The basic proposition was that no human enterprise could be undertaken without divine sanction. This applied to domestic households as well as to state affairs. The gods worked through natural phenomena to reveal their wishes or intentions. Signs included the flight or songs of birds, the activities of animals and thunder and lightning. It was also possible to attach significance to words or phrases casually spoken.
The College of Augurs had the sole right of interpreting the auspices. (Like the College of Pontiffs, it comprised leading personalities of the Roman establishment and Cicero became a member towards the end of his career.) An Augur would mark off a rectangular space, called a templum (the origin of the word “temple”), from which he would conduct his observations. In some places permanent templa were identified, one of which was on the citadel on the Capitol Hill. Signs from the east (usually on the Augur’s left) were held to be favorable and those from the west unfavorable. In addition, Etruscan soothsayers, or haruspices, were often called to Rome to explain apparently supernatural events and gave judgments based on an examination of the entrails of sacrificed animals.
Sanctity permeated the annual calendar, which controlled political and legal processes according to a religious framework. The calendar was divided into twelve columns and each day was marked with an F or an N, depending on whether it was fastus or nefastus—lucky or unlucky, lawful or unlawful. On the former days, business could be conducted, the law courts could sit, farmers could begin plowing or harvesting crops. Especially fortunate days were marked with a C (for comitialis), which meant that popular assemblies could meet. Some days were thought to be so unlucky that it was not even permissible to hold religious ceremonies: these included the days following the Kalends (first of a month), Nones (the ninth day before the Ides), the Ides (the thirteenth or fifteenth of the month) and the anniversaries of national disasters.
If a day was nefastus, the gods frowned on human exertion (although one was allowed to continue a task already started). An added complication was that some days were partly lucky and partly unlucky. According to a stone-carved calendar discovered at Antium, 109 days were nefasti, 192 comitiales, and 11 were mixed. The Roman year was also punctuated by numerous festivals or public holidays (some of which were one-time events caused, say, by the need to expiate some offense or sacrilege). For certain public holidays the dates were not fixed until the last minute by the priests and officeholders who managed the calendar.
The interfusion of church and state gave plenty of leeway for manipulation and chicanery by the colleges and by politicians. Julius Caesar’s colleague during his first Consulship, Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, tried to invalidate all Caesar’s legislation by withdrawing to his house to “scrutinize the heavens,” a step that theoretically brought all political activity to a halt. Popular assemblies were sometimes prevented from meeting by the simple expedient of declaring nefastus the day when they were to be called.
Public and religious ceremonies were conducted according to precise forms of words and any mistake by the officiant was held to be so unlucky that the entire ritual had to be repeated. Men in public life did their best to avoid accidental events or actions from being seen as unlucky. On a famous occasion during the civil war, Caesar tripped when disembarking from a ship on the shores of Africa and fell flat on his face. With his talent for improvisation, he spread out his arms and embraced the earth as a symbol of conquest. By quick thinking he turned a terrible omen of failure into one of victory.
Cicero came to know the Forum well during his student years. But then, alarmed by the turbulent reigns of Marius and Sulla, he stayed clear of public life. During the latter part of the 80s, he read and wrote, studied literature and philosophy and improved his knowledge and practice of public speaking. His aim was “not (as most do) to learn my trade in the Forum, but so far as possible to enter the Forum already trained.” Other ambitious young upper-class Romans were trying their hands as advocates in their early twenties, building political support and generally getting noticed; but for the time being Cicero was mostly silent and invisible.
In the summer of 81 the proscription came to an end, and life began to return to normal. Sulla turned his attention to political reform. His basic idea was to prevent the dominance of two classes of politician who, he believed, had come near to destroying the Republic. The first was the radical Tribune, like the Gracchus brothers with their dangerous obsession with land reform. The second was the powerful general willing to lead his loyal army on Rome—in other words, someone very like himself. He was determined to stop another Sulla from expropriating the state.
