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Rome’s civil-war years saw a drastic redistribution of wealth, as the victorious warlords oversaw the confiscation of property and land owned by those who ended up on the losing side of history. It was one of the ways by which the winners were able to reward the loyalty of their supporters, many of whom (according to Cicero) joined Caesar’s cause precisely in the expectation that it would prove financially beneficial. As he says in Philippic 4.9 about Antony and his followers: sed spes rapien...

Cicero now returns to the issue of the (fake) auspices that Antony produced to challenge the validity of Dolabella’s election to the (suffect) consulship. Caesar planned to have the matter discussed at the senate meeting scheduled for the Ides of March, but his murder upset the agenda and Cicero follows the lead opened up by the assassination to dwell on Antony’s reaction: fear for his life and a panicky flight from the senate house. His apprehension was justified: no-one knew at the time whe...

As we are nearing the end of the speech, Cicero once again calls attention to the time and the location of the (imaginary) delivery of the speech — a specific moment on 19 September in the temple of Concordia — before opening up, via a strong rebuke of Antony’s decision to bring along an armed body guard, to discuss the relation between statesmen and the wider civic community, with a special focus on the issue of ‘personal safety’. As far as he is concerned, a politician who inspires hatred w...

Since OCR invites us to parachute right into the middle of Philippic 2, here is a quick orientation of where exactly in the text we are when we reach § 44: after his opening statement (§§ 1–2) and his rebuttal of Antony’s attack on him (§§ 3–41), Cicero spends the following two paragraphs inveighing against his adversary’s skills as a public speaker, with particular reference to Antony’s oratorical efforts in the period immediately after Caesar’s assassination. This transitional section (§§ 4...

The paragraph falls into two halves: in the first (Quid ego… cliens esse), Cicero continues to belabour the theme of Antony’s maltreatment of local communities in Italy that happened to pique his anger, though the praeteritio-mode he now adopts suggests that he is starting to run out of steam. Halfway through, his focus turns back to Rome (interea dum tu abes… ut dissimilis esset sui), and he homes in on an event that happened in the capital during Antony’s absence: Dolabella’s destruction of...

Cicero spends most of this paragraph speculating on what might have been had Antony been willing to sustain the conciliatory outlook he adopted right after Caesar’s assassination, and especially during the senate meeting of 17 March. Cicero claims it was Antony’s finest hour — and if he had continued to act in the spirit in which negotiations were conducted, a lasting peace and much fame would have ensued. But from the point of view of Philippic 2, these musings are past counterfactuals. As C...

At the end of the previous paragraph, we left Antony seemingly safely ‘married’ to a contemporary of his, young Curio, who is said to have transformed the scoundrel from a disreputable prostitute into a honourable wife. But this touching scene of domestic bliss is not destined to last as Cicero moves on to explore the corrosive impact of the ‘marriage’ on the Curio-family. Two interrelated semantic fields dominate the paragraph: sexual passion (libidinis causa, hortante libidine, flagitia, am...

At the end of the previous paragraph, we left Antony with Caesar in furthest Gaul (54 BCE). Now we have moved on a year: in the summer or fall of 53, Antony returned to Rome to stand for election to the quaestorship. His quest for public office coincided with the hot phase of street brawling between the gangs of Clodius and Milo that ended with the former dead and the latter exiled for his murder. Antony’s role in all of this was marginal at best, but Cicero had his reasons for dwelling on th...

Cicero continues to dwell on Antony’s attempt to crown Caesar king — acting on his perverse desire to enslave himself, together with everyone else. His associations with tyranny are such that Cicero considers the task of the conspirators only half done with the murder of Caesar — in fact, he suggests that Antony, who volunteered Caesar for the position of monarch and willingly embraced a condition of servitude, deserved even more to be killed than the dictator. At etiam misericordiam...

Cicero composed his incendiary Philippics only a few months after Rome was rocked by the brutal assassination of Julius Caesar. In the tumultuous aftermath of Caesar's death, Cicero and Mark Antony found themselves on opposing sides of an increasingly bitter and dangerous battle for control. Philippic 2 was a weapon in that war. Conceived as Cicero's response to a verbal attack from Antony in the Senate, Philippic 2 is a rhetorical firework that ranges from abusive references to Antony's supposedly sordid sex life to a sustained critique of what Cicero saw as Antony's tyrannical ambitions. Vituperatively brilliant and politically committed, it is both a carefully crafted literary artefact and an explosive example of crisis rhetoric. It ultimately led to Cicero's own gruesome death. This course book offers a portion of the original Latin text, vocabulary aids, study questions, and an extensive commentary. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, Ingo Gildenhard's volume will be of particular interest to students of Latin studying for A-Level or on undergraduate courses. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis to encourage critical engagement with Cicero, his oratory, the politics of late-republican Rome, and the transhistorical import of Cicero's politics of verbal (and physical) violence. To Vivi and in memory of Lucio (3.6.1932–23.8.2016)

Cicero now works towards a rousing conclusion by shifting the focus from Antony back to himself: he combines a personal profession with the notion of self-sacrifice for the benefit of the wider community, intertwining liberty and death. Certatim posthac, mihi crede, ad hoc opus curretur neque occasionis tarditas exspectabitur: Cicero proceeds to answer the rhetorical question he posed at the end of the previous paragraph, suggesting that Antony will soon face an attack of men vying with each ...

