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

An Ancient Ego

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Everitt's account is how unappealing a portrait Cicero paints of himself. He apparently wrote numerous accounts of how utterly splendid his one-year reign as Consul had been, driving his contemporaries to distraction. His letters to Atticus and others reveal how dazzled he believed others to be by his wit and wisdom. "I recalled the weak and weary Senate to its old traditional vigor," he once boasted. "That day, my energy and the course I took brought to the Roman people the first hope of recovering their freedom." (Today, a "close aide" to Cicero would leak such a judgment to Bob Woodward.)

Moreover, Cicero could not control his mouth (or his pen). Again and again, he was unable to resist the clever jibe, aimed at foe or friend. His fate may, in fact, have been sealed when Octavian got wind of a nasty crack aimed at him by his supposed ally Cicero, thus making him less inclined to veto Mark Antony's death sentence against him. Had C-SPAN and its ubiquitous boom mikes covered Roman politics, no doubt Cicero wouldn't have lasted a week.

Cicero's human failings point us to a greater failure of insight--and to his lasting achievement. Cicero believed that the republic could only be saved by better men, imbued with the virtues of prudence, restraint, and loyalty to Republican ways. The utter disaster of such wishful thinking prompted leaders, nearly 2,000 years later, to look to a different answer: to mechanisms that would recognize that "men are not angels" and restrain power despite human nature's worst instincts. Taking Cicero's words to heart, they forged a republic that, so far, has proved impossible for a Caesar to destroy.

JEFF GREENFIELD is a CNN senior analyst. His books include The People's Choice and Oh, Waiter! One Order of Crow! Inside the Strangest Presidential Election Finish in American History.