The Ancients - Cicero

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Marcus Tullius Cicero is one of the most famous orators in ancient history, and a central figure during the final years of the Roman Republic.To explore his life and career, Tristan is joined by Dr Henriette van der Blom from the University of Birmingham. Together they explore Cicero's rise to power, how his speeches shaped public opinion, his relationships with the likes of Julius Caesar, and of course, how he exposed the Catiline Conspiracy.This episode was produced by Elena Guthrie and Annie Coloe, and edited by Joseph Knight.If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like our episodes on The Rise of Cicero and Cicero's Fight for the Roman Republic.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS sign up now for your 14-day free trial HERE.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode we are talking about arguably the most famous orator of ancient history, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who rose to prominence in the 1st century BC and was a major figure during the final years of the Roman Republic. Now, we are fortunate today to have so many of Cicero's speeches and letters surviving. He is an invaluable source for this turbulent period in Roman history, a time of famous names such as

Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, and of course, Julius Caesar. Joining me to give a masterclass in Cicero's story, his rise to power, his interactions with those well-known names, as well as a detailed rundown of an extraordinary coup d'etat called the Catalan Conspiracy, well, I was delighted to interview Dr Henriette van der Blom from the University of Birmingham. Now, I was so grateful for Henriette taking the time out of her busy schedule to do this interview, and I really do hope you enjoy. So without further ado, here's Henriette. henriette it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today thanks for having me tristan you're more than welcome and to talk about cicero in the field of not just roman oratory but ancient oratory this man he almost seems to elevate himself to be above all the others.

He is this man, when you think of oratory, you come to this man of Cicero. Absolutely right. And it's partly to do with the way he positioned himself, but it was not just his own doing. It was also later generations and the ways in which his speeches and his other works were received by later generations all the way up to today. But you're right, he's towering there. Well, we've got 40 minutes. We've got precious time and we're going to see how much of Cicero's life we can get through,

particularly then focusing on some golden moments too. But let's start with his background. What do we know about his background? So we know a lot from what he himself has said, and then later writers have written about it, but it's mainly from himself. So he came from a family that was pretty well off, but was not of the senatorial elite, which means that they were not a political family until he and his brother engaged in politics. So they came from a small town called Apinum, which is about 70 miles southeast of Rome.

And there they had sort of a normal education, but their father, he says, at some point decided that they should go to Rome to have a proper education there. So he took the whole family to Rome, and there he and his brother were educated. And that included the final bit of education for a Roman elite male, which was in rhetoric. So we know about that background and then we know more about what he did with that education. Is that unusual for the time for, as you say,

a figure who doesn't have this senatorial background, but who's then able in this time period to be able to rise to the top through his ability to be such a good master of the art of rhetoric. So Cicero says it is unusual. He called himself a homo nous, a new man. And by that he meant, I think, this is something I've written about, but there are discussions in scholarship about this. I think he meant he came from a family without senatorial ancestors, so not a political family.

What was unusual, perhaps, was that he used, as you rightly say, his rhetorical skills to get into politics, whereas other new men had more gone for a military career as a way into politics. So that probably sets him apart from some of the other people he talks about. So again, we have to remember that he is the main source for our information about this, which of course is a little bit biased. Is Cicero a military man in any way? Most people would say no. He did do military training because he had to, but he says very little about it. And I think it's partly to do with the fact that it took place during a period of civil war.

And civil wars are, of course, always contentious, no matter who wins. And so he says very little. We know that he was in the camp of somebody called Pompeius Strabo, who was actually the father of Pompey the Great. And then what else we know about his military career is actually first his rejection of a province after his consulship. He handed it over to his fellow consul for that year. And then we know that when Pompey, so Pompey the Great, put in a new regulation as to how to populate these administrative roles of provincial governors,

he was forced to go out. And he went out to a province called Silesia, which is the southern coast of modern-day Turkey. And there he did have some military engagements that he then tried to, I suppose, speak up a bit. He was hoping to get a triumph, but that all dissipated in the chaos leading up to the civil war starting in 49, the one between Julius Caesar and Pompey. Which hopefully we'll get to in the next 35 minutes or so. But you did mention the word civil war there. So to kind of set the scene when Cicero, he's a young lad, he's gone to Rome with his brother to begin his, well, his adult life. What world is he walking into? What's going on in the Roman Republic when he is beginning his public career?

