lentulus gets Publius Umbrenus to approach the envoys of the Allobroges, a Gaulish tribe, to see if they will join. When they complain about the unfairness of Roman rule over them, Umbrenus takes them to the house of Decimus Brutus and discloses the conspiracy to them.

(41) The Allobroges ponder whether to join or not but decide not to and inform Quintus Fabius Sanga, their nation’s main patron in Rome, who alerts Cicero. Cicero tells them to feign interest, play along, and try and extract the names of all the conspirators.

(42) There were disturbances in Hither and Further Gaul and at places in Italy, as of bad planning and bad management by the conspirators, and the magistrates arrest many.

(43) The plan is firmed up: when Catiline arrives at Faesulae with his army, Lucius Bestia, tribune of the commons, should convoke an assembly and denounce Cicero which would be the signal for a general uprising: fires were to be set at twelve important points in the city to create confusion; Cethegus was to assassinate Cicero; other assassinations to be carried out; the eldest sons of several noble families to kill their fathers. Then all the supporters to leave the city and join Catiline’s army.

(44) The Allobroges meet again with the conspirators and demand signed proofs of their commitment. They are to leave the city accompanied by Titus Volturcius of Crotona.

(45) Knowing of all this Cicero sent some praetors and their soldiers to arrest the Allobroges and Volturcius at the Milvian Bridge.

(46) Cicero was uncertain how to behave. But he has the signed evidence he needs, now, and had the praetors bring the leading conspirators in Rome to him (being Lentulus, Cethegus, Statilius and Gabinius) and took them to the Temple of Concord where he convoked the Senate. Then he presented before them all the written and verbal evidence.

(47) When Volturcius was offered amnesty he spilled the beans, gave an exact account of the plans and mentioned other senior conspirators. Lentulus tries to deny everything till his letter is read out incriminating him. Ancient Rome not only had no police but no public prison, so the suspects had to be handed over to individual private citizens to be held pending trial.

(48) With the revelation of the plot the commons swing behind Cicero as saviour and execrate the conspirators.

(49) Lucius Tarquinius is arrested on his way to Catiline, brought before the Senate and, once offered a pardon, tells the same story as Volturcius, detailed: the intended fires, the murder of loyal men and the march of the rebels. He also implicated Crassus, who he says sent a message to Catiline that very day. Great discussion of whether this is true, but the Senate declares it a lie, and Sallust himself mentions that he heard Crassus declare it was a libel concocted by Cicero.

(50) Despite their arrest the ringleaders get their freedmen and slaves to scour the streets trying to raise insurrection. The Senate had by now had another session and declared the prisoners guilty, as well as half a dozen other senior nobles. What should be done with them? The consul-elect for the following year, Decimus Junius Silanus, says death. Julius Caesar influences many when he rejects the death penalty and says they just need to be tightly guarded.

(51) Sallust gives what claims to be the full verbatim speech of Caesar to the Senate, by far the longest chapter in the book at 43 lines and a rhetorical set piece. It echoes Sallust’s insistence at the start of the text that man is at his best when he uses pure intellect unclouded by passion and bias. Caesar says passion, fear, revenge must not motivate the Senate’s decision. Men will remember the conspirators’ end more than their malfeasance. Therefore the Senate must act clearheadedly in its own interests. They will be setting a precedent. They must consider how it will appear to aftertimes. Once you start punishing people without due process of law, you set a ball rolling which you can’t control. Caesar, also, invokes the memory of Sulla’s dictatorship and how the very people who welcomed his first few proscriptions found themselves caught up and executed in later ones. (cf the French Revolution.) This is why the Porcian laws had been passed, which exempted Roman citizens from degrading and shameful forms of punishment, such as whipping, scourging, or crucifixion.

Caesar sums up by recommending that the guilty men have their property confiscated and be held in strongholds in free cities, in other words in the nearest thing the Romans had to prisons.

(52) Caesar’s speech is then followed by a similarly long set-piece speech from Marcus Porcius Cato: he says they all know him as a scourge of luxury and decadence. He asks if they are ready to throw away their wealth and security. He introduces the idea that, although they have some of the conspirators in custody, Catiline himself and his army is still at large beyond Rome, in fact there are several armed groups around Italy still capable of attaching the city. If they show themselves soft now that will encourage the remaining conspirators. Therefore, although they had not actually got round to committing any acts of treason, Cato argues that the prisoners should be treated as if they had and executed.

