Presidential Address
1997
Chicago, Illinois
1. Introduction
I imagine there is no-one who has not
approached this presidential duty with trepidation and in a mood of
humility. One re-reads the innovative scholarship, the displays of
wisdom and wit, the magisterial statements of the lasting value of
our subject-matter and discussions of contemporary currents in
education, and then comes the Bertie Woosterish reaction that it
would be well to enter a Nolle
prosequi. Since there is no precedent for
that, let me thank you, my fellow-members, for the honour you have
done me in putting me in this awkward position.
In choosing to talk about Cicero I am indulging an interest which
goes back to my school-days. I remember with gratitude my teachers
who introduced me to the speeches and letters. I am also implicitly
paying tribute to generations of scholars who have established and
commented on the texts and to the historians who have sorted out the
facts. A recent surge of interest in Cicero and his period would get
nowhere without the brilliant and meticulous work of these pioneers.
In this forum let me name only Bob Broughton and Shackleton Bailey,
whose magisterial edition of Cicero’s letters—published
between 1965 and 1980—will bear copious fruit in years to come
in both social andpolitical history. Such is the process of
generation: we graft fruit-trees for our
grandchildren.2
It is my hope that, just as much of what I have to say will be seen
to depend on the work of other scholars—and some is in similar
vein to Bob Kaster’s 1996 address on “The Shame of the
Romans”—so it may impinge from time to time on the varied
scholarly interests of the individual members of the audience. For
the moment you other individuals are all performing the role of
audience. The individual attempts to present her own views and engage
with other points of view, to do what seems to be expected in a
particular context, in a particular series of occasions and before an
ever-changing but somehow continuing community of scholars. Lonely
grappling with material, self-exposure, discussion, learning from
others, risking criticism and stating disagreement, these things
define what we do, in scholarship and in “real life.”
There is also an overriding concern to illustrate a truth of which we
are all convinced, that the study of the past, and of texts long
claimed as “classic,” is as relevant today as it has ever
been to the conduct of our lives and to our evaluation of our
experience. Rigorous scholarship elucidates complex texts; through
them we re-explore both the human condition and the individual human
being and the society in which he or she operated. This does not lead
us to simple moral lessons or to easy conclusions about continuity of
social norms and mores. Much as we might wish to argue that the Romans are
directly responsible for modern Italy, I am regretfully sceptical.
But examining Roman texts may enrich our understanding of the
constant negotiation between an individual and others and a whole
society, about how to assert, interpret and apply in practice what
are said to be accepted moral norms. The Romans are interesting both
because they are like us and because they are unlike us. Cicero is
interesting both because he is a Roman and human and because he is a
unique individual, flawed and selfish, loving and brave, moved by
public opinion and by private conscience.
2. A Continuum
This evening I want to do three things:
first, to explore how an individual feels and presents himself as he
focusses on his innermost feelings, as he reacts to other
people’s reactions to him and as he presents himself to
intimates whom he knows well and to the wider circles of those who
know him; second, to view this activity in its physical context,
especially the town house and the forum; and, third, to set both the
individual and his environment within Roman morality. After some
preliminary observations about the individual, I shall consider moral
attitudes to home and family, and then go on to ideas of natural
affection and duty in the family and to a case study which will I
hope suggest how moral conflict might be experienced between
affection and duties and between the individual and society.
There is an understandable tendency to “compartmentalise”
when we confront our evidence and try to say something intelligible
about it. So we may find a book with individual chapters on Cicero
the philosopher, Cicero the politician, Cicero the orator and Cicero
the man.3 But
that isn’t what it feels like when you are Cicero. He plays many
roles and stands in different relationships to many people, but his
personality is unsplit. Visualise him in the physical world. Picture
him moving from bed to atrium to vestibule and down the hill to the
forum, into law court or Senate house or temple. Wherever he goes, he
cannot escape the public role that he incurred by embarking on a
career as orator and senator. Conversely, during a debate in the
Senate or the storming of Pindenissum, he is still the son of Marcus
Cicero and the father of another Marcus. So much is obvious and we
could say similar things about ourselves. The individual’s
experience is a continuum. Let us think of this in relation to
physical space, indoors and outdoors. In Roman thinking about the
house, public and private join up and overlap. The threshold of the
house does not mark a barrier between public and private worlds, but
a marker over which household members and non-members pass to go in
or out.4
Inside and outside the home, an individual comes under observation.
For instance, Vitruvius makes it clear how the town house of the
powerful man was penetrated by an assortment of people other than
family, friends or staff. He describes the requirements which the
architect must bear in mind. Such a house must have spacious
accommodation for morning visitors (salutatores) and those attending
“public deliberations and private trials and
judgments.”5 The
house was the politician’s headquarters and
office.6
Vitruvius distinguishes public reception rooms (communia), into which even the
common people could come without an invitation, and those for which
you would require an invitation, baths, dining-rooms and
cubicula. Cicero
prided himself on not secluding himself in his cubiculum, but on making himself
accessible, whether as candidate or official, in the more public
areas.7
His strategy, he claimed, was to make himself visible to the
sovereign people, whose eyes were sharper than their ears. He lived
where they could see him, especially after his consulship when he
bought the Palatine house.8
This was on the site of the house of the tribune Drusus, whose
architect had offered to build him a house that could not be
overlooked. Drusus retorted that he wanted to be overlooked and
inspected.9 The
house, Cicero emphasises, could be seen from almost everywhere in the
city.10
The honest senator exposed himself to examination. Concealment bred
conjecture. What could be going on in the house of Piso? The sound of
music and singing suggested that his colleague Gabinius was holding
orgies. Piso’s house was relatively quiet, the haunt of Greeks,
including Philodemus. Cicero is free to find hostile
interpretations.11
The speeches elsewhere suggest that there would be observation and
comment about who went in and out of people’s houses.12
And what?
Consumer goods went in.13
Music and cooking smells emanated from the house.14
So did gossip: the Commentariolum
says gossip by habitués of the
house is inevitable, so the politician had better try to make it
favorable.15
From such information a reputation is built up.16
Modern anthropological studies of the layout of villages and how
social and moral status is continuously assessed show a similar
pattern.17
Romans, a source specifically tells us, scrutinised the vegetable
patch and drew conclusions about the mistress of the
house.18
They would judge a man by the physical aspect of his house: was the
degree of luxury and grandeur precisely appropriate to his social
standing? Did a senator welcome callers at their convenience rather
than his own? Were his slaves well-mannered and well turned out? Were
his callers people of good repute? Did people go in and out openly by
the front door, or was there a lot of slipping in and out at the
back? What went on at entertainments for invited guests?