He increased the powers and size of the depleted Senate. Between 300 and 400 new members were appointed. He also raised the quota of Quaestors and introduced the rule that they became Senators ex officio. In order to prevent inexperienced young men from gaining power too early, he set strict age limits for officeholders. Although there were scandalous exceptions, this was the basic pattern to which the younger generation, including Cicero and Caesar, had to conform.
Tribunes lost much of their authority: their right to present legislation to the General Assembly, thus bypassing the Senate, was withdrawn. More seriously, they were debarred from holding any other public office. The Tribuneship could no longer fast-forward a political career.
New rules were introduced to control elected officials abroad. The Senate allocated provincial appointments and was expected to ensure that the most dangerously ambitious politicians were kept from the most sensitive governorships. Postings were usually to be for one year only and a new treason law regulated governors’ behavior. They were not allowed to start wars without permission, leave their provinces or take their troops into someone else’s. With a few spectacular exceptions, governors adhered to these rules.
Cicero warmly approved of Sulla’s ends but not his means; he believed that the Dictator had won “a disreputable victory in a reputable cause.” He was greatly relieved when order was restored. It meant not only that the constitution had survived but that at long last it was safe to return to the Forum and launch his career at the bar. He was twenty-five years old.
We do not know how the inexperienced advocate won his first briefs. Almost certainly his family’s clientela network was put to work and cases were found that for one reason or another were unattractive to more senior lawyers. His first extant speech dates from 81; it was a defense of a certain Publius Quinctius, who had become embroiled in a complicated dispute with his dead brother’s business partner about the ownership of a cattle farm in Transalpine Gaul. Cicero was noticed as a promising newcomer; but while his voice was powerful, it was harsh and untrained and he strained it from overuse.
All his life he suffered from first-night nerves. He acknowledged:
Personally, I am always very nervous when I begin to speak. Every time I make a speech I feel I am submitting to judgment, not only about my ability but my character and honor. I am afraid of seeming either to promise more than I can perform, which suggests complete irresponsibility, or to perform less than I can, which suggests bad faith and indifference.
On at least one occasion he is known to have broken down completely. He would work up and polish his speeches after delivery and publish them in a form which may sometimes have been substantially different from the original versions. A few times he published speeches that had never been delivered at all.
Malicious critics drew an unkinder picture. A contemporary attack on Cicero’s method in 43 (as reported, perhaps invented, by an imperial historian) is knockabout invective and not to be taken too seriously, but it has a ring of truth.
Why, you always come to the courts trembling, as if you were about to fight as a gladiator, and after uttering a few words in a meek and half-dead voice you take your leave.… Do you think anyone is ignorant of the fact that you never delivered those wonderful orations of yours that you have published but wrote them all out afterwards, like craftsmen who mold generals and cavalry leaders out of clay?
In 80 the case arose that made Cicero’s reputation. He must have hesitated before taking it on, for it touched on corruption in the Dictator’s entourage. Famous legal names had declined to have anything to do with it, fearful of Sulla’s well-known vengefulness. It took some courage for the timid young orator to accept the brief.
His client was one Sextus Roscius, who was accused of having murdered his father. It was the first trial of a capital offense since the proscription. The story Cicero presented to the jury threw a sharp light on the impact that high events in the capital had had on the lives of ordinary people. Roscius’s father, a well-to-do farmer, had paid a visit to Rome during the previous summer or autumn. One night, walking back from a dinner party, he was set upon and killed near some public baths. His son, meantime, was at their home at Ameria, a hill town to the north of Rome, looking after the family estate.
A long-standing feud existed between the victim and two fellow Amerians. According to Cicero, one of the pair happened to be in Rome and immediately sent a messenger to the other with the news of Roscius’s father’s death. This man passed the information to Chrysogonus, a powerful freedman and favorite of Sulla, then encamped with his army a hundred miles north of Ameria. A simple but effective plot was devised to get hold of the substantial Roscius estate.