(53) Cato’s argument wins. Senators who had been swayed by Caesar are won over by Cato. The guilty men are sentenced to death.

But then Sallust goes off on an extended digression. He describes how he has often read about and meditated on Roman history and why a small poor town managed to conquer the world. He became convinced it was due to the merit of specific citizens. In his time he has only known two of the first rank, Caesar and Cato. And so now he gives us a comparative portrait of both.

(54) Caesar became great though compassion and generosity, Cato through his stern righteousness. ‘One was a refuge for the unfortunate, the other a scourge for the wicked.’ It is interesting that he dwells on Caesar’s clementia or forgiveness, a quality Caesar was at great pains to promote.

(55) Digression over, we return to the narrative. Immediately following the Senate’s decision, Cicero in person led the guilty men to a dungeon called the Carcer, the so‑called ‘Mamertine Prison’, near the north-western corner of the Roman Forum. Here Lentulus, Cethegus, Statilius, Gabinius, and Caeparius were brought and the tresviri capitales (minor magistrates who had charge of prisons and executions and performed certain police duties) executed them by strangulation / hanging / garroting (the words used vary in different translations).

(56) Meanwhile, in central Italy, Catiline joined his force with Manlius’s to make up a force of two legions, albeit poorly armed. The loyal general Antonius pursues them from one camp to another.

(57) But when news arrived at Cataline’s camp that the chief conspirators had been executed in Rome, many began to desert. Cataline led the remainder north with a view to crossing the Alps. The loyalist Antonius is joined by Quintus Metellus Celer, with three legions. Seeing he is trapped between the enemy army and the mountains, Catiline addresses his men in a set piece exhortation:

(58) He starts by basely accusing Lentulus of cowardice. Then he says they’re trapped between two armies so must fight their way out. Once again Catiline casts himself and them as freedom fighters battling the oppression of the privileged few. There is no escape. They have to fight and sell their lives dear.

(59) The disposition of each army for the battle.

(60) It was a hard fight. Catiline proved himself ‘a valiant soldier and… skilful leader.’ When his centre was broken and he realised he is losing, Catiline plunged into the thick of the fight and was cut down.

(61) It is striking that Sallust’s account began with such an extended passage about the corruption of the times, and the decline of Roman morality, and then lingers on Catiline’s wretched corruption – and yet it ends with a hymn to the bravery of the soldiers on both sides who fought and fell like true men. It’s an incongruent ending.

Thoughts

No police

Any force could only be achieved via soldiers. In other words, the army plays such a prominent role in politics and the history of the Republic because there was no other force, no other source of authority and enforcement on the streets. This explains the extraordinary wrecking impact of the street gangs led by Publius Clodius Pulcher and Titus Annius Milo in the 50s, but it indicates a profound weakness at the centre of the Roman state.

Lack of courts and prisons

Cicero doesn’t know what to do with his defendants and has to convene the Senate to ask their advice. And then the Senate doesn’t know what to do with them, either. Classicists love their subject because of the dignity and sophistication of the people they describe and yet, stepping back, you can’t help thinking that Rome’s civic arrangements were pitifully inadequate to requirements. They were, quite literally, making it up as they went along, and this is part of the explanation for the sense of the ramshackle stumbling from one crisis to another which characterises the last 50 years of the Republic.

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SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard (2015) 4. Republican timeline

This is a timeline of the Roman Republic, cobbled together from various sources with some details added from Mary Beard’s history of Rome, SPQR.

As you can see, it consists almost entirely of wars because Rome was one of the most aggressive and relentlessly militaristic states in the ancient world, which is the basic reason for its eventual world domination. And when, by about 80 BC, they’d run out of people to conquer, they started fighting each other.

Military campaigning was a defining feature of Roman life and Roman writers organised the history of this period…around its succession of wars, giving them the shorthand titles that have often stuck till the present day.

…the Roman tradition [viewed] war as the structuring principle of history…

The Romans directed enormous resources to warfare and, even as victors, paid a huge price in human life…somewhere between 10 and 25 per cent of the Roman adult male population would have served in the legions each year…(SPQR, pages 176 to 177)

What this list – far from complete and omitting many battles – indicates is the unremittingly violent, warlike environment Rome inhabited, and the relentlessness of its armies and leaders who, no matter how many times they lost battles – and they lost a lot more than you’d expect – always found new men and new resources and came back harder.

