EDITOR’S FOREWORD

            I have made the following essay publicly available in order to preserve Miss Walker’s work, and in hopes that the subject may be of interest to others. This paper was prepared as a scholarly survey of the topic at hand, and as a result Miss Walker generally refrains from incorporating value judgments about her subjects. For the modern reader, who may be less familiar with background of the Roman Civil War, it is important to keep in mind that Cicero and Caesar were great opponents in the most important struggle of the age – those who wished to preserve the system of Republican freedom as against those who sought to replace it with a dictatorship. In contrast, Vergil was primarily a poet, whose sympathies for Republican virtues embodied by Cicero’s party were tempered by his dependence for his life on Caesar’s nephew, the emperor whose reign put a final end to the Republican form of government. Such background would have been common knowledge to the audience for whom this paper was written, so only in passing does Miss Walker touch on that essential subtext.

            For example, in discussing events leading up to the divorce of Cicero and Terentia, Miss Walker notes that “Tullia [Cicero’s daughter] and Terentia implored him to follow Caesar, or, at least, to await in Italy the outcome of Caesar’s campaign in Spain. Terentia even pleaded with him in tears, it is said.” Ms. Walker does not herself draw the conclusion, but it seems obvious that Terentia’s urging that Cicero take the side of those who were out to destroy the Republic would have placed unbearable pressure on their marriage, no matter what other marital troubles may have been brewing.

            To state explicitly what is only implicit within this paper, Cicero and his party represented many of the finest aspects of Roman (and Western) civilization, Caesar and his party embodied the opposite, and Vergil, who did not participate in the Civil War, was simply an artist who conveyed the merits of the first while under the watchful eye of the second. Cicero ultimately failed in his political ambition to preserve the Republic, but he succeeded in setting a standard for resistance to dictatorship that has inspired for centuries. When George Washington staged Joseph Addison’s play “Cato” during the winter of 1777 at Valley Forge, he was endorsing to America the battle fought by Cato and Cicero against Caesar’s impending dictatorship.

            In his philosophical writings, Cicero’s efforts produced more lasting results. His speeches against the dictator’s would-be successor, Mark Antony, have been preserved as eloquent rebuttals to dictatorship, and his political writings on the nature of law, such as the following excerpt from The Republic, foreshadow those of Jefferson and Locke:

True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. And it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, though neither have any effect on the wicked. It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment.

            Cicero was not primarily a philosopher, and his efforts fell short of producing a comprehensive philosophical basis for virtue or liberty (for that, the editor would refer the reader to the work of twentieth century novelist and author Ayn Rand). And in evaluating that Caesar was able to proceed as far as he did before his death, the reader should keep in mind that he did not at first appear to be what he turned out to be, and that he had long been respectful of many traditional Roman virtues. In fact, up to the Ides of March, he had repeatedly declined the title of “king” urged on him by the more radical of his supporters. The study of the Roman Civil War provides much insight into the decay of free societies, and to the threats posed by dictatorships when free societies fail to identify and honor the philosophical underpinnings which sustain them.

            The topic here, however, is the influence of the women closest to them on the lives of these three famous Romans, and the following work provides an interesting overview of that subject.

- LMH December 29, 2004

FOREWORD

            Of the ancient Romans, the men best known today are Cicero, Caesar, and Vergil. Whether justly or not, their writings have been accepted as models of their native Latin and for nearly two thousand years have been read by all students of that language. Furthermore, the name of Caesar is familiar even to those who have not the courage to attempt the study of Latin as one of the greatest military geniuses in history; and that of Cicero, as an orator probably better known than the great Greek, Demosthenes.

            Each of the three, however, can be understood and appreciated thoroughly only by reading with increasing sympathy what he has to say in his own language, the Latin, enriched and brought to its most perfect form by Cicero as a vehicle for use in his powerful and perfect orations, and no less famous treatises. Vergil used it for the first time in a great narrative poem in dactylic hexameter. Caesar used it no less correctly for thoughts more familiar to Romans in writing the greatest of all histories of a series of military campaigns. Each was great in his own way and in his own time, and each has still his own particular influence upon the civilized world. For the very reason that their fame and influence refuse to die out, I have found it interesting to make a study of their lives. In this foreword I wish to mention certain noteworthy parallels and differences in their lives and work before proceeding to the phase with which I have dealt in my thesis, the very natural question of the women who influenced their lives.

