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In the final decades of the Roman Republic, power increasingly belonged to men who commanded armies.
Yet one man rose to the highest levels of Roman politics without conquering territory or leading legions. His weapons were words, law, and an extraordinary ability to persuade.
He exposed conspiracies, confronted dictators, shaped political philosophy for centuries, and ultimately paid for his speeches with his life.
Learn more about the life, career, and legacy of Marcus Tullius Cicero on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of the most important figures in the period marking the end of the Roman Republic, alongside other notable figures such as Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Marc Antony.
However, in most retellings of this period, Cicero is given a supporting role next to the other characters. Yet, Cicero was a major figure in his own right, and his path to power was unique.
Moreover, I’ve mentioned Cicero enough times that I figured it was time that he got his own episode.
Before I start, I should note one important thing. Cicero’s name in classical Latin wasn’t pronounced Cicero. It was pronounced Kikero. The change in how the letter C was pronounced in Latin happened in the Middle Ages, and it has been passed down to us today.
So, for the rest of the episode, I’ll be using Cicero, but if you went back in time and called him that, he’d have no clue who you were talking to.
Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on January 3, 106 BC, near the town of Arpinum, roughly 100 kilometers southeast of Rome.
His family belonged to the local Italian elite. They were prosperous landowners and Roman citizens, but they were not members of the Roman senatorial nobility. Cicero therefore entered national politics as what Romans called a novus homo, or “new man,” meaning someone who didn’t have a consul among his ancestors.
His family name, Cicero, probably came from the Latin word cicer, meaning chickpea. Ancient writers later told stories about one of his ancestors having a chickpea-shaped mark on his face, although this may have been an explanation invented after the fact.
Cicero’s family was wealthy enough to provide him and his younger brother Quintus with an excellent education. As adolescents, they were sent to Rome, where Cicero studied rhetoric, literature, law, philosophy, and politics.
He came into contact with leading intellectuals of the age, including the legal scholar Quintus Mucius Scaevola and Greek philosophers who had settled or lectured in Rome.
From an early age, Cicero displayed an extraordinary talent for speaking and writing.
Cicero grew up during an increasingly unstable period in Roman history.
The Republic had conquered much of the Mediterranean, producing enormous wealth and territorial expansion. Yet Roman political institutions had originally been designed for a relatively small city-state.
Economic inequality grew. Wealthy senators and equestrians accumulated enormous estates. Dispossessed farmers migrated to Rome. Roman generals commanded professionalized armies whose soldiers often felt greater loyalty to their commanders than to the Republic.
Political disputes became increasingly violent.
When Cicero was a child, the Republic was still dealing with the consequences of the reforms and deaths of the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.
During his adolescence, Rome fought the Social War from 91 to 87 BC, when many of Rome’s Italian allies rebelled after demanding Roman citizenship.
Cicero briefly served in the military during this conflict, apparently under the command of Pompeius Strabo, the father of Pompey the Great. Military life, however, was not where Cicero’s talents lay.
Soon afterward Rome descended into civil war between supporters of Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
This atmosphere of violence profoundly shaped Cicero’s political thinking. Throughout his later career, he would repeatedly argue that political disputes should be settled through law, constitutional procedure, and debate rather than military force.
Cicero began establishing his reputation through legal advocacy. His first major case came in 80 BC when he defended Sextus Roscius of Ameria, who had been accused of murdering his father.
The case was politically dangerous because people associated with Sulla’s regime appeared to have benefited from the elder Roscius’s death and confiscated property.
Cicero argued that Roscius had been framed and Roscius was acquitted.
Later writers sometimes portrayed this speech as Cicero courageously attacking Sulla’s dictatorship directly. The reality was more complicated, but the case nevertheless demonstrated Cicero’s willingness to confront powerful interests.
Soon afterward Cicero left Rome and traveled through Greece and Asia Minor, where he continued his education.
In Athens he studied philosophy. On Rhodes he studied rhetoric with Apollonius Molon, one of the most famous teachers of public speaking in the Greek world. Cicero later credited this training with refining his speaking style, making it less physically exhausting and more controlled.