The early legendary material is well covered in Mary Beard’s book and the main wars are at least mentioned. But she gives very superficial, if any, explanations of most of the wars with hardly anything about strategies and campaigns, and nothing at all about specific battles, even the most famous (Cannae, Carrhae, Pharsalus, Actium). I had to look up the detail of all of them online.

Again and again it struck me as odd that Mary Beard has made it her life’s work to study a society whose values and history, whose militarism, violence, aggression, patriarchal sexism and toxic masculinity she is so obviously out of sympathy with.

This is one reason why, as a disapproving feminist, her account of the Republic is so patchy and episodic given that the Republic’s history is, on one level, a long list of wars and battles and setbacks and conquests.

Another reason is that the men in charge in Rome changed on an annual basis as new consuls were elected and held power for just one year. Compared to the late republic and imperial era when successful generals held power, and carried out military strategy for years, this makes the wars of the Republic even more complicated to record and remember.

As a historian I can see that you face a choice between going into each war in enough detail to make it strategically and militarily understandable – in which case you will have written an incredibly detailed and very long military history of Rome. Or doing what Beard does, which is write a kind of thematic social and political history of Rome (with lots of archaeology thrown in) which only dips into the wars briefly, fleetingly, when they help you to demonstrate a particular point about the evolution of Roman society and politics.

I can see why, for practical and editorial reasons she’s taken the latter route but still, Rome without the wars – numerous and confusing though they are – is a bit like Hamlet without the prince.

Timeline

8th century BC

753 BC: The legendary founding date of Rome.

750?: Rape of the Sabine women. Plenty of young men were flocking to his new settlement, but Romulus needed women to breed. He approached local tribes for brides but was turned down. Eventually he invited a group from a local tribe, the Sabines to a feast and, at an arranged signal, young Roman men started carrying the marriageable away. This led to war but then to a notable event. As the two sides lined up to fight the Sabine women intervened between them pleading for peace. The men put down their weapons and made peace, Romulus agreeing to share his kingship of Rome with the Sabine leader, Titus Tatius. So the abduction is important – but so is the peacemaking ability of the women.

The French painter Jacques-Louis David chooses to depict ‘The Intervention of the Sabine Women’ between their avenging fathers and brothers on one side, and their new Roman husbands on the other, rather than the more famous ‘rape’, in this painting from 1799.

753 to 510: Seven kings The quarter-millennium rule of the seven legendary kings of Rome. Some traditions mention other sub-kings who ruled in gaps between the big seven, and even Livy’s traditionalist account emphasises that the kingship didn’t simply progress by primogeniture i.e. to the eldest son, but was sometimes elected or chosen by the people.

But as Beard explains, modern archaeology suggests the traditional tale of a quarter millennium of legendary kings was used to glamorise and cover what, in reality, probably amounted to the slow coalescing of small communities of herders and cattle farmers led by local chieftains.

6th century BC

534 to 510: Reign of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, last king of Rome. Tarquin was expelled after the people revolt and overthrow him, traditionally said to have been caused by one of his privileged sons raping a worthy Roman matron, Lucretia, at dagger point.

509: Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (literally ‘Jupiter the Best and Greatest’) also known as the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus because it was built on the Capitoline Hill. Dedicated to the Capitoline Triad consisting of Jupiter and his companion deities, Juno and Minerva, it was the oldest and most prestigious temple in Rome till it burned down in 83 BC during Sulla’s violent occupation of Rome. It became the traditional place for victorious generals to place trophies. Also lost in this fire were the Sibylline Books, a collection of oracles in Greek hexameters, that were purchased from a sibyl or prophetess by the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, and were consulted at moments of crisis through the history of the Republic and the Empire.

5th century BC

495: After losing a prolonged struggle to regain his throne, Tarquinius Superbus, last king of Rome, dies in exile at Cumae.

484: The first temple of the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) is dedicated in Rome’s Forum Romanum by Aulus Postumius following his victory over the Latins (the tribe who occupied the county surrounding Rome) at the Battle of Lake Regillus.

450: The number of Roman quaestors is increased to four and opened to plebians.

