A reconstructed statue of Augustus as a younger Octavian. Wikimedia
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.
‘The Vengeance of Fulvia’ by Francisco Maura y Montaner, 1888, depicts Mark Antony’s wife Fulvia inspecting the severed head of Cicero. Wikimedia
2. A Political Defeat, But an Intellectual Triumph
Cicero’s underestimation of Octavian came back to bite him, hard. Caesar’s young heir shrewdly reconciled with Mark Antony and cut a deal that divided Rome between themselves. They then proceeded to clean house and eliminate all enemies and potential opponents of the regime in a bloody purge that outdid Sulla’s. Cicero, as an avowed enemy of Mark Antony, was on the new regime’s list of the proscribed. He fled Rome, but was captured and killed on December 7th, 43 BC. A vindictive Antony then had Cicero’s severed head and hands displayed in the rostra, or speaker’s platform in Rome’s Forum, after Antony’s equally vindictive wife Fulvia pierced the orator’s tongue with knitting needles.
Cicero was defeated politically, and the Roman Republic he had worked so hard to defend was no more. However, he triumphed intellectually. Cicero’s impact extended beyond his own days, as he left behind a trove of writings on philosophy, politics, rhetoric and oratory. Their rediscovery in the thirteenth century and the keen interest they aroused in scholars, amongst whom Petrarch was most notable, helped jump-start the Renaissance. Cicero thus influenced European literature and ideas more than any single prose writer before or since. His impact on the Latin language was such that until the nineteenth century, all European prose could be viewed as a return to or a reaction against Cicero’s style.
1. Unsurprisingly, Given the Patriarchy’s Great Power in Ancient Rome, to Kill One’s Father Was Amongst the Most Heinous Crimes in Roman Eyes
In light of the extraordinary powers that Roman fathers exercised over their family, it is no surprise that, from time to time, some kids snapped and did in the patriarchs. Since Ancient Rome was as pure a distillation of patriarchy as ever existed, that patriarchy took a particularly dim view of the murder of patriarchs. The Romans were particularly horrified and revolted by patricide, or the murder of one’s father. So they expressed their abhorrence with a particularly inventive punishment: poena cullei, or the “Punishment of the Sack”.
In accordance with Roman law, those convicted of patricide were first severely beaten with blood colored rods, while their heads were covered in a bag made of a wolf’s hide. Then the patricide was sewn into the poena cullei, a sack made of ox hide, together with an assortment of live animals that included a snake, a rooster, a monkey, and a dog. The sack was beaten to rile up the animals and get them to bite and tear at the patricide. It was then put on a cart driven by black oxen, to a river or the sea, where the sack and its occupants were thrown into the water.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
