Cicero
The Voice of the Republic
In 63 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero stood before the Roman Senate and delivered the words that would define his life: "O tempora! O mores!" — Oh the times! Oh the customs! He was denouncing Lucius Sergius Catilina, a patrician conspirator who had plotted to overthrow the Republic by fire and murder. Cicero had no army, no ancient lineage, no vast fortune. He had only his voice — and with it he saved Rome, destroyed a conspiracy, and proved that eloquence could be as powerful as any legion. He was the first man in his family to reach the consulship, and the last great defender of a Republic that was already dying.
“O tempora! O mores!”
106–43 BC
Born in Arpinum, a provincial town southeast of Rome, to an equestrian family with no political connections. Murdered on Mark Antony's orders during the proscriptions. Sixty-three years that gave the Latin language its greatest prose.
58
Of the roughly 88 speeches Cicero delivered during his career, 58 survive in whole or in part — a corpus that defined Latin oratory and remained the model for European rhetoric for two millennia.
900+
The largest collection of personal correspondence from the ancient world — letters to Atticus, to his brother Quintus, to friends and rivals. They reveal the private man behind the public orator: anxious, vain, brilliant, and deeply human.
63 BC
Elected consul — the highest office in the Roman Republic — as a novus homo, the first in his family to reach the Senate. He won election in his year, the youngest age legally permitted, defeating Catiline himself at the ballot box.
Roman orator, statesman, philosopher, defender of the Republic
Defining Events
The Catilinarian Conspiracy
As consul, Cicero uncovered and crushed a conspiracy led by the patrician Lucius Sergius Catilina to overthrow the Republic. His four orations against Catiline — the In Catilinam — are among the most famous speeches in Western history. The first, delivered in the Temple of Jupiter Stator with Catiline present in the Senate, opened with the immortal words: "Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?" — How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience? Within weeks, Catiline had fled Rome and the conspirators were arrested. Cicero ordered their execution without trial — a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
The Philippics Against Antony
After Caesar's assassination, Cicero delivered fourteen orations against Mark Antony — modelled on Demosthenes' speeches against Philip of Macedon and deliberately named the Philippicae. They were Cicero's last great political act: a desperate attempt to rally the Senate against Antony's tyranny and restore republican government. The Second Philippic, never actually delivered but circulated as a pamphlet, is considered his masterpiece — a savage, brilliant prosecution of Antony's character, ambition, and crimes. Antony never forgave him. When the proscription lists were drawn up, Cicero's name was first.
Father of Latin Philosophy
In the final years of his life, exiled from politics by Caesar's dictatorship and grieving the death of his daughter Tullia, Cicero wrote the philosophical works that would shape Western thought for two thousand years. The De Republica, De Legibus, De Officiis, De Natura Deorum, and the Tusculanae Disputationes translated Greek philosophy into Latin prose and made it accessible to the Roman world. He invented Latin philosophical vocabulary — words like qualitas (quality), moralis (moral), humanitas (humanity) — that passed into every European language.
Timeline
Born in Arpinum
Marcus Tullius Cicero is born on January 3 in Arpinum, a hill town in the Volscian mountains about 100 kilometres southeast of Rome. His family is wealthy but provincial — equestrian rank, not senatorial. The same town had produced Gaius Marius, Rome's great general. Cicero's cognomen means 'chickpea,' perhaps from an ancestor with a cleft in his nose resembling a chickpea.
Education in Rome
Sent to Rome for education, Cicero studied rhetoric under Lucius Licinius Crassus and law under the Scaevola family — the finest legal minds in Rome. He also studied Greek philosophy, mastering the works of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. His intellectual ambition was staggering: he intended to transplant Greek thought into the Latin language.
First Court Case
Delivered his first major speech, Pro Quinctio, a civil property case. The following year, he defended Sextus Roscius of Ameria against a charge of parricide — implicitly challenging the dictator Sulla's regime. The acquittal made the twenty-five-year-old Cicero famous overnight.
Against Verres
Prosecuted Gaius Verres, the corrupt governor of Sicily, in the most famous trial of the Roman Republic. Cicero's evidence was so devastating that Verres fled into exile before the verdict. The Verrine Orations established Cicero as Rome's greatest advocate and broke the stranglehold of the aristocratic faction on the courts.
Consul and Saviour of the Republic
Elected consul at the minimum legal age. Discovered and crushed Catiline's conspiracy to overthrow the government. Ordered the execution of five conspirators without trial, invoking the senatus consultum ultimum. The Senate hailed him as Pater Patriae — Father of the Fatherland. It was the highest moment of his life — and the act that would later destroy him.
Exile
Publius Clodius Pulcher, a populist tribune and Cicero's bitter enemy, passed a law retroactively criminalising the execution of Roman citizens without trial. Cicero was forced into exile — his houses burned, his property confiscated. He spent sixteen months in Macedonia, writing letters of almost unbearable despair.
Triumphant Return
Recalled by a vote of the people and the Senate. His journey home became a triumphal procession — crowds lined the roads from Brundisium to Rome. His house on the Palatine was rebuilt at public expense. But the Republic he had defended was already slipping away: Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus had divided power between themselves.
The Philippics and Death
After Caesar's assassination, Cicero launched his final political campaign — the fourteen Philippics against Mark Antony. When Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate, Cicero was placed on the proscription list. On December 7, 43 BC, soldiers caught him on his litter near his villa at Formiae. He bared his neck to the sword. Antony had his head and hands nailed to the Rostra in the Forum — the very platform from which Cicero had spoken.
Key Figures
Julius Caesar
Caesar and Cicero represented opposite visions of Rome's future. Caesar saw that the Republic was broken and needed a strong hand; Cicero believed it could still be saved through law and oratory. They respected each other intellectually — Caesar praised Cicero's rhetoric as superior to his own, and Cicero admired Caesar's prose style in the Commentarii. But politically they were irreconcilable. After Caesar's assassination, Cicero rejoiced privately, though he had not been part of the conspiracy. It was Caesar's heir who ultimately signed his death warrant.
Mark Antony
Marcus Antonius was everything Cicero despised — a soldier who drank too much, spoke crudely, and reached for power through force rather than eloquence. Cicero's Philippics painted Antony as a tyrant, a drunkard, and a disgrace to Rome. Antony's hatred was equally personal. When the proscription lists were drawn up, Antony demanded Cicero's head — literally. After the murder, Antony's wife Fulvia reportedly pulled out Cicero's tongue and stabbed it with her hairpin, taking revenge on the voice that had attacked her husband.
The Legacy of Cicero
Cicero's head was displayed on the Rostra — the speaker's platform in the Roman Forum — by order of the man he had denounced. It was a brutal, deliberate message: the age of persuasion was over; the age of the sword had begun. But the voice outlived the sword. Cicero's speeches, letters, and philosophical works survived the fall of Rome, the Dark Ages, and the fires of a thousand libraries. Petrarch rediscovered them in the fourteenth century and they ignited the Renaissance. The American Founders read him. John Adams kept a bust of Cicero in his study. The very concepts of natural law, republican government, and individual rights that underpin Western democracy owe more to Marcus Tullius Cicero than to any other single mind.
He had no legions, no royal blood, no divine lineage. He had only the Latin language — and he made it immortal. Read his story in his own words — the first-person ePub brings you inside the mind of Rome's greatest orator.
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