So even before he begins his public career, but when he's coming to Rome, we know of his first published work called De Inventione, or you could say on invention or on brainstorming, preparing for writing a speech. And that work is curious in many ways because it seems very apolitical. And scholars are at the moment actually doing much more work on this particular work to understand what does it say about Cicero and the world he lived in. But 91, when we think it's approximately that time when it was circulated, is also the time when the so-called social war breaks out, i.e. the war between the Romans and their

Italian allies. And that ran for a couple of years. When it was over, almost immediately, the Romans went into civil war, i.e. Sulla against Marius and Marius' supporters, including Kinna. And that led all the way down to 81, when Salah won that war and made himself dictator. So you can imagine coming into your sort of early adult life in that situation of a decade of strife, civil war, atrocities, violence is not an easy way to operate. Not an easy way to operate indeed.

But indeed, from this, sometimes you see some of these figures who go on to become titans like Crassus almost taking advantage of the crisis that follows. Do we know how Cicero is able to use this crisis and what follows it to almost rise his own career? So he writes a little bit about what happens in that period of the 80s, and he does that in a work that he calls the Brutus. He calls it the Brutus to honour the person he is honouring with that work, the Brutus, the late murderer of Julius Caesar.

But in that work, he writes the history of oratory at Rome, and he tells us at the end his own sort of development as an orator and his own education. And there he says, well, in that period of the 80s, the forum was almost empty. There were not very many speeches delivered and there were not very many orators around because they were either away fighting or they were killed. So it was difficult if you wanted to learn how to deliver a political speech to find an example to listen to. But he does mention a few of the people that he then managed to listen to and developed from that. And his first circulated written version of the speech was a speech he delivered in 81, which was what we call a forensic speech, a court case speech, where he acted as defense

advocate in what we would call a private law case. It was about money. And that was the first case we know and we have the speech from. He will likely have delivered earlier speeches. And then it's only in the next year, 80, when he delivers a very high stakes and high profile speech in a defense of another person called Ruscus. And this time in the criminal courts, because Ruscus was accused of murder. And there are all these incriminating elements about whether Sulla was behind this. And Cicero in this speech tried to say, nothing to do with Sulla.

It's only some of the people hanging around him who are trying to use the situation, i.e. the prescriptions, to put this guy, Roskis, into the picture so they could get his property. guy, Roskus, into the picture so they could get his property. So Cicero does talk about how this situation had an impact on his career, but I think he also manages to get perhaps the case of defending Roskus because there are not that many other people around who could do this. So there is that element, you know, kind of taking advantage of that crisis, as you say, if there were less people around, which is really interesting for the story of Cicero. I must ask, when you say the word law courts, I mean, my mind might think of something like suits today, you know, in a room, it's inside. But how should we imagine Cicero performing his oratory in one of these trials in the 80s and 70s?

one of these trials in the 80s and 70s? So this is a super question, Tristan, because as I said before, we scholars talk about these kinds of speeches as forensic speeches. And today we think of forensic as associated with trials or forensic archaeology, but actually the word comes from the word forum. So the forum Romanum, the forum in Rome, which was where all these trials took place, out in the open, not in a closed room or not in a closed building. They were out there, and that means that the audience was not just the judge or the jury, but also the whole ring of onlookers, the corona, as they are called. Although we scholars think it's a bit unfortunate that the pandemic that happened a few years ago also had that name, but it's because corona means a ring. So these trials took place out in the open. There were onlookers who could,

you imagine, shout things at the judge or the defendant or the prosecutor. So it's quite a challenging situation to be operating as a young barrister, a young advocate. Yeah, very much make or break. As you said, you've got the audience watching you as you're performing this speech. For Cicero, when he is practicing his oratory, when he's in these earlier cases in the 80s and 70s, does he have any idols that he's looking at for inspiration? You mentioned that there were less people for him to learn from in the forum at that time, but were there any standout figures that really influenced his style? So again, if we ask Cicero himself, he produced a work which sets up the kinds of role models that he wanted other people to think of him following.

