Statue of Cicero in front of the Palace of Justice in Rome • ISTOCK At 60, the age at which, for Romans, a man is already an old man, Marcus Tullius Cicero, or Cicero, is convinced that his political career is over. Far are his glorious years as a defender of corrupt politicians and enemies of the state, such as Catiline (the patrician whose conspiracy he unmasked before the Senate 15 years earlier). He then watched helplessly as Pompey and Caesar ascended, generals and party leaders who would eventually cause a civil war by vying for power. Cicero criticizes them both, especially Caesar, for their quasi-monarchical ambitions, contrary to the old republican ideal that he himself has always defended. In 48 BC. J.-C., after Caesar's victory over his rival, the orator returned to Rome, but he only participated from afar in political life:if he believed for a time that Caesar could restore the Republic, the reality dispels all hope as, appointed dictator on the approval of the Senate, he accumulates in his person an almost absolute power. Cicero withdraws from political life Cicero's political ostracism also coincided with a difficult personal period. Shortly after his return to Rome, at the beginning of the year 46 BC. AD, he divorced his wife Terentia, after 30 years of marriage. His wife has squandered a large part of the family fortune in dubious investments, which pushes Cicero to contract a new marriage with Publilia, a young girl from a good family, from whom he nevertheless divorces six months later. As if that were not enough, in mid-February 45 BC. J.-C., he loses his beloved daughter Tullia, who has just divorced Dolabella, a close collaborator of Caesar, and gave birth in January to a son who will also die soon after. As a result of all these events, Cicero sinks into a serious depression. Too many setbacks and misfortunes, which Cicero tries to overcome, as at other times in his life, by taking refuge in his passion for literature. The speaker devotes himself to an activity that is both frenetic and absorbing, busy writing some of his most important rhetorical works (Brutus or dialogue on illustrious orators and From the speaker, for example). Above all, he undertakes the project of popularizing Greek philosophy in Latin for the Roman public. While Cicero secluded himself in his properties in Astura, Tusculum, Puteoli or Arpinum, a group of conspirators organized the attack which cost Julius Caesar his life. Although very closely related to the orator - in particular Marcus Brutus, over whom Cicero exercised a decisive intellectual tutelage -, they do not inform him of their project, no doubt because they know his doubtful character and his reluctance to commit violent acts. However, Cicero is present at the session of the Senate of the Ides of March 44 BC. BC, during which Caesar is stabbed to death. Caesar is assassinated His reaction was a mixture of surprise and horror, but also of contained joy:in his private correspondence and in the speeches he subsequently wrote against Marc Antoine, the Philippiques , the speaker expresses his pride that Brutus, raising the dagger he had planted in Caesar's body, had shouted Cicero's name as an invocation of regained freedom. But Cicero's undisguised joy at Caesar's death was brief, for it was Marc Antony who ended up controlling the situation in Rome:during the funeral honors paid to the dictator, he inflamed the crowd and hurled it against the assassins of the latter. who was his leader and friend. Fearing for their lives, Brutus and Cassius leave Rome. Cicero, also forced to leave the city, deplores in an increasingly bitter tone the inactivity of "our heroes" - the conspirators - their lack of decision since the day of Caesar's assassination, their inability to confront Marc Antoine and their lack of plans for the future. He, on the contrary, is unwilling to surrender. Convinced that the survival of the Republic is at stake, he decides to set himself up as the leader of the Senate in a fierce fight against Marc Antoine. As if he had nothing to lose, abandoning the doubts and indecision of other moments in his life, Cicero shows himself implacable vis-à-vis his enemy. He pleads for actions far more drastic and violent than the leaders of the conspiracy who, by his own account, acted with the courage of a man, but with the head of a child. The Octave “puppet” Nevertheless, when soon after Decimus Brutus, another conspirator, defies Marc Antony from Cisalpine Gaul, putting the Romans in the face of the threat of a new civil war, Cicero has a moment of weakness. All seems lost to him. The Republic, he admits in a letter addressed to his friend Atticus, is "a boat completely dismantled or, better, disintegrated:no plan, no reflection, no method". Desperate, he decides to leave Italy and go to Greece. But he does not manage to make this trip, because an untimely storm prevents him from doing so when he has already embarked. Cicero reflects and decides to return to Rome. He has received encouraging news that the situation has resumed a calmer course, as Marc Antony seems willing to give up his demand that Decimus Brutus hand over Cisalpine Gaul to him. Moreover, Cicero thinks that, in the face