CICERO’S PHILIPPICS, 44 BC
The Philippic Orations of the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) were a series of fourteen speeches he wrote or delivered against his enemy, the powerful politician and general Marcus Antonius (83-30 BC; Shakespeare’s “Mark Antony”). They were so-called after the famous speeches of the Athenian orator Demosthenes against Philip II King of the Macedonians. Presented here are all the references in them to Greek love.
The translation is by C. D. Yonge for M. Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, London: George Bell & Sons, 1903.
The Second Philippic
The first draft of the Second Philippic was written in October 44 as if it were the record of a real speech delivered in the Senate on 19 September as a personal reply to Antony’s invective against Cicero on that day. In reality Cicero had absented himself to avoid danger and never delivered the speech. However, the amended version here quoted from was published in December.
44-47
“Examining” Antony’s “conduct from the time when you were a boy”, here on what happened when he found himself bankrupt following his father’s death (when he was eleven or twelve):
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You assumed the manly gown, which your soon made a womanly one:[1] at first a public prostitute, with a regular price for your wickedness, and that not a low one. But very soon Curio[2] stepped in, who carried you off from your public trade, and, as if he had bestowed a matron's robe upon you, settled you in a steady and durable wedlock. No boy bought for the gratification of passion was ever so wholly in the power of his master as you were in Curio's. [3] How often has his father turned you out of his house? How often has he placed guards to prevent you from entering? while you, with night for your accomplice, lust for your encourager, and wages for your compeller, were let down through the roof. That house could no longer endure your wickedness. Do you not know that I am speaking of matters with which I am thoroughly acquainted? Remember that time when Curio, the father, lay weeping in his bed; his son throwing himself at my feet with tears recommended to me you; he entreated me to defend you against his own father, if he demanded six millions of sesterces of you;[4] for that he had been bail for you to that amount. And he himself, burning with love, declared positively that because he was unable to bear the misery of being separated from you, he should go into banishment. |
[44] Sumpsisti virilem, quam statim muliebrem togam reddidisti. Primo vulgare scortum; certa flagiti merces nec ea parva; sed cito Curio intervenit, qui te a meretricio quaestu abduxit et, tamquam stolam dedisset, in matrimonio stabili et certo collocavit. [45] Nemo umquam puer emptus libidinis causa tam fuit in domini potestate quam tu in Curionis. Quotiens te pater eius domu sua eiecit, quotiens custodes posuit ne limen intrares! Cum tu tamen nocte socia, hortante libidine, cogente mercede, per tegulas demitterere. Quae flagitia domus illa diutius ferre non potuit. Scisne me de rebus mihi notissimis dicere? Recordare tempus illud cum pater Curio maerens iacebat in lecto; filius se ad pedes meos prosternens, lacrimans, te mihi commendabat; orabat ut se contra suum patrem, si sestertium sexagiens peteret, defenderem; tantum enim se pro te intercessisse dicebat. Ipse autem amore ardens confirmabat, [46] quod desiderium tui discidi ferre non posset, se in exsilium iturum. |
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And at that time what misery of that most flourishing family did I allay, or rather did I remove! I persuaded the father to pay the son's debts; to release the young man, endowed as he was with great promise of courage and ability, by the sacrifice of part of his family estate; and to use his privileges and authority as a father to prohibit him not only from all intimacy with, but from every opportunity of meeting you. When you recollected that all this was done by me, would you have dared to provoke me by abuse if you had not been trusting to those swords which we behold?[5] But let us say no more of your profligacy and debauchery. There are things which it is not possible for me to mention with honor; but you are all the more free for that, inasmuch as you have not scrupled to be an actor in scenes which a modest enemy can not bring himself to mention. |
Quo tempore ego quanta mala florentissimae familiae sedavi vel potius sustuli! Patri persuasi ut aes alienum fili dissolveret, redimeret adulescentem, summa spe et animi et ingeni praeditum, rei familiaris facultatibus eumque non modo tua familiaritate sed etiam congressione patrio iure et potestate prohiberet. Haec tu cum per me acta meminisses, nisi illis quos videmus gladiis confideres, maledictis me provocare ausus esses? [47] Sed iam stupra et flagitia omittamus: sunt quaedam quae honeste non possum dicere; tu autem eo liberior quod ea in te admisisti quae a verecundo inimico audire non posses. |
The Third Philippic
Cicero delivered his Third Philippic to the Senate on 20 December 44 BC, thereby initiating his open fight against M. Antonius.
