Resumen de Pro Marcello without Caesar:: grief, exile and death in Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares 4
The ancient editor of Cicero’s ad familiares 4 delivers a striking storyline and a cluster of thematic connections that are coherent and meaningful. The attempt by Cicero to obtain from Julius Caesar the pardon of M. Claudius Marcellus forms the central plank of the book. The optimism for the political future of Rome generated by the securing of Marcellus’ pardon – prominently on display in the published Pro Marcello – is extinguished in the editor’s non-chronological scheme, twice: first by the death of Cicero’s beloved daughter Tullia and then by the suspicious death of Marcellus himself. Grief, philosophy, and consolation are recurring themes: motifs given force by Tullia’s death and depth by the fusing of Cicero’s despair over Tullia with the anguish of the senatorial correspondents for the extinction of the res publica. Ad Familiares 4 offers an encapsulation of civil war significantly different from the productions of the Augustan age.
