Commentary #7 (Cicero)

Cicero: Much More than a Chickpea

Do you ever wonder what lies beyond the textbook descriptions of the ancient Greek and Roman personalities we study in English 525? I do. For instance, we have read that Cicero (106-43 B.C.) was an Italian legal orator whose eloquence gained him high political positions although he lacked a patrician background. He believed that an orator must be well educated in a wide variety of subjects, and he favored an elaborate or florid style of writing and speaking. Among his works is De Oratore, in which he expresses his own ideas about rhetoric.

But what about Cicero and his family? According to William Smith (994), Cicero married Terentia perhaps in 80 or 79 B.C. and had two children – Tullia (Tulliola) and Marcus Tullius Cicero Minor (Letters). Below, a transcript of an emotional letter Cicero wrote to is family while he was in political exile portrays him as a loving husband and father who desperately misses his loved ones. He says he wants Terentia to come to him but fears that travel would compromise her health.

Cicero’s tone seemed to change after his return to Rome. Although Terentia appeared to have managed the household as well as she could without her husband, he blamed her for the poor state of their finances. In 46 B.C., he divorced Terentia and ignited a scandal by marrying the young Publilia. Reportedly, Cicero had not married the girl for her youth but, rather, for her money, which he wanted to use to pay off his debt to Terentia. Apparently, Wife No. 1 never did receive restitution of funds from Cicero, and it is not clear whether or not she remarried. Some claim she married one of Cicero’s enemies, a historian named Sallust (Smith 994).

Tullia was the apple of her daddy’s eye, and she in turn was a devoted daughter who worked side-by-side with her first husband, Calpurnius Piso Frugi to gain safety for Cicero, then living in exile in Brundisium. By the time Cicero returned to Rome, Tullia was widowed; but she soon married and divorced Furius Crassipes. Next she married the wealthy, young patrician P. Cornelius Dolabella, a known but tolerated “bad boy” of the time. Not only did Cicero and his son-in-law disagree politically, but Dolabella turned out to be a womanizing scamp, who didn’t even console his wife when their baby died shortly after childbirth. When finances and her marriage faltered, Tullia visited her father at Brundisium in 47 B.C. (Smith 1181). She died in 45 B.C., and her father never recovered from the loss of his beloved “Tulliola.”

Oh, about the chickpea: One of Cicero’s male relatives had a cleft on his nose that resembled the indentation on a chickpea – or cicer in Latin, from which the name “Cicero” originates. Despite pea pleas from well-meaning people who feared his name would impede his chances for success in law, Cicero refused to change it. (“The Roman World”)
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Cicero wrote the following letter to his family while he was in exile in Brundisium:

To Terentia, Tulliola, and Young Cicero (at Rome)Brundisium, 29 April

Yes, I do write to you less often than I might, because, though I am always wretched, yet when I write to you or read a letter from you, I am in such floods of tears that I cannot endure it. Oh, that I had clung less to life! I should at least never have known real sorrow, or not much of it, in my life. Yet if fortune has reserved for me any hope of recovering at any time any position again, I was not utterly wrong to do so: if these miseries are to be permanent, I only wish, my dear, to see you as soon as possible and to die in your arms, since neither gods, whom you have worshipped with such pure devotion, nor men, whom I have ever served, have made us any return. I have been thirteen days at Brundisium in the house of M. Lænius Flaccus, a very excellent man, who has despised the risk to his fortunes and civil existence in comparison to keeping me safe, nor has been induced by the penalty of a most iniquitous law to refuse me the rights and good offices of hospitality and friendship. May I sometime have the opportunity of repaying him! Feel gratitude I always shall. I set out from Brundisium on the 29th of April, and intend going through Macedonia to Cyzicus. What a fall! What a disaster! What can I say? Should I ask you to come—a woman of weak health and broken spirit? Should I refrain from asking you? Am I to be without you, then? I think the best course is this: if there is any hope of my restoration, stay to promote it and push the thing on: but if, as I fear, it proves hopeless, pray come to me by any means in your power. Be sure of this, that if I have you I shall not think myself wholly lost. But what is to become of my darling Tullia? You must see to that now: I can think of nothing. But certainly, however things turn out, we must do everything to promote that poor little girl’s married happiness and reputation. Again, what is my boy Cicero to do? Let him, at any rate, be ever in my bosom and in my arms. I can’t write more. A fit of weeping hinders me. I don’t know how you have got on; whether you are left in possession of anything, or have been, as I fear, entirely plundered. Piso, as you say, I hope will always be our friend. As to the manumission of the slaves you need not be uneasy. To begin with, the promise made to yours was that you would treat them according as each severally deserved. So far Orpheus has behaved well, besides him no one very markedly so. With the rest of the slaves the arrangement is that, if my property is forfeited, they should become my freedmen, supposing them to be able to maintain at law that status. But if my property remained in my ownership, they were to continue slaves, with the exception of a very few. But these are trifles. To return to your advice, that I should keep up my courage and not give up hope of recovering my position, I only wish that there were any good grounds for entertaining such a hope. As it is, when, alas! shall I get a letter from you? Who will bring it me? I would have waited for it at Brundisium, but the sailors would not allow it, being unwilling to lose a favourable wind. For the rest, put as dignified a face on the matter as you can, my dear Terentia. Our life is over: we have had our day: it is not any fault of ours that has ruined us, but our virtue. I have made no false step, except in not losing my life when I lost my honours. But since our children preferred my living, let us bear everything else, however intolerable. And yet I, who encourage you, cannot encourage myself. I have sent that faithful fellow Clodius Philhetærus home, because he was hampered with weakness of the eyes. Sallustius seems likely to outdo everybody in his attentions. Pescennius is exceedingly kind to me; and I have hopes that he will always be attentive to you. Sicca had said that he would accompany me; but he has left Brundisium. Take the greatest care of your health, and believe me that I am more affected by your distress than my own. My dear Terentia, most faithful and best of wives, and my darling little daughter, and that last hope of my race, Cicero, good-bye!

29 April, from Brundisium (Letters)
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Works Cited

Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Trans. E.S. Shuckburgh. New York: P.F. Collier, 1909. The Online Library of Liberty. 13 Oct. 2007. .

Smith, William. Directory of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology 3: 994. The Ancient Library. 14 Oct. 2007. .

Smith, William. Directory of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology 3: 1181. The Ancient Library. 14 Oct. 2007. .

“The Roman World.” Ancient Worlds. 14 Oct. 2007. .