Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was Rome's greatest orator and was killed for a series of speeches. Born at Arpinum in 106 BC into an equestrian family with no consular ancestors, he was a novus homo who reached the consulship at the earliest legal age in 63 BC — an achievement almost without parallel for a man of his background. He made his name as an advocate, first defending Roscius against a favourite of Sulla's and then prosecuting Verres, the governor of Sicily, whose extortion he documented so thoroughly that the defence collapsed before he finished. As consul he uncovered and suppressed Catiline's conspiracy, delivering the four Catilinarian orations and executing five conspirators without trial under emergency powers. He regarded it as the salvation of the republic and never stopped saying so; his enemies regarded it as murder of citizens, and Clodius drove him into exile over it in 58 BC. He was recalled the following year and was politically marginal thereafter, caught between Pompey and Caesar, choosing Pompey and being pardoned. He wrote most of his philosophy in enforced idleness — On Duties, On the Nature of the Gods, the Tusculan Disputations, On the Republic — creating a Latin vocabulary for Greek ideas that Europe used for eighteen centuries. After Caesar's murder he attacked Mark Antony in the fourteen Philippics. The triumvirs proscribed him. He was caught near Formiae in December 43 BC, put his head out of the litter, and was beheaded; his hands and head were nailed to the rostra. Augustus is said to have found a grandson reading him and to have remarked that he was a learned man who loved his country.

• Lived: 106 BCE – 43 BCE
• Nationality: Roman
• Roles: intellectual, ruler, writer