Cicero (Anthony Everitt, 2001)

I've had an "Everitt trio" on my to-read list for a while now, all the result of reading The Rise of Rome earlier in the year. The plan was to knock them all out chronologically: Cicero, Augustus, and Hadrian, but I opted to defer Augustus in light of the new biography by Adrian Goldsworthy. Look for that book and Hadrian in, God willing, 2016.

Ironically, the biggest chunk of Cicero knowledge I have comes from his presence in the extensive Gordianus the Finder series by Steven Saylor. Saylor and Everitt are both of a like mind on Cicero: brilliant, but arrogant. Purely by accident, Cicero lived through one of the most turbulent periods of Roman history in the Republican era. While he did not live to see Octavian/Augustus launch the empire, he was around all the key figures of the era: Sulla, Marius, Cato the Younger, Clodius, Catalina, Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, and Mark Antony. Although not a raging optimate like Cato, Cicero spent most of his career (political and legal) battling the more fringe-leaning figures of the populares, the rival faction. In fact, his obsessions with hotheads like Catalina and Clodius probably kept his eyes off the ones that really rocked the system: Julius Caesar and his grandnephew/adopted son Octavian.

Reading books about this time period inevitably make you wonder if we are living in a modern parallel. Although a certain pachyderm-esque poltical persuasion seems to think Obama is the anti-Christ, there are a lot of key differences. I think the big one is the lack of a cohesive political structure. Since there was no legal equivalent of a written constitution, it left things open to heavy interpretation. Of course, the office of Dictator left an especially delicious loophole for any aspiring tyrant, and it is a minor miracle that nobody until Sulla, 400 years after the establishment of the Republic, thought of distorting the limits to achieving his goals.

Coupled with The Rise of Rome, Cicero serves as a good chronicle of the continuing story of Rome as told by Anthony Everitt, with not too much overlap. The earlier book is mainly concerned with the pre-Gracchi period and sort of gallops through the later years covered here. I'm looking forward to continuing the story, although through other authors (Tom Holland, Goldsworthy) initially.