            Since Cicero was born in 106 B.C., Caesar, in 100, and Vergil, in 70, all lived in the first century before the birth of Christ, one of the most significant periods in history because of the great religious, cultural, social, and political changes taking place.

            Each was affected by the gradual but widespread loss of faith in the Roman gods which prepared the way for the Christian era. Cicero and Caesar, most affected by current thought, became deeply skeptical, in common with the most thoughtful men of their time. Caesar, whose life was most strenuous at the last had not time to puzzle over such things, and seems to have been satisfied to believe only in “Fortuna”, his good luck. Cicero, particularly after the death of his daughter, was profoundly interested in questions about spiritual matters, and has given us in his philosophical treatises as interesting insight into his spiritual gropings. Vergil, the latest but most conservative of the three, kept his faith, it seems, and glorified the Gods in his “Aeneid”.

            In common with most educated Romans of that century, all were products of the Greek culture which had “conquered” Rome. All studied under Greek teachers; Cicero, later, in Athens; and Caesar, at Rhodes. Caesar’s oratorical powers, second among Romans only to those of Cicero, were perfected at Rhodes. Cicero’s oratory and literary productions show Greek influence and he became so interested in Greek philosophy as to be the first Roman to express in Latin the teachings of the great Greek philosophers, before then recorded only in Greek. The influence of the Greek writers upon Vergil’s work was such as to give rise to the charge, made at various times, of too great dependence upon the Greeks, especially upon Homer in the planning and writing of the “Aeneid”. That charge is made, however, only when not enough thought has been given to the fact that whatever Vergil used from the Greek he made his own and so we read in the “Aeneid” most distinctly Roman Vergil and not Homer.

            Cicero, Caesar, and Vergil each had the benefit of the best educational advantages of that day and was prepared for the same career, the public life of a Roman advocate and politician. Cicero and Caesar spent their lives as contemporaries on opposing sides in the very thick of Roman politics. Vergil was the friend of Caesar’s great heir, Augustus, but he himself retired as far as possible from public life.

            Of their private lives, which will be discussed later, it may be noted that not one of the three was either a Cincinnatus of the plow or a Nero. They lived at a time between extremes in Roman life and each reacted in a characteristic way to the changing social conditions. They were alike in two ways. Each lived a life of ease but each was free from coarse living and debauchery.

            In any period of history men of great natural abilities enhanced by culture would undoubtedly been known; but Cicero, Caesar, and Vergil lived in a time when great crises arose and influenced their lives. Caesar, impressed by the teachings of Marius and the group around him, from the beginning took the side of reform in politics against the all-powerful Senate. He seems to have seen from his entrance into public life that changes in the constitution were inevitable, and it was as a natural consequence of his insight into the situation that he finally took the government of Rome into his own hands and became the great Dictator, for whom the history of Rome from the end of the Punic wars surely prepared the way.

            The unsettled time in which he lived was not so well suited to the talents of Cicero. He was a man fitted to plead in the courts, to administer public office fairly for the good of Rome as he knew it. In the great crises, he did not see his way as clearly as did Caesar. For that reason, he has been called vacillating by critics who do not pause to think how infinitely hard it was to see the best thing for Rome while actor in those stirring scenes in the century before Christ.

            Vergil, at 26, had no part in Roman life on the Ides of March, 44 B.C., when Caesar was killed in the midst of his great reforms, or in the following year when Cicero was great and sure of himself in his unselfish opposition to the plans of Mark Antony. Vergil had already written his first great work, the Eclogues, at his home near Mantua, but it was in the time of Augustus, with the decisive battle of Actium not yet fought, that he wrote the Georgics, and did his bit for Rome when he supported the policy of Augustus in the "Aeneid".