The house, however, though permeable, was private property. Public
and private are naturally contrasted. The Romans, like us, speak
routinely of “at home and abroad,” domi forisque, literally
“at home and out of doors.”19
For a member of the ruling class, the contrast is often between
private and public, his domestic and official life.20
Domus and
forum are
opposed.21
The locus of family life was the house, or houses. The house is
naturally spoken of in the same breath as the family or
interchangeably with it. The equation came naturally, since
domus could mean
the physical house or the family.22
There is a strong sense in Cicero of home as a refuge from the
troubles of the world. He says of his Tusculan villa, “in that
one place alone can we rest from all toils and
annoyances.”23 A
senator, it is clear, might expect that villas would give him a
chance to get away from the constant demands put upon him by clients
and friends at his town headquarters.24
We shall see later how Cicero could find comparative seclusion in the
country.
The house is both contrasted with the outside world and seen as part
of a continuum with that world. On the immortal Nones of December 63
Cicero bravely told the Senate that he was prepared to sacrifice
himself to secure the safety and happiness of the Senate and Roman
People. His eye moves from the great symbolic public places to the
individual’s most private place, and back again to the curule
chair from which he has just risen and before which he is standing.
“"I am the consul for whom neither the forum, which contains all
equity, nor the Campus, consecrated by consular auspices, nor the
Senate house, to which the races of the world come for help, nor
house, the common refuge of all, nor bed, the place granted us for
repose, nor this seat of honour has ever been free from ambush and
peril of death."”25
Both the buildings and open spaces in which a Roman exercised his
political rights and the home which was the focus of his private life
were sacred. Both domus and urbs had Lares
and Penates.
What is holier and more strongly fortified by all religious awe than the house of each and every citizen? Here are the altars, hearths, Penates, here the sacred things, reverence, rituals. This refuge is so holy to all that it is never right to snatch anyone away from there. (Dom. 109)26
A man feels at home with his own household, domestici, who include kin, staff and various hangers-on, such as intellectuals. In a letter to Atticus, Cicero explicitly contrasts close kin and friends, including those who did not usually live in the same household, with other people. He missed the company of his brother, who was in Asia at the time, and of Atticus. In Shackleton Bailey’s translation:
And you whose talk and advice has so often lightened my worry and vexation of spirit, the partner in my public life and intimate of all my private concerns, the sharer of all my talk and plans, where are you? I am so utterly forsaken that my only moments of relaxation are those I spend with my wife, my little daughter, and my darling Marcus. My brilliant, worldly friendships may make a fine show in public, but in the home they are barren things. My house is crammed of a morning, I go down to the forum surrounded by droves of friends, but in all the multitude I cannot find one with whom I can pass an unguarded joke or fetch a private sigh. (Att. 18/1.18.1, 20 Jan. 60)27
3. Philosophical and Public Statements on Family
The family is at the heart of Roman morality. The theory endorsed and transmitted by Cicero in his work on the Duty of Man, which as Tully’s Offices had a good run as a prescribed text for centuries, is that the state is rooted in the family and the family in natural instinct.
Because the urge to reproduce is an instinct common to all animals, society originally consists of the pair, next of the pair with their children, then one house and all things in common. This is the beginning of the city and the seed-bed of the state. (Off. 1.54)28
An individual owes a primary duty to kin. This was the completely uncontroversial view of nearly all writers in classical antiquity. As philosophers explored the origins and functions of communities, both households and states consisting of people linked by affection (philoi), a humbler literature of manuals of good behaviour had preached proper relations between husband and wife, parent and child and master and slave.29 There was a similar duty to friends and to the city. Where there are duties, there must be conflicts of duty.
I shall trace briefly now three themes in the rhetorical treatment of the family: its association with city and state; emotional attachment to family, especially children; and assessment of the character of friend or foe by examining behavior to kin.
First, the family is constantly linked with the city, as the philosophical consensus would lead us to expect. When a Roman imagines the physical city of Rome, he may speak of templa and tecta, the dwellings of gods and humans.30 When he thinks of human society, he moves from the household to the community of citizens.31
Natural family affection is the second theme. The family is invoked in speeches to heighten the audience’s emotion.32 In forensic speeches the orator elicits sympathy for the relatives of the accused, especially (where possible) children or defenceless females.33 In political speeches, there is often an appeal to the hearers’ instinct to protect their children. The old appeals to the need to defend the status quo against political opponents, who are defined as people who would act like foreign foes, are couched in terms of defence of hearth, home, fortunes, household gods, wives and children.34 Affection between family-members is held up as the social norm.
How strong an emotion one’s own family ought to inspire is made very clear from Cicero’s speeches on his return from over a year’s exile. A man so tough that he could calmly bear separation from his family would demonstrate insensitivity. For love of one’s own family is demanded by common humanity: we naturally hold them dear (cari) and find them agreeable (iucundi).
Could I…deny my humanity and repudiate the common feelings of our nature? I would not have done a praiseworthy deed nor conferred any benefit on the commonwealth, if I could have lost with equanimity the things I left for the sake of the commonwealth, and I would have thought such toughness of mind (like that of a body which does not feel a burn) an insensitivity, not a virtue. To take on such mental agony, for one man to suffer while the city still stands the things which happen to the conquered when a city is captured, and to see oneself torn from the embrace of one’s family, the house taken stone from stone, one’s fortunes plundered, to lose one’s very country for the sake of country, to be despoiled of the glorious privileges conferred by the Roman People, to be hurled down from the highest level of dignity, to see one’s enemies in the dress of magistrates bidding like undertakers to perform the funeral before one’s death has even been bewailed to undergo all this for the sake of saving citizens’ lives and that when you are present and sorrowing, not such a philosopher as those who care for nothing, but loving your own people and things as common humanity demands: that is glorious and godlike fame. For a man who with equanimity for the sake of the commonwealth abandons things which he never thought dear and pleasant, demonstrates no remarkable benevolence towards the commonwealth; but a man who leaves for the sake of the commonwealth things from which he is agonisingly torn, truly loves his country, whose survival he puts before his love of home and family. (Dom. 97–98)
Cicero’s references to his family in speeches are often intended to evoke fellow-feeling from his auditors.35 Simultaneously, he is representing himself as a good family man.
Thirdly, play can be made with evaluations of how well or badly other people perform their duty to their family. The invectives are more memorable than the eulogies. Verres fails in his duty to his son by taking him into bad company; Sassia is the complete opposite of a loving mother to her son; Clodius not only commits incest but tramples on a sister’s property-rights; Antony parades through Italy with an actress who usurps the status of a wife.36 Such people are not to be trusted with other people’s nearest and dearest.