And it's a work called De Oratora, On the Orator, or often translated as On the Ideal Orator, in which he sets a dialogue in 91 before the outbreak of the social war that I mentioned before. And there he has people discussing the best kind of orator and all kinds of rhetorical aspects. And the two foremost interlocutors, as we call them, dialogue partners, are called Crassus and Antonius. This is not the Crassus from the later grouping with Julius Caesar and Pompey. This is another Crassus, Lucius Licinius Crassus, who was famous as a consul, but especially famous from Cicero's depiction here as an outstanding orator. And Antonius is the grandfather of the later Marcus Antonius, who took over after Julius

Caesar was murdered, so an ancestor to him. And this Marcus Antonius, Cicero also depicts as a great orator, but he makes a distinction between the two. La Cines Crassus is fantastic, but also really emphasizes the importance of rhetorical training to become a great orator. Whereas Marcus Antonius is presented as someone who suggests that oratory, you just have a talent and you just practice it until it becomes really good. And so you can see that tension between training and practice played out in this work. So Cicero wants us to understand that here are the two role models for him, and they form part of a history of oratory at Rome that Cicero builds up across many of his dialogic works, where these two guys are there and Cicero somehow becomes the climax in this

history of oratory at Rome. Did Cicero, do you think when you look at his career, do you think he was more the practical man or was he more looking at the books to learn the way of oratory almost? I think he did both. So he had a really thorough education. He did what we would now call a year abroad. So he went to Athens with some other people as well as some young people. And he tells us about this in yet another of his works, a philosophical work called Definibus on Moral Ends. And he tells us in the preface to the fifth book of this work

that he was in Athens with all these friends of his, including Atticus, the guy who received many of Cicero's letters that we still have extant today. And they went there to learn about philosophy, but also about rhetoric. And afterwards, Cicero went to Rhodes, where one of the famous rhetoric teachers recited and learned even more. So he traveled to really get better at oratory. And he says he did so because actually having practiced a lot of oratory at Rome, his voice was really suffering from it. His health was suffering. He needed a bit of a break. So he's presenting himself as someone who works super hard at practice, but who's also learning the theory to support it all.

By the time we reach the mid-60s BC, so going on a bit in Cicero's career, in that decade or more of Cicero in the public eye of his public career, how prominent an orator and a statesman has he become by this time? So this is an interesting question because in the 70s, he was actually away for some of the time. He was away on his first political office as Cuista, where he was sent to the western part of Sicily. But that enabled him to really make the case that he should be the prosecutor of a governor who had governed in Sicily called Verus. And he prosecuted Verus successfully in 70 BC, which many people think actually sort of shoved him up to the top level of oratorical fame in Rome,

which meant that in the 60s, the period you are asking about, he already has a bit of a star quality to him. But it's also in the 60s that he diversifies his oratory from not just being forensic, not just in law courts, but also beginning to address other audiences. And I'm thinking in particular of a speech he delivered in 66 BC when he was Peter. It's a speech in support of a proposal for law put forward by a tribune. in support of a proposal for law put forward by a tribune. And that proposes that Pompey, Pompey the Great later, that he should receive a huge command against the Pontic king called Mithridates. The speech is called the Prolegomenilia or the Imperio Gnae Pompei.

And in that speech, Cicero not just argues for the proposal, but also praises Pompey to the sky. And it's often seen as the flattery with a strategic purpose of Cicero getting on the side of Pompey and thereby hopefully supporting his career going forward, even though Pompey then got the command and was away from Rome for a couple of years. But it is a way of Cicero also to, I suppose, make himself be known to the Roman people, who will again vote in all the political elections, for example, elections for office, where you have to be elected in order to move forward in your own political career. Is he showing how powerful an ally he could be to the likes of Pompey and maybe

later like Crassus and Caesar and anyone else who's hungry for power at that time in the Senate watching on? How powerful an ally Cicero can be because of his mastery of speech? He's been in the law courts and now he's shown that he can be flexible and do these kinds of speeches as well. And the power of words in that he's able to convince these important people in front of him. Absolutely. And I say this not just because Cicero clearly demonstrates his ability for oratory, but also because I've studied the oratory of the other people you mentioned. So Pompey is an interesting example because the sources say that he could be a great speaker mainly when he was favored by his audience and when he was speaking about himself. So quite a narcissistic kind of good orator. Whereas Julius Caesar was