The proscription lists had been closed on June 1, 81 BC, but Chrysogonus arranged for Roscius’s father’s name to be entered on it retrospectively, despite the fact that he was a well-known conservative. AS a result, all his property was confiscated and publicly auctioned. Although valued at 6,000,000 sesterces, it was knocked down to Chrysogonus for a trifling 2,000 sesterces. AS his share of the spoils, one of the Amerians was given some of Roscius’s father’s land. The remainder went to Chrysogonus, who appointed the other Amerian as his agent and business manager.
The affair caused a great deal of bad blood in Ameria, where Roscius’s father had been a respected figure, and a civic delegation was dispatched to Sulla to lay a complaint. One of the alleged conspirators was appointed to the group and he made sure that it failed to obtain a personal audience with the Dictator. Instead, the Amerians met Chrysogonus, who gave them the assurances they asked for: he would have Roscius’s father’s name removed from the proscription list and would help the son to regain possession of the dead man’s estate.
This bought the conspirators some time, but obviously their promises would have to be delivered sooner or later—and seen to be delivered. If young Roscius were somehow to come by a nasty accident in the meantime, the problem would be solved. This would not be difficult, for he was now isolated, penniless and vulnerable. After more than one attempt on his life, he realized it would be sensible to leave town and he made his way south to the comparative safety of Rome.
Foiled, Chrysogonus and his partners in crime decided on a bold course of action. In fact, if they wanted to preserve their gains, they had little other choice. Father and son had been on poor terms (even Cicero acknowledged this) and it was arranged for the young man to be accused of parricide. This was among the most serious offenses in the charge book and was one of the few crimes to attract the death penalty under Roman law. The method of execution was extremely unpleasant. An ancient legal authority described what took place: “According to the custom of our ancestors it was established that the parricide should be beaten with blood-red rods, sewn in a leather sack together with a dog [an animal despised by Greeks and Romans], a cock [like the parricide devoid of all feelings of affection], a viper [whose mother was supposed to die when it was born], and an ape [a caricature of a man], and the sack thrown into the depths of the sea or a river.”
It is difficult to judge how convincing the case against Roscius was. AS with all Cicero’s speeches at the bar, the arguments of the other side have not survived—sometimes (albeit not on this occasion) even the verdict is lost. Taken as a whole, the story Cicero tells is internally consistent. The likeliest explanation of the murder is either that Roscius was the victim of a late-night mugging, plausible enough in a city without police and street lighting, which his enemies in Ameria then opportunistically exploited—or alternatively that they arranged his assassination themselves.
Cicero’s speech appears to have been soundly based on meticulous research, but its dramatic effect derived more from its daring structure than from the evidence. He opened with a refutation of the charge of parricide. Then he shifted gear and took the offensive: his aim was to destroy the character of the two Amerians and pin the murder charge on them. Finally, and one can only imagine the gasps of surprise around the courtroom, he launched into a full-frontal assault on the Dictator’s favorite, Chrysogonus and the un-Roman excesses of his lifestyle. He, the argument went, was the real villain of the piece.
“He comes down from his mansion on the Palatine Hill,” Cicero intoned with a measured flourish before swooping in for the kill. “For his enjoyment he owns a delightful country place in the suburbs as well as some fine farms close to the city. His home is crammed with costly gold, silver and copper Corinthian and Delian dishes, including that famous pressure cooker which he recently bought at auction at so high a price that when people heard the bids called they thought a landed estate was up for sale. And that is not all. How much embossed silver, carpets and coverlets, pictures, statues, marble do you think he owns? AS much, of course, as he could pile up in one house, taken from many famous families during this age of riot and pillage.” Cicero was nothing if not a genius at character assassination. “And just look at the man himself,” he concluded, “gentlemen of the jury. You see how, with his elegantly styled hair and reeking with perfume, he floats around the Forum, an ex-slave surrounded by a crowd of citizens of Rome, you see how superior he feels himself to be to everyone else, that he alone is wealthy and powerful.”