Pietas towards relations was the best possible indication of probity in all social dealings, including politics. I quote from the Defence of Plancius:
I omit those things which are less in the limelight but are certainly praised when they are publicised, how he lives with his people, first of all with his parent—for in my judgement pietas is the foundation of all virtues. He venerates him like a god—and indeed a parent is not very different from a god to his children—and loves him like a companion, a brother, a contemporary.... These are the solid and clear proofs, judges, these are the signs of a probity which is not painted with the cosmetics of public display but branded by the private marks of truth. When we canvass and court the people, it’s an easy thing; it can be looked at but not handled; it shows up well at a distance, it isn’t shaken out and scrutinised, it can’t be picked up in the hand.... He is a man distinguished both in external and private matters.... (Planc. 29–30)37
In combination, these three themes allow the
orator to deploy and exploit the powerful idea that a man’s
public behaviour will be all of a piece with his conduct in the
private sphere. “His wife can’t trust him, why should
I?”38
4. Private Statements on Family, Especially on
or to Cicero’s Own
There is no inconsistency between the
attitudes to family paraded in the speeches and the reactions of the
letters, which we will normally suppose to be closer to what Cicero
himself thought or felt. Cicero is unfailingly courteous in his
references to the kin of his correspondents39
and displays affection, for instance, to Atticus’ wife and
daughter.40
The welfare of his own family is a concern in letters to Atticus as
well as to Terentia.41
His affection for his children is a constant theme. His sensitivity to the charm of the very young cannot be doubted.42 Here, I want to concentrate on the adult Tullia, not because I assume that he loved her better than young Marcus, but because the available sources tell us more about her.43 The emotional and moral content of the relationship will emerge most clearly when we reach the surviving evidence on the father’s reactions to his daughter’s death.
It is clear that his relationship with her was very important to him. In 49, for instance, thanking Atticus for his attentiveness to Tullia, he had commented on her virtues:
Her courage is amazing. How bravely she bears public disaster and family trials! How noble she was when we parted! She shows
love and sympathy in the highest degree. But she wants me to do what is right and to be well spoken of. I must stop talking about this, in case I show too much sympathy for myself. (Att. 199/10.8.9, 2 May 49, Cumae)
5. Duty to Family: Deeds, Not Words
Moral questions arise most distinctly in
crises. Cicero’s reflections on what he owed his family, and
some account of what he did for them, come out best in times of
difficulty. The key passage on duty to wife and children comes in an
emotional letter to Terentia during Cicero’s exile. He makes it
clear that his duty included a duty to look after his family. He is
ashamed that he has not shown courage and proper care
(diligentia) to
his excellent wife and adorable children. It is his fault they are
suffering.
I am overcome by grief, my dear Terentia. But my own sufferings do not torture me more than yours and those of all the rest of you. But I am more wretched than you, very wretched as you are, because this disaster is common to both of us, but the blame is all mine.... I am overcome by pain and shame: I’m ashamed because I did not show manly courage and due care for my excellent wife and sweet children.... As long as you have hope, I shall not fail, lest everything should seem to have been ruined by my fault. (Fam. 9/14.3.1–2 to Terentia, 29 Nov. 58, Dyrrhachium)
A major part of his duty to Tullia, as he perceived it, lay in arranging a suitable marriage for her44 and then in helping support the marriage, on the one hand both by treating her husband as a member of the family and by continuing his old relationship with her, and, on the other hand, by conscientious attention to his financial responsibilities towards her.45 This is shown most clearly in her third marriage, to Dolabella. The marriage had been arranged in 50 by Tullia and Terentia during Cicero’s absence in Cilicia and without his knowledge, though he had (if we can trust what he said in his own defence to Ap. Claudius Pulcher) given them a blanket authorisation and he certainly gave retrospective approval.46 Known to be wild, Dolabella lived up to his track-record. We can distinguish three strains on the marriage: Dolabella’s sexual infidelity, the fact that he was in Caesar’s camp and Cicero in Pompey’s, and Cicero’s own financial problems. Of these, Dolabella’s adherence to Caesar could have worked as an insurance-policy, and perhaps did to some extent, but was a political embarrassment to Cicero, especially when Dolabella adopted measures which ran counter to Cicero’s advertised beliefs.
As for the third, Cicero was responsible for paying the dowry in three instalments on July 1 of 49, 48 and 47. In March 48, Cicero accused himself of being to blame for his negligence towards his daughter: he had not got the second instalment available.47 Divorce was discussed, between Atticus, Tullia, and presumably Terentia in Rome and Cicero in Greece, but it appeared too dangerous and the idea was shelved.48 Pompey’s crash, the defection of his brother and his own humiliating return to Brindisi depressed Cicero further. By his birthday on January 3rd 47 he was feeling suicidal about his position and how he had failed Tullia.49
Even a visit from her in the summer did nothing to raise his spirits and he accused himself:
I have not taken the pleasure I ought to take in my remarkable daughter’s courage, humanity and love. On the contrary, I am overcome by incredible grief at the realisation that such a human being has such an unhappy lot and that this is happening through no wrongdoing of her own, but by my grievous fault. (Att. 228/11.17.1, 12/13 June 47, Brindisi)
Although he was clear that the final decision to
divorce was up to Tullia,50
Cicero focussed on his own duty and shortcomings: his concern for her
happiness and his own political and financial mistakes, which
imperilled her position.51
He never blames her for picking Dolabella and he is ready to
sacrifice luxury and capital to meet his obligations. He agonises
over his handling of the situation.52
Tullia’s patient and easy-going nature is constantly praised.
Tullia was eventually briefly reconciled with her husband, but
divorce followed soon after.53
6. Assessment of the Behavior of Others
People’s conduct of their family
affairs often provoked curiosity and comment. Marriage and divorce,
being relatively public, could be analysed. Kin, friends, social
equals and even the Roman people took an interest in observable
behaviour, inside or outside the privacy of the house, at any
crisis.
How to bear or display grief at the death of a relation was not only a problem for the bereaved but a topic of interest to people outside the family. It may offer a case-study of appropriate behaviour. Ethics, social convention, etiquette; ideas about privacy, ideas about the example to be set by people in public life; natural feeling, the character of the individual; duty to the dead; concern, interference, observation, sympathy, gossip, malice—all come into play.
The topic to be discussed is the tension between
what people actually felt and what they or others thought they ought
to feel and the consequent conflicts about behaviour.
7. Grief and Mourning
Birth and death are the only two
experiences we all share. We confront our own death alone. The death
of a parent or child, perhaps even more than that of a husband or
wife, makes us think of our own mortality. Emotion runs high. Moral
questions become urgent. Natural death will tend to occur at home,
perhaps in one’s bed, privately.
How a family copes with a death is also in part public knowledge. Like birth or marriage, it may be formally announced and officially registered. The body must be moved from the house and disposed of, with or without formal ritual.