            In the case of no one of these great Romans was his career an accident or the outcome of circumstances. Each built his life on a conscious purpose with a very definite idea from boyhood of what he wanted to be and do. Each was actuated by the driving power of a will to accomplish that purpose, and by the genius which made remarkable results possible. One question remains. In the lives and careers of these outstanding figures in the history not only of Rome but of the world, what part did women have and what influence did they exert?

Chapter I Cicero

Helvia

            To find traces of feminine influence in the life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, it is natural to turn first to the facts known of his early home life and consider what is said of his mother. There is no doubt that the impress of his childhood home near Arpinum remained with him. He was loyal to his family and to his birthplace, and his loyalty seemed to become even greater as his fame increased and he became one of the greatest figures in Rome. Probably the contrast between his early home and the life in which his manhood was spent deepened his appreciation of the worthiness of his first environment. Cicero of Arpinum he has been called because throughout his life he remained more the Arpinate and a "peregrinus" rather than one in sympathy with the lives and tastes of those of equal standing in the corrupt society of the Rome of his day. In the treatise "De Legibus", written in 52 B.C., the scene is laid at Arpinum and Cicero when his fame had been won, describes the little town near the Liris "as the background against which he wished to appear."

            We know that his mother’s name was Helvia, that she was well-born, and of the equestrian rank and sturdy stock to which her husband also belonged. Her son’s pride in his birth was shown when he wrote in “De Legibus”, “Here, descended from a very ancient race, we first saw the day. Plutarch relates as a story commonly told that a vision appeared to his nurse and foretold that she was nurturing a great blessing to all Romans. He says further that Cicero’s mother was of good family and conversation but that different origins were given for his father, also called Marcus, some saying that he was born and reared in the workshop of a fuller, others that his descent could be traced back to Tullus Atticus “who reigned with distinction among the Volsci and fought against the Romans with no small vigor.” Though his grandfather is the first member of the family about whom anything is known, most authorities are agreed that the Ciceros were farmers and had been of good position, even leaders, in Arpinum for many generations. Furthermore they were counted as knights and according to the Roman law had to be worth from $16,000 to $20,000.

            From the fact that his decedents, though many people made a joke of the name Cicero, were not only not ashamed of it but even showed pride in it, Plutarch infers that the first of the family who got the cognomen was a man of note. He accounts for the name in this way. “Cicer” in Latin means the vetch and the first Cicero had at the end of his nose a cleft or split like the cleft in the vetch.. Hannis Taylor suggests that the cognomen was derived from the cultivation of the vetch, if not from an ancestor who had a wart on his nose. He adds the statement that “Tullius originally meant a spring or rivulet.” When Marcus Tullius Cicero entered public life he was advised to change his name but replied that he would make the name famous.

            It seems that Helvia did not live to see much of “the promise or ripening powers of her son.” Probably her influence was felt only in his boyhood. Though the Romans laughed at the people of the country districts as rude and old-fashioned, it was in such simple homes as that of Cicero’s father on the Tibrenus, an affluent of the Liris in southeastern Latium, that the ancient virtues of the Roman people were still respected and preserved. We may surmise that the mother of the family still held an honored place and that Cicero’s mother helped to mold in his youth the best characteristics of her son. He himself writes in 6 B.C. of “hard work coupled with scrupulous integrity” as “the two conditions and powers with whose aid he expects to go forward to the remaining honors of public life.” There is every evidence to show that he lived up to that ideal. One writer, referring to the fact that when governor in Sicily at the time of a famine in Rome, he sent large cargoes to Rome without practicing extortion, says, “like few Roman officials” he “was capable of genuine moral enthusiasm.” It was an understood custom for Roman provincial governors to be cruel and dishonest but there is no doubt of Cicero’s honest and humane treatment of the people of Sicily in 75 B.C. and of the people of Cilicia during his proconsulship in 51 B.C. Though ready to lend and borrow and careless of his accounts, he was always honorable in money matters. Though the chief aim of his life was to gain praise and glory and to gratify his vanity, he did not stoop to win elections by large expenditures of money. He was temperate in eating and drinking. His personal morality was astonishing in an age of such licentiousness that even Cato divorced his wife for her to marry Hortensius, then received her back, a rich widow, when Hortensius died. He was true to his friends, to his home and family, to his work as orator, statesman, and writer, and to his love for Rome. I do not believe that Peterson exaggerates when he writes, “It can probably be maintained with an exceptionally high degree of likelihood that if the great Romans of his day had taken a vote to decide which one among them stood highest as a representative of unselfishness in public service, of culture, and of good breeding, the outcome would have been the same at the time when the colleagues of Themistocles took their famous vote. Each one, like a true son of Romulus, might have put himself in the first place, but he would have given the second place to Cicero.” Such a man was not an accident but should be compared to a tree which was bent the right way when it was young.