The court burst into loud applause and Roscius was acquitted. (Unfortunately, the future fate of the players in the drama is unknown.) Cicero had scored a brilliant victory and in one bound joined the front rank of Roman orators. However, the achievement was not without risk.
Cicero insisted that he was not attacking Sulla, who (he claimed) knew nothing about the case, but it was hard to read the speech other than as a critique of the regime. The Dictator was in a position to take revenge on an impertinent young advocate if he wanted to do so. Soon after Cicero compounded the offense by taking on another case with political overtones, that of a woman from Arretium who challenged Sulla’s withdrawal of her Roman citizenship.
In any event, the Dictator took no action against Cicero. Perhaps he could not be bothered to intervene in a minor matter of this kind; he was beginning to lose interest in the exercise of power and withdrew into private life in the following year.
The chief result of Cicero’s defense of Roscius was a flood of briefs. In the months that followed he brought a rapid succession of cases to court—as he recalled, “smelling somewhat of midnight oil.” He was soon suffering severely from overwork.
He did, however, make time to find a wife. This would help him stabilize and enhance his finances and, if he chose well, extend his political connections. It seems that in or around 79, at the age of twenty-seven, Cicero married Terentia. Apparently much younger than he was, she came from a wealthy, perhaps aristocratic family and brought with her a dowry of 480,000 sesterces. This was a substantial fortune, well beyond the sum of 400,000 sesterces required for entry into the equestrian order. She owned woods and pastureland, probably near Cicero’s villa at Tusculum. Little is known about her background, except that her half-sister, Fabia, was a Vestal Virgin. She had a strong character, as Plutarch observed: “Terentia was never at any time a shrinking type of woman; she was bold and energetic by nature, ambitious, and, as Cicero says himself, was more inclined to take a part in his public life than to share with him any of her domestic responsibilities.”
The traditional Roman wedding was a splendid affair designed to dramatize the bride’s transfer from the protection of her father
’s household gods to those of her husband. Originally, this literally meant that she passed from the authority of her father to her husband, but at the end of the Republic women achieved a greater degree of independence, and the bride remained formally in the care of a guardian from her blood family. In the event of financial and other disagreements, this meant that her interests were more easily protected. Divorce was easy, frequent and often consensual, although husbands were obliged to repay their wives’ dowries.
The bride was dressed at home in a white tunic, gathered by a special belt which her husband would later have to untie. Over this she wore a flame-colored veil. Her hair was carefully dressed with pads of artificial hair into six tufts and held together by ribbons. The groom went to her father’s house and, taking her right hand in his, confirmed his vow of fidelity. An animal (usually a ewe or a pig) was sacrificed in the atrium or a nearby shrine and an Augur was appointed to examine the entrails and declare the auspices favorable. The couple exchanged vows after this and the marriage was complete. A wedding banquet, attended by the two families, concluded with a ritual attempt to drag the bride from her mother’s arms in a pretended abduction.
A procession was then formed which led the bride to her husband’s house, holding the symbols of housewifely duty, a spindle and distaff. She took the hand of a child whose parents were living, while another child, waving a hawthorn torch, walked in front to clear the way. All those in the procession laughed and made obscene jokes at the happy couple’s expense.
When the bride arrived at her new home, she smeared the front door with oil and lard and decorated it with strands of wool. Her husband, who had already arrived, was waiting inside and asked for her praenomen or first name. Because Roman women did not have one and were called only by their family name, she replied in a set phrase: “Wherever you are Caius, I will be Caia.” She was then lifted over the threshold. The husband undid the girdle of his wife’s tunic, at which point the guests discreetly withdrew. On the following morning she dressed in the traditional costume of married women and made a sacrifice to her new household gods.
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