How should a person react when a close relative dies? This eternal human question was much treated by ancient philosophers. How Roman society as a whole thought people should act, in the disposal of the body, in the transient rituals of mourning and the funeral or in lasting commemoration on stone, is documented in literature on deaths and funerals, in tombs and epitaphs. When Cicero addressed the question for himself in theoretical works, he (typically) sought out Roman exemplars of bereaved parents. When he experienced grief himself, most notably at the death of Tullia, he examined his conscience and considered what other people thought of his reactions.54
The philosophers recommended iron self-control. Roman etiquette prescribed a limited amount of ritualised lamentation by women, followed by formal mourning for a set period. The rules for men were different, because they were expected to be involved in public service. But nine days from the death marked a ritual period of withdrawal from normal life for both sexes, ending in a funeral feast. In real life the reactions of bereaved men, at least, were scrutinised, partly in sympathy, to see how they were coping, and partly to see how they lived up to an ideal of restraint in the display of grief and in ability to get back to “business as usual.”
Caesar, for example, evinced proper self-control when his only child, Julia, died in 54. Quintus reported on Caesar’s deportment to his brother, who replies “About the virtus and gravitas which Caesar showed in his terrible grief, I derived great pleasure from your letter.”55
I think most people in our society who have experienced the loss of a close relative will have felt a numbness and disbelief in the first shock, followed by turbulent emotions, including some which conscience censors as inappropriate, such as anger at the dead person for leaving us. Psychiatrists distinguish three stages in normal grief, first “denial,” then depression, and finally a return to a stable state, with sad thoughts of the dead, but without the violence of the earlier emotions. Six to eight months are considered the normal period for the “grief response.” I quote a convenient modern authority:
Initially the bereaved feel numb. They find it impossible to comprehend the full consequences of what has happened, and thus may appear so emotionally unaffected by the death as to seem callous. Psychiatrists call this period the stage of denial, and it can quite normally last for a week or two.
The second stage includes all the signs and symptoms traditionally associated with depression. During this period, the bereaved person is preoccupied with memories of the person who has died, talks incessantly about them....
The bereaved sufferer has a poor appetite, weight loss, waves of sadness and insomnia accompanied by night-time tears. They withdraw from their social life, losing interest in many of the activities they previously enjoyed....
Although many feel guilt in the second stage of grief, others may feel anger. This may be directed at the person who has died. “How could she leave me with all these problems?”...
Within four or five months, in the normal grief response, the depressed mood lightens....56
Some of this, at least, seems to reflect universal human emotions.
The fact that Tullia died (in February 45) as a result of bearing Dolabella’s child must have increased Cicero’s feeling of guilt that he had not taken a firm line earlier.57. His bitter grief at his virtuous daughter’s death was entirely natural. He and Terentia had recently divorced, his new marriage to Publilia turned out to be a rash experiment, his relationship with his brother was impaired, his son was beginning a more independent life. Apart from Atticus, Tullia was the person closest to him. His way of coping with grief was to avoid company as far as was possible to a man of his station, to devote himself to philosophical composition, and to attempt to carry out what he regarded as a duty to the dead woman, the creation of a shrine where people would remember her.58 He recognised that Atticus thought the scheme a mistake (error), but both of them realised that it was a great comfort and consolation to him. He regarded himself as bound to carry it out, as by the strongest of possible oaths, and if he did not do it he would be guilty of scelus.59 In the event, it was unexpectedly difficult to find the perfect site and the scheme seems to have been quietly dropped. Tullia’s true memorial was the philosophical work which had occupied Cicero’s mind more constructively.60
Cicero’s series of daily letters to Atticus in the spring of 45 reflect his emotions and his activities at the time. We lack a contemporary record of the early period of his mourning, between Tullia’s death in February and the first surviving letter, from Astura, on 7 March.61 More than half of this first letter in the series is on business matters. This section includes a request to Atticus to excuse him to others from engagements on the score of ill-health. He preferred not to allege mourning (luctus).62 In between, there is a restrained but moving account of his mood and occupations:
Brutus’ letter of condolence was sensible and friendly and made me weep. The solitude of this place is less irritating to me than the crowds there. The only person I miss is you. I can occupy myself in reading and writing as easily here as if I were at home. The pain (ardor) presses on me as before and stays. I do not indulge it but fight against it. (Att. 250/12.13.1, 7 March 45, Astura)63
It is clear that Cicero is past the first stage of numbness and disbelief. Subsequent letters maintain the usual standards of concern for others and for attention to business.64 Atticus urged Cicero to "get over it."
In wanting me to recreate myself from this grief, you are my constant friend as ever. You can bear witness that I have not failed myself. When I was at your house I read everything that anyone has ever written on how to diminish grief. But all consolation is defeated by pain. I have, however, done something which no-one ever did before me. I have consoled myself through writing. I will send you the book, if the clerks have copied it. I can tell you that there is no consolation like it. I write for days at a time, not that I get any good by it, but for the moment I am distracted—not, of course, enough (for intense feeling presses on me), but I find release and I do my utmost to repair not my mind but my countenance itself, if I can. When I do this, I sometimes think I am doing wrong (peccare) and sometimes that I would be doing wrong if I did not do it. The solitude helps me a little, but it would be much better for me if you were here. This is the only reason I have to leave here, for it is all right considering the bad circumstances. But that too gives me pain. You cannot be the same towards me. For the things you loved have perished. (Att. 251/12.14.3, 8 March 45, Astura)65
Next day, Cicero reports that he was talking to no-one and spent his days from morning to evening hidden in a wood. He conversed with books, but this was interrupted by fits of weeping.66 The following day he continues in the same vein. Atticus would be the first person who would be able to help him, and he longed to see him, but ruled out being in Atticus’ house or his own house in Rome.67 On the 11th, he asked for Atticus’ approval and help about the scheme for the shrine, which he had already discussed with him. His memories pained him as if they bit him. Writing had been like applying a fomentation to his wound, but now he found solitude best. He wanted to consecrate her (she is not named) with Greek and Latin memorials (apparently inscriptions). It might irritate his wound, but he felt bound as it were by a vow and promise. “And the long time when I shall not exist moves me more than this little span, which yet seems too long to me. For though I have tried everything, I have nothing which gives me peace.”68
After a number of letters on business and on the shrine, he writes again on the 15th, replying to a report of criticisms from others that he did not dissimulate his pain enough. He protests that he was totally occupied in reading and writing, and this is backed up by his request for prosopographical information about whether a certain son died in the lifetime of his father and whether a certain mother died in her son’s lifetime or later.69 He protests that criticism from others about his absence from the forum meant little to him: he cared only for the good opinion of Atticus. His research and writing on bereavement showed that he was a brave patient, who took his medicine.70 He wanted lonely places, but if he had to be in Rome was determined to conceal his pain from all but Atticus. He did not want to be in the Caesarian forum, and, as Atticus said, his town house was like the forum. But what did he want with a town house? “I am dead, dead, Atticus, and have been for a long time, but now I can admit it, because the one thing which kept me here is lost to me.”71
Solitude continues to be his chief wish, although he can also say that he does not want to be away from Atticus and others.72 Atticus encouraged him to return to his normal life. Cicero explains that he had done his duty in mourning the commonwealth, when he had Tullia as a refuge (ubi acquiescerem). Now he could not live that life again. He put his own conscience before other people’s gossip. His self-consolation had reduced his overt grief (maeror) but not his inner pain.73 He left Astura at the end of March, and went to a villa of Atticus’ outside Rome.74 This ends the first period of second-stage mourning documented in the letters.