            Since Cicero’s extant correspondence does not begin until 68 B.C. when he was thirty-eight years of age, his letters contain no information about his mother. Quintus Cicero has shown his mother to have been a careful housewife and a thrifty disposition by relating in a letter to Tiro in 44 B.C. the incident of her sealing empty wine flasks to prevent the possibility of their having been emptied by servants. It is probable that she helped to build up or at least to maintain the substantial property which enabled Cicero’s father to buy a house in the Carrinae in Rome and to spend at least from October to June there in order to give his sons the advantage of studying under the best teachers, such as the Greek poet, Archias, and of acquiring that Greek culture which added to his genius enabled Cicero to mold the Latin language to the perfect form of his great prose writings.

            It was through his mother’s family that Cicero made some of his most valuable contacts in Rome. Her sister married C. Visellius Aculeo, of equestrian rank and no especial culture, but eminent in the Roman civil law, and for that reason well known to L. Licinius Crassus and Marcus Antonius who then were the foremost figures at the Roman bar. Both had profited by the Greek culture and learning, just beginning to be appreciated in Rome, and Antoninus knew the language. Cicero heard and questioned both. The sons of Aculeo and their cousin studied under such teachers as Crassus approved. Sihler says that “Crassus seems to have taken a kindly interest in studies for whose choice he had assumed a certain responsibility.” With his cousins Cicero was invited to the house of Crassus and that association must have meant much to the ambitious young student.

            Cicero’s mother was evidently not ignorant or unintelligent, and was probably ambitious for her sons, but his father seems definitely to have hoped for them to enter politics and establish senatorial families, an ambition which was Cicero’s from boyhood. The elder Cicero lived until about 67 B.C. and, an invalid in his later years, spent his time in quiet study in the villa three miles from Arpinum on the site of the home where Cicero was born. He approved of Greek culture and was interested in the past and present of Rome and must have been so much in sympathy with his son that their discussions strengthened the early impressions from which Cicero derived his love for Rome and its past, and his respect for the Republican constitution, qualities which made his political life what it was. Arpinum was too far away for the changes in Roman political life to be appreciated. People in outlying districts are always conservative and Cicero, the Arpinate, never saw the situation in Rome as Caesar saw it.

            In another way Cicero’s political life was affected by his family. His work was made harder; but his political success was finally assured by the fact that he belonged to the equestrian rank and remained loyal to those whom he called the “true Roman people.” Opposed to radical reforms, he was not popular with the masses who, moreover, accepted the preeminence of the aristocracy and were not inclined to vote for a “novus homo” for the higher magistracies in Rome. Looked down upon always by the Roman aristocracy, he had to face the united opposition of the established ruling class. Political success in Rome was not easy for a man whose family was unknown. It was Cicero’s influence with the Italian middle class which elected him quaestor, curule aedile, praetor, and consul at the earliest age allowed. It was their demand for his recall which ended his exile in 57 B.C., as soon as the active opposition of Caesar was removed, and it was his strength as their leader which made Caesar wish to have his support in 49 B.C.

