Cicero's Letters About The Assassination Of Julius Caesar

Classics 10B Final Paper – Prompt 4 When Cicero wrote his letters about the Ides of March and the assassination of Julius Caesar, he was primarily writing to Atticus and Gaius Trebonius, two close and personal friends of his. In contrast, his Second Philippic against Mark Antony was written about Mark Antony and for the general literate people of Rome. As a result, the two writings have dramatically different purposes, which explains the differences between them. The letters were meant to convey Cicero’s personal feelings, free of any attempts to change people’s political views, to Atticus and Trebonius, men whom he trusted. The goal of the Second Philippic was to make himself and Octavian more popular while simultaneously discrediting Mark …show more content…
The first reason for this difference was that he was being accused of being a key member of the conspiracy (which, according to himself and a variety of other sources, he was not a part of). If he had said that he was fully in support of Caesar’s death it would lead people to believe that he had been involved in it. He instead argues that the conspirators were so well known immediately after they had killed Caesar that it would be impossible for him to have been involved without everybody already knowing about it. By denying his involvement in the killing of Caesar, Cicero makes himself look more moderate in his views, making him more relatable to the average Roman and making his views more well respected. He chose to display his support of the killing of Caesar, but to make it clear that he wasn’t involved in any way. This aligned him with the beliefs of the majority of other Romans, who didn’t want an autocrat but also weren’t concerned enough about it to commit what essentially amounted to regicide. This made the point of the Philippic (defamation of Mark Antony) easier to achieve because people would be more likely to respect Cicero’s opinion later on after he had shown that their beliefs