While he was there, he received a letter from Ser. Sulpicius Rufus. Sulpicius wrote from Athens to administer consolation as a friend, expressing his own sense of loss (but pointing out sensibly that relatives were not well able to subdue their tears enough to console each other). He produces the usual reflections on human mortality, puts the loss of “one little woman” into the context of losses in the civil war and of the short lives of famous cities and argues that she would have had little more to live for under a dictatorship. She had had a successful life, which ended at the right moment. Cicero is to remember he is Cicero and demonstrate his philosophy. All pain is softened with time, but Cicero must return to public life without waiting for time to heal him. It would be disgraceful (turpe) for him to wait, and he owes it to her not to. “If the dead feel at all, she had such love for you and such dutifulness to all her family, that she assuredly does not want you to do this.”75 Fresh from his intensive reading, Cicero can have found little new here, but who can be original in a letter of condolence?
Sulpicius brings the usual consolation to Cicero, that men are mortal, that the dead knew happiness and loved their mourners, that the pain will grow less and that one must be brave. Being as educated and more eloquent than Sulpicius, Cicero is able to rebut his argument. He finds that the retirement from public life forced on him by Caesar’s victory means that he has no distraction from grief. “I am overcome sometimes and can scarcely withstand my pain, because I do not have the solaces that others, whose examples (exempla) I put before myself, had in similar misfortunes.” He names various men whose grief for their sons was assuaged by their position in the state, dignitas. But he has lost all the honours for which he had worked so hard.
The one solace I had left has been snatched from me. My thoughts were not distracted by the affairs of my friends nor by taking care of the commonwealth; it did not please me to do anything in the forum; I could not bear to look at the Senate house; I thought—and I was right—that I had lost all the fruits of my hard work and good fortune. But when I realised that I shared this with you and some others and when I broke myself in and forced myself to bear this tolerantly, I had a person with whom I could take refuge, with whom I could find repose, in whose conversation and sweetness I laid aside all cares and pains. But now with this deep wound, even those things which seemed to have healed have broken open again. For then, when I came back miserable from public life, a house welcomed me and cheered me. But now when I grieve I cannot take refuge in public life and find repose in its good things. So I am absent both from home and forum, because my home cannot now console me for the grief I feel about the commonwealth, nor can the commonwealth console me for my private grief. (Fam. 249/4.6.2–3, mid-April 45, Atticus’ villa near Nomentum)76
On going back to Astura in May, nearly restored to himself, he resumed his correspondence with Atticus and his writing, rebutting strongly criticisms of his absence. He was not broken in mind, for he was writing on difficult subjects and his occupation was worthy of a learned man.77
You say you are afraid that my influence and authority may be reduced by this grieving of mine. I do not understand what people can reprove or demand. That I do not feel pain? Who can? That I not be prostrated? Was anyone ever less so? While your house gave me relief, did I refuse anyone admittance? Who came who was offended? I left you for Astura. Those happy people who reprove me cannot read as much as I have written. How well I’ve done it doesn’t matter. (Att. 281/12.40.2–3, May 45, Astura)78
Atticus was not the only friend to worry about it. Lucceius, in a kindly letter, approved of Cicero for seeking solitude and engaging in scholarship, but hoped he was not giving in to tears and sadness as he had before he left Rome.79 Cicero replied thanking Lucceius for his love—“I would have called it pleasant, had I not lost that word for ever”—and excusing himself on the grounds that the remedies he ought to have had for his wound did not exist. His friends were dead or had become insensitive (except for people like Lucceius); instead of enjoying in old age what they had achieved, they were ashamed to be alive; even books did not work as a refuge now he was despoiled of private and public distinctions and solaces, for they kept him from the refuge of death. His home could not delight him; he was repelled by the times, men, forum and Senate house.80 But he now met Atticus’ unusually stern reprimands with the admission that he was probably at fault (vitium or error). The shrine was still a comfort to him.81 Planning to leave for Rome or Tusculum, either of which would be full of memories, he claimed to have crushed his feelings and perhaps conquered.82
It is at this point that he admits he cannot sleep and has been writing a vast amount at night. Even Tusculum would not bring back any more thoughts than those which exhaust him day and night. If he is ever to go back there, it cannot matter whether he goes now or in ten years’ time, for his grief will still be the same, though it may be less apparent to others.83 The subject of his suffering and the subject of the shrine taper off, though he writes at least daily until June. Life seems to return to normal, though sadness resurfaces because he has nothing to do and is nothing in private or public life.84 After his return to Tusculum about 9 July, he was still working on philosophy, but also conducting a busy social life.85 We may perhaps regard him as having reached the threshold of a return to normal life, the third stage.
The second stage of mourning for Cicero did not mean he was sunk in hopeless depression. His mind was still focussed on Tullia and he suffered from insomnia and a revulsion from company and his usual pursuits. He displays, however, all his usual precision of style and alertness to political and financial matters. His meticulousness about historical facts remains. He is not dead to the demands of friendship nor does he rebuff even tedious callers. There are traces of humour. He is able to act as he thinks right and to negotiate the demands he experiences from philosophical theory, Roman convention, his “public” and the friends who represent them to him. He both feels and controls deep grief, both finds philosophy and conventional morality wanting and takes them into account, both listens to his friends and argues with them. Dealing with grief and mourning in private and public is a tightrope act.
As I finished drafting my piece on “Tullia Dead,” at the end of August 1997, news came through of the sudden death of another divorced mother in her 30s, prominently placed in national and international society. The question of appropriate mourning became urgent and painfully controversial. Restraint, custom, the convention that the immediate family are allowed a time to mourn in private, were opposed by a desire for public demonstrations of grief, rituals which evolved and in which more and more people participated as they were publicised. In the end some balance was perhaps achieved between free and public expression of emotion and the comforting solemnities of traditional ritual.