449: The Twelve Tables, the earliest examples of Roman law, are compiled. They were the result of agitation by the plebeian class, who had hitherto been excluded from the higher benefits of the Republic. The law had previously been unwritten and exclusively interpreted by upper-class priests, the pontifices. They formed the basis of Roman law for 1,000 years. The Twelve Tables were inscribed on bronze and publicly displayed so that unwritten law restricted to a ruling class was converted to written law accessible to all.

440: Roman quaestors are chosen by the assembly rather than by the consuls.

4th century BC

390: Battle of the Allia (11 miles north of Rome) at which the Senones, a Gallic tribe led by Brennus, crushed a Roman army and subsequently marched to and occupied Rome. Later historians describe the city as being out to fire and sword: ‘no living being was thenceforth spared; the houses were rifled, and then set on fire’ (Livy Book 5). The traditional date is 390, modern scholars have adjusted this to 387. The Gaulish Sack of Rome led to fear of Gaulish armies or marauders which lasted centuries.

Rome spent the next 32 years fighting the Volsci, the Etruscans and the rebel Latin cities.

366: Institution of the role of praetor, a title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to a man acting in one of two official capacities, as i) the commander of an army or ii) as an elected magistrate.

348: Plague strikes Rome.

343 to 341: First Samnite War, the Samnites being a tribe from central Italy, was the result of Rome’s intervention to rescue the Campanian city of Capua from a Samnite attack.

340 to 338: The Latin War (the Latins being another nearby tribe). Victory for Rome.

337: Until this year praetors were chosen only from among the patricians. In 337 eligibility for the praetura was opened to plebeians.

334: Rome signs a peace treaty with the Senones tribe i.e. the Gauls who sacked Rome.

326 to 304: Second Samnite War was the result of Rome’s intervention in the politics of the city of Naples and developed into a contest over the control of central and southern Italy.

3rd century BC

298 to 290: Third Samnite War:

297: Third Samnite War: Celts and Samnites join forces and defeat the Romans at the Battle of Camertium.

295: Third Samnite War: In a battle lasting all day, Romans narrowly defeat a force of Celts and Samnites at the Battle of Sentinum, the decisive battle of the war.

294: Third Samnite War: A Roman army led by Lucius Postimius Megellus defeats an army from Etruscan Volsinii.

285 to 282: Rome defeats the Celts in Italy. Rome’s dominance in central Italy is secured.

284: Gauls of the Insubres and Boii tribes defeat the Romans at the Battle of Arretium.

283: Rome decisively defeats the Senones at Picenum. Rome defeats the Etruscans and Celts at the Battle of Lake Vadimo.

280 to 272: Roman war against Tarentum in southern Italy. Upon victory, Rome’s dominance in lower Italy is secured.

280: The Romans conquer the Etruscan cities of Tarquinia, Volsinii and Vulci.

264 to 241: First Punic War. Carthage cedes Sicily to Rome.

241 to 238: Rebellion of the mercenaries. Unpaid mercenaries under the leadership of Mathos and Spendios rebel against Carthage. Despite their peace treaty, Rome takes the opportunity to strip Carthage of Sardinia and Corsica.

229 to 228 Rome fights Illyrian pirates. Queen Teuta pays tribute to Rome.

225: Two Roman armies surround and defeat a Celtic army at the Battle of Telamon.

223: Romans successfully campaign against the Celtic tribes of Cisalpine Gaul.

222: Rome conquers Cisalpine Gaul (modern-day Provence, France).

222: The Celts are defeated at the Battle of Clastidium by Roman forces.

219: Illyrian coast is under Roman control.

218 to 201: Second Punic War the main feature of which is Hannibal Barca bringing an army from Spain along the south of France and over the Alps into Italy where it remained for fifteen long years, and the non-confrontational, attritional tactics of the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, surnamed ‘Cunctator’.

216: The Battle of Cannae, Hannibal inflicts the worst ever military defeat in Roman history at Cannae 200 miles south-east of Rome (p.180). The authorities consulted the famous Sibylline Books and, on their recommendation, two Gauls and two Greeks were buried alive in the main marketplace (p.180). Hannibal ante portas meaning ‘Hannibal at the gates’. Hannibal Barca, Carthaginian general, directly threatens the city of Rome, but cannot advance due to lack of supplies and reinforcements.

c. 215 to 216: The Boii crush a Roman army 25,000 strong at Litana. Victory was partly achieved by pushing cut trees down on top of the Romans as they marched.

