“And yet in your case [Antony], as your most familiar friends are always saying, you practice declamation to evaporate your wine, not to sharpen your wits.”—Cicero, Phillipic II.xvii
“By the most rival impulses, Conscript Fathers, in critical times the scale is turned most completely, not only in all the accidents of public affairs, but principally in war, and most of all in civil war, which as a rule is governed by opinion and rumor.”—Cicero, Phillipic V.x
I know, I know, this is a whole lunar month late. Life got exciting (which is French for "I forgot").
February's book of the month is Anthony Everitt's Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician. It's a newer book (2011) so it's quite accessible, but it has other virtues: it is also thorough, detailed, and sympathetic.
We probably know more personal details about Marcus Tullius Cicero than any other man (or woman) of the ancient world. That is because over nine hundred of his letters, official and personal, have survived to the present in one of those preservational flukes historians love to argue about. "In Cicero's correspondence," writes Everitt, "noble Romans are flesh and blood, not marble. Here is someone who dined with Julius Caesar,
You ever bump into fun little parallels in your studies? That's all this post is--a fun little parallel. I was reading through Cicero's Phillipics (his speeches condemning Mark Antony after the assassination of Julius Caesar) and came across the following passage in the Tenth, where he is denouncing the weak-minded conciliation of his fellow senators:
"Finally—let me give utterance at last to a word, true and worthy of myself—if the purposes of this our order are governed by the nod of the veterans, and all our sayings and doings are regulated according to their will, I should choose death, which to Roman citizens has always been preferable to slavery. All slavery is wretched; but grant there was a slavery that was unavoidable; do you contemplate ever beginning the recovery of your liberty? When we could not endure that unavoidable and almost Fate-designed calamity, shall we endure this voluntary one? The whole of Italy is aflame with the longing for liberty; the citizens can no longer be slaves, we have given the Roman people this war and these weapons long after they have demanded them.
“As regards discipline, when was not prosperity to the unwary what fire is to wax, or the rays of the sun to snow and ice? David was wise, Solomon wiser; but, flattered by unlooked-for success, the one in part and the other altogether acted foolishly.”—Bernard of Clairvaux, De Consideratione II.12
“If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would be changed.”—Pascal, Pensees