There is no neat fit between the public events of 1997 and the evidence I have been looking at from Cicero’s semi-private documentation of his grief and mourning. It is interesting to note that classicists were not slow to see parallels with Rome. Peter Jones compared the takeover of Caesar’s funeral by elements of the Roman plebs, who cremated him in the forum instead of outside the city.86 He might have added the precedent of Clodius, for whom the Senate house was turned into a pyre.87 It was the people who demanded too that Pompey’s wife and Caesar’s daughter should be buried in the Campus Martius.88 Others noticed the reactions to the news of the death of Germanicus abroad, when the populace anticipated formal public mourning by deserting the forum and shutting themselves up indoors, so that there were silence and groaning everywhere. It happens that that painful occasion has been the subject of a joint seminar with the AIA at this meeting, of at least one individual paper, and of an article in the January issue of Omnibus.89
8. Conclusion
In contemporary history we have seen what
was neatly called “the current mood of compulsory populist
emotionalism” exert an influence in changing protocol and the
public behavior of public figures.90
For Cicero, conversely, we see pressure to appear playing his
accustomed role in the forum and in his town house, to go back to
work and to conceal his grief. As he said a few months later in
another context, “What a great and difficult thing it is to
maintain in public life the mask of a leader, which must be a slave
to the hearts as well as the eyes of our
fellow-citizens.”91
As human beings and scholars, we must and can
bring our training, scholarly objectivity, subjective assessment and
sympathy to bear on the public and the private experience.
1 (The text here published
represents with minor revisions the address given at the Annual
Meeting in December 1997. I thank Andrew Bell, Paul Chénier
and R. Elaine Fantham for their generous help. In the footnotes, I
have restricted myself almost entirely to ancient sources.
Cicero’s works are cited by title only. For the letters, the
number given by Shackleton Bailey precedes the traditional number.
(Note that the paperback edition, Cicero’s Letters to His
Friends [American Philological Association Classical Resources I,
Atlanta, 1988] sometimes has a revised number, indicated here in
parentheses.)
2 A fuller list would include
RE, the prosopographical studies of, e.g., Syme and Wiseman,
and editions and commentaries. Grandchildren: V. E. 9.50, cf.
G. 2.58, 294.
3 For example, T. A. Dorey,
ed., Cicero (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964) has
separate chapters, among others, on the speeches, the poems,
“The Political Career of a Novus Homo,” “Cicero
the Philosopher” and “Cicero the Man.”
4 Ov. Fast.
1.135–36: omnis habet geminas hinc atque hinc ianua
frontes / e quibus haec populum spectat, at illa Larem.
5 Vitr. 6.5.1–3 (Loeb tr.
of 2: et publica consilia et privata iudicia
arbitriaque). Cf. Sen. Ben. 6.33.4–34.5.
6 E.g., Phil. 12.24:
Domesticis me parietibus vix tueor sine amicorum custodiis. itaque
in urbe maneo, si licebit, manebo. haec mea sedes est, haec vigilia,
haec custodia, hoc praesidium stativum. teneant alii castra, gerant
res bellicas; occiderint hostem; nam hoc caput est; nos, ut dicimus
semperque fecimus, urbem et res urbanas vobiscum pariter
tuebimur. (“I can barely protect myself by the walls of my
house without a garrison of my friends. So I stay in the city; I will
stay, if I am allowed. This is my dwelling, watch, guard-duty,
permanent station. Let others hold camps, carry on military tasks,
slay the enemy. This is capital: we, as we say and have always done,
will protect the city and the affairs of the city on equal terms with
you.”) Cf. Phil. 14.20.
7 Att. 116/6.2.5, 10;
Sul. 26; Phil. 8.28–31; cf. Q. fr.
1/1.1.25. See now Andrew M. Riggsby, “ ‘Private’ and
‘Public’ in Roman Culture: The Case of the
cubiculum,” JRA 10 (1997): 36–56.
8 Planc. 66–67. Cf.
Fam. 95/2.12.2.
9 Vell. 2.14.3. Cicero
(Att. 13/1.13.6, 25 Jan. 61) mentions the prestigiousness of
his new address and implies that comment had been hostile (cf.
Att. 16/1.16.10, 80/4.5.2) because he had had to borrow to
meet the steep price: homines intellegere coeperunt licere
amicorum facultatibus in emendo ad dignitatem aliquam pervenire
(“people began to realise that it is permissible by using the
resources of friends in making a purchase to arrive at a degree of
dignitas”). Cf. Fam. 4/5.6.2, to P. Sestius,
mid/late Dec. 62, on the price and the seller, M. Crassus. Plut.
Cic. 8.3 stresses the convenience of the house for
salutatores. E. Papi in E. M. Steinby, ed., Lexikon
Topographicum Urbis Romae II: 202–4 at 202, thinks the
house, not just the site, was Drusus’.
12 Cf. Verr. 2.5.28,
Comm. pet. 3.
14 Noise: S. Rosc. 134,
Verr. 2.5.28, Pis. 22; cooking: Pis. 13.
16 E.g., a house might be
reputed lascivious or virtuous (Cael. 55, cf. 9; Phil.
2.68).
17 In her study of a small
Greek village in the late 1960s, Juliet du Boulay analyses the design
of houses and how they hamper or permit a degree of observation by
neighbours (Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village [Oxford:
Clarendon, 1974]). See 11, on the front yard, open to public
inspection, in which “the baking and washing are done, wood is
chopped, animals are tethered, dishes washed,” etc. “None
of these activities is secret in itself, but the garnering of
information about as many people as possible is vital to the life of
the villager, both from the point of view of simple enjoyment of the
knowledge of what is going on around him, and because it might just
become relevant in a certain situation to know what a particular
person was doing at a certain time on a certain day.” Further on
the house, 15–40. “The house as a physical structure is
deeply linked with the identity of the family, so the house in which
the family lives is the chief stronghold of those values which are
basic to that society” (17). Observation of domestic tasks: 49,
of staying at home/going out: 195; gossip: 201–13. The village
was Ambéli in Euboea, a “dying village” of 33
houses, 144 inhabitants, in the late 1960s (1966–68, 1970). From
my own experience of traditional communities (the Cotswolds in the
1940s and 1950s, the Sabine hills in the 1960s), I would say this is
how it works. The observer notes how white the washing looks or how
early in the day it is hung out to dry and draws conclusions about
the industry of the housewife. The children’s behavior, the
modest look of a girl sewing at a window, conduct at the
fountain—such everyday things provide a basis for moral
assessment.
19 E.g., Phil. 2. 69;
Att. 318/13.10.1; Fam. 111/15.5.1, from Cato. For the
metaphorical use see Att. 92/4.18.3.
20 E.g., Planc. 66;
Sest. 95; Phil. 2.109.