214 to 205: First Macedonian War: Traditionally, the Macedonian Wars include the four wars with Macedonia, plus one war with the Seleucid Empire, and a final minor war with the Achaean League of Greece. All together they span the period 214 to 148.

The Greek peninsula and west coast of what is now Turkey were characterised by numerous states jostling for position. The triggers for war were some smaller states asking Rome for protection against the two largest powers in the region, the Macedonian Kingdom and Seleucid Empire. The first war ran in parallel to the First Punic War i.e. Rome was fighting on two fronts.

In 216 King Philip V of Macedon had allied himself with the Carthaginian general Hannibal, who was roaming at large through Italy. Rome dispatched an army eastwards which did little more than skirmish with Macedonian forces and seize minor territory along the Adriatic coastline. Rome wasn’t interested in conquest, but in keeping Macedon too busy to send forces to join with Hannibal. The war ended indecisively in 205 BC with the Treaty of Phoenice.

205: On the recommendation of the Sybilline Books, in response to the ongoing Punic War, a poor harvest and other ill omens, an image of Cybele/the Great Goddess was transferred from Asia Minor to Rome. Weirdly, the goddess turned out to take the form of a black meteoric stone accompanied by a retinue of self-castrated, self-flagellating, long-haired priests (p.179).

204: Scipio Africanus sails to North Africa to take the Second Punic War directly to the enemy (p.182). After he had defeated the Carthaginians in two major battles and won the allegiance of the Numidian kingdoms of North Africa, Carthage ordered Hannibal to return to protect the mother city, thus ending his 15-year campaign in Italy without a decisive victory.

202 October: Scipio wins the decisive Battle of Zama, destroying the Carthaginian army. Rome imposes a punitive peace treaty. Hannibal survives but goes into exile in the eastern Mediterranean. It was at this point that Publius Cornelius Scipio was given the agnomen or ‘victory name’ Africanus, so he is often referred to as Scipio (family name) Africanus (victory name) to distinguish him from other members of his (eminent) family.

201: As part of peace treating ending the Second Punic War, Sicily is definitively made a Roman province.

2nd century BC

200 to 196: Second Macedonian War: In the resulting Treaty of Tempea, Philip V was forbidden from interfering with affairs outside his borders, and was required to relinquish his recent Greek conquests. At the Olympiad in 196 Rome proclaimed the ‘Freedom of the Greeks and relapsed into its former apathy.

193: The Boii are defeated by the Romans, suffering, according to Livy, 14,000 dead.

192 to 188: Seleucid War Antiochus III, ‘the Great’, sixth ruler of the Seleucid Empire, invades Greece from Asia Minor. Various Greek cities appealed to Rome for help and a major Roman-Greek force was mobilised under the command of the great hero of the Second Punic War, Scipio Africanus, which landed and started inflicting defeats.

191 to 134: Various resistance movements against Rome in Iberia.

190: Roman army under Scipio defeats Antiochus III at the Battle of Magnesia. Apart from his other crimes, Antiochus was harbouring Rome’s long-term enemy, Hannibal (p.176).

c. 188: Treaty of Apamea Kibotos establishes peace with the Seleucid Empire and Rome plus its allies, such as Pergamon and Rhodes. The Seleucids have to evacuate their forces from Asia Minor and to pay a huge war indemnity.

172 to 168: Third Macedonian War: Philip of Macedon’s son, Perseus, challenges Rome and is defeated.

168: Roman legions smash the Macedonians at the Battle of Pydna. Twice Rome had withdrawn from Greece, leaving the city states to their own devices, assuming there would be peace, but instead facing renewed threats. So now Rome decided to establish its first permanent foothold in the Greek world. The Kingdom of Macedonia was divided by the Romans into four client republics.

154 to 139: Viriato leads the Lusitanians against Rome.

150 to 148: The Fourth Macedonian War Macedonian pretender to the throne Andriscus was destabilizing Greece. The Romans defeated him at the Second Battle of Pydna.

