Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics) (44 page)

Future generations will surely be astounded to hear and read of your commands, your provinces, the Rhine, the Ocean, the Nile,
*
your numberless battles, your unbelievable victories, monuments, games, and triumphs. [29] But unless you bring stability to this city through reform and legislation, your renown will just wander far and wide, without acquiring a settled home and fixed habitation. Among those yet to be born, there will be great differences of opinion, as there have been among us. Some will praise your achievements to the skies, while others will perhaps find something missing
*
—and that the most essential thing of all—unless you now proceed to extinguish the flames of civil war by the rescue of your country, and thereby prove the former to have been the result of fate, but the latter the result of policy. Submit, therefore, to the judgement of those who, many centuries from now, will judge you, and may well do so with less partiality than we do: for they will judge you without passion and without self-interest on the one hand, and without envy and without malice on the other. [30] And even if, as some mistakenly believe,
*
you will be beyond caring about all that when the time comes, you are surely not at this time beyond caring whether you are, in truth, a man whose fame will never be obscured by oblivion.

Our fellow-citizens were divided in their loyalties, and differed in their opinions. We diverged not only in our policies and ideals, but in weapons and camps. The situation was far from clear. The dispute was between leaders who were both men of the highest distinction. Many were unsure as to what was for the best, many as to what was in their interest, many as to where their duty lay, and some also as to what was lawful. [31] The country endured this wretched war which fate had forced upon it. The victor was one who did not let his good fortune stoke up the hostility felt towards him, but instead let his goodness assuage it; nor did he judge all those with whom he had been angry as deserving in addition exile or death. Some laid down their arms; others were disarmed. Ungrateful and unjust is the citizen who, though freed from the danger of arms, nevertheless keeps his spirit armed: even the one who did not give up his cause, but fell in battle and there poured out his spirit is better.
*
For although some will regard such conduct as obstinacy, others will view it as constancy.

[32] But at the point at which we are now, all dissension has been crushed by force of arms, and extinguished by the fairness of the victor: the result is that all those who possess some degree not necessarily of wisdom, but merely of sanity, desire the same thing. We cannot be secure, Gaius Caesar, unless you too are secure, and unless you also continue to follow the policy which you have followed in the past and particularly today. Therefore all of us who desire Rome to remain secure both urge and beseech you to take care of your life and your personal safety; and since you believe that there is some hidden danger which you need to take precautions against, we all promise you (if I may express also on behalf of others the feeling which I experience myself) not only sentinels and bodyguards, but the protection of our own lives and limbs.

[33] But, to conclude my speech at the point at which it began, we all offer to you, Gaius Caesar, our profoundest thanks—while feeling even greater gratitude in our hearts. We are all of one mind, as you could see from everyone’s prayers and tears. There is no need for everyone to stand and make a speech; but they all wish me at least to do so, since it is in a way necessary that I should do so. The most appropriate reaction to your restoration of Marcus Marcellus to this order, to the Roman people, and to the country is, I can see, actually taking place. For I can see that everyone is overwhelmed with a joy that does not arise only from the salvation of one individual, but from the salvation of every one of us. [34] My own reaction, on the other hand, is one of absolute goodwill—a goodwill towards Marcellus, which was always well known, and which I would judge scarcely inferior to that of his excellent and devoted cousin Gaius Marcellus,
*
and inferior to that of no one besides him—a goodwill which, since I expressed it for so long through my worry, my anxiety, and my exertions on his behalf as long as his fate was in doubt, I should without question also, now that I have been liberated from that dreadful anxiety, trouble, and grief, continue to express. Therefore, Gaius Caesar, I offer you my thanks. I owe to you, wholly and completely, not only my preservation, but the position of honour which I now hold. I never supposed that anything more was possible—and yet the countless personal favours which you have conferred on me have been gloriously crowned by what you have done today.

