This is an old book (published in 1966) containing 196 pages of Cicero’s most interesting letters, selected and translated by L.P. Wilkinson. Wilkinson’s introduction is a bit waffly but conveys the key facts: Marcus Tullius Cicero was born in 106 BC and rose to high office in Rome. Having studied philosophy and oratory in Greece, he went on to become the premiere lawyers and orator of his time. He then rose through the set series of official posts or magistracies (the cursus honorem), attaining the post of consul in 63 BC, aged 43. It was towards the end of that year that he had to deal with the notorious Cataline conspiracy.

After a brief exile in 58, to flee his political enemies, in the later 50s he played a key role in trying to effect a compromise between the partisans of Caesar and Pompey. In 51 he was sent to serve as governor of the province of Cilicia in the south of modern-day Turkey, a post he filled with conspicuous rectitude. But it meant he was absent from Rome as the great political crisis between Caesar and Pompey came to a head.

When civil war broke out in January 49, Cicero agonised about choosing a side and eventually plumped for Pompey, still hoping the latter could become the leader who could restore what Cicero optimistically called the ‘harmony of the orders’, and so followed Pompey and his army when they crossed the Adriatic to Greece. After Caesar decisively defeated Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus in August 48, Cicero returned to Rome, where he reluctantly acquiesced in the dictatorship of Caesar.

It is from this period of withdrawal from political life that date most of his written works, including books about oratory, law, the ideal republic, on the duties of the citizen, the nature of the gods and many more.

After the assassination of Caesar in March 44, Cicero threw himself behind the cause of the dictator’s 18-year-old great-nephew, Octavian, in opposition to the crude and brutal Mark Antony, against whom he wrote several vitriolic diatribes. This proved to be a miscalculation, for only a year later Octavian made peace with Antony to form the Second Triumvirate (along with Lepidus), the three partners drew up lists of political enemies to be ‘proscribed’, and Antony put Cicero at the top of his list of opponents to be killed. And so he was.

Cicero’s correspondence

Cicero’s correspondence is ample but slow to get going. There’s nothing from his youth or young manhood i.e. the 90s, 80s or 70s BC. The first letter dates from 68 BC but between that date and 65 there are only eleven letters. There’s nothing from his early career as a lawyer or his campaign to be elected consul. The latter is a particular shame as his consulship, in the year 63, coincided with the conspiracy of the senator Catiline to overthrow the state, which Cicero was instrumental in uncovering. Cicero was instrumental in rounding up the ringleaders (in Rome; Catiline himself remained at large in Italy) and then took the lead, after a fiery debate in the senate, in executing them. (See Sallust’s Catiline Conspiracy and Plutarch’s Life of Cicero.)

Cicero’s correspondence doesn’t become continuous until the year after his consulship, in 62 BC. But from that year until July 43 (when Cicero was executed on the orders of Mark Anthony) more than 900 letters survive, about 835 by him and 90 addressed to him. Of his own letters, half (416) were addressed to his friend, financial adviser, and publisher, Titus Pomponius Atticus, who he describes as:

my constant ally in public affairs, my confidant in private, my partner in every conversation and project.

He wrote so many letters to Atticus because the latter had (very wisely) withdrawn from Rome altogether to live in Athens. In fact ‘Atticus’ is a nickname referring to Pomponius’s preference for Greek culture. Cicero’s other 419 letters are to a wide range of friends, acquaintances and relatives, some 94 named individuals in all.

It is important to note that Cicero and Atticus were not only friends of long standing (possibly they went to school together) but had the further tie that Cicero’s brother, Quintus Tullius Cicero, was married to Atticus’s sister, Pomponia – although it was an unhappy marriage, something Cicero refers to in some of his letters.

Wilkinson

Wilkinson’s introduction is a bit waffly, generalising about how loveable Cicero is and so on, fondly indulgent of his narcissism as most other commentators are. Wilkinson is much better in the short linking passages which precede each batch of letters, generally only a couple of paragraphs long but in which he briefly explains the historical context of each batch and what we know of the events Cicero is describing, from other sources. These linking passages are concise and fascinating.

In the moment

Cicero’s letters are so interesting for two reasons. I suppose the obvious one is that he was a central, or central-ish, figure in the high politics of the last decades of the Roman Republic. I found it dazzling that he writes letters to, and receives replies from, all the key players – Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Brutus and Octavian.

But he could have done this and the letters still be boring. The real secret of their appeal is Cicero’s immense and eloquent involvement in the politics of his time and because his letters plunge you into the moment. All the histories of late republican Rome which I’ve read, ancient or modern, are written with the benefit of hindsight i.e. they often mix up events with their consequences, giving a sense that events were fore-ordained, fated to happen and are a foregone conclusion, regarding them as done and dusted and fodder for thematic analysis.

Wilkinson’s brief introductions, by contrast, give you a snappy resumé of events up to the moment when the next batch of letters start, and then plunge you into the present of the letters in which none of the characters know what is going to happen next.

And all sway forward on the dangerous flood
Of history, that never sleeps or dies,
And, held one moment, burns the hand. (from To a writer on his birthday by W.H. Auden)

As we read the letters, we are living in the dangerous present, alongside Cicero, sympathising with his efforts to figure out what the hell to do, given the immense press of fast-moving events. As the letters progress, they become more and more dramatic and immersive, and genuinely gripping, as gripping as any thriller.

Political parties?

One thing which surprised me in Wilkinson’s introduction is how confidently he talks about political parties with a capital P – the People’s Party, the Senate Party, the Knights Party. Obviously these were not political parties in the modern sense. All the authorities emphasise this. Instead they were loose and flexible affiliations, generally clustered around powerful individuals, because that was the structure of Roman society at large. The Roman ruling class was based on the notion of rich patrons who were surrounded by a host of ‘clients’, who benefited from their largesse and in return offered services. It was a subtle, complicated, ever-changing flux of relationships – personal, familial, military and political.

Given all this, I was surprised to read Wilkinson very much using the language of ‘parties’ and surprised at how acutely it shed light on events which had been more personalised in other accounts. All the accounts I’ve read tend to focus on individuals and their rivalries and hatreds, for example between Marius and Sulla. But Wilkinson recasts this in terms of ‘parties’.

Thus he sees the rivalry between Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla as not only a fierce personal and professional rivalry (which it undoubtedly was) but as a struggle between the People’s Party of the former and the Senatorial Party of the latter. He explains how Gnaeus Pompey at first appeared to follow in Sulla’s footsteps but, during the 70s, left the Sullan cause and helped pass a series of laws which rolled back all the laws Sulla put in place at the end of the 80s to try and bolster the power of the senate.

Alongside Pompey, was Marcus Licinius Crassus (born 115 BC, so 9 years older than Cicero) the richest man in Rome, who Wilkinson puts at the head of the Equites or Knights, the class of often very rich businessmen who sat, as it were, just beneath the senate in terms of power and prestige.

And coming up on the outside was the young, but poor, and extremely ambitious Julius Caesar, born in 100 BC and so 6 years younger than both Pompey and Cicero. By temperament, and family ties (his aunt had been Marius’s wife) Caesar was the rising star of the People’s Party.

