CHAPTER 3

Cicero's Epic and Civic Theologies of Departure and Return

The focus of this chapter is Cicero's departure for exile, his return, and the performances and literary depictions through which he theologized both. Because of Cicero's influence on the political theologies of Caesar and Augustus, it is important to understand the post-consulship phase of Cicero's version of the theology of Rome's returning savior. Like his contemporary Pompey, Cicero was an eyewitness to the events of the Social War and the civil war between Marius and Sulla. He also followed Pompey's meteoric rise in the decades after Sulla, observing up close such events as Pompey's return in 71 and consulship in 70. Cicero was therefore very familiar with the evolution of personal political theology in this period. It is also clear from Cicero's writings that Marius and Sulla both loomed large in his imagination over the course of his career and also informed his self-representation.¹ As mentioned in the first chapter, it was Cicero who reported the fact that Lentulus Sura tried to exploit an oracle concerning the “Third Cornelius.”² Cicero lionized the memory of his fellow Arpinan Marius in terms consistent with the most positive Marian propaganda.³ In making his argument in favor of Pompey's command against Mithradates, Cicero adopted Sulla's theology of the secular savior and applied it to Pompey.⁴ Then, during his consulship, Cicero presented himself as the “man of the saeculum” who saved Rome from destruction. It is thus clear that Cicero both was aware of the memory of Sulla and Marius' personal theologies and employed it for his own ends.

Catiline and Pater Patriae

In his rhetoric, Cicero exploited themes of secular crisis and the darker side of the Sullan legacy, with the aim of both casting a pall on the reputations of his enemies and also inflating his own importance as a savior of the Republic. He first utilized the negative side of Sulla's legacy when he prosecuted Verres in 70.⁵ Cicero later reached his apex of honor during his consulship in 63, when he revealed and then quashed the so-called Catilinarian conspiracy and was awarded the honorific title pater patriae. The rhetorical pyrotechnics that made his attack on Catiline so successful involved drawing on the memory of Sullan violence to paint a horrific image of the conspiracy and its plans—a connection that was easy to exploit thanks to Catiline's involvement in the Sullan cause.⁶ Prompted by secular omens in 65 that haruspices interpreted as portending the end of Rome and its empire, Cicero represented the year of his consulship as a fatalis annus and perhaps promulgated the story, reminiscent of the Lavernan prodigy, of fire leaping up at the altar when his wife was celebrating the rites of Bona Dea—a sign she allegedly interpreted as urging him to take the extreme measure of executing the conspirators.⁷ In his view, Rome was now reborn thanks to him.⁸

It was fitting, then, that Cicero's suppression of the so-called Catilinarian conspiracy, although not uncontroversial, won him sincere appreciation and lofty honors. People may have genuinely believed that Rome had been on the brink of annihilation and that it would have fallen but for Cicero's suppression of the conspiracy. Crassus delivered a glowing speech praising Cicero's salvation of Rome; and Q. Lutatius Catulus, rebuilder of the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter, successfully moved that Cicero be given the title pater patriae, an honor of more than blandly metaphorical significance.⁹ Cicero was, in fact, the first Roman to be thus honored officially. The title pater patriae carried not only the cultural respect accorded to fatherhood and thus a recognition of Cicero's paternal care for the state but also a symbolic kinship with Rome's founder Romulus and those Roman deities that bore the epithet pater.¹⁰ As a way of signaling his new prestige, Cicero purchased a house on the Palatine, the hill on which Romulus first founded the city.¹¹ Cicero's new lofty position, when added to the questionable legality of Cicero's execution of Catiline's co-conspirators, made him an easy target for accusations of tyranny, which his enemy Clodius would later exploit to the fullest. Nevertheless, Cicero's consulship and handling of the Catilinarian conspiracy provided Cicero an opportunity, unique given his status as a novus homo lacking any serious military accomplishment, to present himself as a savior and father of Rome.

Theology and Performance in the Exile of Cicero

The way in which Cicero became a savior and father of the city during his consulship was revolutionary, inasmuch as it did not involve violent civil war or any military achievement. Thus Cicero expanded the possibilities for how one could play this role, beyond the models of Sulla and Pompey. At times, his self-promotion strikes one as overreaching, such as when he sought to ride on the coattails of Marius' legacy or Pompey's successes.¹² Nevertheless, Cicero's self-representation had important ramifications for the future ideology of the Principate and is thus worthy of careful examination. A key aspect of Cicero's self-representation was his theological construction of his departure into and return from exile. Cicero's exile at the hands of his bitter enemy Clodius was a humiliating experience that drove him to suicidal despair. As this chapter seeks to show, Cicero nonetheless deftly employed a wide variety of theological gestures in order to reshape perceptions of his exile and continue his fight against his enemies upon his return. Cicero's theological efforts can be seen in his public performances, oratory, epic poetry, and personal letters in this period and later. A large part of the value of Cicero's case, then, is in the fulsome nature of the evidence. While Cicero's theologization of his exile would not have the same immediate historical impact as the civil war victories of Sulla, Caesar, or Octavian, Cicero's intellectual stature provided him a kind of auctoritas in his dealings with Caesar and in his postmortem intellectual influence on Augustan Rome.