Like
Pro Marcello
(46
BC
), the
Second Philippic
is an epideictic (display) speech set in the senate. But there the resemblance ends.
Pro Marcello
dates from the period of Caesar’s dictatorship; the
Second Philippic
from two years later, six months after his assassination.
Pro Marcello
is a short panegyric; the
Second Philippic
a lengthy invective. And
Pro Marcello
was delivered on a real occasion, in Caesar’s presence; the
Second Philippic
, like that other masterpiece of Cicero’s,
Pro Milone
(52
BC
), and like
In Verrem
II.1–5, was never delivered. Most importantly, however, with the
Second Philippic
we have entered a new world—a world of fear and uncertainty in which powerful men made competing appeals to Caesar’s veterans, and republicans, reinvigorated by their act of tyrannicide but unprepared for the consequences, began to reckon up the terrifying forces ranged against them.

In this world, in September 44, the major figures were Marcus Antonius (in English, Mark Antony), the dead Caesar’s consular colleague, and the 18-year-old Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (Octavian), Caesar’s great-nephew, principal heir, and adoptive son. For Cicero, it was the first of these who presented the greater danger. He had not wished to cross swords with Antony; but when Antony, with all the authority of a consul, bitterly attacked him in the senate in his absence, he felt impelled to write, in pamphlet form, a comprehensive rejoinder. This rejoinder, the
Second Philippic
, marked the point of no return in Cicero’s deteriorating relationship with Antony, while also confirming Cicero’s status as Rome’s greatest orator. Written in a simpler style than most of his previous speeches, particularly the elaborate
Pro Marcello
, it is an utterly devastating attack. Later orators and critics regarded it as the classic invective, and the fact that its author was murdered for writing the
Philippics
certainly added to its fascination. In the early empire it was also of political interest in that Antony was Octavian’s great rival—the enemy in Augustan ideology as well as in Ciceronian rhetoric. The speech did much to determine the way Antony was viewed by posterity: it was used by Plutarch for his
Life of Antony
(
c
. AD 110–15), which in turn provided the historical basis for Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra
. Nearly two centuries after its composition, the satirist Juvenal, himself a past master in the art of denigrating others, would label it ‘the divine
Philippic
’ (10.125).

Cicero’s
Philippics
(there are fourteen of them in existence, four dating from 44 and the rest from January to April 43) are more properly known as
In Antonium
(‘Against Antonius’). But in a lost letter to Brutus, Cicero
jokingly suggested that they might be described as his ‘Philippics’, and in a reply of 1 April 43 (
Epistulae ad Brutum
2.3.4) Brutus good-humouredly approved the title, which then stuck (as Plutarch testifies at
Cic
. 48.6). The title
Philippics
is a reference to the four (extant) speeches which the Athenian orator Demosthenes composed against Philip II of Macedon between 351 and 340. Cicero’s
Philippics
, like those of Demosthenes, set out to defend the freedom of the state against an aggressor who threatened it. But apart from that, Cicero’s speeches have little in common with their Greek namesakes, and contain no verbal allusions to them. In choosing the title, Cicero did not mean to suggest any complex relationship between the two sets of speeches: all he was doing was making a light-hearted comparison between himself and Greece’s most famous orator. Indeed, when he published his corpus of consular speeches in 60, he wrote to Atticus comparing the speeches, in an equally light-hearted way, with Demosthenes’
Philippics
(
Att
. 2.1.3), and it is perhaps only an accident of history that it is his speeches of 44–43 that have come to be known as the
Philippics
rather than those of 63. The
Second Philippic
, however, does have something in common with Demosthenes’ greatest speech,
De corona
(‘On the crown’, 330
BC
): both speeches review at length the careers of the orator and an opponent (in Demosthenes’ case, his enemy Aeschines), and Cicero’s speech contains six allusions to its Demosthenic counterpart. But even so, the influence of Demosthenes is not strongly felt: Cicero does not allow imitation of an admired literary predecessor to deflect him from his central purpose of abusing his opponent.