a great orator in and of himself, and that he was the one person who could have rivaled Cicero's oratorical brilliance had he wanted to do so. So I think they both realize, Julius Caesar and Pompey, that Cicero is an orator to reckon with, but Julius Caesar himself, if he had wanted to, could have done something like that himself. But he then chose more of a military direction to his career. Before we go on a bit further, you did mention that trial of Vérys earlier, And I remember talking to Professor Catherine Steele about it a couple of years ago now. And that was absolutely fascinating. But if we talk about that quickly, because I think it's also a bit relevant to Caesar, that Cicero, when he's in the law courts and he's doing that forensic law courts,

he's not defending someone, which, correct me if I'm wrong, could so be seen as maybe a more honourable thing, but he is prosecuting a Roman. Was that a more daring and a bold thing to do, especially for someone quite early on in their career? Absolutely. Catherine Steele and I have both done research on this, and it is very striking, again, Cicero is our source here mainly,

but it's very striking that generally you do not prosecute very often and you mainly do it early in your career if you want to make a bit of a splash. So Cicero does it and he says he does it quite late in his career. He's already 36 when he prosecutes Veres and he therefore has to somehow justify his prosecution as he does in his speech. Whereas people like Julius Caesar had started much earlier, he had already prosecuted when he was about 22, 23, and made a splash with that speech

as well. Even though he didn't win the case, people sort of noticed him. And we know of many other young prosecutors who then go on to not prosecute at all, or even just do defense speeches. So it is true that there's a kind of an odium and negativity associated with prosecuting. And Cicero addresses that in some of his later works and says, well, you have to be really careful. There's a guy he mentions in his history of oratory at Rome, whom he says was famous for being a prosecutor, but nobody liked him. So you do not become popular with the people who are essentially going to vote you in,

in the various political offices, if you are continually prosecuting. And you certainly don't become very popular in the elite because you would be prosecuting usually these elite kind of people. So prosecution has to be used quite sparingly and strategically. I'm glad you mentioned that word strategically there to finish it off, because as we kind of keep going with Cicero's career, we get past 65 BC. You mentioned how you have this speech in 66 where he's pandering to Pompey and he's being very strategic there. Did Cicero at this time, did he have any very strong principles or does he seem a very flexible character that he'll be supporting one person and one person's ideals at a moment's notice and then he'll be supporting someone else with very different ideals at another

moment's notice? So it depends a little bit on when you say supporting people, because I think as a barrister, you are, of course, trying to defend, generally defend, because you're not prosecuting very often, you're defending your client no matter what, a bit like you would do today. You can't say that a barrister is flip-flopping just because he or she has to defend particular clients that they've been assigned or that they're taking in. So I think that's one thing to put aside. Yes, Cicero could both prosecute Veris for exploiting provincials in Sicily and defend other ex-governors for also being charged with exploitation of the provincials. But in terms of political outlook, we don't know that much about Cicero's political outlook.

And I think it's partly to do with a strategic attempt not to offend anybody. Because remember, he's still this newcomer in the senatorial elite. He has had a few offices already, so he is a member of the Senate, but he's not yet really a top dog in that sense. I think he's trying very much not to offend other people. Of course, it changes when he becomes elected to the consulship, and then that is the top job.

And then he can go out a bit more, and then we know after that a bit more about his political perspectives. And he certainly does offend some a bit more about his political perspectives. And he certainly does offend some people when he becomes consul, doesn't he? And I've got in my notes the figure of Catiline. So let's go on to this now. This is an amazing story. So let's set the scene, Henriette, 63 BC, and who was Catiline? So Catiline came actually from one of those ancient senatorial families, but his family had not been very prominent in the last few generations. This is the impression we get at least. And again, Cicero is our main source alongside the historian Salas.

So there is a potential bias here, and not everybody believes Cicero's projection of the story. But apparently, Catiline had tried several times to be elected to the consulship and been unsuccessful. And apparently he tries, well, we know that he tried in 64 when Cicero was elected and Catiline was not elected, then tries again in 63, unsuccessful. And this is the point at which, in the autumn of 63, that Cicero goes to the Senate and tells them in a speech that we now know as the first Catilinarian speech, tells them that Catiline is plotting against the state. And he addresses Catiline directly, who is sitting