149 to 146: Third Punic War: Despite the fact that Carthage had obeyed all the provisions of the treaty which ended the Second Punic War, hawks in the Senate wanted to finish her off for good. When Carthage broke the treaty by retaliating against Masinissa king of the neighbouring Numidians’ repeated raids into Carthaginian territory, the hawks took this as an opportunity to declare war. Rome sent an army of 50,000 men then demanded that the Carthaginians must hand over all of their armaments and warships.

Carthage agreed to this humiliating demand, but when Rome went on to insist that they burn their city to the ground, relocate inland and change from being a seafaring, trading people to becoming farmers, the Carthaginians rebelled and broke off negotiations. The Roman army settled down for a siege of the city which dragged on for two long years. In the spring of 146 the besiegers, led by Scipio Aemilianus (an adopted grandson of Scipio Africanus) broke into the city which they burned and ransacked for 6 days, finally selling the 50,000 survivors into slavery, and razing the city to the ground.

The remaining Carthaginian territories were annexed by Rome and reconstituted to become the Roman province of Africa with Utica as its capital. Roman Africa became a major source of foodstuffs for Rome for centuries to come.

146: The Achaean War Following on from the fourth Macedonian war, the Achaean League mobilised for a new war against Rome. It was a foolish idea the historian Polybius blames on the demagogues of the cities of the league. The Achaean League was swiftly defeated and, as an object lesson, Rome utterly destroyed the city of Corinth in 146, the same year that Carthage was destroyed. To try to ensure peace Rome divided Macedonia into two new Roman provinces, Achaea and Epirus. From this point onwards Greece was ruled by Rome.

139: Law introduced the secret ballot.

137: 4,000 Celtiberians trap a force of 20,000 Romans at the Siege of Numantia, forcing their surrender.

135 to 132: First Servile War in Sicily, led by Eunus, a former slave claiming to be a prophet, and Cleon from Cilicia.

133: Rome captures Numantia, ending Iberian resistance.

133: Attalus III, the last king of Pergamon, bequeathes the whole of his kingdom to Rome.

133: The plebeian Tiberius Gracchus proposes sweeping land reforms which are so bitterly opposed by aggrieved landowners that he is murdered, bludgeoned to death. 70 years later Cicero saw this murder and the year 133 as opening up the fault lines of Roman society between two groups he calls the optimates and the populares (though modern scholars doubt the existence whether these really existed as organised groupings).

125: Rome intervenes on behalf of Massalia against the Saluvii Celts.

121: Gallia Narbonensis becomes a Roman province.

112 to 106: The Jugurthine War Numidia was a north African kingdom roughly covering the northern coastal part of what is now modern-day Algeria is. When the old king died the kingdom was disputed between his two sons and Jugurtha, his ambitious nephew.

111: Jugurtha murders his main rival along with many Roman merchants in a Numidian town. The Roman populace cried out for revenge but the event triggered an amazing sequence of delays caused by Jugurtha’s wholesale bribery and corruption of envoys sent to parley with him and then, once he’d gone to Rome, of various senators and officials dealing with him. The way Jugurtha was able to bribe and cajole his way out of various tight spots came to be seen as symbolic of the endemic corruption which had infected the body politic and inspired a vitriolic history of the war by this historian Gaius Sallustius Crispus, usually referred to as Sallust, writing a generation after the events (86 to 35 BC).

113 to 101: The Cimbrian War The Cimbri were a Germanic tribe who, in one account, hailed from Denmark and went trekking through Germany and down towards the Danube. Local tribes allied to the Romans asked for help and Rome sent an army under the Roman consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo which was annihilated.

109: Cimbrian War: the Cimbri invade the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis and defeat the Roman army there under Marcus Junius Silanus.

108: Jugurthine War: Gaius Marius elected consul and given command of the army against Jugurtha.

107: Jugurthine War: the Tribal Assembly awards command of the Roman army in north Africa to the very ambitious general Gaius Marius Lucius Cornelius Sulla as his quaestor.

107: Cimbrian War: The Romans are defeated by the Tigurini, allies of the Cimbri. The Cimbri defeated another Roman army at the Battle of Burdigala (Bordeaux) killing its commander, the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravalla.

106: Jugurthine War: The Second Battle of Cirta Romans under Gaius Marius with quaestor Lucius Cornelius Sulla as cavalry commander, defeated a Numidian-Mauretanian coalition led by King Jugurtha and king Bocchus and captured the Numidian capital of Cirta.