He was elected quaestor in 75 BC.
His assignment took him to western Sicily, where he oversaw financial administration tied to grain shipments to Rome.
This Sicilian posting would become unexpectedly important to his career. Several years later, Sicilians approached Cicero and asked him to prosecute their former governor, Gaius Verres, in 70 BC.
Verres was accused of massive corruption, extortion, theft, and abuse of power during his governorship of Sicily. Opposing Cicero was one of Rome’s most famous lawyers, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, who represented Verres.
Rather than relying solely on theatrical courtroom rhetoric, Cicero traveled through Sicily gathering documentation and testimony.
His evidence was overwhelming. Cicero delivered the opening portion of the prosecution so effectively that Verres abandoned the trial and went into voluntary exile.
Cicero later published additional speeches he had prepared, known collectively as the Verrines, and the trial helped establish his reputation.
Cicero was elected aedile in 69 BC and praetor in 66 BC. During his praetorship, he delivered a major political speech supporting a proposal to give Pompey extraordinary military authority against King Mithridates VI of Pontus.
The speech, commonly known as Pro Lege Manilia, helped associate Cicero with Pompey, who was becoming Rome’s most celebrated general.
The political challenges Cicero’s faced were unusual.
He lacked the ancient family connections that normally helped aristocratic candidates achieve high office. Instead, he constructed coalitions among senators, equestrians, and ordinary voters.
In 63 BC, he achieved the greatest political success of his life. He was elected consul.
Very few novus homo were ever elected consul. He was one of only around 15 new men to become consul between 366 and 63 BC, a span of 300 years.
Furthermore, he was elected suo anno, or “in his year” which means he did it in the first year he was eligible to be consul. To have both distinctions was extremely rare, and something which he considered his proudest achievement.
The most important event of Cicero’s consulship was the conspiracy of Lucius Sergius Catilina, better known as Catiline. Catiline was an aristocrat with considerable political ambitions who had repeatedly failed to win the consulship.
According to Cicero and other ancient sources, Catiline organized a conspiracy involving political assassination, armed revolt, and the seizure of political power.
Cicero obtained intelligence about the plot and presented evidence to the Senate. His confrontation with Catiline produced some of the most famous speeches in Roman history.
Cicero denounced Catiline before the Senate and accused him of plotting against the Republic. Catiline soon left Rome and joined an armed force in northern Italy, but several conspirators remained in Rome.
Cicero arranged for evidence against them to be obtained and arrested several of the conspirators.
The Senate then debated what to do with the prisoners. Julius Caesar argued against execution without trial and recommended imprisonment.
Marcus Porcius Cato, aka Cato the Younger, argued for execution.
Cicero ultimately ordered the conspirators executed. He announced their deaths to a crowd with the single word:
Vixerunt, meaning “They have lived.”
Catiline was killed in battle the following year.
Cicero was celebrated for supposedly saving the Republic. He received the honorary title Pater Patriae, “Father of the Fatherland.” For Cicero, this moment became the defining achievement of his life, but the decision to execute the conspirators without a trial would have repercussions later on.
One of Cicero’s most dangerous enemies was Publius Clodius Pulcher. Clodius was a controversial aristocratic politician who became a populist tribune.
In 58 BC, he promoted a law prescribing exile for anyone who had executed Roman citizens without trial. The law clearly targeted Cicero.
In response, Cicero fled Italy, and his house on the Palatine Hill was confiscated and partly destroyed.
For Cicero, the exile was emotionally devastating; however, it didn’t last long. Pompey supported his recall, and in 57 BC Cicero returned to Rome amid considerable public celebration.
By then, the first Triumvirate ruled Rome, consisting of Julius Caesar, Pompey Magnus, and Marcus Licinius Crassus.
Cicero disliked the concentration of political power in their hands. He envisioned a Republic governed by cooperation among respectable citizens, particularly the Senate and the equestrian class.