After the delusional image of marital stability that concluded § 44, matters fell apart in § 45: Curio pater and Curio filius have both been reduced to tears, even though the reasons for their emotional incontinence differ drastically: the former is laid low by a bout of depression at his inability to check his son’s self-destructive infatuation with Antony (a case of senile dementia), the latter wails at Cicero’s feet in an effort to protect his beloved (call it penile dementia). For the day...

Cicero clinches the account with his public service — and a twin focus on liberty and death. The final thought (or wish) of Philippic 2 is one of cosmic justice: that the fate of the individual reflects the nature of his actions within the public sphere. Those who invested much in the commonwealth ought to see their efforts rewarded; those who harmed the civic community ought to suffer accordingly. Much to Cicero’s regret, reality proved recalcitrant to this principle: throughout much of his ...

In the run-up to the election of Dolabella as suffect consul, Antony seems to have announced that he would try to prevent the election of Dolabella to the consulship by making use of a religious veto that he could issue in his capacity as augur. In the event, he made good on his threat. Over the next few paragraphs, Cicero rakes him over the coals for this. To understand his lines of attack, we need to come to terms with some technicalities of Rome’s civic religion. This dimension of Roman cu...

When one day the head of Cicero was brought to them [sc. Antony and his wife Fulvia] — he had been overtaken and slain in flight —, Antony uttered many bitter reproaches against it and then ordered it to be exposed on the speakers-platform more prominently than the rest, in order that it might be seen in the very place where Cicero had so often been heard declaiming against him, together with his right hand, just as it had been cut off. And Fulvia took the head into her hands before it was re...

Cicero follows up on his claim in the previous paragraph that Antony ought to have been killed a long time ago. After a reference to the official entry in Rome’s calendar (the so-called fasti) on what had happened on 15 February, Cicero adds some generic abuse about Antony’s debauchery (drinking through the day with his depraved mates) before returning to his impact on the political culture of the republic: his subversion of peace (Cicero uses both otium and pax) and his destruction of the le...

Cicero continues to insinuate, wrongly, that Antony, during his recent sojourn in Southern Italy, tried to stage another hostile take-over of Varro’s villa at Casinum. During his visit, it appeared as if the property had changed ownership, from the learned Varro to the loathsome Antony, who turned a house of erudition into a cesspool of vice. In § 104, Cicero focuses on boozing and gambling, including the emetic consequences of over-indulgence. In § 105, he adds sexual debauchery to the portf...

Cicero concludes his examination of Antony’s inconsistency in handling Caesar and his legacy by lambasting him a final time for his alleged lack of eloquence: put on the spot to defend his policies Antony (so Cicero insinuates) will have nothing to say. His abject failure to articulate himself in supple and muscular speech stands in dismal contrast to the heights of eloquence achieved by his grandfather — Antony is the sad offspring of a once great family. The paragraph thus also brings to a ...

In his treatise On Duties, Cicero explains the reasons for the catastrophic self-laceration of republican Rome as follows (Off. 1.26): Maxime autem adducuntur plerique ut eos iustitiae capiat oblivio cum in imperiorum honorum gloriae cupiditatem inciderunt. Quod enim est apud Ennium: ‘nulla sancta societas nec fides regni est’, id latius patet. Nam quidquid eius modi est in quo non possint plures excellere, in eo fit plerumque tanta contentio ut difficillimum sit servare ‘sanctam societatem’....

Around 20 May 44 BCE, Antony returned to Rome — together with several thousand veterans settled at Casilinum and Calatia (Appian, Bellum Civile 3.5 mentions 6,000), whom he had recruited by means of evocatio (‘recall into active service’) in the course of his journey through Southern Italy. From then on, he used this army as a bodyguard and to intimidate senate and people. At Philippic 5.17–20, Cicero gives an extensive account of how the presence of Antony’s troops shaped events in September...

After his victory in the civil war, Caesar, while nominally upholding republican traditions, effectively exercised autocratic powers and could determine whom to reward when with what position in the state. As Denniston (1926: 144) puts it: ‘After the victory of Munda the senate voted Caesar, among other honours, the right to appoint the magistrates. Outwardly he declined the privilege, but by “recommending” certain persons to the people for election he accepted the substance of it (Dio, xliii...

