Political Career of Marcus Tullius Cicero - Early Career

Early Career

Cicero's childhood dream was "Always to be best and far to excel the others," a line taken from Homer's Iliad. Cicero pursued dignitas (position) and auctoritas (authority), symbolized by the purple-bordered toga praetexta and the Roman lictors' rod. There was just one path to these: public civil service along the steps of Cursus honorum. However, in 90 BC he was too young to apply to any of the offices of Cursus honorum except to acquire the preliminary experience in warfare that a career in civil service demanded. In 90 BC–88 BC, Cicero served both Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo and Lucius Cornelius Sulla as they campaigned in the Social War, though he had no taste for military life. Cicero was first and foremost an intellectual. Several years later he would write to his friend, Titus Pomponius Atticus who was collecting marble statues for Cicero's villas: "Why do you send me a statue of Mars? You know I am a pacifist!"

Cicero started his career as a lawyer around 83-81 BC. His first major case of which a written record is still existent was his 80 BC defense of Sextus Roscius on the charge of parricide. Taking this case was a courageous move for Cicero; parricide and matricide were considered appalling crimes, and the people whom Cicero accused of the murder—the most notorious being Chrysogonus—were favorites of Sulla. At this time it would have been easy for Sulla to have Cicero murdered, as Cicero was barely known in the Roman courts.

His arguments were divided into three parts: in the first, he defended Roscius and attempted to prove he did not commit the murder; in the second, he attacked those who likely committed the crime—Titus Roscius Capito and Titus Roscius Magnus relatives of the defendant—and stated how the crime benefited them more than Sextus; in the third, he attacked Chrysogonus, stating Roscius' father was murdered to obtain his estate at a cheap price. On the strength of this case, Roscius was acquitted.

Cicero's successful defense was an indirect challenge to the dictator Sulla. In 79 BC, Cicero left for Greece, Asia Minor and Rhodes, perhaps due to the potential wrath of Sulla, however the delay of around a year, in which time he married hardly points to a panicked flight, and his own related reasons of poor health appear much more likely. Accompanying him were his brother Quintus, his cousin Lucius, and probably Servius Sulpicius Rufus.

Cicero travelled to Athens, where he again met Atticus, who had fled war-torn Italy to Athens in the 80s. Atticus had become an honorary citizen of Athens and introduced Cicero to some significant Athenians. In Athens, Cicero visited the sacred sites of the philosophers. The most important of them was the Academy of Plato, where he conversed with the present head of the Academy, Antiochus. Because Cicero's philosophical stance was very similar to that of the New Academy as represented by Philo of Larissa, he felt that Antiochus had moved too far away from his predecessor. He was also initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, which made a strong impression on him, and consulted the oracle at Delphi. But first and foremost he consulted different rhetoricians in order to learn a less exhausting style of speaking. His chief instructor was the rhetorician Apollonius Molon of Rhodes. He instructed Cicero in a more expansive and less intense (and less strenuous on the throat) form of oratory that would define Cicero's individual style in years to come.