105: Cimbrian War: Battle of Arausio where Cimbri, Teutons, and Ambrones divide a huge Roman army (80,000 men plus support personnel) led by two  rivals, Gnaeus Mallius Maximus and the proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio. Only Caepio, Maximus and a few hundred Romans escaped with their lives across the river choked with corpses. The Battle of Arausio was the costliest defeat Rome suffered since Cannae and the losses and long-term consequences were far greater.

104 to 100: Second Servile War in Sicily, led by Athenion and Tryphon.

104: Cimbrian War: Rome declared a state of emergency and the constitution was suspended to allow Gaius Marius, the victor over Jugurtha of Numidia, to be elected consul for an unprecedented five years in a row, starting in 104. He was given free rein to build a new army and took the opportunity to make sweeping reforms in structure, organisation, recruitment, pay and strategy. Marius created a professional standing force composed of able-bodied but landless volunteers. Meanwhile the Cimbri unaccountably lost the opportunity to invade Italy while Rome was without an army, instead trekking to Iberia where they experienced their first defeats.

102: Cimbrian War: The Cimbri along with several other allied tribes finally invaded Italy, dividing their forces into two distinct armies which took separate routes south. Marius defeated the army of the Teutons and Ambrones at the Battle of Aquae Sextiae.

101: Cimbrian War: The main body of the Cimbri penetrated north Italy and ravaged the valley of the Po. Marius waited for reinforcements and then took on the Cimbri at the Battle of Vercellae near the confluence of the Sesia River with the Po on the Raudine Plain. The Cimbri were virtually annihilated, both their highest leaders, Boiorix and Lugius, fell, their womenfolk killed both themselves and their children in order to avoid slavery, bringing the Cimbrian War to an end. The war had two massive consequences:

  1. The end of the Cimbrian War marked the beginning of the rivalry between Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla who had served under Marius during the Jugurthine War, and served during the Cimbrian War as military tribune. Their rivalry eventually led to the first of Rome’s great civil wars.
  2. Following the victory at Vercellae, and without first asking permission from the Senate, Marius granted Roman citizenship to his Italian allied soldiers. Henceforth all Italian legions became Roman legions and the allied cities of the Italian peninsula began to demand a greater say in the external policy of the Republic. This led eventually to the Social War.

So the final part of the Cimbrian War sowed the seeds of civil strife in Italy for the next 15 years.

1st century BC

91 to 87: The Social War between Rome and its Italian allies who wanted Roman citizenship and an equal share in power. Only won by Rome granting citizenship and other rights to the allies. Once achieved, this hastened the Romanisation of the entire Italian peninsula but was a bitter and destructive internecine struggle.

89 to 63: Mithridatic Wars against Mithridates VI, ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus in northern Anatolia.

88 to 87: First Civil War between Marius and Sulla. First march on Rome by Sulla.

83: Sulla’s second march on Rome. Mass proscriptions i.e. lists of Sulla’s political enemies to be hunted down and liquidated. Not quite Stalin’s Russia, but similar in intent.

80: Sulla is persuaded to give his junior general, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus known as Pompey, his first ‘triumph’ in Rome.

73 to 71: Rebellion of Spartacus also known as the Third Servile War.

71: Pompey is granted his second ‘triumph’ for his victories in Spain.

70: Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus, generally referred to as Crassus, are made consuls.

67: The Gabinian Law is passed, giving Pompey extraordinary power to deal with pirates in the Adriatic.

66: The Manilian Law is passed, giving Pompey extraordinary power to deal with Mithridates VI of Pontus.

64: Galatia becomes a client state of Rome.

63: Pompey defeats the Seleucid Antiochus XIII and incorporates Syria as a province of the Roman empire.

62: Pompey returns to Italy, and disbands his army upon landing.

61: Cicero’s accuses Catalinus of being the ringleader of a coup attempt. Pompey holds another ‘triumph’ in Rome celebrating his military achievements in the East.

60: Gaius Julius Caesar, Pompey and Crassus make a behind-closed-doors deal to share power between them, bypassing traditional constitutional arrangements, a moment later writers lamented as sealing the fate of the republic. It comes to be known as the First Triumvirate, or the Gang of Three as Beard jokily calls it.