in the Senate as a fellow senator and says, you are plotting. How long should we wait for you to carry out this plot? How long should we have our patience with you? So he starts that speech by totally attacking Catiline for his coup d'etat and then says afterwards in the next day, Catiline has fled the city that shows that he is guilty. And then we have the whole story of the so-called Catilinarian conspiracy. So go on then, this whole story, because it is quite mad in its own right. I mean, if Catiline has fled the city, does he flee because he actually is plotting? Or what is revealed in the days and weeks following as Cicero is still consul? So yes, Cicero is consul until

the end of the calendar year. And Catiline leaves Rome, goes north up to Etruria, where he meets a guy called Manlius, who has for several months been collecting forces. And of course, we can't be sure whether Catiline fled because he had already plotted or because Cicero forced him to leave Rome because he had accused him of this? We will never know. But it is a fact that he joined up with Manlius. There were forces there with weapons.

And Cicero also then manages to convince the Senate that this is a crisis situation. And the Senate decides to declare a so-called tumultus, which means there is a problem. So it's not declaring a wall outright, but they're declaring that here is a problem. And they are also telling Cicero and his consular colleague that they should take all care to protect the res publica, the state. And you can interpret what that means, as Cicero also interpreted that in many ways and also got into trouble afterwards. So this is the situation when Catiline is away, and this is in November, late November, but it's not until December that Cicero actually has proof

of Catiline's intentions. And he gets this proof by having people coming to him and saying, there's something really fishy going on. He has people from Gaul coming. The Allobrogues are coming and telling him, well, this Catiline guy and his supporters are coming to us to get support from us against Rome. We think this is very odd. And Cicero thinks, aha, here, the suspicion is confirmed, but he still doesn't have proof. Until in early December, some people who are going to go towards Catiline with messages to him, messages from co-conspirators in Rome, and these letters are intercepted.

And in those letters, it's possible to read all kinds of things about the plot and they can be identified not by, you know, an address on the back flap as we have it, but on a seal on the letter. And that seal, the most important person in this is a guy who is Praetor and therefore a senator, Lentulus. And his letter is intercepted. Cicero has the proof. He can go to the Roman people to say, here is proof of the conspiracy. And he can then, after the conspirators that sent the letter, there is a meeting in the

Senate a few days later on the 5th of December 1963 to discuss what to do about these conspirators now that it is clear that they are plotting against the state. And what does Cicero advocate they do? This is more brutal Cicero coming through, I feel. What happens next? So this is a very interesting situation. So the Senate meeting on the 5th of December, we know about from Cicero's fourth catenarian speech. Scholars have argued that speech is not the speech that Cicero delivered. It's an amalgam of several, you can say, interjections in the debate because Cicero,

as presiding consul, was the chair of the meeting, but couldn't really come in and say, this is what I think. He had to make sure that all views were being put forward. And in chairing this meeting, he would have invited in speakers according to a traditional rank. And we know about quite a few of these speakers. We know a guy called Silanes, who was advocating back and forth, was saying, well, we should execute them, but not quite sure how to do this. We know of Julius Caesar, who at this point was just elected to the preacheship for the following year. So not really so high in the senatorial hierarchy. Caesar argued, according to Sallis, that they should not be executed, these conspirators, even though it was clear that they had plotted against the state.

Caesar's point was that if you do that, you set a very dangerous precedent for what happens in the future. And he said it would be much better if they could be incarcerated, not in the way we think of it. The Romans didn't have prisons like we have, but they could be kept in various towns around Italy, south of Rome. But then, finally, the speaker that turns around the mood of the whole Senate is Cato, Cato the Younger, the famous guy who committed suicide at Utica when he didn't want to receive the pardon of Julius Caesar in the Civil War of the 40s. And he argues that they have to execute these conspirators because they're so dangerous that if you keep them, then they might escape.

And who knows then what would happen? And he then turns around the mood of the Senate and the Senate decrees that these conspirators, these five captive conspirators should be executed. Remember, Catiline is not among them. He's still up in Etruria, but these five conspirators, that they should be executed. And the Senate decrees this, and a decree is not a law. It's an expression of the will of the Senate. But on this decree, Cicero goes out and tells the people this is what's going to happen. And then the conspirators are executed on his order as consul. So Cicero has got his way, although Caesar has put up a bit of resistance,

hasn't he? And you have Cato the Younger at the end, swaying it back in what Cicero had wanted. It's also quite interesting, isn't it, is this is almost the penultimate act to the whole Catiline conspiracy, or basically the story of the life of Catiline, because he doesn't live much longer afterwards. I'm guessing Cicero goes after him next. Well, not Cicero personally, but after that, an army is sent out who is led by another senator, But after that, an army is sent out who is led by another senator, Metellus. And in a couple of months, the conspirators, Catiline, Manlius, and all their mini army up in Etruria are all subdued and they're killed. And then that's the end of that part of the story.