Let us review the political developments which resulted in Cicero’s composition and publication of the speech. On the morning of the Ides (15th) of March 44, the consul and dictator Gaius Julius Caesar was assassinated in the senate by a large group of conspirators, some of them, like Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, republicans who objected to tyranny, others Caesarians who for one reason or another had turned against their leader. They had chosen their moment carefully: in three days’ time Caesar had been due to leave for a three-year expedition against the Parthians, to avenge Crassus’ defeat at Carrhae in 53. The other consul, Antony, was taken to one side just before the deed was done: the conspirators had decided to kill Caesar alone (a basic error which Cicero later claimed that, had he been invited to join the conspiracy, he would have pointed out; cf.
Fam
. 10.28.1, 12.4.1). In the afternoon, the conspirators, who described themselves as ‘liberators’, addressed the people in the forum and then, after being received with a stony silence, took refuge on the Capitol.

Two days later, on 17 March, Antony called a meeting of the senate and a compromise was agreed by which an amnesty was granted to Caesar’s
assassins, but the dictator’s acts, including those not yet made public, were ratified. Caesar had wanted Publius Cornelius Dolabella (who from 50 to 46 had been Cicero’s son-in-law) to take over from him as consul when he left for Parthia; Antony, although he had previously resisted this, now gave way, and Dolabella was appointed as his colleague. The conspirators were then persuaded to come down from the Capitol.

Caesar’s funeral took place on
c
. 20 March. Antony gave the oration, but his words so stirred up the crowd (whether intentionally or not) that they burned the body themselves on an improvised pyre in the forum, instead of allowing it to be taken to the pyre that had been prepared in the Campus Martius. There was considerable violence, and attacks were made on the houses of the conspirators. (The chaotic scenes must have recalled those which had accompanied the impromptu cremation of Publius Clodius Pulcher in the senate-house in 52.) Antony brought the situation under control, however, and soon afterwards won the approval of Cicero and other republicans by proposing that the office of dictator be abolished. But it was no longer safe for the conspirators to remain in Rome: Brutus and Cassius withdrew from the city on
c
. 12 April (in Brutus’ case, special permission was required, since he was city praetor), and others left to take up the provincial governorships assigned to them by Caesar (Brutus’ cousin Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus went to Cisalpine Gaul). Cicero himself, although he had not been a conspirator, left Rome on 7 April to visit his country estates.

By mid-April, Antony had already started abusing his position as consul and custodian of Caesar’s papers (these had been handed over to him by the dictator’s widow Calpurnia as early as the night of 15 or 16 March). Since the ratification of Caesar’s acts had extended to those not yet made public, Antony took the opportunity of forging documents in Caesar’s name in return for massive bribes. He also helped himself to the vast treasury that Caesar had deposited in the temple of Ops (possibly for use in the Parthian campaign), and he bought Dolabella’s acquiescence with funds taken from the same source. These actions appalled Cicero, but he did not make his feelings public, and Antony treated him throughout this period with a show of respect. The senate, however, decreed that from 1 June all of Caesar’s purported acts should be subject to scrutiny by a special commission set up for the purpose.

On 18 April, Octavian arrived at Naples (at the time of Caesar’s death, he had been at Apollonia in northern Greece, preparing to join his great-uncle for the Parthian campaign). Large numbers of Caesar’s veterans had been settled in Campania, and Octavian presented himself to them as Gaius Julius Caesar, the dictator’s adoptive son. (He also presented himself to Cicero, who at this time was staying at his villa in Puteoli.) A week
or so after this, Antony left for Campania himself, ostensibly to oversee the settlement of further veterans, but partly no doubt also to secure his own hold over the soldiers. Once he had left the capital, his colleague Dolabella, in a demonstration of independence, demolished an altar and column that had been set up on the spot where Caesar had been cremated, and summarily executed the people who were worshipping there. At the beginning of May, however, Octavian arrived in Rome and announced his intention to claim his inheritance, pay Caesar’s legacies to the Roman people, and hold games in Caesar’s honour.