58 to 51: Under the terms of the triumvirate, Pompey campaigns in the east, Caesar conquers Gaul.

58: Caesar attacks the Helvetii while on migration and defeats them.

58 to 57: Cicero is exiled from Rome.

56: The navies of Rome and the Veneti Gauls clash resulting in a Roman victory, the first recorded naval battle in the Atlantic Ocean.

55: Caesar attempts to invade Britain.

54: Caesar successfully invades Britain but then withdraws to Gaul. The island will be decisively conquered under Claudius.

54: Ambiorix of the Eburones tribe destroys around 9,000 Roman soldiers at the Battle of Atuatuca, up towards the modern French border with Belgium, one of the most serious setbacks suffered by Julius Caesar during his conquest of Gaul.

53: Rome loses the Battle of Carrhae to the Parthians, on what is now the border between southern Turkey and Syria. Crassus, one of the Triumvirate, is captured and executed by the Parthians.

52: Julius Caesar is defeated at the Battle of Gergovia in south-central France by Vercingetorix.

52: After becoming trapped and besieged at Alesia, Vercingetorix surrenders to Caesar.

51: Caesar’s successful siege of Uxellodunum ends the Gallic War.

49: Burebistas sends Acornion of Dionysopolis as ambassador to negotiate an alliance with Pompey.

49: Caesar decides to march back from Gaul into Italy to dispute ultimate power with Pompey. According to tradition the ‘die is cast’ for war when he leads his legions across the river Rubicon. Civil war between Caesar and Pompey begins.

48: The Battle of Pharsalus the decisive battle of Caesar’s Civil War fought near Pharsalus in central Greece. Although Pompey enjoyed the backing of a majority of Roman senators and the larger army, his forces were massacred by Caesar’s legions, battle hardened from their long wars in Gaul. Pompey survived the battle and fled to Egypt, where he was assassinated on the orders of Ptolemy XIII who thought it would please Caesar.

46: The Bellovaci unsuccessfully rise against Roman rule in Belgica. Caesar holds a ‘triumph’ through Rome in which he displays peoples he has defeated and loot he has taken. The parade featured floats with people posing in dramatic tableaux, and placards, one of which read pithily: veni, vidi, vici – I came, I saw, I conquered. This referred to Caesar’s quick victory in his short war against Pharnaces II of Pontus at the Battle of Zela, in Turkey, up towards the Black Sea, in 47 (SPQR p.290). The historian Suetonius says Caesar used it in his triumph but the biographer Plutarch says he used it in a report to the Senate. Either way it’s indicative of the way the phrase was still quotable 150 years later and a token of Caesar’s skill as a writer, rhetorician and self publicist.

44: The Allobroges unsuccessfully rise against Roman rule in southern Gaul.

44: Caesar becomes dictator for life. On the ‘Ides of March’ (15th) he is killed by conspirators including Brutus and Cassius. Octavian, son of Caesars niece Atia, is posthumously adopted as his heir.

43 to 36: a Second Triumvirate is set up by Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), Gaius Octavius (Octavian) and Marcus Lepidus, in opposition to the assassins of Caesar, chief among them Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus (p.341). Following the innovation of Sulla in the 80s, the triumvirate draws up a long list of proscriptions i.e. people they want to see liquidated. The list includes the most eminent writer of Latin prose, Cicero, who is caught trying to flee, and beheaded in 43 (p.341).

42: Octavian and Antony defeat Republicans under Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi (Greece)

36: Octavian strips Lepidus of all power but the purely ceremonial Pontifex Maximus (supreme priest). Lepidus dies of old age in 12 BC, leaving Mark Anthony, allied with Cleopatra of Egypt, as Octavian’s main enemy.

33: The Belgic Morini and the Celts of Aquitania unsuccessfully rise against Roman rule.

31: 2 September Battle of Actium. Octavian defeats Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt.

29: Octavian’s ‘triumph’ displays images of the people he defeated in the East along with such vast amounts of loot that it took 3 days to process through central Rome.

27: Octavian is given extraordinary powers and the name Augustus by the Roman Senate. Although many of its constitutional forms live on for centuries, the Republic is in effect dead, and historians date the start of the Roman Empire from either 31 or 27.

Credit

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard was published in 2015 by Profile Books. All references are to the 2016 paperback edition.

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Posted by Simon on February 4, 2022

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