3. A Great Politician’s Great Misstep
In 60 BC, Cicero declined an invitation to join Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus in what became known as the First Triumvirate. He deemed the arrangement to be unconstitutional and did all he could to undo it by driving wedges between the Triumvirs. Crassus was killed in battle in 53 BC, and when Pompey and Caesar fell out and the latter marched on Italy in 49 BC, Cicero sat out the resultant civil war. To fill the time, he wrote books and treatises and indulged in other scholarly pursuits.
When Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, Cicero promoted the cause of Gaius Octavian, Caesar’s teenaged adopted son and heir. He sought to use the teenager as a cat’s paw in his conflict against Caesar’s chief lieutenant Mark Antony, whom Cicero loathed and against whom he penned and orated scathing critiques known as The Philippics. Cicero thought he could control and manipulate Octavian, and quipped that he would “praise, raise, and erase” him. He greatly underestimated the youth, who as the future Emperor Augustus would end the Roman Republic and replace it with the Roman Empire.
