Philippicae Orationes - The Philippics

Marcus Tullius Cicero

The Philippics were written and delivered in the twilight years of the Roman Republic, the state and unwritten constitution which Cicero loved and had sworn to defend to the best of his ability. In these speeches and pamphlets, the reader or listener can sense the frustration and rage of an educated philosopher statesman who at the height of his rhetorical prowess was named Pater Patriae, “The Father of the Country”. Amidst the time of this translating, many turbulent things have been happening in my own country which have caused me to turn once again to Cicero. Assuming that we are rational, logic-thinking citizens who have been brought up to respect the laws of our state, then how does a rational person handle the fact that high-elected officials in his Republic tortured and killed innocent people of another country for no adequately given reason, a thing forbidden in not only our laws, but the laws of other allied states? How does a logic-thinking citizen of this Republic come to terms with the idea that law enforcement officers, who are given weapons and training to keep their fellows safe and protected, have seemingly turned those violent gifts to murdering those who, while fellow citizens, are of a different skin color or culture? Cicero would ask us why the hell are we just sitting on our benches.
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phi·lip·pic
fəˈlipik/
noun literary
plural noun: philippics
a bitter attack or denunciation, especially a verbal one.
synonyms:tirade, diatribe, harangue, lecture, attack, onslaught, denunciation, rant, polemic, broadside, fulmination, condemnation, criticism, censure;
informal:blast
"no publisher wanted to touch his scathing philippic"

Gaius Iulius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar, after naming himself Dictator Perpetuus (Dictator for Life), was assassinated by Senators on March 15th, 44 B.C. - The Ides of March. Cicero, though not included in the plot (the conspirators mistrusted his ability to keep the plot to himself), certainly sympathized with Caesar’s murderers. After the conspirators hastened to the Capitoline to give thanks to the gods for the successful slaying, the conspiracy’s authors, Lucius Junius Brutus (descendant of the Junius Brutus who deposed the last king of Rome) and Gaius Cassius Longinus, held a meeting of the People in the Forum to inform them of what had happened; the People remained silent. Cicero urged the conspirators to seize the reigns of government, summon Senators, and immediately vote to have Caesar declared a tyrant, making all his legislation illegal and void; instead, Brutus and Cassius negotiated with Marcus Antonius, Caesar‘s second and acting Consul. Publius Cornelius Dolabella was named his co-Consul in Caesar‘s stead. Seemingly, with the Dictator dead and two Consuls acting in their proper capacities, the Republic was restored. However, Caesar, like Sulla before him, had set a dangerous precedent: the Republic could, ostensibly, be ruled by one man. Upon Caesar’s death, several men asked themselves, why not me?

Marcus Antonius, Vatican Museum

Marcus Antonius (working with speed which betrays a mind which would have been clever if it were not besotted too often by drink) quickly secured Caesar's private papers and treasury from his widow, Calpurnia, and read Caesar’s will on March 18th. Two things of great importance occurred at this: firstly, the People, who had already mistrusted the wisdom of slaying Caesar, now turned almost entirely against the conspirators when they learn that Caesar had bequeathed to them each 300 sestertii and his property across the Tiber made public grounds for their use; secondly, Octavius, his grandnephew, he adopted has his legal son and be renamed Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. This passing-over upset Antony and ensured the relationship between these two Caesarians would be prickly at best.

Two days later, on March 20th, Antony delivered his famous funeral speech in the Forum over Caesar’s body. The mood of the People, angry at best, now erupted into violence and madness. The conspirators were forced to barricade themselves in their homes and then make good their escape from Rome under the pretext that they were leaving to monitor the importation of grain.

Becoming a stable and level-headed leader in the aftermath of the assassination, Cicero had to contend with trading a highly competent megalomaniac (Caesar) with a brutish and violent drunk in the form of Antony, giving credence to a maxim that after the death of a Perikles, often a Kleon rises. If Cicero had had any anger at Brutus and Cassius for working with Antony instead of killing him, it now was certainly given way to depression. He quit Rome, leaving Antony effectively in charge and would not return until August 31st, and not appear in public until he delivered the first of the following speeches on September 2nd.

In Cicero’s absence, Antony continued to harass and horrify the Senate, using Caesar’s veterans to intimidate any opposition to his legislation - the acta, the acts of Caesar which were passed after the Dictator’s murder. These were pieces of legislation found amongst Caesar’s effects, and the thinking by the Caesarians was that these should be passed as his - it quickly became obvious that Antony was publishing and passing laws of his own making, but under the pretence they were Caesar’s. However, with an illegal army surrounding him, opposition to Antony was untenable and ill-advised, especially with Caesar’s killers having fled the capitol, and Rome’s most wise statesman in a depressed self-imposed exile in Campania.

To make matters worse, Antony had been given the province of Macedonia when it came time to divvy up such pieces of the empire to highly-elected officials. Antony had since decided that Macedonia was far too far away from the capitol and asked formally to swap with Decimus Junius Brutus (a relation of the assassin) who had the province of Cisalpine Gaul which lay just north of Italy; by forced marches, Antony could have his troops quickly at the city‘s gates should any trouble arise. Decimus Brutus refused the swap and Antony was clearly moving towards settling the matter with arms when Octavian arrived on the scene. With an army of Caesar’s veterans behind his own back, this intellectually gifted young man of twenty had met with Cicero in Campania and continued on to Rome where he pressed Antony to execute faithfully Caesar’s will and bestow the money and property on their inheritors. Antony, who already had to contend with Brutus and Cassius causing problems in Italy, found this youth yet another nuisance and swept him aside.

It is with these events being such as they were that Cicero penned these speeches. Borrowing from the pages of another famous orator, Demosthenes of Athens, Cicero penned invectives and damning speeches against Antony. Dubbed “The Philippics” after Demosthenes’ tirades against Philip II, King of Macedonia, the reader is to keep in mind that these speeches left so lasting an impression on Antony that he had Cicero murdered for them.

Demosthenes the Rhetor

M. TVLLI CICERONIS IN M. ANTONIVM PHILIPPICA PRIMA - The First Philippic