§§ 48–50a are devoted to Antony’s public career in the 50s BCE. At the opening of § 48, we are in Rome and the year is 58: Antony, Cicero claims, became a bosom friend of Clodius, who was tribune of the people at the time (about to drive Cicero into exile and burn down his house…) as well as married to Antony’s future wife Fulvia. The couple offered Antony excellent opportunities to pursue his imputed revolutionary and sexual passions: Cicero casts him as Clodius’ principal firebrand in the c...

‘Classical’ texts, or at least those we consider classical that have come to us from Greco-Roman antiquity, are texts that have managed to outlive the immediate historical context or even wider culture for which they were originally intended, attracting ever-new audiences down the ages. At times, such texts are simply read because they have been accorded the status of ‘classical’ at some point in the past. This, however, is a rather weak justification for continuing to read them — it might im...

After wrapping up his opening anecdote in his imaginary biography of Antony, Cicero continues with a transitional paragraph that lays out his approach to the rest of the material. As in § 43, he stresses that he has to leave out a lot. Some of the stuff that Antony got up (or down) to is simply beyond the pale: the sort of X-rated material no person with any sense of decency would be able to put into words. And there is also a feeling of urgency: Cicero is loath to linger too long on Antony’s...

Cicero now moves on to a vivid account of what happened on 15 February 44 BCE. He starts with Caesar sitting on the speakers’ platform (which is were the run of the Luperci came to an end), decked out in quasi-royal regalia (a purple toga, a golden chair, a crown) but not yet unequivocally a ‘king’. The runners arrive, in the nude as is ritual practice, but somehow Antony has a diadem on him: where does it come from? Cicero ponders various possibilities he rejects (for instance: Antony just f...

In §§ 92–97, Cicero blasts Antony for the forged decrees of Caesar that he used to enrich himself or to recall exiles, following up with two paragraphs (§§ 98–99) devoted to Antony’s alleged mistreatment of his uncle C. Antonius Hybrida (Cicero’s colleague as consul in 63), who had otherwise a rather checkered record: in 70, he was temporarily expelled from the senate because of bankruptcy and in 59 he was exiled because of provincial mismanagement. At the beginning of § 100, Cicero returns t...

Scholarly opinion on Caesar’s stature as a ‘statesman’ is divided (as opposed to his unanimously acknowledged genius as a military strategist and commander). Many feel that he did not have a (or any) viable vision for the Roman commonwealth beyond installing himself as quasi-omnipotent dictator. Be that as it may, he did initiate a significant programme of innovations and reforms across various cultural spheres (not least the calendar), including a slate of legislative measures. In the years ...

Cicero continues to lambast Antony for defiling Varro’s domicile of learning, contrasting Varro’s intellectual achievements across all areas of culture with Antony’s obscene indulgence in orgies of booze and sex. Towards the end of the paragraph, he moves on to rake Antony over the coals for his asocial behaviour towards representatives of local communities who came to greet him (as was expected of them when a Roman consul happened to stay in the vicinity). Quae in illa villa antea dicebantur...

In this and the following paragraph Cicero dwells on the moment Antony decided to invalidate or at least vitiate the election of Dolabella, which had just run its course, by announcing that he had become aware of a natural disturbance that signaled divine displeasure. He used the ritual phrase that calls for postponement: alio die means ‘Sorry, just got a communiqué from above: let’s reconvene to repeat the proceedings on another day’. This reiteration never happened; and hence Dolabella’s su...

Cicero continues to insist that Antony ought to be very much afraid for his life if he continues his pernicious politics of fear. His bodyguard, meant to keep would-be assassins at bay, will not help him in the long run — or, indeed, much longer: even those close to him will sooner than later rise up against him. What renders this apparently counterintuitive claim plausible is the spectre of Caesar: those who did him in included some who had benefitted most from his benevolence. Built into th...

After the drunken debaucheries at Varro’s villa, Antony made his way back to Rome, shut off from the world in his litter. For a high magistrate of Rome, whom everyone wants to meet and greet, travelling behind closed curtains was in principle a violation of socio-political etiquette, not least since it humiliated the inhabitants of the townships located en route who were keen to see (and curry favour with) the representative of Roman power. There may of course have been perfectly good reasons...

The paragraph falls into two parts: in the first, devoted to Caesar’s funeral, Antony plays Mr Hyde — a subversive monster out to destroy the city and murder its best citizens; in the second, which revisits senatorial business in late March/early April conducted in the spirit of the compromise reached between Caesarians and liberators on 17 March, Antony has a moment as Dr Jekyll — a high magistrate who conducts affairs of state with sense and sensibility. Cicero singles out for appreciation ...

