The sheer bulk of Cicero's works is impressive. He was killed by Antony's troops and his head nailed to the rostra, or speaker's platform in the Roman Forum where Cicero had often spoken. Events turned out otherwise Octavian joined Antony and another of Caesar's officers, Lepidus, in a second triumvirate of power brokers, and when this second triumvirate drew up its list of enemies to be proscribed in November, 43 b.c.e., Antony insisted that Cicero be included. He thought-wrongly-that he could use Julius Caesar's grandnephew Octavian, whom Caesar had adopted in his will, against Mark Antony, and then discard him when he was no longer necessary. He was not one of the conspirators who murdered Caesar on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 b.c.e., but there is little doubt that he approved, and in the immediate aftermath, he tried to arouse the senate to suppress Mark Antony's efforts to take over. After the defeat of Pompey's army during the next year at the battle of Pharsalus, Cicero returned to Italy. by crossing the Rubicon River which marked the boundary between his province of Cisalpine Gaul and Italy, Cicero, after some hesitation, joined the senatorial group led by Pompey, who were Caesar's enemies. When Caesar started the civil war in 49 b.c.e. and was allowed to return only after he made it clear that he would not make waves for the political triumvirate of Pompey, Crassus, and Julius Caesar who were manipulating politics behind the scenes at this time. even though he was a "new man"-that is, no one in his family had been consul before-and during his year in office, he suppressed the conspiracy of Catiline and put the conspirators to death without trial, which was illegal. To win the case, Cicero had defeated the best lawyer of the day, Hortensius, and his reputation was made. Verres went into voluntary exile before he was sentenced, and the Sicilian provincials who were his victims got no restitution. when he impeached Gaius Verres for his corrupt governorship of Sicily. His first great triumph in court was in 70 b.c.e. Cicero thought it prudent to retire to Greece for further study following this case and only returned to Rome after Sulla's death in 78 b.c.e. This was the period of Sulla's dictatorship, and Cicero made himself a marked man by successfully defending a man who had incurred the enmity of one of Sulla's minions, Chrysogonus. For the next few years he studied rhetoric and philosophy in Rome and made his court debut in 81 b.c.e. He served under the father of Julius Caesar's rival, Pompey, which he always thought gave him a special link with Pompey. At eighteen he began his compulsory military service. At age sixteen he was attached to a well-known barrister of the day, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, to win his entrée into the Roman legal industry. in the small town of Arpinum (modern Arpino). The facts of Cicero's life can be given briefly. After him, there is no prose author of note until Cicero and Julius Caesar in the middle decades of the first century b.c.e. All that survives of his writing is a treatise on agriculture that leaves the impression that he was a hard-boiled but pious farmer. He was a considerable orator, and in his old age he wrote a history titled the Origines on the origins not only of Rome but neighboring towns as well. Marcius Porcius Cato (234–149ī.c.e.) was the first author and statesman who made a point of using Latin in his writing. His history, written during the desperate war with Hannibal the Carthaginian, was intended to encourage pro-Roman sympathies in Greece. The first true historian of Rome, Fabius Pictor, wrote in Greek rather than Latin. Roman historical traditions shaped the Roman people from early times, the pontifex maximus ( high priest) of Rome kept a record on a whitewashed board of the magistrates for each year and any notable events. Latin Prose Writers Before the Augustan Age Writers Before Cicero.
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