Low roads lead to Rome: the most exalted of all Roman politicians was a master of dirty politics. - 'Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician' - book review

Washington Monthly, June, 2002 by Jeff Greenfield

CICERO: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt Random House, $25.95

ON MARCH 4, 1841, ABOUT AN HOUR and a half into the longest inaugural address in American history, President William Henry Harrison turned from his clause-by-clause celebration of the Constitution to warn of the lessons posed to the American republic from ancient Rome: "[T]he senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the Commonwealth and the people assembled in the forum, not as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast their free votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the senate, but to receive from the hands of the leaders of the respective parties their share of the spoils."

If the Roman history seems a bit much, consider that President Harrison's speech was about an hour shorter than intended, thanks to Daniel Webster, who dissuaded the new Chief Executive from submitting the citizenry to a legion-by-legion account of the Roman armies. What Harrison's inaugural nevertheless reveals is how intensely earlier generations of American politicians took to heart the lessons of the Roman Republic.

You can get a taste of what this fascination must have been like if you follow the oratory of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), for whom any amendment, procedural vote, appropriations debate, or quorum call is a dandy excuse to expound on ancient history. For example, during a 1999 House-Senate conference, Byrd instructed dazed listeners on the triumph of Scipio Africanus over Hannibal in 202 B.C., bolstering his case for loan guarantees for the steel industry with highlights from the life of Emperor Majorian. Sadly, neither the majority of today's politicians, nor the bulk of its journalists, has anything like the knowledge of Roman history that any educated citizen would have possessed a century ago. (My own knowledge comes in more or less equal measure from Gladiator, Spartacus, Ben-Hur, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.)

So it is that in our time, the name Cicero is more likely to evoke an Illinois community noted for its laid-back approach to matters of public probity than one of the most influential voices of the last 2,000 years. It is the goal of first-time author Anthony Everitt to rescue Marcus Tullius Cicero from his recent descent into obscurity, and to celebrate the great Roman politician and orator who has become "an unknowing architect of constitutions that still govern our lives," and whose oratorical style "can be heard in the speeches of Thomas Jefferson and William Pitt (not to mention Abraham Lincoln and, only half a century ago, Winston Churchill.)"

Everitt has his work cut out for him. He seeks to encapsulate some 65 years of Roman history during which the Republic buckled and ultimately collapsed under the weight of economic crises, plots and counterplots, civil wars, and successive generations of military men who held the republican form of government in minimum high regard. He also aims to give as rich a glimpse as possible into the life and thinking of Cicero--a task considerably aided by the fact that Cicero's lifelong correspondence with his friend Atticus has survived the ages. Moreover, Everitt seeks to show "how unrecognizably different a world the Roman Republic was from ours," but also that "the motives of human behavior do not change."

He succeeds admirably on the latter mission; reading this book is a dispiriting lesson in the eternal power of pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth. But this success comes at a price: Far from kindling an admiration for Cicero as the noblest Roman of them all, Everitt succeeds--unwittingly, I suspect--in painting a vivid portrait of a vain, temporizing figure of towering self-importance, whose hunger for flattery and position undermined his professed goals for the republic and ultimately cost him his life.

Politics of Personal Destruction

From his earliest days (he was born in 106 B.C.), Cicero was determined to make his mark as a public figure. For someone outside the Roman aristocracy who was by nature unsuited for a military career--he was, in fact, something of a physical coward--that meant a career as an advocate, a lawyer, where success in pleading the case of a litigant led to a measure of fame and a foothold on the ladder to political power. For Cicero, the "main chance" came in 80 B.C., when he defended Sextus Roscius on a charge of murdering his father--almost certainly a frame-up concocted by the real killers. His defense consisted in large measure of a sustained attack on the character of one of the complainants:

   He comes down from his mansion on the Palatine Hill. 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 ... And just look at the man himself you see
   how, with his elegantly styled hair, and reeking of perfume, he floats
   around the Forum you see how superior he feels himself to be to everything
   else, that he alone is wealthy and powerful.