The trouble is that it's not the end of the story for Cicero, because already in December, so right after this has happened, there are critical voices in the Senate for how can you actually execute Roman citizens without a trial? There is a law against this. And Cicero's argument is, of course, well, the Senate has decreed this, so this is the backing. But it becomes a problem for him politically, and it escalates. Clodius, who later is the person who pushes him into voluntary exile because of this, is actually not the first person to raise this.

But it builds up over several years. And in the end, as I just said said Cicero has to go into exile. Because when you think of Cicero did Cicero think that his triumph over Castile was still one of his greatest achievements or did as you say when he gets this backlash coming against him in those years ahead is there any sign of regret or does he always kind of champion this as one of his great successes? So we can't be sure what Cicero actually thought or believed, but what we can say on the basis of his text is how he presents himself and how he presents his story or the narrative of the events. And there, there's never any sign of regret. any sign of regret. Now, I think, again, that this is strategic because he's trying to put forward his version of the story to justify his action. And it would be not just exiling, but political suicide to say, I was wrong. So he doesn't do that. He keeps his story throughout.

And after his exile, because he's actually recalled, he makes this a point about him having saved the Republic from Catiline's threat and it being justified as so evident that he was recalled from his exile. So there's never a public expression of any doubt about the correctness of his action. And as we therefore get into the 50s BC, in the time when you see Julius Caesar going off to Gaul, he's getting very, very powerful, Pompey and Crassus dying in the east. You mentioned earlier how Cicero is being very strategic, but then later you do start to see more of his political beliefs coming to the fore. I mean, is this when we start to see this next chapter almost in Cicero's career, I guess, post that exile?

Yes, on Cicero's views, I think. So his consulship is one of the ways in which you could get an idea of his political views. But after his exile, when he just comes back, he sort of triumphed and said, I was recalled. And all my version is, of course, the right one, since I was recalled from exile. And all my version is, of course, the right one since I was recalled from exile. And he acts as if he's an independent politician. Nobody has a hold over him. But pretty soon, and by pretty soon, I mean spring of 56, he's warned that he can't actually operate like that. And he's warned because his brother is being talked to and being told that, you know, your brother Marcus Cicero, he should just really

toe the line of what the three most powerful people in Rome and outside Rome, actually, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus that you mentioned, Tristan, that they would like Cicero to actually support their cause. And he has to then do that by, for example, defending their supporters in court. And he's quite unhappy about it, I think. And the reason why I think this is that he writes more and more treatises, so political and philosophical works to set out some of his views, including the work I mentioned earlier on the ideal orator, but also works on the state and on the laws,

where he obviously tries to emulate Plato's famous works, but also puts them in the Roman setting and therefore giving us more of his perspectives on political structures and how the Roman Republic should function. Well, Henriette, this has been great. It's been a bit of a whistle-stop questions on Cicero, I must admit, because we don't have much time. I'm not going to ask about Cicero in the Civil War and what follows following Caesar's death, because we have covered that in another podcast when we look at Mutina and so on and so forth. But I really do appreciate your time. And it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. It has been a real pleasure. I always

love talking about Cicero, Tristan. You can have me on anytime. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Henriette van der Blom giving an overview of Cicero's life. I really do hope you enjoyed today's episode. Hopefully in the future, we'll get Henriette back on the podcast. I've got a few more ideas that i'd love to do around cicero and his writings he is such a massive figure so much source material on him about him surviving that we have to do more than one episode on this figure you can of course also check out our archive where we've done a couple of episodes another one on the rise of cicero and another on his final years when he fights for the roman republic and he leads the forces against the likes of mark anthony and ultimately octavian

the battle of mutina and so on and so forth with the brilliant steel brand so go and check those out in the ancients archive too now last thing from me wherever you're listening to the ancients podcast whether it's on apple podcast or on on Spotify or another service, make sure that you are following the podcast so you are notified when we release new episodes twice every week. We've got some amazing episodes coming up just for you. But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.