Marcus Tullius Cicero
Oliver J. Thatcher
Marcus Tullius Cicero was the eldest son of an equestrian, though not
noble, family. He was born 105 B.C. and was beheaded by Antony's soldiers in 43
B.C. The path open for political honors to a "new man" [i.e., no one
of whose family had held a magistracy in Rome] was through the law, and at
twenty-six, after a thorough Greek and Latin education, Cicero pleaded his
first case. The next year he successfully defended Publius Sextus Roscius
against the favorite of Sulla, the dictator, and thought it best, during the
rest of Sulla's dictatorship, to travel for his education and his health. At
thirty-two he was elected quaestor to Sicily, and because of his integrity
while holding this magistracy, was soon afterwards chosen by the Sicilians to
prosecute their former governor Verres for extortion. Cicero was curule aedile
in 69 B.C., praetor urbanus in 66 B.C. In this year he supported Pompey for the
eastern command, and the two never quite ceased to be friends. Cicero was
consul in 63 B.C., and put down the conspiracy of Catiline.
Sulla's constitution had been gradually changing since his death, and Cicero
slowly came to side with the optimates as against the populares and to try to
carry the equestrians with him. He might have been a member of the "First
Triumvirate" but perhaps preferred the existing institutions to such
high-handed measures. In 58 B.C. he was exiled through the efforts of the
demagogue Publius Clodius, but was recalled the next year. When civil war broke
out between Caesar and Pompey, Cicero tried to side with neither, but at length
joined Pompey's army in Epirus. After the defeat of the latter at Pharsalus,
Cicero, whom sickness had kept from the battle, returned to Italy and sought
pardon of Caesar. When Caesar was assassinated four years later, Cicero saw
visions of the old republican government revived once more, and delivered his
fierce philippics against Antony; but upon the coalition of Octavius and
Antony, was proscribed by Antony and killed by the latter's soldiers.
From: Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources
(Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co., 1907), Vol. III: The Roman
World, pp. 216-241.
Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton. Prof.
Arkenberg has modernized the text.
Further modified and enhanced by
Jon Roland of the
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