Word: ciceros
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...year-old classicist says he first became interested in Cicero when he was a high school student in England. By any measure, Cicero was an important political figure in Roman history, but Bailey says he is especially interesting to study because he was a voluminous letter writer, and many of his letters have been preserved. Bailey has authored a comprehensive translation of Cicero's approximately nine hundred letters which still remain--it is likely that the letters which exist today are just a fraction of those that Cicero actually wrote...
Segal got the idea for writing the play when he read Cicero for his own edification. "It occurred to me that the end of his life was a ready-made tragic drama," Segal says...
...after Julius Caesar's death, when his adopted son Octavian returns to Italy. Octavian wants to reclaim his inheritance, which Mark Antony has stolen, and he is determined to fight for his fortune. Octavian was confident of his military power, but he needed some political clout, so he persuades Cicero to come out of retirement, go back to the Senate, and challenge Mark Antony's supremacy...
...Octavian gets corrupted, and makes a deal with Mark Antony--"at that point, Cicero is finished," Segal says. Octavian is forced to sign for Cicero's execution--reluctantly, he does...
...Cicero is an unlikely hero, Segal says, because for most of his life, he was the quintessential politician. "He was a Lyndon Johnson type. He was very successful, and basically bent with the wind. He was never a moral leader," says the writer. "Cicero was a major figure in contributing to the world of great power, great money and great corruption, but at the end of his life, he fought against this corruption. It was heroic, because he didn't have to do it. He could have just led a rich, quiet and safe life in retirement...