Terentia

            Some time between 78 B.C. and 73 B.C., Cicero married Terentia and, in so doing, furnished a seemingly undying subject for debate for those writing upon or merely interested in the life of Cicero. The debatable question is whether Cicero or Terentia was more to be blamed for the marital troubles which ended in their divorce in 47 B.C. or early 46 B.C. The date of the marriage is not known, but this trace of it occurs in 73 B.C. that, according to Plutarch, there was mention of Cicero having Terentia’s marriage portion. It is hardly to be thought that he married before he returned home from the East in 77 B.C., having gone there to study in 79 B.C. as a matter of precaution after having opposed a favorite of Sulla in the defense of Roscius.

            Of Terentia it is known that she was well-born and possessed of a considerable fortune. If her fortune was one of her attractions, it must have been a disappointing one because she kept control of it, and exercising the privilege which Roman women were enjoying, in that changing time, of taking part in financial dealings, she had her own steward and became interested in financial enterprises which seem finally to have involved her husband’s money also. Probably her social standing was her chief attraction. Though Cicero continued to be of an “equestrian consciousness”, he was ambitious to win a high position in Rome and may have married Terentia because she was an aristocrat and had a substantial fortune as well. Her dowry of about $18,000 was not to be despised by an ambitious young man who had very little with which to begin life except his genius and a determination to win the praise and glory which he mentions in the oration “Pro Archia” as the one thing to be desired in life. His father left him the house in the Carinae in which he lived until 62 B.C. when he bought the mansion built by Crassus on the Palatine. As his father probably left him little money and as his own earnings as an advocate, depending as they seem to have done on gifts, loans, and legacies from grateful clients, must have been slow in accumulating, the dowry of Terentia should have been very acceptable. The reproach of Mr. Hannis Taylor that Cicero resented not getting sufficient financial aid while with Pompey’s army from “the wife whose independent fortune he had always enjoyed” does not seem just. No mention is made of his using Terentia’s money or of her loosening her grip upon it to aid him in any financial difficulties. Probably she was managing his property at the time with the aid of her freedman, Philotinus, whom Cicero seems to have with good reason to have distrusted. When Cicero began to improve his way of living in accordance with the idea he himself advances in his treatise on “Duty” that “a man of prominence should live in a house befitting his station,” his first purchase, the villa at Tusculum, was made with borrowed money, and, even if he had had the use of it, Terentia’s property could have meant little to Cicero who in 62 B.C. paid $150,000 for the mansion on the Palatine. Apparently he received huge sums as gifts and legacies, for he owned eight villas, at Tusculum, Formiae, Antium, Astura, Sinuessa, Cumae, Puteoli, and Pompeii, besides four lodges, as stopping places while he was traveling, the family home at Arpinum, and several houses in Rome.

            When the villas at Tusculum and Formiae were sacked by the bands of Clodius during his exile, the Senate allowed him $22,000 for the first and $11,000 for the other, neither sum having been considered sufficient by Cicero. That he made a great deal of money and that his credit was good in spite of his reckless expenditures and careless business methods we infer from his own statement in a letter to Sestius in 62 B.C., “Let me tell you I am so deep in debt as to desire to enter into a conspiracy myself. But my credit is good in the Forum.” His very carelessness in regard to finances makes it natural to suppose that Terentia acquired some control over his money rather than he over hers.

            Terentia was an ambitious woman and must have appreciated fully the possibility of the brilliant young orator’s rise to fame and power. She seems to have been interested in his political career and that may have been a bond between them until that career reached the highest point to which a Roman could attain when Cicero was elected to the consulship in 64 B.C. There are some instances of her influence upon his work but there is no evidence to show that he owed his success in the slightest degree to his wife’s influence.

