In the year 63 BCE, the Roman statesman and renowned orator, Cicero, served as a consul of Rome, the highest political leadership position in the Roman Republic. During his one-year term in that high office, Cicero led the Roman government in discovering and dismantling a conspiracy. At the head of the plot was Lucius Sergius Catilina (often shortened to Catiline), an unsuccessful candidate for consul who raised an armed rebellion after losing his election. Rome’s government discovered the conspiracy and revolt around October of 63 BCE, prompting a quick military response against the rebels. In November and December, several conspirators were arrested in Rome, and Cicero (with support from a majority of the Roman senators at the time) decided to controversially execute at least five of the conspirators without a proper trial. Although many of the senators supported the decision, it also irked a number of the government’s tribune officials, who operated as a check against the patricians and senators. Displeasure from the tribunes was palpable at the end of the year, when it was about time for Cicero to relinquish his position as a consul of the Roman Republic. The exiting consul wanted to formally address the Roman masses regarding his efforts to overcome Catiline’s conspiracy. Yet, to the statesman’s frustration, this wish for a formal speech was blocked by the tribunes, Bestia and Nepos. Catiline’s rebels were finally defeated in 62 BCE, but Cicero could not take too much of a victory lap, for the debacle over the executions of untried conspirators left Cicero politically vulnerable.
Cataline’s rebel army fell the same year that a curious firebrand rabble-rouser named Publius Clodius Pulcher began making a peculiar political ascent in Rome. In 62 BCE, the patrician Clodius disguised himself as a woman and infiltrated the sacred female-only festival of the Bona Dea, the Good Goddess (later known as Fauna), a deity thought to have influence over fertility and fruitfulness. This festival took place in the palace of the highest priest of Rome, the pontifex maximus, who at that time was none other than Julius Caesar. That year’s Bona Dea festival would have been hosted by Caesar’s mother, Aurelia, alongside the Vestal Virgins—a sisterhood of full-time priestesses of the hearth goddess, Vesta. The pontifex maximus’ wife, Pompeia, was also in attendance. By tradition and religious law, all of the banqueters at the festival were meant to be women. Therefore, Clodius’ infiltration of the event was not only against the rules, but also sacrilege.
Wearing an unconvincing costume and allegedly wielding a harp, Clodius was inevitably outed by suspicious party-goers. His discovery at the women-only event quickly became sensationalized by gossipers and the incident erupted into a great scandal in Rome. As Clodius was a notorious womanizer, the rumor mills churned out theories that his purpose for being at the Bona Dea festival was to seduce the attendees, including Caesar’s wife, Pompeia. Curiously, Julius Caesar did not press or pursue any charges against Clodius—instead, Caesar divorced Pompeia and later hired Clodius as a political henchman.
Julius Caesar aside, there was still the matter of sacrilege, and other people in Rome were willing to champion the case. Clodius was brought to trial and Cicero was involved in the prosecution. As the story goes, Clodius ultimately triumphed in the sacrilege case by using bribes, but Cicero’s speeches and testimony caused great reputational damage to the defendant among his peers in the patrician class. Nevertheless, Clodius made a political comeback by renouncing his patrician status to become a plebeian, a move that allowed him to be elected as a tribune in 59 BCE.
Back in power, Clodius quickly seized the opportunity to get revenge against Cicero by targeting him with vengefully-crafted legislation in 58 BCE. Clodius’ bill called for the outlawing, and property seizure, of anyone responsible for executing Roman citizens without a trial. As Cicero had done just that at the time of the Cataline conspiracy, he now found himself to be in legal peril. Although Cicero tried to plead his position, he ultimately was forced to go into exile. The ancient historian, Appian (1st-2nd century CE), recounted the event:
“Clodius impeached Cicero for breach of the constitution because he had put Lentulus and Cethegus and their followers to death without trial…Cicero abandoned all hope and like Demosthenes embraced exile voluntarily. A crowd of friends accompanied him out of the city, and the senate sent letters commending him to cities, kings and petty rulers. Clodius pulled down his town house and his country residences, and was so elated by this that he now compared himself to Pompeius, who was the most powerful man in Rome” (Appian, The Civil Wars, 2.15).
Fortunately for Cicero, the Pompeius in question—known more famously as Pompey the Great—intervened in the situation and eventually orchestrated the exiled statesman’s return to Rome in 57 BCE. On this, Appian wrote that Cicero “returned home because of Pompeius, about sixteen months after his expulsion, and his town house and country residences were rebuilt at public expense. They say that when he was received at the gates in spectacular style by the entire population, the whole day was spent on greetings…” (Appian, The Civil Wars, 2.16). Cicero was naturally thankful for Pompey’s help, and the two had a close friendship, but this was also the beginning of the end for Cicero’s political heyday. On the one hand, Cicero’s friendship with Pompey irked the senatorial faction of the Optimates, which championed the supremacy of the Senate in Roman government. On the opposite side of the political divide, Cicero was also too much of a constitutionalist and a lover of the Republic to fully embrace the emerging authoritarian factions of Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Augustus. In this dilemma, Cicero fell into a political limbo, giving him time and opportunity to devote himself to literary pursuits. Unfortunately, some of those writings ultimately led to Cicero being assassinated on the orders of Mark Antony and Augustus in 43 BCE.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Cropped illustration (dated between 1875–90) of a standing Roman, in the art style of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and MET).
Sources:
- The Civil Wars, by Appian and translated by John Carter. Penguin Books: 1996.
- Catiline’s Conspiracy, The Jugurthine War, Histories, by Sallust and translated by William W. Batstone. Oxford University Press: 2010.
- The Republic and the Laws, by Cicero and translated by Niall Rudd. Oxford University Press: 1998.
- https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20120102184349801
