According to Plutarch, Cicero “planned that, if he were finally deprived of the chance of following a public career, he would retire to Athens, away from the law and politics, and spend his life here in the quiet pursuit of philosophy.” In fact, although from time to time over the years he was indeed forced into periods of retirement, this never happened. But if he did not go to Athens he made Athens come to him. At his house at Tusculum he would later re-create the Academy, with halls and walks for intellectual debate and meditation, and build a version of Aristotle’s base in Athens, the Lyceum.
In the autumn of 79, Cicero left Athens for Asia Minor. In Rhodes, he sat briefly at the feet of a well-known Stoic philosopher and historian, Posidonius. More important, he consulted a distinguished rhetorician, Apollonius Molon, whom he had heard twice in Rome and whose style was rather more restrained than that of his florid rivals on the Asian mainland. He provided the technical retraining Cicero needed. Molon was, Cicero later recalled,
not only a pleader in real cases [as distinct from theoretical exercises] and an admirable writer but excellent as a judge and critic of faults and a very wise teacher and adviser.… And so I came home after two years not only more experienced but almost another man; the excessive strain of voice had gone, my style had so to speak simmered down, my lungs were stronger and I was not so thin.
In 78 news came of Sulla’s death and any residual anxieties Cicero may have had for his personal safety disappeared. In two years he would be old enough, under the new rules, to put a foot on the first rung of the political ladder and run for Quaestor. He was determined to stand at the earliest legal opportunity. If elected he would hold office the following year, when he would be thirty. By 77 he was back in Rome rebuilding his legal career in the Forum and planning his first political campaign.
4
POLITICS AND FOREIGN POSTINGS
Cicero Enters the Ring: 77–63 BC
During his childhood and youth Cicero had watched with horror as Rome set about dismantling itself. If he had a mission as an adult, it was to recall the Republic to order. The image that came to his mind when describing its constitution was of a musical concert.
Just as in the music of harps and flutes or in the voices of singers a certain harmony of the different tones must be maintained … so also a state is made harmonious by agreement among dissimilar elements. This is brought about by a fair and reasonable blending of the upper, middle and lower classes, just as if they were musical tones. What musicians call harmony in song is concord in a state.
These words were written late in life, but, even if his political thinking as a young man was not yet fully formed, Cicero’s experience of Roman politics and his philosophical explorations would already have confirmed his conservative cast of mind. It became his self-ordained duty to conduct the orchestra of all the classes and train it to play in tune again.
Cicero campaigned vigorously and won his election as Quaestor for 75 without apparent difficulty. It may be imagined that he and his family called in every favor and exploited every connection in order to ensure a good turnout. Doubtless many citizens of Arpinum took the trouble to travel to Rome to vote for their local boy. The fact that he was a New Man meant that the outcome would not have looked at all certain.
A Quaestor had no political or military authority. He and his colleagues assisted the Consuls by supervising the collection of taxes and authorizing payments. They were responsible for the management of the Treasury in the Temple of Saturn and had a small, permanent staff to conduct day-to-day business. Since Sulla’s recent reforms the really important feature of the post was that it gave the holder automatic membership in the Senate.
Some Quaestors were given foreign postings and Cicero was allocated one of the two Quaestorships based in Sicily, reporting directly to the governor. Wives did not accompany Romans on official business abroad, and so, once again, Terentia was left behind in Italy, where she doubtless spent much of her time with little Tullia.
With the decline of Italian agriculture and the provision of subsidized corn for the urban masses in the capital, Sicily was Rome’s most important provider of cereals and it was essential to ensure stability of its supply and price. The oldest of Rome’s provinces, the island had been won from the Carthaginians in 241 and, as tribute, its communities were required to export gratis 10 percent of their corn harvest to Rome. If more was needed, it could be acquired by compulsory purchase. It was the Quaestors’ job to calculate the price and the quantity of extra corn to be bought.
In carrying out this task Cicero showed a talent for competent and fair administration. To counteract an inflation of the corn price in Rome, he made an assessment of additional need and negotiated a fair rate with the suppliers. When the Sicilians received payment, he made sure that his office did not deduct the usual, but illegal, commission. This behavior made him very popular.
Cicero believed in honesty in public affairs, but it was also in his personal interest to win over local opinion. If his career was to progress, he would have to build up political support and his stay in Sicily was an excellent opportunity to expand his client list. Cicero won the backing of many equites, some of whom he represented in court in front of the governor. This class included Roman tax farmers and traders and also, since the enfranchisement of Italy and Sicily after the War of the Allies ten years earlier, local aristocracies across the peninsula. It was a substantial new constituency of Roman citizens, still largely untapped, and someone like Cicero whose roots were non-Roman and provincial was well placed to appeal to it. Although his ambition was to join the ruling elite in Rome, he never forgot where his political backing really lay—among the Italian middle classes.
In his leisure hours Cicero was an indefatigable tourist. Sicily had a long and colorful history: originally colonized by the Greek states during their heyday, it contained many wealthy and beautiful cities, with fine temples and works of art by great sculptors and painters. Carthage had dominated the west of the island for many years and, although that was now long in the past, something of the exotic character of her culture survived. Cicero’s headquarters were at Lilybaeum (now Marsala), a wealthy town at Sicily’s western extremity.
The Roman heritage attracted Cicero’s prime loyalty and his deepest feelings, but he was also fascinated by the legacy of other people’s pasts. He sought out and rediscovered the lost grave of Archimedes, the great scientist and geometer, a citizen of Syracuse who had been killed during the Roman siege more than one hundred years before. The exploit demonstrated detective skills and inquisitiveness which he put to good use in his legal career, and he recalled it with pride:
When I was Quaestor, I tracked down his grave; the Syracusans not only had no idea where it was, they denied it even existed. I found it surrounded and covered by brambles and thickets. I remembered that some lines of doggerel I had heard were inscribed on his tomb to the effect that a sphere and a cylinder had been placed on its top. So I took a good look around (for there are a lot of graves at the Agrigentine Gate cemetery) and noticed a small column rising a little way above some bushes, on which stood a sphere and a cylinder. I immediately told the Syracusans (some of their leading men were with me) that I thought I had found what I was looking for. Slaves were sent in with scythes to clear the ground and once a path had been opened up we approached the pedestal. About half the lines of the epigram were still legible although the rest had worn away. So, you see, one of the most celebrated cities of Greece, once upon a time a great seat of learning too, would have been ignorant of the grave of one of its most intellectually gifted citizens—had it not been for a man from Arpinum who pointed it out to them.