Term Paper on "Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero Was Born"

Term Paper 8 pages (2477 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on January 3, 106 BC and was murdered on December 7, 43 BC. Cicero was born and raised in the Italian provincial town of Arpinum (Arpino), seventy miles east of Rome. The Arpinates had been citizens of Rome for nearly a century, but its residents were still viewed with careless disdain in Rome as "new men," without noble ancestors, breeding, or background. His life coincided with the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, and he was an important actor in many of the significant political events of his time (and his writings are now a valuable source of information to us about those events). He was, among other things, an orator, lawyer, politician, and philosopher. Making sense of his writings and understanding his philosophy requires us to keep that in mind. He placed politics above philosophical study; the latter was valuable in its own right but was even more valuable as the means to more effective political action. No single fact in Cicero's life is more important. Until his death, he labored under the political disability of his country heritage; although he was raised to the highest position in Rome, yet he always, often unattractively, bore wounding insecurities regarding the more established Roman establishment.

In the increasing political chaos, some ambitious men like Gaius Julius Caesar sought personal power through military careers. Others, like Cicero's lifelong correspondent Atticus, turned their backs on public affairs, preferring an epicurean life of intellectual pursuits and entertaining friends. Cicero chose a career in civilian public affairs, hoping to prevent the Republic from degenerating into a violent, lawless regime or into a new monarchy. He saw the Republic as a mix of different groups that would produce a "concord of the orders," just as music is a mix of different instruments that produces a harmonious sound. This system would benefit all members of society.

Cicero decided to start his difficult climb in Roman politics as a lawyer. In his first famous public trial, he defended one Sextus Roscius against the charge of murdering his own father. In fact, the charge was hatched by three of the father's enemies, including Chrysogonus, a henchman of the then-dictator, Sulla. Cicero not only refuted the murder charge but launched a full-scale assault on Chrysogonus as a corrupt official. Though careful to point out that Sulla could not be expected to know the misdeeds of every underling, Cicero risked the anger of a murderous dictator to clear his client of false charges, and helped promote the importance of honesty as a moral foundation of the Republic.

Cicero also led by example. In his first elected office, he was in charge of purchasing and paying for grain to be sent to Rome from the province of Sicily. While filling that position, he refused to take the typical, though illegal, cut from the moneys he paid out to merchants for their grain. For Cicero, a magistrate's corruption and abuse even of subject peoples was a weakness for the Republic. His honesty so endeared him to the Sicilians that, a few years later, a delegation of Sicilians employed Cicero to bring a lawsuit against the politically well-connected but rapacious Gaius Verres, who became governor of that island after Cicero's term. Cicero went back to the island to gather facts and witnesses and, in spite of the efforts of Verres' friends; the corrupt former governor was forced to flee Rome ahead of the guilty verdict.

It was during his Consulship in 63 that an event occurred that defined Cicero for the rest of his life. Catiline, a patrician with a notorious reputation who claimed to represent the disenfranchised, was refused higher office. Cicero stumbled on information suggesting that Lucius Sergius Catilina was plotting to raise an army to march on Rome, murder many of the magistrates, and set himself up as ruler. Many senators thought Cicero exaggerated the danger, but as the evidence mounted, more of his colleagues realized that the Republic was in peril. His speech against Catiline in the Senate was so withering that Catiline left Rome, later taking up arms against the state and dying in the attempt.

It was during the trial that Caesar's actions made Cicero take him seriously. Cicero spoke forcefully for immediate execution of all conspirators, as did Cato. Caesar spoke for banishment, rather than death (no Roman was allowed to be put to death without formal trial, a rule which Cicero in the danger of the moment was determined to ignore). Although Caesar almost swayed the crowd, Cato then spoke for Cicero's position, winning the argument. The men were executed immediately, with Rome in a state of the highest political tension.

One of the least attractive sides of Cicero's character was revealed by the Catilinarian conspiracy. He was absolutely convinced that, single-handed, he had saved the Roman state. He sought the praise of his contemporaries as Rome's savior with impetuous greed; collecting all his speeches against Catiline for publication and inviting others to write of his actions in prose and verse. He was unwise to boast as loudly as he did; the ambiguities of his legal actions were kept firmly in the public eye.

In the end, however, the Catiline conspiracy was Cicero's undoing. The Senate had given him a final order during the crisis that allowed him to take any measures necessary to protect the Republic. When two conspirators were caught red-handed, he asked the Senate whether they should be put to death without the fundamental Roman right to a trial. Facing the threat of an armed assault on Rome, the Senate agreed to a death sentence and the conspirators were dispatched. But one of Cicero's enemies, Publius Clodius Pulcher, turned this action against Cicero after he left office.

Clodius was a brutal politico who organized a gang of thugs to intimidate and murder opponents. Playing up Cicero's seeming violation of a citizen's right to trial, Clodius rallied the former consul's opponents to have him exiled from Rome. His house in Rome was burned and his property confiscated. In just a few years, Cicero the savior of the Republic had become a refugee. This episode shows the deteriorating political regime in Rome: political violence was becoming a regular and tolerated part of Roman politics, and the law was being used by those who would destroy it.

Cicero's supporters later engineered his return to Rome. But for the rest of his political life Cicero operated in the shadow of two contemporaries, Gneaus Pompeius Magnus and Julius Caesar, who used their military careers as the basis of political power. Caesar also pandered to the growing poor urban population, putting on elaborate games to entertain the masses. Inevitably, a civil war broke out between Pompey and Caesar. Cicero reluctantly backed Pompey, who lost and was killed. Caesar took all power into his own hands and had himself made dictator for ten years. Cicero hoped that Caesar would reestablish republican institutions and then step down. Instead, Caesar decided to make himself dictator for life and was then assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 B.C.

The Death of Cicero

After Caesar's assassination, Cicero moved back into the political forefront, instantly approving the action and the conspirators in undertaking it. He openly urged the Senate to destroy others, like Marc Antony, whose ambition represented continued threats to the restored Republic, thus incurring Antony's hatred. Cicero wrung his hands over the conspirators' lack of follow-through after Caesar's death. He had the prestige of a senior consular, but his judgment was imperfect; he apparently was willing to bet on the guarantees of Caesar's 19-year-old heir, Octavian, which he would be temperate moving against the "liberators." He supported him enthusiastically in his early moves against Antony and, indeed, until the very moment where the uncloaked young Caesar marched on Rome with seven legions, forced through his own election to the consulate at age 19, and reconciled with Antony.

From September, 44 to April, 43, Cicero made his last great cycle of speeches, the so-called "Philippics," supporting Octavian and urging the Senate to declare Antony a public enemy of the Roman state. In fourteen different orations, his temerity in savagely attacking Antony before his peers and eulogizing the dead Republic earned him undying admiration for undaunted courage. Antony, already his enemy, surely marked him mentally for death with the words Caesar spoke to a rapt Senate.

Written below is the first philippic of Cicero against Marcus Antonius.

But what frightens me more than such imputations is the possibility that you yourself may disregard the true path of glory, and instead consider it glorious to possess more power than all your fellow-citizens combined, preferring that they should fear you rather than like you. If that is what you think, your idea of where the road of glory lies is mistaken. For glory consists of being regarded with affection by one's country, earning praise and respect and love; whereas to be feared and disliked, on the other hand,… READ MORE

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