Cicero, Marcus Tullius 106-43BC
Roman orator, statesman and man-of-letters

Cicero was born at Arpinum in Latium into a wealthy equestrian family that was distantly related to Gaius Marius. At Rome he studied law and oratory, Greek philosophy, and Greek literature. He saw military service in the Social War of 90-88BC under Pompeius Strabo, the father of Pompey the Great. His first important speech (Pro Roscio Amerino), in 80BC, was the successful defence of a client against a favourite of the dictator Sulla. After a visit to Athens (where he met his future friend and correspondent Titus Pomponius Atticus), and a tour in Asia Minor, he was elected quaestor (76), thereby qualifying for membership of the senate, and obtained an appointment in Sicily. At the request of the Sicilians he undertook his brilliant impeachment of the corrupt governor Gaius Verres in 70; Verres abandoned his defence after Cicero's first speech (actio prima), but Cicero completed and published the long actio secunda, which further enhanced his reputation.

In these speeches, Cicero made clear his support for Pompey and the supremacy of the senate. In 66 he became praetor, and supported in a great speech (Pro Lege Manilia) the appointment of Pompey to conduct the war with Mithridates VI of Pontus. In 63 he held the consulship, and foiled the plot of Catilina after the elections for 62, in which Catilina was unsuccessful a second time; the senate voted on the death penalty for the conspirators, and Cicero had the sentence carried out immediately. The 'father of his country' (pater patriae, as Marcus Cato called him) was for a brief time the great man of the day. His great political ambition, not achieved, was the 'harmony of the orders' (concordia ordinum, ie of the senatorial and equestrian classes).

Then the tide turned against him. In 59 Cicero had declined an invitation to join the triumvirate of Pompey, Caesar and Crassus. He was now without real support, and his enemies exploited the situation by accusing him of having violated the constitution, since a Roman citizen could not be put to death except by the sentence of the people in regular assembly. Publius Clodius, an old adversary of Cicero and tribune in 58, brought in a popular bill outlawing anyone who had put a Roman citizen to death without trial. Cicero took refuge at Thessalonica; he was condemned to exile, and his house at Rome and his country houses at Formiae and Tusculum were plundered.

But in 57 the people with Pompey's support almost unanimously voted his recall. In his subsequent speeches he tried to secure compensation for himself and his supporters, such as P Sestius, whom he defended against a charge of rioting brought by Clodius (d.52BC) (Pro Sestio, 56). However, he was no longer a power in politics; and, nervously sensitive to the fluctuations of public opinion, he could not decide between Pompey and the aristocracy and Caesar and the new democracy. He hoped for the breakdown of the triumvirate, but this hope was dashed when the arrangement was renewed at a conference at Luca. Although he ultimately inclined to Caesar, he lost the esteem of both parties, being regarded as a trimmer and time-server. In 52 he composed his speech (Pro Milone) in defence of Milo, who had killed Clodius in a riot; but the court was packed with the supporters of Clodius, and Cicero lost his nerve, to his subsequent great mortification; Milo was condemned and exiled. Next year Cicero was in Asia, as Governor of Cilicia. In 49-48 he was with Pompey's army in Greece, but after the defeat at Pharsalia (48) he threw himself on Caesar's mercy.

In 46 Cicero divorced his wife Terentia, to whom he had been married for 30 years, and married his ward Publilia. In 45 his daughter Tullia died, leaving Cicero overwhelmed with grief. Later he divorced Publilia. These personal catastrophes, combined with the realization that Caesar's supremacy meant the end of good republican government, forced him to withdraw from public life and take refuge in his writing. In 46-44 he wrote most of his chief works on rhetoric and philosophy, living in retirement and brooding over his disappointments.

In 43, after Caesar's death, his famous speeches against Marcus Antonius, the Philippics, were delivered, and cost him his life. As soon as Antony, Octavian and Lepidus had formed a second triumvirate, they proscribed their enemies, and Cicero's name was high on the list. Old and feeble, he fled to his villa at Formiae, pursued by the soldiers of Antony, and was overtaken as he was being carried in a litter. With calm courage he put his head out of the litter and bade the murderers strike. He was in his sixty-third year.

As orator and pleader Cicero stands in the first rank; of his speeches the most famous are those against Verres and Catiline; equally fine is his speech in defence of Milo. As a politician, though in the end defeated, he was one of the outstanding figures of the late Republic. He is also remembered as an essayist and letter-writer, especially for his essays De Senectute ('On Old Age'), De Amicitia ('On Friendship') and De Oficiis ('On Duty'). His extensive correspondence (notably with Atticus) is one of the principal sources of knowledge of the politics of his time (in some years we are told of events from day to day), and his prose style was a model for the orators of the next four centuries.

Bibliography: E Rawson, Cicero: A Portrait (1983); D Stockton, Cicero: a Political Biography (1971).