Cicero

These, indeed, are the most plausible reasons given for the divorce. Terentia, however, denied that these were the reasons, and Cicero himself made her defence a telling one by marrying shortly afterwards a maiden.[*](Publilia, of patrician family.) This he did, as Terentia asserted, out of love for her youthful beauty; but as Tiro, Cicero’s freedman, has written, to get means for the payment of his debts.

For the girl was very wealthy, and Cicero had been left her trustee and had charge of her property. So since he owed many tens of thousands he was persuaded by his friends and relatives to marry the girl, old as he was, and to get rid of his creditors by using her money. But Antony, who spoke of the marriage in his replies to Cicero’s Philippics, says that he cast out of doors the wife with whom he had grown old, and at the same time makes witty jibes upon the stay-at-home habits of Cicero, who was, he said, unfit for business or military service.

Not long after Cicero’s marriage his daughter died in child-birth at the house of Lentulus, to whom she had been married after the death of Piso, her former husband. His friends came together from all quarters to comfort Cicero; but his grief at his misfortune was excessive, so that he actually divorced the wife he had wedded, because she was thought to be pleased at the death of Tullia.

Such, then, were Cicero’s domestic affairs. But in the design that was forming against Caesar he took no part, although he was one of the closest companions of Brutus and was thought to be distressed at the present and to long for the old state of affairs more than anybody else. But the conspirators feared his natural disposition as being deficient in daring, and his time of life, in which courage fails the strongest natures.

And so, when the deed had been accomplished by the partisans of Brutus and Cassius,[*](On the Ides of March, 44 B.C.) and the friends of Caesar were combining against the perpetrators of it, and it was feared that the city would again be plunged into civil wars, Antony, as consul, convened the senate and said a few words about concord, while Cicero, after a lengthy speech appropriate to the occasion, persuaded the senate to imitate the Athenians[*](These declared a general amnesty after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants by Thrasybulus in 403 B.C.) and decree an amnesty for the attack upon Caesar, and to assign provinces to Cassius and Brutus.

But none of these things came to pass. For when the people, who of themselves were strongly moved to pity, saw Caesar’s body carried through the forum, and when Antony showed them the garments drenched with blood and pierced everywhere with the swords, they went mad with rage and sought for the murderers in the forum, and ran to their houses with fire-brands in order to set them ablaze. For this danger the conspirators were prepared beforehand and so escaped it,[*](Cf. Plutarch’s Brutus, chapter xx. ) but expecting others many and great, they forsook the city.