Young Quintus joined Caesar’s army and Marcus, nervous of approaching his father directly and working through Atticus, sought permission to go too. And while he was asking for favors, he would also be grateful for a decent allowance. The second request presented no great difficulty, but Cicero told his son that, as for going to Spain, it was enough for the family to have abandoned one side without joining the other. He warned him that he might not enjoy being in the shade of his older and more influential cousin. Although his father did not formally refuse to give his permission, Marcus was a docile boy and no more is heard of the project.
The exchange was a reminder that some thought needed to be given to the twenty-year-old’s future. He had practical rather than academic abilities and had inherited little of his father’s literary talent. Nevertheless, in the following year it was decided that he should continue his studies in Athens. He seems not to have been the most diligent of students. In a handful of letters to Tiro from 44, he apologized for being a dilatory correspondent and promised to work harder. He wanted the freedman to put in a good word for him with his father and be his “publicity agent.” He also dropped a hint about his “meager allowance” and asked Tiro to get a clerk sent out to him, preferably a Greek. “I waste a lot of time copying out my notes.” On Cicero’s explicit instructions, Marcus dropped the company of Gorgias, a rhetorician who was encouraging the young man to overspend and to drink too much, and began to study with a distinguished Aristotelian philosopher. Marcus was good-natured, lazy and fond of a good time. He was too much in awe of his father to stand up to him directly and had the diffidence of the child who knows he is not a favorite.
Cicero now made a disastrous move in his personal life. In 46 he at last found the wife he had been looking for, but his selection, a wealthy teenage ward of his, Publilia, was unfortunate. Terentia, sniping from the sidelines, accused him of an old man’s infatuation. Cicero did not help his case by responding to criticism with a tasteless joke. When someone reproached him on the eve of the wedding for marrying a mere girl, he retorted: “She’ll be a woman tomorrow.”
Little is known about Cicero’s relations with the opposite sex. He claims that he made a point of not being promiscuous in his youth and seems to have endured separations from Terentia even early on in their marriage with equanimity. Accounts of the political support she gave him during his Consulship suggest a businesslike relationship and strong mutual loyalty. What remains of their correspondence was written when they were both middle-aged and conveys little more than routine affection.
The only woman with whom Cicero’s emotions seem to have been powerfully engaged was Tullia. This was noticed by his contemporaries. In an age when political invective made a great deal out of opponents’ sexual peccadilloes, the only serious (but completely unconvincing) charge against him was that he had committed incest with his daughter.
Although Roman upper-class women had considerable social freedom and could sometimes exert political influence behind the scenes, it was a male world and the socially conservative Cicero mainly enjoyed the company of men. There is mention of one elderly woman friend, although unfortunately there is very little information about her. This was Caerullia, who was ten or more years older than Cicero and had philosophical interests. They were very close towards the end of his life and their correspondence (now lost) was said to have been somewhat risqué.
Tiro disagreed with Terentia about Cicero’s motives for marrying Publilia. Many years later he claimed that friends and relatives pressed Cicero to make the match in order to settle his large debts. The only comment Cicero has left behind was matter-of-fact and says more about Terentia than Publilia. He wrote to a friend:
AS for your congratulations on the step I have taken, I am sure your wishes are sincere. But I should not have taken any new decision at so sad a time, if on my return I had not found my household affairs in as bad a state as the country’s. In my own house, I knew no security, had no refuge from intrigue, because of the villainy of those to whom my welfare and estate should have been most precious in view of the signal kindnesses I had showered on them. So I thought it advisable to fortify myself by the loyalty of new connections against the treachery of old ones.
A month or two after the marriage Cicero was struck by the most terrible blow he had ever experienced in his life. For the first time since his exile his mental equilibrium was threatened. Tullia died.
In January 45, she gave birth to a son, “little Lentulus,” as Cicero called him after one of his father’s names. The lying-in apparently took place at Dolabella’s house, although the couple was now divorced. The mother failed to recover, surviving for only a few weeks, and the child died some months later. Tullia is a shadowy figure, who never speaks for herself and is glimpsed only through her father’s loving comments. We can guess that she was intelligent and amusing (as well as being self-willed and with a pronounced tendency to fall for unsuitable men).
Cicero was devastated. Tusculum and his house on the Palatine were too full of memories and for a time he stayed with Atticus, reading everything he could find in his library that the Greek philosophers had to say about grief. Then, having gained leave of absence from his public duties, he fled the city. He went to Astura, a property he had recently bought on the coast south of Antium, a wooded and remote spot where he could hide away and grieve. The Romans disapproved of extravagant mourning, especially over a woman, and Cicero did his best to control or at least to conceal his emotions. He asked Atticus to attribute his absence from Rome to ill health.
Reading did not help, so he picked up his pen and wrote a Self-Consolation, one of the most celebrated works of antiquity, although now lost. Consolatory texts were a recognized genre, but he was, he thought, the first man to write one for himself. He assembled every relevant text he could find and “threw them all into one attempt at consolation,” he wrote to Atticus, “for my soul was in a feverish state and I attempted every means of curing its condition.” He worked quickly and finished the book by early March, when he promised a copy to Atticus (with whom he was corresponding daily). “I write all day long, not that I do myself any real good, but just for the time being it distracts me—not enough, for grief is powerful and importunate; still it brings a respite.” He suspected that his anguish was changing his personality and was afraid that Atticus would no longer feel towards him as in the past. “The things you like in me are gone for good.”
He found that he could not stop crying and spent most of his time on his own out-of-doors. “In this lonely place I don’t talk to a soul. Early in the day I hide myself in a thick, thorny wood, and don’t emerge till evening. When I am alone all my conversation is with books; it is interrupted by fits of weeping, against which I struggle as best I can. But so far it is an unequal fight.”
When contrasted with the self-indulgent and sometimes slightly formulaic expressions of grief of his letters from exile, Cicero’s state of mind during this crisis reveals a new intensity of feeling, too raw and too astonishing to be publicized. He showed little self-pity; his pain was so fierce as almost to be physical. This was a true breakdown and he recognized it. He withdrew from the world like a sick animal and fought as hard as he could for recovery, for the regaining of his life.