Biography of Cicero

Biography

Cicero was born in Arpinum and killed outside of Rome, fleeing from political 
enemies. "It is no exaggeration", wrote Taylor (as cited in "References"), 
"to say that the most brilliant era of Roman public life was ushered in by 
Cicero and closed by his death—he stood at its cradle and he followed its 
hearse." His family, the Tullii Cicerones, was one of the landed gentry in 
Arpinum and resented the fame and fortunes of the other great Arpinate 
families, the Marii. Throughout his life, the conservative Cicero loathed 

Early life

According to Plutarch he was an extremely adept student, learning so well 
and rapidly that he attracted attention from all over Rome. He was especially 
fond of poetry, although he shied away from no scholarly field.

Cicero served as quaestor in Western Sicily in 75 BC. He wrote that in Sicily 
he saw the gravestone of Archimedes of Syracuse, on which was carved 
Archimedes' favorite discovery in geometry, that the ratio of the volume of a 
sphere to that of the smallest right circular cylinder in which it fits is 
2:3. He built an extremely successful career as an advocate, and first 
attained prominence for his successful prosecution in August 70 BC of Gaius 
Verres, the former governor of Sicily. Despite his great successes as an 
advocate, Cicero suffered from his lack of reputable ancestry; as no Tullius 
Cicero had been consul before him, he was neither noble nor patrician, and 
his family considered unimportant. He was furthermore hindered by the fact 
that the last man to have been elected to the consulate without consular 
ancestors (i.e., the last "New Man", or Novus Homo) had been the political 
radical Marius.


Consul

In 63 BC, Cicero became the first New Man in more than 30 years by being 
elected consul. His only significant historical accomplishment during his 
year in office was the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy, a plot 
to overthrow the Roman Republic led by Lucius Sergius Catilina, a 
disaffected patrician. Cicero procured a senatus consultum de re publica 
defendenda (a declaration of martial law, also called the senatus consultum 
ultimum) and drove Catiline out of the city by a speech known for the 
harsh, almost brutal, language in which he describes the debauchery of 
Rome and especially Catiline. Catiline fled but left behind his 'deputies' 
who would start the revolution from within whilst Catiline assaulted it 
from without with an army recruited among Sulla's veterans in Etruria. 
Cicero managed to have these 'deputies' of Catiline confess their crime 
in front of the entire Senate, after ambushing an embassy they had sent 
to a Gaulish tribe.

The Senate then deliberated upon the punishment to be given to the 
conspirators. As it was a legislative rather than a judicial body, there 
were limits on its power to do so; however, martial law was in effect, 
and it was feared that simple house arrest or exile - the standard 
options - would not remove the threat to the State. At first most in the 
Senate spoke for the 'extreme penalty'; many were then swayed by Julius 
Caesar who spoke decrying the precedent it would set and argued in 
favour of the punishment being confined to a mode of banishment. Cato 
then rose in defence of the death penalty and all the Senate finally 
agreed on the matter. Cicero had the conspirators taken to the Tulliam, 
the notorious Roman prison, where they were hanged. He received the 
honorific "Pater Patriae" for his actions in suppressing the conspiracy, 
but thereafter lived in fear of trial or exile for having put Roman 
citizens to death without trial. He also received the first public 
thanksgiving for a civic accomplishment; heretofore it had been a 
purely military honor.


Exile and return

In 58 BC, the populist Publius Clodius Pulcher introduced a law exiling any 
man who had put Roman citizens to death without trial. Although Cicero 
maintained that the sweeping senatus consultum ultimum granted him in 63 BC 
had indemnified him against legal penalty, he nevertheless left Italy for a 
year and spent his quasi-exile setting his speeches to paper.

As the struggle between Pompey and Julius Caesar grew more intense in 50 BC, 
Cicero favored Pompey but tried to avoid making Caesar into a permanent 
enemy. When Caesar invaded Italy in 49 BC, Cicero fled Rome. Caesar attempted 
vainly to convince him to return, and in June of that year Cicero slipped out 
of Italy and travelled to Salonika. He returned to Rome, however, after 
Caesar's victory.

In a letter to Varro on April 20, 46 BC, Cicero indicated what he saw as his 
role under the dictatorship of Caesar: "I advise you to do what I am 
advising myself – avoid being seen, even if we cannot avoid being talked 
about... If our voices are no longer heard in the Senate and in the Forum, 
let us follow the example of the ancient sages and serve our country through 
our writings, concentrating on questions of ethics and constitutional law."

In February 45 BC Cicero's daughter Tullia died. He never entirely 
recovered from this shock.


Opposition to Mark Antony, and death

Cicero was taken completely by surprise when Caesar was assassinated on the 
Ides of March 44 BC. Cicero and Caesar's subordinate, Mark Antony, became 
the leading men in Rome; Cicero as spokesman for the senate, and Antony 
as consul and as executor of Caesar's will. But the two men had never been 
on friendly terms, and their relationship worsened after Cicero made it 
clear he felt Antony to be taking unfair liberties in interpreting Caesar's 
wishes and intentions. When Octavian, Caesar's heir, arrived in Italy in 
April, Cicero formed a plan to play him against Antony. In September he began 
attacking Antony in a series of speeches he called the Philippics.

Cicero described his position in a letter to Cassius, one of Caesar's 
assassins, that same September: "I am pleased that you like my motion in 
the Senate and the speech accompanying it... Antony is a madman, corrupt 
and much worse than Caesar - whom you declared the worst of evil men when 
you killed him. Antony wants to start a bloodbath..."

Cicero's plan to drive out Octavian and Antony failed, however. The next 
year the two reconciled and allied with Lepidus to form the Triumvirate for 
the Constitution of the Republic. Immediately after legislating their 
alliance into official existence for a five-year term with consular imperium, 
the Triumviri began proscribing their enemies and potential rivals. Cicero 
and his younger brother Quintus Tullius Cicero, formerly one of Caesar's 
legates, were both numbered among the enemies of the state.

Cicero fled, but was caught and decapitated by his pursuers on 
December 7, 43 BC; his head and hands were displayed on the Rostra in the 
Forum Romanum according to the tradition of Marius and Sulla, both of whom 
had displayed the heads of their enemies in the Forum. He was the only 
victim of the Triumvirate's proscriptions to have been so displayed after 
death. According to Plutarch, Antony's wife Fulvia took Cicero's head and 
pulled out his tongue, jabbing the tongue repeatedly with her hatpin, taking 
a final revenge against Cicero's power of speech.