Cicero finally disseminated the text more widely in late November or early December.23 He was now fully committed to three interrelated objectives: to drag a reluctant senate into a military confrontation with Antony, whom he configured as the new tyrant-in-waiting; to act as self-appointed mentor of Octavian, who was courting Cicero as an influential establishment figure, and thereby ensure his support for the traditional order; and most importantly to restore the senatorial regime to power.
Over the next few months, Cicero weighed in with twelve more speeches against Antony.24 On 20 December 44, he addressed both the senate (Phil. 3) and the people (Phil. 4) and did so again on 1 January 43 (Phil. 5, to the senate; Phil. 6, to the people). The remaining eight Philippics were all delivered in the senate: Phil. 7 (mid-January 43), Phil.
8 (4 February 43), Phil. 9 and 10 (both in early February 43), Phil. 11 (end of February 43), Phil. 12 (beginning of March 43), Phil. 13 (20 March 43), and Phil. 14 (21 April 43). All seem to have been published rapidly.25 The last intervention occurred just after news had reached Rome of the battle of Forum Gallorum near Mutina (14/15 April 43). While the
‘senatorial’ alliance that Cicero helped put together against Antony won this encounter as well as a follow-up battle on 21 April at Mutina, the victories turned out to be Pyrrhic: soon after, Caesar Octavianus switched sides and Cicero was history.26 By choosing Philippics as the label for his last oratorical efforts, he preternaturally seems to have known where he was heading.
The name Philippics alludes to the corpus of speeches that the Athenian orator Demosthenes (384–322 BCE) delivered against Philip II of Macedon (382–336 BCE), the father of Alexander the Great, who
23 See Hall (2002: 275, n. 6): ‘While a written text of the speech was certainly being prepared in late October 44 (Att. 15.13.1–2; 15.13a.3; 16.11.1–2), the precise date of its circulation is not known. Early December seems plausible, given Antony’s departure for Cisalpine Gaul at the end of November’.
24 Stroh (1982), followed by Manuwald (2008), argues that they form a cycle of twelve speeches in imitation of Demosthenes in their own right, to which Philippic 1 and 2 were later added.
25 Kelly (2008).
26 For a more detailed account of the historical context for each individual speech (and the nature of its intervention) see Manuwald (2007: 9–31: ‘2.1. Events in 44–43 BCE’).
threatened to invade the Greek peninsula from the North and ‘enslave’
the Greek city-states, in particular Athens. He realized his ambitions after winning the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, and Demosthenes’
oratorical efforts against Philip acquired an iconic status as an eloquent stand on behalf of liberty against tyranny and oppression. In the 40s, Demosthenes more generally had become a prominent point of reference for Cicero’s theorizing on oratory, and he began to think of himself as the Roman equivalent.27 The label Philippics for the set of speeches against Antony deftly extended the affinities he felt with Demosthenes to the sphere of politics and helped to endow Cicero’s endeavours with historical prestige. It suggests an analogy: just as Demosthenes fought for the freedom of the Greeks against Philip, the Macedonian tyrant, so Cicero was fighting for the freedom of the Romans against Mark Antony, the would-be tyrant of Rome.
When, precisely, he started to conceive of the speeches against Antony as a thematically unified set in conscious imitation of Demosthenes’
resistance to Philip II is impossible to reconstruct; it certainly happened while the corpus was still evolving, but seemingly some time after the initial two interventions were first drafted. In a letter written to Cicero (Brut. 2.3.4 = 2 SB; 1 April 43), written after perusal of Philippic 5 and 7, Brutus praises Cicero for his spirit (animus) and his genius (ingenium) before signing off on the label Philippics that Cicero himself had proposed, half in jest (because of its potentially presumptuous implications): iam concedo ut vel Philippici vocentur, quod tu quadam epistula iocans scripsisti (‘I am now willing to let them be called by the name of ‘Philippics’, as you jestingly suggested in one of your letters’).28 In the letter to Atticus that accompanied a draft of what would turn into Philippic 2, Cicero does not yet use the label, though one could argue that the speech already manifests a Demosthenic flavour: ‘in the Philippics, beginning with the Second Philippic, one sees the first genuine attempt on Cicero’s part to imitate Demosthenes’ use of style and argumentation. After Antony’s furious attack on him in the senate on 19 September, Cicero realized that reconciliation was not possible and that he was engaged in a death
27 Wooten (1983: 49).
28 See also Brut. 2.4.2 = 4 SB (Cicero to Brutus, 12 April 43): haec ad te oratio perferetur, quoniam video delectari Philippicis nostris (‘The speech [= Philippic 11] will be sent to you, since I see you enjoy my Philippics’).
21 Introduction
struggle to preserve the only form of government in which he himself could function effectively (cf. Letters to Friends, | 12.2, 1). Moreover, Antony had attacked Cicero’s whole career, as a politician, as an orator, and as a man; and Cicero realized that his reply had to be a defence of his entire life. Less than two years before, Cicero had put his hand to a Latin translation of Demosthenes’ speech On the Crown. He had already come to think of himself, both as an orator and as a politician, in terms of Demosthenes’.29
You may want to ask yourself: does this analogy mean the speeches were pre-destined to make a posthumous hero out of Cicero (as they did of Demosthenes) but also doomed to seal permanent political failure?
Though unlike Demosthenes’, Cicero’s Freedom Speech couldn’t even turn up and make its Big Moment. Even within its own corpus, Philippic 2 is unusual: ‘the speech is in fact something of an anomaly within the collection as a whole. Its function as invective means that it contains little of the deliberate style of oratory found elsewhere in the Philippics;
and with a total of 119 sections it is more than twice as long as any of the other speeches’.30 See also Wooten (1983: 156): ‘… the primary aim of Philippic II is to establish firmly the character of the major participants in the conflict, very much like the first speech in the second action against Verres. As in this speech and as in Demosthenes’ Philippics and Olynthiacs, narrative is used to discredit the character of the opponent.
There is nothing in the speech about what actions should be taken to oppose Antony, nothing about Cicero’s own political program, no rational analysis of the situation. Emotional appeals are used to
29 Wooten (1983: 50–51). (In his speech On the Crown, Demosthenes defended a fellow Athenian citizen Ctesiphon who had been dragged into court by Demosthenes’
rival Aeschines for daring to propose that Demosthenes ought to be honoured with a civic crown for outstanding services to the city; Demosthenes used this occasion to justify his person and his politics.) NB: you might want to question Wooten’s dogmatism: ‘…realized that…’, ‘Cicero realized…’ — as if Cicero did not have any other options or might not have misjudged the situation. Likewise, imitation of his Greek models does not preclude emulation, not least in the area of hard-hitting verbal abuse. See Worman (2008: 321–22): ‘Many of Cicero’s most effective character assassinations rely on demonstrating that his opponents fail miserably in this bodily restraint. His extravagant portrait in the Philippics of Antony’s appetitive outrages echoes in much more extreme form the excesses … that Demosthenes attributes to his opponents, most particularly Aeschines but also Meidias, Androtion and, of course, Philip’.
30 Hall (2002: 275).
galvanize Cicero’s supporters, and vilification of character is used to set the stage for the exposition of the specific proposals that Cicero would eventually make’ (from the third Philippic onwards).
Its special status raises all sorts of questions: do the rest of the speeches step around or recycle it, only this time for real in the public spaces of the city? Has Cicero integrated Philippic 2 in with the rest or does it stick out like a surgically removed thumb? Might it be the dustbin for everything he didn’t get into the rest — highlights too juicy to chuck away?