Pompey sponsored a bill which removed control of the juries in trials from the Senate and gave a third of juries to the Equites, thus securing the support of the Knightly Party. And then, after being awarded enormous powers to rid Rome of the pirate scourge 67 BC, Pompey won such overwhelming popularity with the People that he was given huge powers to go east and deal with the ongoing problem of King Mithradates VI of Pontus in 66.

When you see Crassus, Pompey and Caesar as not only extremely ambitious individuals, but as representatives of interest groups or ‘parties’, it makes even more sense that in 60 BC Caesar persuaded the other two to join him in an informal pact to manipulate elections and laws and award each other official positions which suited their interests – the first triumvirate.

Cicero’s initial hopes for Pompey

Wilkinson begins his collection with a letter from Cicero to Pompey, written in 62, the year after Cicero’s consulship (when, as he never stopped reminding people, he claimed to have more or less single-handed saved Rome from overthrow by Catiline and his conspirators).

At this point, before the triumvirate was set up, Cicero was still hero-worshipping Pompey and hoping that he would become an enlightened leader and centre of a circle of intellectuals (such as himself). More importantly that Pompey could straddle the interest groups of the different parties (senate, knights and people) and so effect what Cicero called ‘the harmony of the orders’ i.e. put an end to the continual conflict between the different ‘parties’ and reconcile them to work together for the good of Rome.

Pompey had dramatically demonstrated his dedication to the constitution when, upon returning to Italy from his triumphs in the East, he didn’t march on Rome as Marius and Sulla had done, but simply disbanded his army and returned as a private citizen at the beck of the senate. Good man.

(This first letter establishes a recurring theme of the correspondence which is Cicero’s enormous sense of his own importance. Cicero never loses an opportunity to brag at length how the whole world recognises how he single-handedly saved the state during the Cataline crisis.)

Thus, in this first letter, he expects that, despite his (Pompey’s) recent letter to him (Cicero) being restrained and distant, nonetheless, once he arrives in Rome and learns what a hero Cicero is, he (Pompey) will be all the readier to allow Cicero to consort with him in private and in politics. ‘Once you realise how heroically I saved Rome you will want to hang out with me’.

Timeline of Cicero’s letters

63 BC

Cicero serves as consul. November to December the Catiline conspiracy. After a debate in the Senate a vote was taken choosing to execute the known conspirators and, as a result, Cicero promptly led five of them to Rome’s gaol where they were garrotted without a trial. This prompt but rash action, in a moment of national crisis, was to haunt Cicero for the rest of his life and be used against him by his enemies who claimed it was illegal and itself deserving the death penalty. It was the threat of prosecution for it which sent Cicero into self-imposed exile in March 58. And it helps explain the boastfulness when you realise every time he mentioned it he was also in part exonerating himself, building up his defence with everyone he spoke to or wrote to.

62 BC

First letter to Pompey insisting he ought to take him (Cicero) seriously as the man who saved Rome the year before.

61 BC

January: Long gossipy letter to Atticus mentioned the scandalous affair of Publius Clodius Pulcher impersonating a woman to enter Caesar’s house during a women-only religious ceremony. Bitchy remarks about Pompey. June: Cicero describes the trial of Clodius in colourful terms. Cicero intervened to demolish Clodius’s alibi, thus making a mortal enemy who terrified him into exile three years later. From mid-61 to 58 Cicero missed the help of his brother, Quintus Cicero, who went to serve as governor of Asia Minor.

60 BC

January: Cicero complains to Atticus about not having anyone to trust. June: another letter about Clodius’s ongoing intrigues. He was rumoured to have had incestuous affair with his sister, Clodia, who features in the poetry of Catullus as his beloved ‘Lesbia’. Clodia was married to that year’s consul, Metellus. Cicero says she’s a disgrace and he ‘hates’ her.

Julius Caesar invited Cicero to join with him, Crassus and Pompey in what would become known as the Triumvirate. Cicero declined out of loyalty to the constitution.

59 BC

Julius Caesar takes up office for a year as consul. He brings in a Land Bill for the settlement of his servicemen. He ignored the opposition of the senate and vetos by the tribunes i.e. a clear indication that the triumvirate were going to ignore constitutional checks. Next, the tax collectors got a remission of one third on the price they’d paid to collect taxes in the East, to please their representative, Crassus. As his reward for organising all this, the other two arranged for Caesar to be made governor for 5 years of Cisalpine Gaul, Illyrium and Transalpine Gaul. Caesar also married his young daughter, Julia, to Pompey, in order to cement their political bond. She was 17 and Pompey was 47, but in fact he became devoted to her.

Summer: Cicero writes to Atticus telling him the actions of the triumvirate have created a climate of fear, disgust and universal despair at the loss of political freedoms and the state of ‘general servility’. Cicero tells Atticus how at the gladiatorial shows and the theatre Pompey is hissed and booed. Caesar offers Cicero a job as one of the 20 Land Commissioners deciding which land should be assigned to ex-soldiers, but Cicero realises it’s a trap i.e. will associate him with the regime and lose him the support of ‘loyalists’.

58 BC

The Triumvirate arrange for the patrician Clodius to be adopted into a plebeian family so he could be elected as one of the ten tribunes of the plebs. Clodius introduced laws which benefited them all. Caesar encouraged him to persecute Cicero because the triumvirs feared his continued opposition to them jeopardised their programme.

Thus it was that Clodius was encouraged to propose a law threatening exile to anyone who executed a Roman citizen without a trial. Cicero, having executed members of the Catiline conspiracy four years previously without a formal trial, was the clear target of this proposal. After senators and colleagues failed to offer him the assurances he needed, Cicero wisely departed Italy for Greece. A few days later Clodius put forward another bill formally exiling Cicero and confiscating his property. Cicero’s house on the Palatine Hill was destroyed by Clodius’ supporters, as were his villas in Tusculum and Formiae. On the ruins of the Rome house Clodius had a temple dedicated to Libertas built.

The more dangerous, because principles and unbending, opponent of the triumvirs, Cato, was, via another of Clodius’s proposals, sent as governor to Cyprus to get him out of the way.

[What strikes the casual reader of both the general background and Cicero’s letters is how immensely personalised this all was. It’s as if ‘the state’ only consisted of half a dozen people who make and break friendships like schoolboys in a playground.]

April: a letter to Atticus from Brindisi saying he’d love to come to Athens. A sad and moving letter to his wife, Terentia, who he calls the ‘best and most devoted of wives’. She has stayed behind in Rome to see their houses confiscated etc. Practical arrangements about what to do with their large staff of slaves now they have no house. Love to his wife and daughter (married to Piso) and little son, Marcus.