But Cicero lacked the military power or the wealth necessary to challenge the triumvirs. So he oscillated between opposition, accommodation, and attempts to preserve his own political influence.
Cicero increasingly turned toward writing. Around 55 BC, he composed De Oratore, “On the Orator.” The work presented Cicero’s ideal statesman-orator as someone trained not merely in rhetoric but in philosophy, law, history, and politics.
Around 54 to 51 BC, he worked on De Re Publica, “On the Republic.” The work was heavily influenced by Plato but focused on Roman government.
In 51 BC, Cicero was sent as governor to the Roman province of Cilicia in what is today the southeast coast of Turkey.
When he returned to Rome, the alliance between Caesar and Pompey was disintegrating. Without Crassus to balance them, who had died in 53 BC, Caesar and Pompey became rivals.
Cicero desperately hoped for compromise, believing civil war would be disastrous regardless of which side won. However, in January 49 BC, Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army and civil war began.
Eventually, Cicero joined Pompey’s side, where he did not play an important military role.
After Pompey’s defeat, Cicero returned to Italy, where Caesar eventually pardoned him.
Cicero’s relationship with Caesar was complicated. Personally, the two men could be respectful toward one another. Caesar appreciated Cicero’s literary and oratorical abilities.
Politically, however, Cicero regarded Caesar’s concentration of power as incompatible with Republican government.
Cicero largely withdrew from active politics. This period became one of the most productive literary phases of his life. He wrote extensively on rhetoric, ethics, theology, philosophy, friendship, aging, and political theory.
Despite being against Caesar becoming dictator for life, he did not take part in the assassination plot against him. Nonetheless, he approved of Caesar’s death because he believed it created an opportunity to restore the Republic.
However, that hope proved unrealistic, as the assassins removed Caesar but had no coherent plan to replace the political system he had dominated.
In the aftermath of the assassination, Cicero views Caesar’s right-hand man, Marc Antony, as the biggest threat to the Republic.
Beginning in September 44 BC, Cicero delivered a series of speeches attacking Antony. These became known as the Philippics, named after Demosthenes’ famous speeches against Philip II of Macedon.
There were fourteen surviving speeches. Cicero accused Antony of corruption, violence, drunkenness, tyranny, and seeking to become another Caesar.
He viewed Caesar’s posthumously adopted son, Octavian, as a possible defense against Antony, but he grossly underestimated his political savvy. He ended up supporting Octavian being elected to the consulship at the age of 19. Soon afterward, Octavian joined with Marc Antony to create the Second Triumvirate.
This would prove to be fatal for Cicero. The Triumvirate created a proscription list of its enemies, allowing anyone to kill them and seize their property. Mark Antony added Cicero to the list in revenge for the Philippics.
Cicero traveled toward the coast, hoping to escape by sea. On December 7, 43 BC, soldiers caught up with him.
According to later accounts, Cicero ordered his litter to stop and presented his neck to his executioners. He was killed at the age of sixty-three.
His head and hands were cut off and taken to Rome. Antony ordered them displayed on the Rostra in the Roman Forum, the very platform from which Cicero had delivered many of his speeches.
However, this was not the end of Cicero’s impact.
Cicero’s speeches and writings had an enormous influence on later generations because they became models for both Latin prose and political thought. For centuries, students across Europe learned Latin by reading and imitating Cicero, whose style helped define what educated Latin was supposed to sound like.
His works on rhetoric shaped ideas about effective public speaking, while his philosophical writings transmitted Greek ideas about ethics, natural law, and government to the Latin-speaking world. Renaissance humanists and Enlightenment thinkers drew on his discussions of republican government and civic virtue.
Cicero ultimately failed in the cause that mattered most to him. The Roman Republic he spent his life defending collapsed, and he was murdered by the very political forces he had tried to resist. Yet in another sense, Cicero outlived nearly everyone who defeated him.
Caesar, Antony, and Octavian commanded armies, but Cicero’s greatest weapon was the written and spoken word, and in the long run, those words proved remarkably durable.