Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician

John Adams once said of Cicero, “All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined.” His son, John Quincy, referred to Cicero as something akin to his spiritual father, a man whose writings got him through the darkest of times. I greatly admire both these men so I wanted to learn what was it about this man that stoked so much of their admiration. To this end, I purchased two books. This one, which is a biography of Cicero, gives an excellent and detailed account of the society in which he lived. Although it gives the reader a pretty good idea of the ethics and personality of the man, and does present a large amount of Cicero’s correspondence, it only gives a brief summary of his many books and did not give me a complete understanding of what provoked the Adams’s admiration. Hopefully, the second book which is a collection of his more renowned writings will provide that.What was the world in which Cicero lived? He lived from 106 – 43 BC. Although not born in Rome, he spent most of his life there. The era in which he lived was one of enormous change within the Roman Republic. It was collapsing into a dictatorship. We normally think of the collapse as occurring in 49 BC when Julius Caesar brought his troops into Rome thus violating one of the Republic’s greatest taboos. But it began before that. This taboo had already been violated in 87 BC, when the Roman General Sulla brought his soldiers inside the city limits of Rome. He did this because one of the tribunes was attempting to strip him of his command of the Eastern army. Once in the city, he killed the tribune and many of his allies. Sulla took his army and returned to the east to fight the King of Pontus. While he was in the East, Rome erupted into what was essentially a civil war. The conflict was between two groups, the optimates (those who favored patrician objectives. Sulla was the leader of this group) and the populares (those who favored the objectives of the common people). Both groups, despite their different objectives belonged to the wealthier classes. Sulla returned in 83 BC, restored order in Rome, had himself declared dictator, and began another massacre. This time those targeted were members of the populares. According to one estimate there were 9,000 victims of this purge. Sulla resigned his dictatorship in 79 BC.Where was Cicero in this chaos? Although he was a member of the gentry and not an aristocrat, he aligned himself with the objectives of the optimates. To him, they represented the rule of law that he so valued. Ideologically he supported Sulla but the memory of the dictator’s vengeance never left him. In a book published in the 40s, one senses in Cicero almost a physical shudder as he relates, ‘’the proscriptions of the rich, the destruction of the townships of Italy, the well-known ‘harvest’ of Sulla’s time.” So, as he was to do throughout his life, he retreated from the violence into his world of books. However, it was only temporary for he did have a hunger for recognition and when circumstances became more stable, he entered law and politics with an ability that very few at that time, or any time, had.The book details the many cases that he won in court. His rise to the highest levels of the government (Consul); the formation of the First Triumvirate (60-53 BC: Caesar, Crassus, Pompey). I did not realize that Caesar had repeatedly enticed Cicero to become a fourth member of this ruling group and that Cicero repeatedly refused because he believed in the rule of the Senate rather than autocratic rule. His refusal was probably one of the principal reasons why his enemies were successful in having him briefly exiled from Rome (58-57 BC). The book describes the collapse of the Triumvirate; Caesar’s defeat of Pompey and his assigning himself the role of dictator for life; Cicero’s support of the assassination of Caesar (44 BC); the formation of the Second Triumvirate (43-32 BC: Augustus, Marc Antony, Lepidus); and finally the assassination of Cicero by Marc Antony’s henchmen (43 BC).In the last chapter of the book, the author, Anthony Everitt, evaluates the character of the man and his effect on history. Some of his comments about Cicero are unflattering. He says that Cicero was insecure, nervous and boastful but he also acknowledges that “his philosophical writings are masterpieces of popularization and were one of the means by which the heritage of classical thought was handed down to posterity. . . . his writings are imbued with a humane skepticism . . . His greatest gift to European civilization was the man himself – rational, undogmatic, tolerant, law-abiding and urbane.” To support this assertion of society’s appreciation of the nobility of the man, the author at the very end of the book recounts a story involving the Emperor Augustus. Augustus had colluded in Cicero’s assassination. One day Augustus found his grandson reading one of Cicero’s books. He took the book from the boy, stood for a long time reading the entire text, handed it back to the boy and said, “An eloquent man, my child, an eloquent man, and a patriot.”I am looking forward to reading Cicero’s actual writings to give me a greater understanding of why he was so adamant for a republic and so opposed to an autocracy. It should be noted that several of Cicero’s books were written after the death of his beloved daughter Tullia (45 BC). He essentially had a mental breakdown and for several months withdrew from society, only able to deal with his overwhelming sadness by relentlessly reading and writing.

Odds are, you have heard of Cicero. Considered one of Rome's greatest orators, his writings are the main influence on how way we remember the last days of the Roman republic. The story of Cicero's life is the story of end of Republican Rome. All of the major players of the era: Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, Brutus and Octavian (soon to be Augustus) all make an appearance in his life. In his role as one of the world's first brilliant statesman and backroom player, Cicero was friends and enemies with all of them. From Everitt's book, it seems Cicero was, at times, courageous in his rhetoric and at times, he was cowardly. He always tried to see all the angels and jockeyed for a position that put him in the best place politically while betraying as few of his political convictions as possible. In the end, he wound up on the wrong side of Marc Antony and was killed.The story in getting from provincial boy to one of the most powerful men in Rome is fascinating. I am no expert on Roman history. I have read no other biography of Cicero. But to my tastes, Everitt's biography of Cicero is excellent for the reader with a casual interest in this time period in Rome. Not only does it give us insight into what a complicated person Cicero was (both arrogant and generous; brilliant in the courtroom and terrified of physical injury) but also perhaps more importantly it is an excellent primer on the death of the Roman republic. The story of Rome's decent into dictatorship, the attempt at recovering republicanism, and then the reassertion of dictatorship is the stuff that western history is made of, and Everitt's book is a good place to get a sense of who did what when and what Cicero had to say about it. Recommended.

This book combines clear and lucid writing with a fascinating subject -- the life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, probably the greatest of all Roman Senators. Cicero lived through the end of the Republican stage of Rome and died just as Augustus would transform Rome into an authoritarian Empire. Cicero has been portrayed by different authors in different ways -- as a vain and somewhat childish man, or, as here, as an imperfect human being but essentially a ruthlessly intelligent and tough-minded man, harsh in judgment of folly and dedicated to Rome's Republican principles. In this book the author captures the various famous nuances of Cicero's career, including his vanity after the Catiline affair, and his intelligence and ruthlessness during and after the reign of Julius Caesar.I have only read a few biographies of Cicero, but I found this one to easily be the most readable of them. The author does an excellent job of explaining how Rome's system of government worked, its essential nature as an oligarchy dominated by a few noble families, which goes to the extraordinary ability of Cicero that was required to enable him, a New Man, to ascend to Rome's highest office, Consul, through sheer ability. This singular fact about Cicero should erase any doubt about the superlative ability as a lawyer, a politician, and a scholar that enabled Cicero to do what very few Romans ever did -- advance above his class by ability alone.Readers who are looking for a highly readable but still scholarly work dealing with Cicero and his times will enjoy this excellent book. RJB.