of the inaction of the conspirators, he will be able to use an 18-year-old young man, who has recently entered politics, as a battering ram in his confrontation with Marc Antony. This young man is Caius Octavius, grandson of a sister of Julius Caesar, whom the dictator had designated as his heir in his will. Octave received the news of Caesar's assassination while he was in Apollonia, in present-day Albania, and he immediately set out on the journey to disembark at Brindisi, in southern Italy. Once there, he tries to gain the trust of the veterans of the Caesarean legions, but also of influential figures such as Cicero. This is why, on his way to Rome, he stops to talk to the orator in his villa in Puteoli. He showers him with attention, aware that his support can be useful to him in his political projects. Cicero feels flattered to see this young man "who [him] is totally devoted", and he is convinced that he will be able to use him as a brake on the ambitions of Marc Antoine. Thus, when he learns that in the absence of Marc Antoine Octave presented himself in Rome with the veterans of two legions to speak in front of the people and claim his rights, Cicero welcomes it:as he tells his friend Atticus, "that boy gave Antoine a good beating". Octave himself convinces him to return to Rome and, under his authority, to take the lead in the fight against Marc Antoine. To everyone's surprise, it was his young nephew, Octave, whom Caesar designated as his heir. An 18-year-old boy whom Cicero intends to use in his maneuvers against Marc Antony. Once back, Cicero took advantage of the departure of Marc Antony, on his way to Cisalpine Gaul, to convince the new consuls Hirtius and Pansa to openly declare war on him by writing his Philippians . This energetic attitude is opposed to the desire of the Senate to exhaust the avenues of negotiation and to try to convince Marc Antony to abandon the siege of the city of Modena, where Decimus Brutus resists with great difficulty while waiting for the troops of the Senate. These arrived a month later and, with Octave's forces, won two decisive victories. When the news arrives, euphoria seizes Rome, and Cicero, the great winner of the moment, is carried in triumph from his house to the Capitol and then to the Rostra of the Forum, the orator's platform, from where he addresses , exulting, to the Roman people. But, again, Cicero's joy is fleeting. Marc Antoine manages to save part of his legions and soon establishes an alliance with Lépide, governor of Narbonne Gaul. Moreover, instead of pursuing his enemy, Octavian decides to claim the consulship for himself and, when the Senate refuses, he does not hesitate to cross the Rubicon, as his adoptive father Caesar had done, and walk on Rome with its legions. Powerless, the senators are forced to give in. Once again, Cicero sees a military leader taking advantage of the power of his troops to trample republican legality. Moreover, Octavian has reason to be wary of Cicero, because it has come to his ears that he seems to be conspiring against him:"This boy [Octavian] must be praised, honored and eliminated", the orator is said to have asserted in private. . On the terrible list of outlaws Dejected and knowing that the cause of the Republic is definitively lost, Cicero retires to his estates in southern Italy. From there, he contemplates powerless the rapprochement of Octave with Lepidus and Marc Antoine, and the constitution of what is called the "second triumvirate", in 43 BC. This agreement is not only a political setback for Cicero:it threatens him personally. Indeed, the triumvirs establish a long list of senators and knights whom they condemn to death and the confiscation of their property. The thirst for revenge means that family ties are not even respected on this list:Lépide sacrifices his own brother Paulus and Antoine, his uncle Lucius César. In the case of Cicero, it is finally Octave who yields to the vindictive Marc Antoine. Plutarch tells it:“The proscription of Cicero is the one that led to the biggest discussions between them, because Antony would not accept any proposal if Cicero was not the first to die […]. It is said that [Octavian], after remaining firm for two days in the defense of Cicero, finally gave way on the third day, treacherously abandoning him. » Cicero is in his villa in Tusculum with his brother Quintus, when he learns that both are on the first list of outcasts. Filled with fear, they immediately leave for the villa of Astura, in order to embark there for Macedonia and join Marcus Brutus. However, at one point, Quintus retraces his steps to fetch provisions for the trip. Denounced by his slaves, he was assassinated a few days later with his son. Arrived in Astura, Cicero, in the grip of anguish and doubt, finds a boat, but he disembarks after 20 miles of navigation and, to everyone's surprise, walks about thirty kilometers in the direction of Rome to return to his villa in Astura and from there to be taken by sea to his villa in Formies, where he regains his strength before undertaking his final crossing to Greece. The philosopher facing death Too many doubts. Too late. Hearing that Antony's soldiers are about to arrive, Cicero hastens to be taken through the woods to the port of Gaeta to re-embark. The soldiers find the house empty, but a slave named Philologus shows them the way Cicero took. Today is December 7, 43 BC. J.