 57 BC

Caesar has gone to Gaul to take up what would turn into 8 years of successful campaigning (see Caesar’s Gallic Wars). Having created a leader of street gangs and proposer of strident laws in Publius Clodius Pulcher, Pompey found him impossible to control, and begins to lobby for Cicero’s return. Clodius’s gangs riot but Pompey helped set up a rival and opposing gang leader, Titus Annius Milo, and got him elected tribune of the plebs, who proposed a law repealing Cicero’s exile. The start of a five year period of unpredictable street battles between the rival gangs and supporters. For example, on 23 January 57, when Clodius tried to use a force of gladiators to block a move to recall Cicero from exile, Milo arrested Clodius’ gladiators. Milo was subsequently attacked by Clodius’ gangs. Milo attempted to prosecute Clodius for instigating this violence but was unsuccessful. The warfare between Milo and Clodius’s gangs became a feature of Roman life. But meanwhile, with the support of Pompey and that year’s consul, Lenthulus Spinther, Cicero’s exile – which he had spent mostly in Salonika – was ended.

September: letter to Atticus rejoicing at being back in Rome. Far more than that, it celebrates in hyperbolic terms what Cicero describes as widespread celebrations of his return, so that at every city and town he was feted by cheering crowds, received delegations of civic worthies etc. Cheering crowds at the gates of Rome, in the forum, on the Capitol. He is immediately back in the buzz of political life and makes a speech in support of a motion to award Pompey control of the corn supply, seeing as there’s a shortage. Fascinating detail of the way the consuls proposed the law giving Pompey control of the corn supply throughout the empire for 5 years, but then Messius introduced an amendment giving Pompey a fleet and army and complete authority over regional governors. Superpowers. This is evidence for the case that the Republic collapsed not because of a handful of ambitious men, but because it was no longer up to administering such a huge area. Anyway, he also hints that all is not well in his household, first hint of deteriorating relationship with Terentia.

November: description of how a mob led by Clodius knocked down Cicero’s half-rebuilt house then incited them to set fire to Cicero’s brother’s house and then ran amok through the city promising to free slaves who joined them. He describes how on 11 November he and his entourage were proceeding along the Sacred Way when Clodius’s gang appeared and produced stones, clubs and swords so that Cicero et al were forced to take refuge in a friend’s house and barricade themselves in.

Clodius is a one-man evidence for the argument that the collapse of law and order in Rome set the scene for the end of the republic. Cicero describes feeling resentfully jealous of Milo and his complete lack of scruples, Milo openly saying he will murder Clodius if he can (though it would be four more riotous years till he did).

56 BC

February: Letter to his brother Quintus describing the attempted trial of Milo. When Pompey attempted to speak for him, Clodius’s gang erupted in shouts and catcalling, then a near riot broke out and Cicero fled. In the following days there was a meeting of the senate, proposals that the riots amounted to sedition. Cato made a violent speech against Pompey who then stands and makes a measured reply. Cicero makes the shrewdest comment on Cato that I’ve read:

from the highest principles he sometimes does the state harm (p.39)

Pompey confides in Cicero that there is a conspiracy against his (Pompey’s) life. He thinks Crassus is encouraging Cato’s attacks while continuing to fund Clodius’s gangs. Cicero allies himself with Milo and the constitutionalists.

April: a sweet letter to Atticus asking him to send some of his slaves or servants who are expert at book management to help restore his library.

In April 56 Cicero made a career-changing mistake. He still thought he could break up the Triumvirate with a view to restoring traditional senatorial rule. The strategy he chose was to launch an attack on Caesar’s Land Bill, which sequestered land to give to his war veterans. But it had the opposite effect, for Pompey supported Caesar’s measure. Indeed it led to the entrenching of triumvirate power when Caesar called Pompey, Crassus and 120 senators to a meeting at Lucca in his province of Cisalpine Gaul, where the pacts behind the Triumvirate were reconfirmed. They agreed that Caesar’s command in Gaul was to be extended by a further five years, that Pompey and Crassus would be consuls for 55, the former with responsibility for Italy and Spain, but remaining in Italy to keep an eye on Rome while the latter went hunting for glory against the Parthian Empire in the East. He had for some years been complaining about the spinelessness of the ‘nobles’, especially when they failed to stand up to Clodius about his exile. Now his patience snapped and he washed his hands of the senatorial party (‘had they not led me on, then ratted and thrown me over…I must finish with them’), made his peace with the Triumvirate (‘let me endeavour to make friends with those that have power’) and retired from politics, concentrating on his writing (p.55).

May: The famous letter to the historian Lucius Lucceius unashamedly sucking up to him and suggesting he write an historical account of the Catiline conspiracy giving pride of place, of course, to Cicero’s heroic achievements in saving the state! Interestingly, he describes in detail his conviction that a mere chronicle of events is boring; what brings it alive is describing the vicissitudes of fortune, the rise, setbacks and triumphs of individuals. This is interesting in itself but indicates the gulf between the ancient and modern world: what interests us is analysis which is undertaken on the basis of a whole range of modern theories, economic, sociological, political, Marxist along with various schools of psychology. By contrast with the web of sophisticated interpretative theories which modern readers and commentators have at their fingertips, the ancients had just one: Fortune and its impact on the rise and fall of great men.

May: letter to Atticus bemoaning his situation whereby if he speaks out about what is right in politics, he is thought mad; if he agrees with the triumvirate, he is thought servile; if he says nothing, he feels crushed and helpless.

May: letters to Lentulus Spinther who, as consul in 57, supported Cicero’s return from exile and is now governor of Cilicia. Cicero describes how the triumvirate have succeeded in gaining their goals beyond their wildest dreams and how he is being realistic and attaching himself to Pompey. He laments that he once looked forward, after a lifetime of service, to giving independent advice in the Senate. But now that vision and world have disappeared. There is now only a choice between ‘humbly agreeing or disagreeing to no purpose.’ ‘The whole essence of the Senate, law courts and the State in general has changed’ (p.61).

55 BC

Cicero sent his brother, Quintus Tullius Cicero, to join Caesar in Gaul. Caesar repelled an incursion by two Germanic tribes and then made his first expedition to Britain. In November Crassus departed Rome to sail to Asia (Turkey) with a view to heading on to Syria to raise the forces for his ill-fated campaign against the Parthian Empire.

April: letter to Atticus from his country house in Cuma where he laments his impotence in politics but:

The more I am robbed of my relish for material pleasures by the thought of the political situation, the more comfort and recreation I find in literature. (p.61)

September: long letter to Marcus Marius giving descriptions of a festival which the former missed and Cicero says he would have hated, describing the bad plays, terrible acting and excessive props; the grimness of the gladiator games and animal hunts, with a word for how the killing of the elephants elicited not pleasure but horror.

54 BC

Cicero’s brother, Quintus Tullius Cicero, took part in Caesar’s second expedition to Britain, which is referred to in Cicero’s letters to him. Julius Caesar’s daughter, Julia, died, aged just 22, leaving her husband, Pompey, bereft. She had provided an important link between the two men and from this point they began to drift apart. Caesar tried to re-secure Pompey’s support by offering him his great-niece in marriage, but Pompey declined.

Spring: an uneasily sycophantic letter to Julius Caesar recommending a friend and colleague Gaius Trebatius Testa for service in Caesar’s army in Gaul.

