Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

430
Martha C. Nussbaum
building a shrine to her memory; many letters are occupied in attempts
to get Atticus energized about searching for an adequate site. I think we
can safely say that a consistent Stoic would not have tried to build such a
shrine. Where the Republic was concerned, its calamities engaged him
even more obsessively (since it might still survive) and with the rollercoaster
of emotion that one might expect. The assassination of Julius
Caesar on the Ides of March restored hope to the passionate republican,
who writes in April 44 that “the Ides of March are our consolation; our
heroes achieved everything in their power both gloriously and magnificently”
(Att. 14.4); who speaks giddily of his delight, but also of his
fear, who reports his anxiety saying, “O my dear Atticus, I fear that
the Ideas of March have brought us nothing besides our joy, and a payment
for our hatred and our grief” (Att. 14.12).
Fearing that the death of the tyrant would not stave off the conversion
of a republic into a tyranny, Cicero spends his last year in engaged
and angry pursuit of Marc Antony. The speeches he wrote denouncing
him, the Philippics, are among the masterpieces of the oratory of indignation.
Nor should one doubt that deep emotion accompanied and motivated
their composition: to Atticus, Cicero denounces Antony in very
angry terms, calling him “unscrupulous, disgraceful, mischievous”, etc.
(Att. 14.13). Plutarch movingly describes Cicero’s hatred of Antony,
showing how it led him to be tricked into forming a political alliance
with the future Augustus – who promptly sold him out, agreeing to permit
Antony to assassinate him.
Learning of the danger, Cicero and his brother Quintus try to get to
the seacoast to join Brutus in Macedonia. Plutarch describes the cortege:
“So they were carried along in litters, being worn out with grief; and on
the way they would halt, and with their litters placed side by side would
lament to one another” (47.2) 2 – though Plutarch emphasizes that Cicero
was more controlled and dignified in his lamentation. Quintus decides
to go home – where his servants betray him and he is killed. Cicero
presses on. He might gotten safely to sea, but he fatally hesitates,
thinking, says Plutarch, that there was still a chance to save the republic.
The assassins sent by Antony catch up with him near the coast. Cicero
looks them straight in the eye, with a face so wasted by anxiety and grief
that most of the assassins averted their eyes. He then stuck his neck out
to the assassin’s blow and died, at the age of sixty-four.
2 All citations from Plutarch are from Perrin’s translation in Plutarch (1919).