Cicero’s Laws for Historians
The first law is that the historian shall never dare to set down what is false; the second that he shall never dare to conceal the truth; the third that there shall be no suspicion in his work of either favouritism or prejudice.
These high standards for historians were set forth by Marcus Tullius Cicero, orator, lawyer, statesman, philosopher and man of letters in De Oratore (55 B.C.), a treatise on the art of public speaking. Cicero virtually created Latin prose, transforming a tight terse utilitarian language fit for merchants, lawyers and soldiers, into a strong but supple one capable of conveying subtle feelings and shades of meaning. His influence extends not only to later Latin writers but to writers in other languages influenced by Latin. Many of his thoughts are of continuing relevance. For instance:
The nobler a man is, the harder for him to suspect baseness in others (Ad Quintum fratrem I).
Nothing quite new is perfect (Brutus).
There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it (De Divinatione).
The people’s good is the highest law (De Legibus).
Let the punishment match the offence (De Legibus).
Nothing stands out so conspicuously or remains so firmly fixed in the memory as something in which you have blundered (De Oratore).
The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust (De Oratore).
No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone (Epistulae ad Familiares VI).
No thinker has ever . . . said that a change of mind was inconsistency (Epistulae at Atticum XVI).
Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error (Philippics XII).
We forget our pleasures, we remember our sufferings (Pro Murena).
In time of war, the laws are silent (Pro Milone).
One should eat to live not live to eat (Rhetoricorum).
In the end it was Cicero’s words as contained in the famous Philippics that led to his death. The Philippics were a series of fourteen speeches in which Cicero, leading the group of senators who hoped to restore the Republic following the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., bitterly attacked Marc Antony who threatened to succeed Caesar as dictator. To fend off Marc Antony, Cicero supported Caesar’s heir, the nineteen-year-old Octavian, hoping that veteran legionaries would remain loyal to him until new units could be raised and led by republican commanders. (”An excellent youth who must be praised, used and pushed aside”, Cicero is supposed to have said of Octavian.) But young Octavian played a deeper game, one that eventually culminated with his metamorphosis into the Emperor Augustus. He aligned himself with Antony and Lepidus, who had led Caesar’s cavalry, to form a new triumvirate that quickly gained control of Rome. Once in power, their first act was to condemn numerous opponents including, at Antony’s determined insistence, Cicero. Antony then dispatched a party of soldiers to find and kill him. This mission accomplished, Antony had Cicero’s head and hands (because they had written the Philippics) displayed in the Forum on the very rostrum where he had gained his reputation as Rome’s greatest orator. Antony’s wife Fulvia stuck a hairpin through the tongue. For more about the splendours of Roman civilisation see Caesar’s Law.
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