June: letter to his brother Quintus Cicero. These letters reveal an effort by Cicero to really ingratiate himself with Caesar, to seek his friendship and approval. He regrets being slow to cultivate Caesar’s friendship and promises his brother he will now speed up. These letters with their record of who he’s recommending to who for what position or post, with whose support or opposition, take us into the network of friendships, family and professional and political obligations, alliances, rivalries and enmities which characterised Rome.

September: a famous letter to his brother describing the building works being done to the latter’s villa at Arce and problems with the builder, Diphilus.

October: fascinating letter to his brother describing progress on his book on politics, The Republic. He had cast it in nine books in the form of discussions between Scipio Africanus and his literary circle in the 120s BC. However, when he had it read out at his house in Tusculum in the presence of (the 32-year-old) Gaius Sallustius Crispus, the latter said it would have much more power if it was set in the present day and had Cicero himself as a speaker. This shook his confidence in his conception and he’s now reconsidering.

December: letter to Gaius Trebatius Testa who, as we saw, Cicero recommended to Caesar to be his legal counsel.

53 BC

In June 53 Marcus Crassus was killed leading Roman legions against the Parthian Empire at the Battle of Carrhae in Syria. (See the description in Plutarch’s Life of Crassus.) The Triumvirate was thus ended and became a duumvirate, with an uneasy peace between Caesar and Pompey lasting for the next four years. Milo made a bid for one of the consulships for 52 while Clodius was standing for the praetorship. Milo had won popular support by staging extravagant games and enjoyed the support of the Optimates but Pompey supported Clodius. Milo and Clodius’s supporters clashed in the streets leading to such a breakdown of order that the elections were declared void.

52 BC

In January 52 Milo and Clodius and their respective entourages met by chance on a provincial road outside Rome and a scuffle turned into a fight during which Clodius was wounded then killed. Clodius’s followers brought his body back to Rome and laid it in the Senate House which, after more rioting, they set fire to and burned down. As a result the Senate elected Pompey as sole consul for that year to restore order. Cicero was pleased that the man who had him exiled was now dead and, when Milo was brought to trial for murder, defended him in a speech which became famous, Pro Milone. True to the spirit of the times, though, Clodius’s supporters made such a racket and surrounded the proceedings in such number that Cicero was intimidated into delivering the speech poorly and it couldn’t be heard (though he took care to have it published soon after). Milo was convicted and sent into exile at Massilia.

Caesar was granted permission to stand for the consulship in his absence, being far away on campaign in Gaul – but a powerful party in the Senate wanted him both stripped of his command in Gaul and prevented from holding office back in Rome. Marcellus specified the date 1 March 50 for when Caesar should be relieved of his role. This was to become the crux which sparked the civil war.

51 BC

May: letter to Atticus complaining about the behaviour of his sister, Pomponia, to her husband i.e. Cicero’s brother, Quintus. ‘I never saw anything so polite as my brother or as rude as your sister’ (p.71).

Before he left for Cilicia Cicero secured Marcus Caelius Rufus, a clever unprincipled young man, to be his eyes and ears in Rome (see section, below).

May: first of Caelius’s letters explaining that he has sub-contracted writing out a really thorough account of all the acts of the senate and the assemblies, plus all stories, rumours, jokes and gossips, to another hand. This is just an accompanying letter with highlights.

June: letter to Atticus en route to Cilica, stopping over at Athens. He has behaved well and prevented his staff using their privileges to requisition or spend excessively. But oh he is not looking forward to this governorship.

June: letter to Gaius Memmius who was the dedicatee of Lucretius’s famous poem On the nature of the universe. It’s in fact a boring letter about the preservation of a building once belonging to Epicurus.

July: a suite of letters telling Atticus about the journey by boat from Athens via various islands to Epidaurus.

August: Caelius writes with news of the debate about the end of Caesar’s command in Gaul.

Cicero writes to Atticus saying his governorship commenced on his arrival in Laodicea on 31 July and he is bored to death. He describes the state of the province of Cilicia, which has been mulcted by his predecessor and Roman tax collectors: on all sides he hears complaints about the amounts demanded and the brutality of his predecessor as governor, Appius Claudius Pulcher, in punishing anyone who objected. As the natives have realised, Cicero is determined to be fair, they flock to him in adulation.

[It’s worth pausing a moment over this Appius Claudius Pulcher (97 to 49) because he’s such a good example of the way family ties were vital in understanding the minutiae of Roman politics and society. Appius Claudius Pulcher was head of the senior line of the most powerful family of the patrician Claudii. The Claudii were one of the five leading families (gentes maiores or ‘Greater Clans’) which had dominated Roman social and political life from the earliest years of the republic. He was also the elder brother of Publius Clodius Pulcher the rabble rouser who was responsible for driving Cicero into exile in 58. In the summer 55 Appius married his younger daughter to Pompey’s eldest son, Gnaeus Pompeius (born c.79 BC), thus ensuring his election to the consulate for the following year. He served as consul in 54, along with Cato’s brother-in-law Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. Then he was proconsul for Cilicia for two years, 53 to 51, when Cicero took over. Elected censor in 50 with Caesar’s father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus (cos.58), Appius was promptly prosecuted for electoral bribery by Cicero’s new son-in-law Publius Cornelius Dolabella. At some stage he had married his other daughter to Marcus Junius Brutus and so Brutus now came to his defence, along with the famous advocate, Quintus Hortensius, and he was acquitted. It’s important to note that Cicero was very cautious and politic both in his letters to Appius and in any comments about him because he knew he would need Appius’s support to be voted the triumph he so dearly hoped for. Thus the byzantine personal relationships of Roman society and politics.]

Letter to Appius laying out how friendly and positive Cicero has been, and reproaching Appius for refusing to meet him, moving to the furthers part of the province and taking the cohorts with him.

There’s a running thread in letters of Caelius to Cicero asking for panthers for the games which, as aedile, he is charged with arranging. Where are my panthers? Just give the orders for them to be captured. Caelius has sent people to arrange their transport back to Rome.

October: Caelius writes to tell Cicero the latest developments in Rome on the issue of whether Caesar can stand for consul in his absence. Caesar wants to do this is so he can pass straight from being commander of the army in Gaul to being consul without a break. If there is a break and he returns to Rome as a private citizen, he knows that his enemies have compiled a list of his alleged misdemeanours in Gaul and will immediately prosecute him, with the very real risk that he will be sent into exile and stripped of citizenship, thus ending his career.

November: letter to Caelius. It always comes as a surprise to realise how military these men are. Thus Cicero gives a detailed account of the military affairs of his province, his various campaigns against enemy peoples and the fact that his writing this letter from a Roman army which he is supervising in the siege of Pindenissus, on Mount Amanus (which he was to take after 57 days). This was the military campaign upon which Cicero was later to base his (repeated) request for a triumph to be held in his honour.

