They were too late. A small party of men, led by a Military Tribune, Popillius Laenas, whom Cicero had once successfully defended in a civil case, and a centurion, Herennius, arrived at the villa. Finding the doors bolted, they broke them down, but those inside disclaimed all knowledge of their master’s whereabouts.
Then a young freedman of Quintus named Philologus, whom Cicero had educated, told Popilius that Cicero’s litter was being carried towards the sea along a path hidden by trees. In a flanking movement, Popilius went around to the shore where he could meet the party when it came out of the woods. Meanwhile Herennius hurried along the path. Cicero heard him coming and told his servants to put down the litter. This was the end and he was no longer going to run away.
He was reclining in a characteristic posture, with his chin resting on his left hand. He had a copy of Euripides’ Medea with him, which he had been reading. He would have been familiar with this drama of bitter revenge, in which a woman kills her children to spite her faithless husband. His eyes may have fallen on lines near the beginning of the play: “But now everything has turned to hatred and where love was once deepest a cancer spreads.”
He looked terrible: he was covered in dust, his hair was long and unkempt, his face pinched and worn with anxiety. He drew aside the curtain of his litter a little and said: “I am stopping here. Come here, soldier. There is nothing proper about what you are doing, but at least make sure you cut off my head properly.” Herennius trembled and hesitated. Cicero added, supposing that the man had already killed other victims and should by now have perfected his technique: “What if you’d come to me first?” He stretched his neck as far as he could out of the litter and Herennius slit his throat. While this was being done, most of those who were standing around covered their faces. It took three sword strokes and some sawing to detach the head and then the hands were cut off.
Popilius was very proud of his achievement. He had specifically asked Antony for the commission to execute Cicero and later set up a statue of himself wearing a wreath and seated beside his victim’s severed head. Antony was greatly pleased and topped up Popilius’s advertised reward with a bonus.
The surviving accounts differ in detail but they all agree on Cicero’s bravery. He showed the same professionalism as the gladiators he had written about in Conversations at Tusculum when they received the coup de grâce in the arena: “Has even a mediocre fighter ever let out a groan or changed the expression on his face? Who of them has disgraced himself, I don’t just mean when he was on his feet, but when falling to the ground? And, once fallen, who has drawn in his neck when ordered to submit to the sword?”
The news of Cicero’s death was received variously. Antony was unreservedly delighted. His comment “Now we can end the proscription” exposes the depth of his frustration with, and hatred of, the man who on three occasions had intervened decisively and negatively in his life and who had led a relentless oratorical campaign against him. When he was in his late teens, his stepfather, Lentulus, had been arrested and executed at Cicero’s instigation. Cicero had advised the elder Curio how to break up Antony’s close friendship with his son. And through the ferocious Philippics the orator had only just failed to derail his political career. None of these things was forgotten or forgiven.
His wife, Fulvia, also felt she had grounds for joy, for she had been married to Cicero’s greatest enemy, Clodius, before graduating via Curio to the victorious Commissioner, her third and last husband. Before the dead man’s head and the right hand that had written the Philippics were nailed onto the Speakers’ Platform in the Forum, it is said that Fulvia took the head in her hands, spat on it and then set it on her knees, opened its mouth, pulled out the tongue and pierced it with hairpins.
We are not told of Atticus’s reaction; one can assume his grief but also, one suspects, that he was too discreet to reveal it. All his energies were now devoted to getting onto the best possible terms with the new regime. Pomponia, despite the fact that she and Quintus were divorced, expressed her feelings more vigorously. Antony handed the freedman Philologus over to her; she forced him to cut off his own flesh bit by bit, roast the pieces and eat them.
These terrible stories may or may not be true. Plutarch records that Tiro, the defender of Cicero’s memory, who can be presumed to have known exactly how his master died, made no reference to Philologus in his writings. However, they are not inconsistent with other recorded atrocities both at this time and on the earlier occasions during the previous century when the rule of law had broken down.
17
POSTMORTEMS
Cicero’s contemporaries and historians of the period were a little cool in their assessment of him. Livy, one of the greatest of the imperial historians, wrote:
During the long flow of success he met grave setbacks from time to time—exile, the collapse of his party, his daughter’s death and his own tragic and bitter end. But of all these disasters the only one he faced as a man was his own death.… However, weighing his virtues against his faults, he was a great and memorable man. One would need a Cicero to sing his praises.
Pollio, the governor of Spain and later an eminent historian, who knew Cicero personally, observed sharply:
This man’s works, so many and so fine, will last forever and there is no need to comment on his great abilities and capacity for hard work.… However, it is a pity that he could not have been more temperate when things went well and stronger in adversity.
This view was to hold for some time. Aufidius Bassus, a historian from the next imperial generation, observed acidly: “So died Cicero, a man born to save the Republic. For a long time he defended and administered it. Then in old age it slipped from his hands, destroyed by his own mistake—his insistence that the state would only be secure if Antony were removed. He lived for sixty-three years, always on the attack or under attack. A day did not pass when it was not in someone’s interest to see him dead.”
In Macedonia, Brutus received the news of his friend’s murder with equanimity. He said that he felt more ashamed by the cause of Cicero’s death than grief at the event itself. He had been baffled by Cicero’s willingness, after a lifetime of constitutional rectitude, to defend the Republic by its enemies’ methods. The relationship with Octavian had been unforgivable. However, he reluctantly exacted retribution by finally accepting Cicero’s advice and executing Antony’s brother, Caius, whom, as coincidence would have it, young Marcus had played an active part in capturing.
These contemporary assessments do not do full justice to their subject. In our eyes Cicero was a statesman and public servant of outstanding ability. He had administrative skills of a very high order and was the preeminent orator of his age, if not of any age. In a society where politicians were also expected to be good soldiers, he was preeminently a civilian and this makes his success all the more remarkable. That his career ended in ruins and that for long years he was a bystander at great events was not due to lack of talent but to a surplus of principle. The turning point in his career was his refusal to join Julius Caesar, Pompey and Crassus in their political alliance during the 50s. He declined the invitation to do so because it would have betrayed his commitment to the Roman constitution and the rule of law. In his eyes that was totally unacceptable.