-C., and Plutarch describes the scene thus:“[…] The murderers arrived; they were the centurion Herennius and the military tribune Popilius, whom Cicero had once defended in a charge of parricide. […] Cicero, having heard the troop led by Herennius run hastily through the alleys, had his litter laid down; and, raising his left hand to his chin, a gesture which was usual for him, he looked at the murderers with an intrepid eye. His hair bristling and dusty, his face pale and disfigured by a series of sorrows, pained most of the soldiers themselves, who covered their faces while Herennius slit his throat:he had put his head out of the litter and presented the murderer's throat. He was 64 years old. Herennius, according to the order given by Antony, cut off his head and the hands with which he had written the Philippians . “Head and hands that Marc Antony ordered to be displayed as trophies visible to all on the Rostra, the very tribune of the speakers where, a few months earlier, Cicero had been acclaimed by the crowd. Stefan Zweig, who not without reason devotes the first chapter of his book The Very Rich Hours of Humanity to Cicero published in France in 1939, concludes his story as follows:"No accusation formulated by the great orator from this rostrum against brutality, against the delirium of power, against illegality, speaks so eloquently against the eternal injustice of violence than this mute head of a murdered man. Suspicious, the people gather around the desecrated Rostra. Dejected, ashamed, he moves away again. No one dares to protest - it's dictatorship - but a battle is fought in their chests, and, troubled, they lower their eyes before the tragic symbol of their crucified Republic. » Find out more Cicero, by Clara Auvray-Assayas, Les Belles Lettres, 2006.The True Story of Cicero, by Claude Dupont, Les Belles Lettres, 2013.Speech. Philippians, Cicero, Les Belles Lettres, 2018. Timeline 49 BC. AD Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon with his army and begins the civil war against Pompey. Cicero, an enemy of Caesar, fled Rome, like most senators, and took refuge in one of its villas.48 BC. AD Cicero joins Pompey in Epirus (Greece). After the defeat of the Pompeians at Pharsalia, he returns to Rome and is reconciled with Julius Caesar. He retired tohis villa in Tusculum, where he wrote prose and poetry.46 BC. AD After 30 years of marriage, Cicero divorces Terentia. He married shortly after the young Publilia. In 45 BC. AD, his daughter Tullia, to whom he was very close, dies. He expresses his grief in several epistles.44 BC. AD Five months after Caesar's assassination, Cicero delivers his Philippians , in which he attacks the consul Marc Antoine. He asked the Senate to declare him a public enemy, but was unsuccessful.43 BC. AD On December 7, Marc Antony ordered the assassination of Cicero. After his execution, the consul had his head and hands exposed in the tribune of the Rostres, on the Forum. Speech as a weapon:Cicero attacks Marc Antony Cicero delivered 14 speeches against Marc Antony entitled Philippians , in reference to those that the Athenian Demosthenes had pronounced against Philip of Macedon, when the latter was preparing to conquer Greece. The second Philippian is probably the hardest. In conclusion, Cicero expresses in a bombastic tone his firm decision to fight for the freedom of the fatherland, as he had done in the time of Catiline, while knowing the risks he incurs:"Marc Antoine, I don't care conjure, return at last to better sentiments; consider of what blood you were born, and not with what friends you live with. Be with me as you wish, but be reconciled with the republic. Besides, it is up to you to see what you will do; as for me, I proclaim it clearly:young, I defended the republic; old man, I will not abandon him. I despised the swords of Catiline, I will not fear yours. I gladly offer my life, if it can redeem the freedom of Rome, so that the pain of the Roman people finally gives birth to what it has conceived for so long. » Fulvia's Macabre Revenge According to Dio Cassius, when the head of Cicero was brought to Rome, Fulvia, then wife of Mark Antony, could not contain her fury. Before the head was taken away to be exhibited in the Rostra of the Forum with the right hand – the one with which the speaker had written the Philippians against Marc Antoine –, "Fulvia took her in her hands and, spitting on her, she put her on her knees and, after opening her mouth, tore out her tongue and pierced it with the pins she used for her hair, while mocking with cruel words”. Ancient historians were very prone to such morbid scenes, so we don't know if this one is a figment of Dio Cassius' imagination. Still, Fulvia had a double motive for hating Cicero, for not only was she the wife of Mark Antony, but she had previously been married to Clodius, another personal enemy of Cicero. No doubt she remembered that when Clodius died in 52 BC. J.-C. in a fight on the Via Appia, Cicero had ensured the defense of his assassin, Milo.
