Marcus Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was born in 106 BCE in Arpinum, a provincial town about sixty miles from Rome. His family was prosperous but not noble, what Romans called 'new men' who had to make their way by talent rather than ancestry. Cicero chose law and rhetoric, studying in Rome, Athens, and Rhodes under the greatest teachers of the age. His voice became his weapon. He rose through the Roman political ranks, quaestor, aedile, praetor, winning each office at the youngest legal age. As consul in 63 BCE, he exposed and crushed the Catiline conspiracy, a plot to overthrow the Republic, earning the title 'Pater Patriae' (Father of the Fatherland). But he also made enemies: his execution of the conspirators without trial would haunt him. The political winds shifted; Clodius, his enemy, forced him into exile. He returned, but the Republic he loved was dying.