            On the night of December 3, 63 B.C., after the conspirators had been put in custody, Cicero did not go to his home but deliberated at the house of a friend because that was the night of the annual rites in honor of the Bona Dea. Since Cicero was consul and the ceremonies were held at the house or a consul or a praetor, they took place at his house. In 65 B.C. a prodigium had happened to Cicero’s wife at that ritual. The sacrifice having been made, Terentia poured a libation upon the ashes. From the ashes a flame shot up, a sign that her husband would be consul in a year. Cicero was sufficiently impressed or sufficiently vain to mention the fact in a poem on his consulship. On the occasion of the ritual in 63 B.C. under the same circumstances a great flame shot up and the Vestal Virgins urged Terentia, as Plutarch says, “to go with all speed to her husband and tell him to take in hand what he had resolved on behalf of his country, for the goddess was displaying a great light to lead him to safety and honour.” He adds, “Terentia, who generally was not a woman of a mild temper nor naturally without courage, but an ambitious woman and, as Cicero himself says, more ready to share in his political perplexities than to communicate to him her domestic matters,” reported this to her husband and stimulated him against the conspirators. What part Terentia had, if any, in causing the enmity between Cicero and Clodius I shall discuss later. That her aristocratic relatives aided Cicero’s career there is no evidence. It is probable that her resentment aggravated the ill will between Cicero and Cataline, but it did not cause it. Cicero had real friends among the aristocrats but he made those friends by his own ability to attract people to him.

            There are different inferences drawn as to the influence of Terentia in Cicero’s purchase in 62 B.C. of the mansion on the Palatine, the most distinguished residential section of Rome. Plutarch says that Cicero’s chief aim was that his clients might not have far to go, but Sihler sees as other motives Cicero’s own social aspirations “which were always ahead of his purse” and, besides, those of Terentia whose birth led her to wish to live in an aristocratic neighborhood.

            We can only surmise what their relationship was until his extant letters begin in 68 B.C. Their home life seems to have been decorous and happy and there must have existed between them for many years a real affection. There is no doubt that Cicero’s conduct in his home was honorable and that his personal morality cannot be questioned. He himself said at the house of Volumnius in 46 B.C., seeing the evident captivation of Antony by the actress Cytheris, “As for me, none of these things ever affected me, not even in my youth, let alone when I am an elderly man.” He might have said the same thing of the licentious pleasures of the Romans, for a youth devoted to hard study had left him no taste for such things. His life was filled with his career as a statesman and an advocate until his exile in 58 B.C. and as an advocate and writer until 51 B.C. when he went to Cilicia as proconsul. It was a life in which Terentia could have little share and it may be surmised that they drifted apart. It seems that for many years Cicero let Terentia have her way entirely in household matters. Sihler gives as a reasonable excuse for his carelessness in his accounts that his law cases left him no time. It was probably true, also, that Cicero was too engrossed with public affairs to be seriously affected by the growing causes of unpleasantness in his family. It was not until other troubles began to fall upon him after his consulship that there is evidence of friction between him and his wife. That he showed consideration for her opinions and interests his letters prove. Terentia was a devout believer in prodigies and the predictions of the soothsayers. As late as the time of the Civil War when he was leaving Italy for Pompey’s camp, he wrote her of an illness the night before to “some god. Evidently it was Apollo or Aesculapius.” He asked that she give thanks with her customary devoutness. In his treatise “On the Nature of the Gods”, he avows himself a sceptic and could have written as he did only to please Terentia.

            In Cicero’s letters to Atticus during the eleven years from 68 B.C. until his exile in 58 B.C., there are no references which show discontent or criticism of Terentia, though he was writing very freely to an understanding friend.

