How Did Cicero Use Politics

Cicero
How did Cicero use the institutions of Roman law and politics now established as part of the republic’s way of business to vault himself from a bright young person from Arpinum to an up and coming member of the Roman elite?

In Cicero, Everitt narrates in the first chapter the political background that Cicero will inherit; in SPQR, Beard’s narration fills in what happens before Everitt takes over by focusing on Cicero. Everitt describes a political system that had become Byzantine in how it operated without even a large bureaucracy. The intersection of power among the senate, consuls, other officials, and the people had led to a “self-defeating political system” (20). Further, various reform proposals that dealt with land and the new peoples that the Republic was now ‘governing’ were being stalled and defeated. Everitt describes how with the professionalism of the Roman army, retired veterans needed land and no solution was easily forthcoming. With reforms stalled, many tribes went into revolt in Italy; the situation was resolved after much bloodshed and the granting of new political rights.

This was considered a backwater by the Romans, not unlike the ‘flyover country’ today perhaps. Everitt describes how Arpinum is central to understanding Cicero; he might serve Rome, but he never forgot his roots either. Cicero’s education led him to Rome where he joined the household of Crassus; it was here that Cicero was introduced to the Roman institutions he would use to vault him into the elite in the future. Cicero’s close observation of the political scene led him to decide that he wanted to be a lawyer; however, a time of civil unrest led to proscriptions in which many of the leading political figures were killed. This period of violence occurred during Cicero’s formative years and led him to the position of “Defense of Republican traditions”