50 BC

Caelius writes to tell Cicero that Appius is being impeached for corruption during his governorship of Cilicia, but that Pompey (whose son is married to Appius’s daughter) is actively supporting him. [Later that year, in August, Cicero learns that his daughter, Tullia, fairly recently widowed, has married Publius Cornelius Dolabella. This placed Cicero in an awkward position because this same Dolabella led the prosecution of Appius for corruption at the same time as Cicero was trying to cosy up to him (Appius).]

February: a long letter to Atticus demonstrating in great detail Cicero’s attempts to be fair to natives in the case of the Roman moneylender Marcus Scaptius who was insisting on repayment of a debt from the people of Salamis on Cyprus at a rate of 48% compound interest. Cicero calls off the moneylenders soldiers, who had been threatening the Salaminians, and remits the interest to 12%.

May: a letter from Cato explaining why he proposed a vote of thanksgiving to Cicero in the Senate to recognise his good governance of Cilicia (p.94).

At the end of July Cicero’s governorship expired, he packed his bags and left Cilicia. But he didn’t reach Italy till November and Rome till January 49. During the second half of the year the political situation in Rome darkened. Various factions were lobbying for Caesar to return from Gaul and surrender his command, some in order that he could take up the consulship, some that he be arrested, or other types of legalistic intervention. The point being that everyone agreed that Caesar’s return would trigger some great crisis.

August: In a series of letters, Caelius gives a running commentary, explaining that the crux is that Pompey insists Caesar cannot take up his consulship until he has given up his army; but Caesar refuses to give up his army because only with it does he feel safe. Caesar has suggested that both he and Pompey give up their armies at the same time, but Pompey refuses. Impasse (pp.97 and 100).

October: Cicero writes to Atticus that he has received letters asking for his support from both Pompey and Caesar. The former he assesses as doing the right thing by the constitution, but the latter has incomparably the stronger army. So what should he do?

A comic note is introduced in the fact that, as the republic slides towards civil war, Cicero’s main concern is fussing to Atticus about lobbying the senate to be awarded a triumph for his campaigns in Cilicia.

Some of the letters describe the moment when Gaius Scribonius Curio went over to active support of Caesar, having been paid an enormous bribe to do so. Curio had been elected tribune and promptly used his veto to block any attempt to recall Caesar or separate him from his army. On 1 December 50 he proposed yet again that Pompey and Caesar lay down their arms simultaneously but it was vetoed by other tribunes. Instead Pompey accepted command of the army in Italy, just as Caesar was heading over the Alps with the army of Gaul. On the day his term of office expired (10 December) Curio went straight to Caesar at Ravenna and urged him to march on Rome. Caesar had his loyal supporter Mark Antony lined up to step into Curio’s shoes as tribune and continue supporting him.

December: At Pompeii Cicero met Pompey who was friendly and supportive of his request for a triumph. Pompey tells him his estrangement from Caesar is complete. In his last letter before civil war breaks out, Cicero laments that they should all have resisted Caesar before he was powerful. Now he is too powerful. But he equally laments that there is no obvious patriotic party in Rome, just different interest groups none of which have the Republic, as such, at heart.

49 BC

In early January, Pompey’s father-in-law, Scipio, proposed to the senate that Caesar be forced to lay down his military command in Gaul. The new tribunes, Mark Antony and Quintus Cassius, tried to use their veto against this but were physically ejected from the Senate. In fear of their lives, they fled Rome and reached Rimini on the north-east coast of Italy on 10 January. On the night of 11 January Caesar led his legions across the little river Rubicon. The significance of this was that the Rubicon formed the border between Cisalpine Gaul, where Caesar legitimately was governor and military commander, and Italy proper, where he was not, and where to lead legions was expressly against the law.

Cicero arrived in Rome after his long, roundabout journey back from Cilicia the next day, on January 12. His letters explode with drama as panic grips Rome and Pompey and his supporters first of all flee Rome to the south-east, then move on to Brundisium which they barricade and fortify, and then depart Italy altogether for north-west Greece.

During these feverish days Cicero sends letters to his faithful freedman and servant, Tyro, with updates on the situation, and to Atticus agonising about what to do. For me what stood out is a sentiment he repeats several times, which is the discovery that ‘on both sides there are people who actually want to fight.’ (p.108) This is the truth that dare not speak its name in liberalism: the college-educated middle class and women want peace; but there is always a significant minority who let themselves get worked up enough to declare peace shameful etc and determine to fight come what may, ‘Death or glory’ etc. Thus the eminently sane, rational and civilised Cicero is bewildered to discover ‘the amazing passion’ which has gripped so many of his acquaintance in Rome.

Very quickly Cicero realises ‘the improvidence and negligence’ of his side, of Pompey, the senate and the consuls, none of whom have made adequate preparations. He realises immediately that it was a fatal mistake for the Pompeians and constitutionalists to abandon Rome.

On 16 February he writes to Pompey himself, saying he is holding the area south of Rome he was tasked with (the senate divided Italy into provinces and assigned governors for the duration of the crisis). But he writes to Atticus fairly certain that Pompey will flee and, sure enough, on 17 March Pompey evacuated his army of 30,000, plus most of the senate, the 2 consuls and tribunes across the Adriatic to Greece. Cicero tells Atticus about a face to face meeting with Caesar who begged him to come to Rome to discuss the issue further. (Persuading Cicero to stay would be a big propaganda coup for Caesar and persuade many other waverers to say and thus validate his regime.)

In April Cicero decided to join Pompey but not because he thought it would save the republic, which he now regards as finished; or because he thought Pompey would win, having displayed such indecision and fear. But in case people think he is ungrateful to the man who helped end his exile.

April: Cicero’s friend Marcus Caelius is on Caesar’s side and writes an impassioned letter warning him not to go over to Pompey, especially at this point when it has become clear Caesar will win. What would be the point?

May: his beloved daughter Tullia had a baby boy, born prematurely. In June he wrote to his wife, Terentia, telling her he is aboard the ship which will take him across the Adriatic to join Pompey, and to go and stay in one of their country houses and so avoid the war areas.

48 BC

During the next few troubled years there are few letters. Having secured the flight of Pompey and his army, Caesar marched all the way to Spain where he defeated all of Pompey’s seven legions and secured the peninsula. In September he returned to Rome and undertook a suite of reforming legislation. In the spring of 48, having built up sufficient fleet, Caesar took his army across the Adriatic and besieged Pompey at Dyrrhachium. Here he suffered a confusing defeat so struck camp and headed east into Greece to relieve pressure on a Caesarian legion facing attack by Pompey’s father-in-law Scipio. Pompey shadowed Caesar and eventually, against his better judgement was persuaded by his camp followers of politicians, to give Caesar battle. He lost the battle of Pharsalus in August 48 and fled to Egypt where he was murdered. Cicero missed Pharsalus having remained ill at a camp on the coast. After the defeat, he opted not to join the hard core Pompeians – Labienus, Cato, Scipio and Pompey’s sons – but returned to Italy where he was grudgingly allowed to stay in Brundisium by Mark Antony who Caesar had appointed his deputy in Rome while he pursued the war in Egypt, Asia and Spain.