21 Verr. 2.4.126;
2.5.137; Dom. 110; Deiot. 33; Lig. 14;
Att. 74/4.2.7, 124/7.1.9, 262/12.23.1; Q. fr. 22/3.2.3;
Fam. 252/5.15.3–4.
22 See especially Richard
Saller, “Familia and domus: Defining and
Representing the Roman Family and Household” in Patriarchy,
Property and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge 1994):
74–101.
23 Att. 1/1.5.7. Cf.
Catul. 31.7–10. For perfugium in this context see
Cat. 4.2, Dom. 109, Fam. 252/5.15.3,
333/7.20.2.
24 See, e.g., his annoyance at
interruptions at the Formianum (Att. 34/2.14.2, c. 26 April
59). He expected and tolerated the common herd up to the fourth hour
(basilicam habeo, non villam; “I have a public hall, not
a villa”), but C. Arrius expected to drop in to talk philosophy,
and Catulus’ friend Sebosus was also a nuisance. Hoc est Roma
decedere? (“Does this amount to leaving Rome?,”
Att. 35/2.15.3). Similar remarks about the Cumanum
(Att. 95/5.2.2, 10 May 51: pusillam Romam, “a
miniature Rome”).
25 Cat. 4.2–3:
Ego sum ille consul, patres conscripti, cui non forum in quo omnis
aequitas continetur, non campus consularibus auspiciis consecratus,
non curia, summum auxilium omnium gentium, non domus, commune
perfugium, non lectus ad quietem datus, non denique haec sedes
honoris umquam vacua mortis periculo atque insidiis fuit.
26 Cf., e.g., Quinct.
83; Sul. 86; Dom. 106, 143.
27 For the thought of being
alone in a crowd cf. Att. 293/12.51.1: quamvis multi sint,
magis tamen ero solus quam si unus esses (“although they be
many, I shall be more alone than if you only were with me”).
29 Philosophers: Arist.
EN 1160b32–1161a3, 1161a22–25, 1162a16–33. Cf.
Lucr. 5.962–65, 1011–27 (Epicureans). See David Konstan,
Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge, 1997)
67–72. Manuals: Treggiari, Roman Marriage. Iusti
coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian
(Oxford, 1991) 192–99.
31 E.g., Cicero relays
Crassus’ speech in which Crassus claimed that he owed his wife,
house and country to Cicero (Att. 14/1.14.3, 13 Feb. 61).
33 Sul. 89; especially
Flac. 106 with (probably) Orat. 131; Red. Sen.
37; Red. Pop. 6–9.
34 Flac. 1, 95, 99,
104; Mil. 3, 76, 78; Phil. 14.9–10.
35 Verr.
2.1.112–14, 153. Cf. 104–11.
36 Verres: Verr. 1.25;
2.2.50, 145, 154; 2.3.23; 2.5.30, 64, 81, 137. Sassia: Clu.
12, 15–18, 184, 188–90, 199–200. Clodius: Mil.
75. Antony: Phil. 2.58, cf. Att. 201/10.10.5. Further
on the perverse domestic arrangements of Antony: Treggiari,
“Leges sine moribus,” AHB 8.3 (1994): 86–98 at
94–96.
37 Cf. Fin. 2.77 (to
Epicurean politicians who fake morality): aut etiam, ut vestitum,
sic sententiam habeas aliam domesticam, aliam forensem, ut in fronte
ostentatio sit, intus veritas occultetur?” For coherence
between private and public life cf. Rhet. Her. 4.25.
38 The connection is explicit
in Phil. 2.50. Probabile ex vita: cf. Rhet. Her.
2.5, 23–26; Inv. 2.50–51. See James M. May,
Trials of Character: The Eloquence of Ciceronian ethos (Chapel
Hill & London, 1988) passim.
39 E.g., ad Brut. 24
(SB p.b. 26)/26/1.18.1; Fam. 232/4.11.1; 234/6.6.3.
40 Both: Att.
115/6.1.22, 20 Feb. 50; Att. 119/6.5.4, 26 June 50; Pilia:
e.g., Att. 104/5.11.7, July 51; Attica: e.g., Att.
413/16.3.6, 17 July 44.
41 E.g., Att.
64/3.19.2–3, 68/3.23.5 (58 B.C.E.); 97/5.4.1 (51 B.C.E.).
42 Att. 18/1.18.1;
125/7.2.4; 248/12.1.1. Cf. Fin. 5.41–43, 48, 55,
61–62 (close observation of a child’s development).
43 The test came with the
death of Tullia. Marcus is almost ignored (most strikingly in Att.
331/13.23.3) in the surviving correspondence. (He is mentioned
in Att. 266/12.27.2, 267/12.28.1, 271/12.32.2.) This is
insufficient to prove that Cicero’s love for Marcus was dead.
There is an excellent brief account of young Marcus’ life in
Keith R. Bradley, Discovering the Roman Family: Studies in Roman
Social History (Oxford, 1991) 103–6.
44 Also specified as part of
the duty of the buon padre di famiglia in Sicily by Jane and
Peter Schneider, Culture and Political Economy in Western
Sicily (New York, 1976): 89.
45 Hope of pleasure from
alliance with Piso: Fam. 9/14.3.3; with Crassipes: Fam.
18/1.7.11. Reactions to Dolabella: Att. 126/7.3.12.
46 Fam. 75/3.12.2.
Retrospective consent was legally necessary, if he was, as I presume,
paterfamilias to Tullia. See further Treggiari, “Digna
condicio: Betrothals in the Roman Upper Class,”
EMC/CV 28 n.s. 3 (1984): 419–51.
47 Att. 212/11.2.2,
?mid. March 48.
51 Att. 228/11.17,
12/13 June 47.
52 Att. 231/11.25.3,
5th July 47: “I was blind to pay the second instalment. I wish I
had done something else, but the opportunity has passed”;
232/11.23.3, 9 July 47; Fam. 169/14.13, 10 July 47.
53 The terminus post
quem for the divorce is Att. 241/12.5c, ?12 June 46. SB
ad loc. puts the divorce in November.
54 Cf., e.g., the deaths of L.
Cicero (Att. 1/1.5.1), Sositheus his reader (Att.
12/1.12.4), Alexio his doctor (Att. 377/15.1.1,
379/15.2.4).
56 Dr. Thomas Stuttaford,
The Times (London) Sept. 1 1997: 5. For a brief collection of
Roman sources, especially on husbands and wives, cf. Treggiari,
Roman Marriage (n. 28) 495–58.
57 For Tullia’s death cf.
Plut. Cic. 41.5. From the villa at Tusculum, where Tullia had
died, Cicero went to Atticus’ house in Rome (Att.