In March 45, Antony left Narbo in Southern Gaul for a surprise visit to Rome that caused some consternation in the city, not least because the reasons for his arrival in the capital remained unclear. Some feared that he had come as a henchman of Caesar, perhaps to prepare the ground for reprisals or even proscriptions. Cicero comments on the situation in a letter to Atticus (12.19.2 = 257 SB, 14 March 45), mentioning that Balbus and Oppius, two of Caesar’s chief lieutenants, wrote to him with...

Cicero is winding down the discussion of Antony’s augural objections to the consulship of Dolabella. The next topic on the agenda is the festival of the Lupercalia on 15 February 44 BCE. At Phil. 13.41 Cicero suggests that Antony as good as murdered Caesar on that day by trying to crown him with a diadem. What exactly happened — and why — is difficult to establish with certainty — not least since it is tied up with the significance of a rather strange religious rite, the Lupercalia, which has...

The paragraph falls into two halves. In the first (Quod si se… impetum fecerunt), Cicero looks back: he assesses the assassination of Caesar against similar events in Roman history, reaching the conclusion that the recent act of tyrannicide outshines all precedents. In the second (quod cum ipsum factum… esse contemnendam), he explores the future implications of what the liberators did: they set an example for others to imitate and will reap immortality through everlasting glory as a reward fo...

As we have seen, then, Philippic 2 is anything but an impromptu outburst by an irate orator who had just been raked over the coals and ridiculed in front of his peers. It is, rather, a deliberate and highly literary act of retaliation, composed (and revised) over several weeks and released in cold blood at an opportune moment (when Antony was no longer present in Rome). Despite the craftsmanship, the overall structure of the speech, however, is deceptively simple and straightforward: §§ 1 – 3...

One of the most hotly contested issues after the Ides of March was Caesar’s ‘ontological status’: was he a dead mortal or had he become divine? Caesar’s religious identity was above all a political matter: whereas the senatorial oligarchy resisted any attempt to elevate Caesar to the level of a god, followers of Caesar had good reasons to push him skywards, not least once it became apparent that such a move was very much in tune with popular feelings. Earlier on in the speech, Cicero touched ...

The previous paragraph ended on the dictum that only a life in harmony with the wider civic community guarantees personal safety. Cicero now explores what this general truth implies for the occasion at hand. A range of political agents (both individual and collective) and entities (populus Romanus, gubernatores rei publicae, res publica, adulescentes nobilissimi) are ready to take a stand against Antony if he persists in behaving like an enemy of the state. Cicero’s tone — set up by another i...

In § 47 Cicero announced that he intends to treat the portion of Antony’s biography that falls in-between his depravities as a teenager and the role he played in the civil war cursorily: ad haec enim quae in civili bello, in maximis rei publicae miseriis fecit, et ad ea quae cotidie facit, festinat animus. Barely three paragraphs later, we reach this moment. The first half of § 50 (quaestor es factus… viri tui similis esses) traces Antony’s return to Caesar in Gaul after his election to the q...

This transitional paragraph begins by portraying Antony as Caesar’s lackey who is unable to do anything during his consulship without first asking his colleague for guidance — even if this involves running after Caesar’s litter. This utter lack of independence serves as foil for his conduct during the election of Dolabella to the suffect consulship over which Caesar presided, though initially it appeared that Antony would hold his peace: Cicero gives a quick blow-by-blow of the different stag...

Cicero continues to blast Antony for his conduct in Southern Italy. His attack is three-pronged: a brief reference back to the close shave he had at Capua with disgruntled locals treated at the end of the previous paragraph; dissolute living to the point of self-harm; and dissolute squandering of public patrimony on undeserving mates, thus inflicting harm on everyone else and the commonwealth as such. Already in the transitional § 43, Cicero lashed out at Antony’s absurd remuneration of his t...

Cicero hammers away at Antony’s seemingly incomplete understanding of the nuances of Rome’s augural law and the different remits it offered to augurs and consuls (as well as other magistrates) — before shifting his focus halfway through from Antony’s ignorance to his impudence. When a magistrate intended to obstruct public proceedings by observing the sky, political etiquette demanded that he announced his intentions ahead of time: since he would invariably find a sign of divine displeasure, ...

Cicero continues his exercise in compare and contrast. Antony merits comparison with Caesar in one respect only: the desire to wield power at all cost (dominandi cupiditas), which makes him a tyrant. And if there is one good thing that the Roman people have learned from the evils inflicted by Caesar it is a more skeptical disposition towards self-styled leaders — and the willingness to do away with those that turn out to be tyrants. He reiterates his a-fortiori conviction: if Caesar was consi...