November: Cicero writes to Atticus bewailing his fate. How can he secure his return to Rome? He is worried about is family. He doesn’t regret joining Pompey and is upset by his miserable murder.

47 BC

June: To Atticus he says he understands Caesar is in a tight spot in Alexandria. Meanwhile he just wants to be allowed to leave Brundisium, no matter how angry the Caesarians are with him. He is saddened by news of Marcus Caelius Rufus.

Caelius sided with Julius Caesar against Pompey in the civil war, warning Cicero not to align his fortunes with Pompey. In 48 he was rewarded with the office of praetor peregrinus. However, when his proposed program of debt relief was opposed by the senate and he was suspended from office, he joined in a rebellion against Caesar which was quickly crushed and Caelius was killed.

Cicero is troubled by the divorce of his beloved daughter Tullia from Dolabella who turns out to be a swine. If Dolabella divorces her Cicero will get back the dowry he paid for her, which was not inconsiderable.

At the end of 47 Cicero divorced his wife of 30 years, Terentia. He has confirmed that she has been swindling him over money for years, and he is fed up with her bad temper. It’s worth noting she was a true religious believer and devout in her worship of the gods, something Cicero teased her about.

46 BC

After campaigns in Egypt, Asia Minor and Spain, Caesar finally returned to Italy. Here he met with Cicero and formally pardoned him, allowing him to return to Rome. He kept his head down, settled in his country estate at Tusculum, and devoted himself to literature. Many commentators think these among the most momentous years of western civilisation, for in the next three years he produced a series of works which invented philosophical discourse in Latin and popularised to the Romans and, later, for all western civilisation, the ideas of the great Greek philosophers.

In December 47 Caesar crossed to Tunisia to take on the Pompeian forces there. It took till April when he wiped them out at the battle of Thapsus. Cato, the great politician and inflexible moralist, committed suicide at the garrison city of Utica.

Cicero agonises about whether to deliver a eulogy for Cato, who was great but unwise. Any praise will only bring criticism on his head from the Caesarians.

April: letters to Marcus Terentius Varro, the polymath and a prolific author, giving the advice to lie low and study, to live with their books and, if they can no longer advise from the senate, to offer advice from the library and study.

July: five letters to Lucius Papirius Paetus, who has warned him about anti-Cicero gossip in Caesar’s circle, reassuring him that his policy, now that Caesar has triumphed utterly, is to do or say nothing to offend Caesar or his supporters. He discusses the merits of opening a sort of school for student orators, amid jokes about haute cuisine and eating peacocks, the kind of luxury talk Cicero absent from his letters till now. He describes a dinner party with unexpectedly celebrity company (Cytheris, a famous actress) and how, nowadays, deprived of political action and the freedom to speak his mind independently, there’s nothing he enjoys more than dining with friends, addressing his wit to whatever subject crops up and turning grumbling into laughter. In various ways he reformulates the same basic thought: that he is lucky to be alive and that they must obey the powers that be:

What will happen is whatever pleases the powers that be; and power will always be with those that have the arms. We ought therefore to be happy with what we are allowed. (p.139)

[The calendar: throughout 46 and 45 Caesar carried out widespread reforms. The most notable of these was reforming the calendar. Because of the discrepancy between the Roman year of 355 days and the actual solar year of 365.242 days, a large discrepancy had opened up, with the Roman calendar 2 months out of true. Caesar consulted mathematicians and had 67 extra days inserted between November and December 46, gave some of the months extra days to being the total up to 365, and instituted the idea of adding an extra day to the calendar every four years. A reform which survives, in essentials, to this day.]

45 BC

After defeat in north Africa the surviving Pompeians rallies in Spain, under the great survivor Titus Labienus and Pompey’s sons. At the end of 46 Caesar went there with an army and eventually brought them to battle and defeated them at Munda on 17 March 45.

To Cassius he writes a brief letter explaining his new mode of life, explaining that: ‘I am ashamed to be a slave, so I make a show of being busy over other things than politics’ (p.140)

In February his beloved daughter Tullia died, leading to a series of letters from condoling friends, Cicero’s replies, and then his plans to have a permanent shrine built to her.

March: long letter from Servius Sulpicius offering carefully thought through advice on managing his grief. Cicero movingly explains to him that he had lost everything else in life, all his public works and political actions and the law courts, everything, and Tullia was the one good thing left to him and now she is dead.

In all these letters Cicero refers to Caesar rather spookily as ‘he’ by whose patience and generosity they now live, creating the sense of an all-powerful dictator who suffers his subjects to live and a painful sense of having lost his freedom to say and do whatever he wants. Against this backdrop it is striking to have a letter (March) addressed directly to Caesar and recommending to his service a young man named Precilius.

More correspondence with Atticus about buying the land and paying for a mausoleum to be erected to Tullia. Then (May) he has clearly published a eulogy to Cato because he writes about the invective against Cato written by Caesar. He doesn’t give a summary or even any of the arguments, which is irritating because the invective has disappeared, but then Cicero’s letters contain almost nothing about the content of his or anyone else’s writings, a big omission.

May: Atticus seems to have suggested Cicero write a letter to Caesar full of advice but Cicero says he can’t bring himself to; not out of shame, although he is ashamed to be still alive, but because he can’t find anything to say. ‘I would rather he regretted my not writing than disapproved of what I wrote…’

June: a letter to Atticus about some of the philosophical discourses he’s working on and, as usual, he doesn’t discuss the philosophy at all, but just the mechanics of the writing, namely who to dedicate the work to (he is dedicating his dialogue On Aims to Brutus, as Atticus has advised) and swapping round the names of some of the characters who appear in other dialogues, to please figures like Varro, Catulus and Lucullus.

July: this theme continues in a letter he writes to Varro accompanying a copy of his dialogue, the Academica, explaining that he has cast him, Varro, as one of the chief speakers, himself (Cicero) one of the others. As usual there is no indication whatsoever of the content, the subject matter or the actual arguments.

July: he tells Atticus he attended a triumph given to Caesar in Rome, where the dictator’s statue was next to Victory’s. He had been nerving himself to write some kind of official letter of advice to Caesar, such as ought to come from such a distinguished statesman, but seeing this procession put him off.

December: Cicero describes to Atticus that Caesar came and stayed in person at one of his country homes. The throng was immense – he brought 2,000 soldiers! But Caesar was affable and polite, did some administrative work, walked along the seashore, had a bath and at heartily a well prepared meal. They kept off politics and discussed literature so nothing unwise was said and Cicero didn’t offend his guest and so the whole visit passed off without embarrassment. But he wouldn’t like it to happen again.

December: a letter to Manius Curius describing the scandalous incident whereby on the last day of the year, the sitting consul Quintus Maximus died in the morning and, hearing this, Caesar gave the consulship for the remainder of the year i.e. for the afternoon and evening, to a friend Gaius Caninius Rebilus. This allows Cicero to make a few weak jokes, such as: During Caninius’s consulship no-one had lunch. And: Such was Caninius’s vigilance that during his entire consulship he didn’t sleep a wink! But he declares himself sickened by Caesar’s contemptuous, offhand treatment of the great offices of state.