281/12.40.2), and then to his villa at Astura
(7 March 45, SB Att. V: 309). He was not without callers and
companions. Att. 253/12.16, 10 March, and 254/12.18.1
(Philippus); 265/12.26.1–2; 266/12.27.1; 273/12.34.1, 30 March
(Sicca); 281/12.40.2; 286/13.26.2. For company at Tusculum later see
Att. 293/12.51.1; 295/12.53 (Tiro, Nicias, Valerius). Cicero
was at Astura for three weeks in March. He spent the whole of April
at Atticus’ Nomentanum near Ficulea (SB Att. V: 328) and
then returned to Astura until 16 May, when he went to the Tusculanum
(where Atticus could drop in occasionally) via Lanuvium, arriving on
the 17th and staying until the 21st of June, when he left for Arpinum
(Att. 287/12.46–290/12.45; 318/13.10.3; 319/13.11).
58 On the shrine, see SB
Att. V: App. III. The idea of apotheosis is explicit in
Att. 277/12.37a, 5 May.
59 Att.
283/12.41.2–4, 11 May, Astura; Att. 284/12.43.2–3,
12 May 45, Astura. Cf. 254/12.18.1; 262/12.23.3; 279/12.38a.2. If he
bought a place on the outskirts of Rome (horti) it would serve
both to give him somewhere to live for the rest of his life and to
soften his grief. (Att. 296/13.1.2, 23 May 45, Tusculum. Cf.
268/12.29.2, 25 March; 285/12.44.2, 13 May 45).
60 Memories of Tullia alive,
hardly ever distinctly evoked even when grief was at its height, are
no longer explicitly mentioned to Atticus. The shrine is last
mentioned in June 44 (Att. 393/15.15.3).
61 He tells us later that
while staying with Atticus in Rome, he had read all the books on how
to diminish grief. But even Atticus’ company did not help
(Att. 251/12.14.3; 253/12.16).
62 Att. 250/12.13. To
refuse “invitations luctus causa would apparently have
been against contemporary social canons” (SB ad loc.,
citing Sen. Ep. 63.13, etc.). Women, for whom formal mourning
was prescribed, would, according to Cicero, though weak, at last stop
mourning the death of children (Fam. 187/5.16.6).
63 Brutus’ letter is
mentioned again (Att. 251/12.14.4).
64 E.g., Att.
251/12.14.1, 2, 4, 8 March.
65 The book is the
Consolatio. Two books of the original version of
Academica were finished in May (Att. 285/12.44.4).
69 Att. 258/12.20.2, 15
March. The points are followed up in Att. 261/12.22.2, 18
March; 262/12.23.3, 19 March, 263/12.24.2, 20 March. He needed a
daily letter from Atticus, and so wrote himself, although he had no
news to report (Att. 259/12.12.2. Cf. 266/12.27.2).
70 Att. 260/12.21.5, 17
March.
71 The comparison with the
forum apparently means he could see people in his house and thus
avoid criticism (Att. 262/12.23.1, 19 March, with SB ad
loc. and pp. 404–5). His possessions meant nothing to him:
he could sell silver or rich fabrics or even the landscapes he had
loved in order to buy a suitable site for the shrine (Att.
262/12.23.3).
72 Att. 265/12.26.2;
268/12.29.2: nec enim esse in turba possum nec a vobis
abesse.
73 Att. 267/12.28.2, 24
March.
74 Att. 273/12.34.1 and
n. 56.
75 Fam. 248/4.5. Cf.
Cicero’s condolence to Titius (Fam. 187/5.16, ?late
summer/autumn 46) and ad Brut. 18 (p.b. 19)/17/1.9.
76 About the same time, he
wrote to Tullia’s divorced husband, protesting that he was not
surrendering to fortune and claiming firmness and constancy
(Fam. 250/9.11; cf. Att. 281/12.40.3).
77 Att. 274/12.35, ?2
May; 278/12.38.1, 6 May; 279/12.38a.1, 7 May.
78 Criticism of Cicero’s
reaction, in this as in other crises of his life, seems to have been
strong enough to affect the verdict on him even posthumously. The
only one of his misfortunes which Cicero bore like a man, they said,
was his own death (Liv. ap. Sen. Suas. 6.22, cf. 24
(Pollio); Plut. Cic. 41.5).
80 Fam. 252/5.15,
mid-May, Astura.
81 Att.
283/12.41.2–3, 11 May; 284/12.43.2, 12 May.
82 Att. 285/12.44.3, 13
May; cf. 283/12.41.1; 284/12.43.2; 286/13.26.2; 287/12.46.1.
83 Att. 286/13.26.2,
14th May; 287/12.46.1, 15th May. Unsurprisingly, when he reached
Tusculum on 17 May, he regretted leaving Astura and found the wound
chafed worse because of where he was. But he was cheered by a brief
visit from Atticus (Att. 290/12.45.1, 17th May; 291/12.50,
19th May; 291/12.49.1, 20th May).
84 Arpinum offered the hope of
solitude by the river, but heavy rains kept him indoors on his
arrival. Later, the place did him good (Att. 318/13.10.1 and 3
?18 June; 323/13.16.1, 26 June; 328/13.20.3, c. 2 July.
85 Att. 330/13.33a,
?9th July; 331/13.23, 10th; 332/13.24, 11th; 333/13.25, 12th,
etc.
86 Caesar: Att.
364/14.10.1; cf. Liv. epit. 116; Suet. Jul. 84, Plut.
Caes. 68, Ant. 14.3–4, Brut. 20.1–7,
App. BC 2.143–47, D.C. 44.50. Jones, Spectator,
Sept. 13 1997: 19.
87 Clodius: e.g., Mil.
33. For the burning of the curia, see Mil.13, 33, 61,
90–91; Livy epit. 107; App. BC 2.21; Plut.
Brut. 20.5.
88 Liv. epit. 106;
Plut. Pomp. 53.4–5; D.C. 39.64.
89 Jasper and Miriam Griffin,
“ ‘Show us you care, Ma’am,’ ” NYRB
xliv. 15 (Oct. 9 1997): 29, reprinted in Omnibus 35
(Jan. 1998): 1–3. Tac. Ann. 2.82. For the official view
of proper mourning for Germanicus, see the SC de Pisone patre,
now accessible in English in M. Griffin, “The Senate’s
Story,” JRS 87 (1997): 249–63. See also Tac.
Ann. 3.3 for the criticism of Tiberius and Livia for not
attending the interment of Germanicus’ ashes.
90 Harry Eyres,
Spectator, 27 Sept. 1997: 51.
91 Phil. 8.29: O di
immortales! quam magnum est personam in re publica tueri principis!
quae non animis solum debet sed etiam oculis servire civium.
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