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.