[Personally I find this attitude a little hard to credit and to sympathise with. It would make sense if the republic whose loss Cicero laments had been a Scandiniavian style paradise of social democracy. But even a reading of his letters indicates the political instability sometimes descending to chaos of the previous two decades, from the Catiline conspiracy through to the violent street fighting between Clodius and Milo’s gangs in the late 50s, with politicians routinely attacked in the street and fleeing for their lives. To a very senior political figure like Cicero ‘freedom’ might have a particular meaning, namely that he could speak out and play a role in the senate. But the reader suspects that to many ordinary Romans, peace and stability was more important than ‘freedoms’ none of them enjoyed, and that’s without mentioning the up to 20% of the population who were slaves. Persuasive though Cicero’s self pity can be, this is essentially rich man’s discourse.]

44 BC

Caesar’s assassination on 15 March in a meeting of the senate came as a great shock to Cicero. Although the conspirators ran out of the building waving their bloodsoaked daggers and shouting Cicero’s name (!) he was not approached to join the conspiracy and was, apparently, as surprised as everyone else. There is a gap around the event itself and the first letter we have is from 7 April, 3 weeks later.

[To my surprise he describes the assassins – or liberatores as they liked to style themselves – as ‘heroes’ who have behaved ‘most gloriously and magnificently’. He says the assassination ‘consoles’ him (p.160). At the same time the impression his letters give is of chaos in domestic politics, as the Senate votes to ratify all Caesar’s reforms but at the same time to declare an amnesty for the assassins. He shows the first signs of realising that assassinating the dictator won’t lead to the restoration of the republican constitution, but to a further sequence of civil wars because the republican constitution was irreparably broken. He also describes (albeit sketchily) something other accounts miss, which is the immediate impact of Caesar’s assassination on the empire. Thus war seems to be continuing against Parthia, but to everyone’s surprise there isn’t a widespread uprising in Gaul, whose leaders politely report to the Roman governor, Aurelius, that they will follow his orders. Having read Caesar’s long, gruelling account of his Gallic Wars, I am very surprised there was no uprising in Gaul and would be interested to read an explanation why.]

April: letter to Atticus lamenting the fact that by the second day after the assassination, which happened to fall on the feast of the Liberalia, it was already too late to move decisively to restore the republic, because on that day the Senate met and agreed that all of Caesar’s acts and laws should be confirmed, that his funeral be held in the Forum and his will read in public. Nobody suspected that Mark Antony would seize the opportunity to not only read the will, but show the mob Caesar’s body, and his toga gashed with bloody holes, and so inflame them that they would grab firebrands from the funeral pyre and run off to burn down the houses of the leading conspirators (and Cicero’s house, though he had no part in the conspiracy) with the result that the so-called liberatores (chief among them Brutus and Cassius) would be forced to flee the city they had supposedly liberated.

In April Octavian arrived in Rome, Caesar’s great-nephew who he had adopted as his legal heir. The Caesarians, led by Mark Antony, spurned him so he realised he’d have to worm his way up the ladder using the republicans. And so he curried favour with Cicero, among others.

April: letter to Atticus explaining that Octavian is staying with him and is surrounded by people breathing slaughter against the liberators. Already Cicero has a bad feeling that ‘our side’ will go under. Amazingly, he admits to wishing Caesar were still here because at least he had principles. In his absence Mark Antony is proposing all sorts of corrupt procedures, based on memos fraudulently claimed to have been signed off by Caesar, specifically a request to recall one Sextus Clodius from exile.

He writes in praise of Dolabella who had had a memorial to Caesar which his supporters had erected in the Forum demolished and its constructors thrown off the Tarpeian rock or crucified!

There’s a running thread of concern over his student-aged son Marcus, who is studying philosophy in Athens. Atticus gives reports of him, as does a friend, Trebonius, who looks him up in Athens. This is the same conspirator Trebonius who was tasked with keeping Mark Anthony in conversation outside the building where the other conspirators murdered Caesar.

June: he hears that the Senate will appoint Brutus and Cassius commissioners for supplying Rome with corn from Asia Minor and Sicily. Then he describes to Atticus the scene when he visited Brutus at his place in Anzio and, in front of the latter’s wife and children, was asked whether he, Brutus, should accept the Senate’s commission. He was in the middle of doing so when the impetuous Cassius burst in. Good God, it’s like a movie, it’s like being in the room with Lenin and Stalin arguing, it’s history at first hand. I am surprised to discover that Cicero thought Mark Antony should have been murdered at the same time as Caesar. Now he is emerging as the central political figure, but far more corrupt and tyrannical than Caesar had been. And the liberators who, as we’ve seen, he knows well and meets and advises, they have ‘No plan, no principle, no system’ (p.169).

Almost comically, there is a letter about Cleopatra who Cicero heartily disliked and found insolent and aloof. She had been staying in Rome under Caesar’s protection and fled the city when he was murdered.

There’s a slight oddity which is that the manuscript collections include 2 letters from Brutus and Cassius to Mark Antony. He was consul for 44 and they were praetors so they had to do business, but very uneasily since he had vowed to capture and execute them but had to acquiesce in the Senate’s decision to send them to governorships in Greece. They had asked Cicero whether they should return to Rome, even briefly, before they set out and he strongly advised against it.

August: Cicero tells Atticus he had set sail for Greece when a wind blew him back to Italy and he got messages of a big meeting happening in the Senate and none other than Brutus came to see him on foot. He praised Piso, Caesar’s father in law, who publicly stood up to Antony in the Senate.

Cicero returned to Rome but refused to attend the meeting of the Senate on 1 September when Caesar was officially deified. Antony made a furious speech criticising him for this. Cicero replied with a speech known as the first Philippic, because modelled on the famous speeches of Demosthenes against Philip of Macedon. This prompted Antony to a furious invective and triggered Cicero’s second Philippic. This is important because this animus led Antony, the following year, to condemn Cicero to death.

September: Cicero writes to Cassius in Athens telling him Antony is seeking any excuse for a massacre and to have him killed, making it unsafe for him to visit the Senate. So we are right back to the days of street violence and extreme instability of the 50s before Caesar made himself dictator.

November: Cicero tells Atticus he has received a letter from Octavian outlining his plans, which is to bribe ex-servicemen to his cause, which Cicero takes to be opposing Antony, and inviting him to a secret meeting at Capua. Meanwhile Antony is marching 3 legions towards Rome. Cicero asks Atticus what he should do, who he should support, and whether he should leave his rural idyll for Rome as things seem to be coming to a head?

43 BC

In June 46 Antony had passed a decree declaring himself governor of Hither Gaul instead of Decimus Brutus. On November 28 he learned that two of the four legions he had summoned from Macedonia had gone over to Octavian, so he took the other two and marched north to Hither Gaul where he besieged Decimus in Modena. Cicero played an important role in Rome, supporting the two new consuls who took office on 1 January, Hirtius and Pansa, and rallying anti-Antony forces with his Philippics. He based his position on support for Octavian as the least worst option. War was declared on Antony on 2 February.

