Political Career of Marcus Tullius Cicero - Consul

Consul

Cicero was elected Consul for the year 63 BC, defeating patrician candidate Lucius Sergius Catilina (Catiline). During his year in office he thwarted a conspiracy to overthrow the Roman Republic, led by Catiline. Cicero procured a Senatus Consultum de Re Publica Defendenda (a declaration of martial law, also called the Senatus Consultum Ultimum), and he drove Catiline from the city with four vehement speeches which came to be known as the Catiline Orations. The Orations listed Catiline and his followers' debaucheries, and denounced Catiline's senatorial sympathizers as roguish and dissolute debtors, clinging to Catiline as a final and desperate hope. Cicero demanded that Catiline and his followers leave the city. At the conclusion of his first speech, Catiline burst from the Temple of Jupiter Stator, where the Senate had convened, and made his way to Etruria. In his following speeches Cicero did not directly address Catiline but instead addressed the Senate. By these speeches Cicero wanted to prepare the Senate for the worst possible case; he also delivered more evidence against Catiline.

Catiline fled and left behind his followers to start the revolution from within while Catiline assaulted the city with an army recruited from among Sulla’s veterans in Etruria. Many peasant farmers who were racked by debt also supported Catiline in the countryside. These five parties had attempted to involve the Allobroges, a tribe of Transalpine Gaul, in their plot, but Cicero, working with the Gauls, was able to seize letters which incriminated the five conspirators and forced them to confess their crimes in front of the Senate.

The Senate then deliberated upon the conspirators' punishment. As it was the dominant advisory body to the various legislative assemblies rather than a judicial body, there were limits to its power; however, martial law was in effect, and it was feared that simple house arrest or exile — the standard options — would not remove the threat to the state. First, Decimus Junius Silanus was asked his opinion and proposed life imprisonment and that the conspirators should be made to suffer the "extremest punishments"; many acceded to his opinion, but then many were swayed when the matter came to a young Julius Caesar, who decried the precedent it would set and argued in favor of life imprisonment in various Italian towns of Cicero's choosing and the confiscation of all of their personal property. Lutatius Catulus then opposed Caesar's proposal and Cato followed him - rising in defense of the death penalty and slated Caesar for his proposed leniency and accused him of involvement, and with that the Senate were swayed and agreed on Cato's proposal. Cicero had the conspirators taken to the Tullianum, the notorious Roman prison, where they were strangled. Cicero himself accompanied the former consul Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura, one of the conspirators, to the Tullianum. After the executions had been carried out, Cicero seeing many members of the conspiracy still assembled in the forum, announced the deaths by the formulaic expression Vixerunt ("they have lived," which was meant to ward off ill fortune by avoiding the direct mention of death).

Consequently Cicero partly due to the help of Cato received the honorific "Pater Patriae" for his efforts to suppress the conspiracy, but lived thereafter in fear of trial or exile for having put Roman citizens to death without trial. He also received the first public thanksgiving for a civic accomplishment; previously this had been a purely military honor. Cicero's four Catiline Orations remain outstanding examples of his rhetorical style.

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Famous quotes containing the word consul:

    I wouldn’t think of asking you to lie; you haven’t the necessary diplomatic training.
    —John Farrow. Consul in Valparaiso, The Sea Chase (1955)