Historians have sometimes been inclined
to explain the shrillness of these passages as
a product of Cicero’s overheated political
imagination. Yet the anxiety shared by
Cicero and his contemporaries towards the
health and well-being of res publica was
real enough. For as Cicero explains, it is a
difficult art to rule over res publica rightly,
as a statesman does, and much easier (like
Caesar and Pompey) to rule like a king (Ad
Atticum: VII.25, VIII.11). Even one man, if
he is sufficiently powerful and charismatic,
may suffice to overturn everything. At the
outset of Rome’s final ruinous bout of civil
wars Cicero observes of his nemesis Caesar
that ‘even when he was very weak, he prevailed
over the whole res publica. What do
you think would happen now? (Ad Atticum:
VII.9) And the last century of Roman res
publica sees a lengthy parade of such men.
The Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Pompey,
Crassus, Caesar, Antony, Octavian: each
and every one of them strides over the civic
garden with hobnail boots. Worse still, those
who rise up to challenge overweening
individuals will tend inevitably to acquire
the same dangerous characteristics as their
foes. When Pompey raises his standard in a
last bid to defeat Caesar, Cicero is despairing.
Now supporters of res publica have a
choice between the horrors of war and the
indignity of servitude, between the domination
of Caesar and the violent instincts for
revenge of his opponents. And this is really
no choice at all, since in either course the
outcome will be the loss of res publica.