A Political Defeat, but an Intellectual Triumph
Octavius shrewdly reconciled with Mark Antony and cut a deal that divided Rome between themselves and a third triumvir, Lepidus. They then proceeded to clean house, and eliminated all enemies and potential opponents of the regime in a bloody purg. 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. That was after Antony’s equally vindictive wife had pierced the orator’s tongue with knitting needles.
Defeated politically, the Roman Republic’s most famous philosopher Cicero triumphed intellectually. His impact extended far beyond his own days. He left behind a trove of writings on philosophy, politics, rhetoric and oratory, whose rediscovery in the thirteenth century greatly interested scholars. Their numbers included Petrarch, who helped jump-start the Renaissance. The Roman Republic philosopher 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 being a return to or a reaction against Cicero’s style.
