Cicero: Words and Illusions
E. Badian introduces Cicero, the master of Latin rhetoric, who long strove to preserve the traditional Republican oligarchy, but who perished at the orders of a military triumvirate that came to represent “the reality of power” in Rome.
Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on his grandfather’s estate in the territory of Arpinum, about seventy miles southeast of Rome, on January 3rd, 106 B.C. As the eldest son of an eldest son he stood to inherit his family’s local eminence; but his birth by no means predestined him for greatness, or even for success in Roman politics and society.
Though in theory Rome was a democracy, governed by the Sovereign People, in practice an oligarchy almost monopolized office. It was not as rigidly exclusive as is sometimes maintained: new families were regularly admitted to junior offices and in the course of a few generations might rise to the consulship. This, the highest magistracy, ennobled the family of its holder.
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