Cicero quotes

The fundamental difficulty of writing a life of Cicero is that he's not the most interesting person in the story by a long shot. The trouble is that he has to share the stage with Caesar, who's bold, sexy -- every man's woman and every woman's man -- far-sighted enough to understand that the ship of the Republic had well and truly sunk, loyal to friends and merciful to enemies -- at least so long as they were potentially useful -- in short, one of the great men of history.

Cicero, by way of contrast, was a bit of a ditherer, prone to dissembling and not committing to anything until the last possible moment (and then prone to changing his mind); he prosecuted or defended a number of high-profile court cases, but in most instances raw political power of the more important factions determined the outcome; and when he was briefly able to play a leading role after Caesar's assassination, it didn't exactly end well. Devoted enough to serving and preserving the Republic, he lacked the capacity or vision to realize its flaws and the need for radical reform.

As a result, it would take a strong biographer not to take Cicero's life and turn it into a sort of synecdoche of the Republic, his own vacillation and weakness standing in for the ineffectiveness of a political institution on its last legs, contrasted with the magnetic, grasping dynamism of an Empire, personified by Caesar.

Everitt, to his credit, avoids this temptation, but does so by taking the puzzling approach turning his book into an exercise in apologetics. Repeatedly, we're told that Cicero was making the best of a bad situation, or not in a position to make strong decisions, or just lacked the capacity for large-scale leadership. There's some truth in this litany of excuses, but Everitt seems to be trying to make the case that but for one or two unfortunate flaws of character, education, or position, Cicero might have been another Caesar or Augustus, at least an Antony.

Of course, this strains credulity, and it's also to Everitt's credit that he provides the evidence allowing the reader to realize he's stretching. The book is a nice balance of concision and comprehensiveness, leading the reader through the proto-Byzantine web of plots and factions that characterized Rome at the fall of the Republic, providing not just Cicero's take on the lead players but also a more objective look at what he missed.

It's just that the analysis at the end has a systematic bias that's hard to take seriously. The most egregious example is probably where after relating how Cicero, as consul, helped roll up a plot to overthrow the Republic, then panicked and executed some of the conspirators without trial, over loud protest. Again, the book makes clear that this was an ill-informed overreaction, with many other leaders correctly counselling restraint -- but Everitt attempts to downplay the magnitude of the error, even as Cicero's peers exile him and hold years'-long grudges over it.

Not to get too far down on the guy -- but the main draw here is definitely that Cicero was a reasonably good observer of an incredibly interesting period of history, playing an interesting albeit minor role, not that he was or even might have been one of the main protagonists. The more Everitt strays into the latter story, the weaker the book becomes.

Before wrapping up, I should note that there's a potential objection here: the genius of his oratory and prose are in large measure why old Tully's revered, not for being a cunning politician or a great leader, so why shouldn't an appraisal of the biography focus on that? Well, yes, but the problem is, the genius of said prose doesn't come across too well in translation; his Latin syntax may be admirably balanced, but reading his speeches in English, power and force don't come through that clearly (though he is endearingly bitchy in his letters). While some writers are at least partially celebrated for the role they played in key events -- Milton, let's say -- they tend to have some masterpiece upon which to hang their hats, clearly overshadowing the parts of their biography wrapped up in politics and war. And for the modern reader, Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon is a much more salient reference point than the rhetorical heft of Against Verres.