            In his letters written during his exile until October 5, 57 B.C., when he met Tullia but not Terentia at Brundisium, there is unfailing evidence of his love for his family in which he always included Terentia, Tullia, and young Marcus. Allowing for the fact that his exile was a terrible blow to Cicero and that it was natural for him to draw near to his family in his time of trouble, his letters, as Taylor says, “the tenderest ever penned,” must be accepted as evidences of kindly feelings towards Terentia. One shows appreciation for the difficulties she has had to contend with and admiration for her as well as affection: “I learn that you are showing a virtue and courage surpassing belief;... Ah me! To think that a woman of your virtue, fidelity, and kindness should have fallen into such troubles on my account.” Terentia had remained in Rome, possibly from ill health and from a wish to save what could be saved from the wreck of Cicero’s fortunes. When the house on the Palatine was burned, she fled to the Temple of Vesta but Clodius forced upon her the unpleasant task of appearing in public to make required statements in regard to the property of Cicero which had been proscribed. Another letter has this evidence of a longing to see her: “Lost and afflicted as I am, why should I ask you to join me? You, a woman weak in health, worn out in mind and body.” The letter ends, “Farewell, my Terentia, my most faithful and best of wives and my dearest daughter, and Cicero, our only remaining hope.” In the four letters written to his family from exile there is the same tone of longing and affection. In one letter he expresses the wish that he had not clung to life and adds that if there is no change, his only wish is to see her again and die in her arms. At the same time he wrote to Quintus that he had been singularly fortunate in his brother, his children, and his wife.

            When he returned some cause for coolness had arisen between them. In letters after his return, he rejoices in his renewed association with Atticus, his brother Quintus, and Tullia, but does not mention Terentia in that connection. In two letters to Atticus, certain references show an immediate coldness. During the six years before Cicero went as proconsul to Cilicia, the estrangement between him and his wife must have become definite. Cicero was not happy or engrossed in public life any longer. He continued to have serious trouble with Clodius until the latter was killed by the bands of Milo in 52 B.C. The triumvirs were all powerful in the Roman world and their agreement was renewed at Lucca in 55 B.C. Cicero still had his work as an advocate but what public work he did at that time was undertaken in support of the triumvirs and his heart was not in it. During that period he did some of his most brilliant literary work. The rhetorical treatise, “De Oratore”, was published in 55 B.C. and “De Republica” in 51 B.C.

            The conditions under which he was living could easily have weakened the tie between him and Terentia. He was showing a cheerful face in the Forum; but his dissatisfaction with the political situation in Rome would have made it harder for him to endure lack of sympathy at home. And the facts we know of Terentia’s disposition indicate that lack. His letters show that she was economical, but disagreeable and hard to live with. Cicero’s regard for her superstitions points to that. She was evidently determined and thought her way best. His unfailing, but, at the last, probably perfunctory, solicitude for her health shows that her health was not good. As early as 68 B.C. she was troubled with severe rheumatism. Plutarch says that she was an ambitious woman and not of a mild temper.

Suppose her ambitions ran along other lines than Cicero’s! She had money and controlled it with increasing interest, depending on her freedman’s assistance and advice against her husband’s wishes. Such a situation could cause a divorce at any period of history. Cicero speaks of her as a good manager and as “strong of heart as any man.” Now Cicero himself was not a good manager and one of his faults was his vacillation. If Terentia, sure of herself in her small domain, showed contempt for Cicero’s lack of regularity and carelessness in regard to money, then she found his most vulnerable point, his vanity. To a man whose orations swayed his audiences, who had gained by his own genius great influence in Rome and other cities of Italy, and counted as his friends the most prominent and cultured men in the Roman world, Terentia’s criticism of his ways, and bickering with her over small matters must have been peculiarly irritating.

            Other causes of friction between them may have existed. A possible cause was Terentia’s jealousy of Cicero’s love for his daughter, which she must have realized was greater than his love for her. Terentia had a will of her own, which may have caused her to resent having to be second, even to her own child. Her jealousy may well have been greater because she herself seems to have felt no interest in Cicero’s literary work, and it was in Tullia that he found the kindred enthusiasm which he must have looked for in vain from his wife. His father, his children, and his brother are mentioned in his writings; but there is no reference to Terentia.

            Terentia on some occasions disagreed with Cicero’s brother, Quintus, and did not seem to get along well with his wife, Pomponia. Cicero loved his brother and could not have been indifferent.

            When Cicero left Rome for Cilicia in 51 B.C., he left to Atticus some supervision of his affairs but made no provision for Terentia. During the eighteen months he was away, he wrote only one letter to Terentia and that contains a reference to her fear that he had not received all her letters. It seems that she had written often to give reports of various things.