31
On the recent conduct of M. Antonius’s younger brother Lucius Antonius, who was bringing a legion to his aid:
| But now what slaughter is this man, who has thus become a captain instead of a murmillo[6], a general instead of a gladiator, making, wherever he sets his foot! He destroys stores, he slays the flocks and herds, and all the cattle, wherever he finds them; his soldiers revel in their spoil; and he himself, in order to irritate his brother, drowns himself in wine. Fields are laid waste; villas are plundered; matrons, virgins, free-born[7] boys are carried off and given up to the soldiery; and Marcus Antonius has done exactly the same wherever he has led his army. | Ille autem ex myrmillone dux [ex gladiatore imperator] quas effecit strages, ubicumque posuit vestigium! Fundit apothecas, caedit greges armentorum reliquique pecoris quodcumque nactus est; epulantur milites; ipse autem se, ut fratrem imitetur, obruit vino; vastantur agri, diripiuntur villae, matres familiae, virgines, pueri ingenui abripiuntur, militibus traduntur. Haec eadem, quacumque exercitum duxit, fecit M. Antonius. |
[1] The man’s toga referred to was adopted by Roman boys in replacement of the toga praetexte when they were between fourteen and sixteen. Antony demeaned it by prostituting himself to men, implicitly taking the female or passive role with them Antony was born in 83 BC, so what is said to have ensued should be dated to the first half of the 60s BC.
[2] Gaius Scribonius Curio. His age is unknown, but he took up office as quaestor in January 54 BC, to be eligible for which he must have been at least thirty. He was therefore born in 85 at the very latest, and likely much earlier to have been able to act as a credible surety for Antony. His father of the same names had been consul in 76 and was probably born around 124 BC, making him most likely to have fathered his son and heir in the 90s.
[3] This illustrates just how familiar Cicero knew it was to the Roman public that a man would buy a slave-boy to satisfy his lust.
[4] The younger Curio junior had apparently guaranteed loans made to Antony totaling six million sesterces, a gigantic sum which he could not pay off without his father’s resources. A top of the market puer delicatus cost 100,000 sesterces, already a great extravagance.
[5] Though he did not name Antony, Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings IX 1 vi described a frugal Curio with a profligate son who had contracted debts of an impossible sixty million sesterces through stuprum (=outrage, ie. pedication) of noble youths. The similarities are too strong for the same story not to be meant.
Besides what is known as to Cicero’s and, more importantly, Mark Anthony’s characters, the likelihood of Cicero’s allegations being true must be judged against their usefulness as political invective (given that it was damningly shameful for a freeborn Roman male to accept the passive sexual role), versus (1) what he is likely to have been able to get away with saying without doing more damage to his own reputation than Antonius’s if the allegations had no support in public knowledge or belief, and (2) the rough corroboration of Valerius Maximus’s account.
[6] The translator’s woefully inaccurate translation of myrmillone, a type of gladiator, as “matador”has been replaced by “murmillo”. Cicero is referring to Lucius Antonius having fought a combat in this guise (Philippic VII 17) at Mylasa in Asia, probably in 50/49 when quaestor in this province.
[7] The translator’s mistranslation of ingenui as “well-born”, which misses the point, has been replaced by “free-born”. Note that it was only free-born boys whom it was an outrage to pedicate and that doing so was seen in the same terms as violating virgins (inaccurately translated as “unmarried girls”).
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