February: a letter to Trebonius wishing he had not taken Antony aside on the Ides of March but had arranged to have him murdered, too. Now Antony has marched north, Cicero describes his leading role in rallying the Senate and trying to reintroduce Republican practices. He now sees Octavian rallying the ex-servicemen and detaching 2 of Antony’s four legions as preventing the latter instituting a new tyranny.

In the next few months Cicero played a central role, co-ordinating efforts by republicans around the empire. He corresponded with Brutus in the Balkans, Cassius in Syria, Trebonius in Asia Minor, Cornificius in north Africa, Pollio in Spain, Plancus and Lepidus in Transalpine Gaul and Galba and Decimus Brutus in Hither Gaul.

He warns Brutus against mercy. ‘If you are going to be merciful, civil wars will never cease’ (p.185).

In April there were two battles at Modena. Mark Antony defeated Pansa but was worsted by Hirtius. Octavian defended the camp against Antony’s brother, Lucius. A few days later, Decimus Brutus sallied out from the city and defeated Antony though both consuls were killed. But Antony got away.

April: Cicero writes to Brutus telling him the news, and describing ‘the boy’ Caesar, remarkably mature and shrewd at 19. He hopes that as he matures, he will be guided by Cicero and the republicans. He then swanks that when news of the first victory at Modena was brought, the population of Rome came flocking round his house and carried him, cheering, to the Capitol and set him up on the rostrum.

Antony fled north over the Alps. Lepidus, Brutus’s brother-in-law, went over to him and was declared a public enemy.

June: Pollio, governor of Hispania, writes to explain that he has kept his legions loyal to the Republic, despite the efforts of Antony and his brother to bribe them away.

June: a very shrewd letter from Brutus to Atticus in which he criticises Cicero for recklessly encouraging Octavian. In short: he thinks Cicero, with good intentions, has ended up supporting a man who will turn out to be more of a tyrant than the one they overthrew. Brutus powerfully expresses the belief in the Republican system i.e. no man should be above the law, for which he was famous in his day and ever since.

July: Cicero’s last letter is a long one to Brutus explaining and justifying his policy, the core of which is support for Octavian, justifying the various honours and ovation he got the Senate to award him, on the basis that he is their bulwark against the corruption and tyranny of Antony, and that he, Cicero, can guide and control and moderate a young man of just 19 who likes to call him ‘father’. In all this, he would prove to be terribly wrong.

When the Senate refused to vote Octavian the proposed honours he marched his army back to Rome and demanded one of the consulships left vacant by the deaths at Modena, the other one for a kinsman, Pedius. He revoked the outlawry of Antony and Dolabella, and secured the condemnation of Caesar’s assassins, confirming Brutus in his fears. Having unoutlawed him, Octavian proceeded to meet Antony in November 43 on an island near Bologna and formed the second triumvirate with him and Lepidus. The three then drew up lists of political enemies to be proscribed i.e. murdered. Top of Antony’s list was Cicero. Octavian held out in defence of his ‘father’ for 2 days but gave in on the third. Cicero was tracked down to a country estate and murdered by bounty hunters on 7 December 43.

Wilkinson ends his text not with a summary or conclusion or analysis, but by excerpting the last few chapters of Plutarch’s life of Cicero, describing in the detail his final flight to the country, and his tracking down and decapitation by the assassins. His head and hands were cut off and taken to Rome where Antony had them nailed to the rostrum in the forum as revenge, being the head and hand which wrote the Philippic speeches which so incensed him. A visual image of the barbarity which Cicero fought against all his life but which always lay implicitly within the Roman culture he loved so much and which, in the end, did for him so brutally.

Thoughts

What an extraordinary record these letters are, what an amazing insight into the actual dynamics of power at the highest level, during one of the most intense and fascinating periods of world history. And what an amazing character Cicero emerges as, wise, foolish, passionate, ever-thoughtful, highly literate and educated, an effective administrator and military governor in Cilicia, a fluent and attractive writer and, in the end, tragically deluded by the ‘boy’ Octavian.

Themes

Cicero’s narcissism

As all the other sources I’ve read point out Cicero is hilariously self-obsessed. Quite quickly you get used to him describing how important he is, how he single-handedly saved the state during the Catiline Conspiracy, how wherever he goes crowds flock out to see him and call his name. He comes across as a pompous, fuss, narcissistic booby.

As a result it’s hard to take him very seriously as either a politician or philosopher. It beggars belief that this man who frets about his sister-in-law’s behaviour, about the number of statues in his country home, who insists that wherever he goes he is mobbed by crowds calling his name, was seriously invited by Caesar, Pompey and Crassus to join the triumvirate.

Philosophy and writings

As to philosophy, these is none in the letters. He refers to Epicurean and Stoic philosophers by name but only to gossip about meeting them, dining with them and so on. There isn’t a word about The Good Life or The Ideal Citizen or any of the other issues Cicero wrote formal essays about. He mentions that he is working on the texts, such as the six volumes of The Republic, but describes or explains none of the actual ideas.

This is a striking gap or lack. Keats’s letters shed all kinds of light on his poetic theories and practice; Cicero’s letters shed no light at all on the ideas expressed in his essays and dialogues. Possibly this is because they were all secondary, in the sense that he was basically copying out ideas developed by Greeks. He had few if any original ideas of his own and therefore didn’t need to discuss them or work them through with correspondents. He administered his philosophical and political ideas, as a good governor administrates his province.

Atticus

It is sweet and lovely to read Cicero’s many letters to his friend Atticus in which he swears deep friendship and affection. I can see why the correspondence inspired all those humanists of the Renaissance who wrote so many essays about the value of friendship.

Quintus Tullius Cicero

The letters to his brother about a) the latter’s sister, who was married to his best friend Atticus, b) endless building works to the latter’s mansion and c) his service with Caesar in Gaul and on the expedition to the new island of Britain, are fascinating and very human.

Marcus Caelius Rufus

Caelius, born in 82 BC was an orator and politician. He is famous for his trial for public violence in March 56 BC when Cicero defended him in the speech Pro Caelio which is widely regarded as one of the greatest pieces of oratory from the ancient world. He is recipient and author of some of the best letters, with Cicero routinely begging him for the latest gossip during his exile in Greece and governorship in faraway Cilicia. There is a comic running thread with Caelius pestering Cicero to supply him with panthers, exotic animals which he wanted for the games he was organising as curule aedile in 50 BC. Cicero refuses, saying paying from public funds for a panther hunt would be against the reputation for good government he is trying to create.

Roman mosaic showing a wild animal hunt in North Africa (third century AD) Musée Archéologique d’Hippone (Algeria)

• Panthers in Cilicia

Tiro

Cicero’s beloved freedman, secretary, amanuensis. After Cicero’s death it was Tiro who edited and published Cicero’s letters to the immense benefit of western civilisation. It’s logical that Robert Harris makes Tiro the narrator of his 2006 novel about Cicero, Imperium.

Related links

• Cicero’s letters online

Roman reviews

• Complete list of my Roman reviews