How to grow old with Cicero

Part XIII of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series

You know when you are having a really, really bad year? Most of us would probably think of the recent covid pandemic, or perhaps of a time when we lost a job or, worse yet, a loved one. Marcus Tullius Cicero knew something about having a bad year. One of his worst was 45 BCE, when he was 61.

Four years earlier Julius Caesar had crossed the river Rubicon with one of his legions, thus declaring war on the Senate of Rome. The ensuing civil war had seen Cicero fighting on the losing side against Caesar, which prompted him to retire from political and public life (forever, he thought, though he turned out to be wrong). Moreover, Cicero’s beloved daughter, Tullia, died in childbirth aged 33.

Cicero was devastated, affected by unrecoverable losses on both the public and the private fronts. And he was getting old, by Roman standards. However, he reacted with force to his new predicament. He did not commit suicide, as his colleague Cato the Younger had done after his defeat by Caesar. And he did not turn to Epicureanism and a hedonic life, like his closest friend Atticus had done many years previously. Instead, he pulled himself up from the depth of despair by writing philosophical treatises.