Cicero was forced into exile in February of 58, when his enemy, the tribune Clodius, passed a law reaffirming and expanding the lex Sempronia against capital punishment without a trial before the people. Without naming names, the law effectively targeted Cicero—the man who had executed co-conspirators of Catiline on the authority of the senatus consultum ultimum, or Ultimate Decree.¹³ Having failed to find a defender (even in his old ally Pompey), Cicero prepared to flee from the city into exile, to avoid prosecution under the law. His initial departure from the city took the form of a solemn profectio. He and a group of friends and family assumed mourning dress and ascended the Capitoline Hill, where the once savior of the Republic dedicated to Capitoline Jupiter a small statue of Minerva taken from his home and called her the “protector of the city.”¹⁴ He departed for Sicily and then Greece, where he remained until Clodius' reign of terror on the streets of Rome reached such a pitch that pleas for Cicero's return found willing ears.

Subsequent to Cicero's departure into exile, Clodius passed legislation to make Cicero's exile official, which enabled Clodius to seize and dispose of the exile's property. Under the questionable cover of this law, Clodius either destroyed or greatly defaced Cicero's home and proceeded to build a shrine to Libertas over part of the space it had occupied, in a gesture evoking the memory of the destruction of the homes of Spurius Maelius, Spurius Cassius, and Manlius Capitolinus on the grounds that they were aiming at kingship.¹⁵ Both the demolition and construction were in keeping with Clodius' argument that Cicero was a tyrant from whom Clodius sought to free the people. These acts may also suggest that Cicero's home was imbued with an unusual significance. Located next to the Porticus Catuli, which Q. Lutatius Catulus had built to commemorate his victory over the Cimbri, Cicero's home had been a monument to Cicero's role in saving the city from Catiline, an act that Cicero intended to liken to Catulus' military achievement by associating the two structures with each other.¹⁶ After receiving the title pater patriae, Cicero's house might be looked upon as a lesser reflection of another Palatine residence of a pater patriae, the hut of Romulus.¹⁷ Clodius' shrine of Libertas, which was probably a renovation and repurposing of the Porticus Catuli, took in part of Cicero's former property and was attached to Clodius' own house, in a manner that prefigured the Temple of Palatine Apollo and the house of Augustus.¹⁸ One must therefore read Clodius' treatment of Cicero's house in light of the significance Cicero attached to his house. Clodius' transmogrification of Cicero's house stood as a symbol of personal freedom and the political power of the plebs, in direct challenge to Cicero's own suggestion that his personal residence, the home of a pater patriae and his gods, was worthy of reverence.¹⁹

Theology in Ciceronian Epic

One of the principal means through which Cicero theologized the events of his consulship and exile was epic poetry. When Cicero was dissatisfied with his friends' efforts to memorialize in literature his achievement in suppressing the conspiracy, he undertook to write about the events in the form of an epic poem entitled De Consulatu Suo. In this poem, Cicero depicted himself as standing in the presence of the gods and receiving there a commission from Jupiter to guard the city of Rome.²⁰ Extant testimony of the poem's contents also helps elucidate the significance of Cicero's dedication of Minerva on the Capitoline. After his return from exile, Cicero, speaking to the Senate in order to obtain the right to rebuild his house, mentioned that Clodius was in the habit of poking fun at Cicero for calling himself Jupiter and claiming that Minerva was his sister, an accusation that may have been intended in part to liken Cicero to Demetrius Poliorcetes, who actually did claim that Athena was his elder sister.²¹ Cicero turned the joke on Clodius by observing that Clodius' infamous relationship with his own sister gave him a clearer right to the name Jove. While it is doubtful that Clodius' accusations were accurate, they suggest that Cicero sought to associate himself closely with these gods in his De Consulatu Suo, rendering him vulnerable to Clodius' wit.²² Indeed, it is possible that Clodius' charge that Cicero affected a divine identity may have derived from Cicero's own use of the title pater patriae in De Consulatu Suo.

References to the De Consulatu Suo in pseudo-Sallust's Invectiva in Ciceronem and Quintilian provide more detail regarding Cicero's personal theologization in this epic.²³ In the Invectiva, the author quoted Cicero reporting being sent down to Rome from a council of the gods with the commission of serving as the city's guardian.²⁴ Quintilian referred to the council but not to the commission.²⁵ Both pseudo-Sallust and Quintilian also alluded to Cicero's claim that Minerva taught him the orator's art.²⁶ This reference can be anchored to another fragment of the second book of De Consulatu Suo, in which the Muse Urania mentioned Cicero's education in Athens, a natural context or foundation for Cicero's reference to the oratorical education Minerva provided him.²⁷ As Harrison has persuasively argued, the references to Cicero's poetry in both pseudo-Sallust and Quintilian are drawn from the De Consulatu Suo, which was composed by Cicero before his exile, and not from the De Temporibus Suis, which was never published.²⁸

The timing of these epic references to Cicero's interactions with the gods is important because it bears on the issue of Cicero's departure from Rome as a theological performance. It is surely not a coincidence that Cicero staged a pre-exilic profectio in which Jupiter and Minerva figured prominently. Cicero's purpose in including these gods in his profectio was to allude to the divine supporters who had appeared in his De Consulatu Suo in such a way that it might shame the friends and associates who had either abandoned or betrayed him. It seems highly likely that Pompey and Caesar would have been among those who had read Cicero's epic about his consulship. They would have been treated therein to the poet's description of his visit to the council of the gods, with the attendant claims that Jupiter gave him a mandate to be the guardian of the city and that Minerva identified herself as Cicero's patron. That Cicero would take time in his departure from the city to allude to De Consulatu Suo, wherein he recounted his salvation of the state, is not at all surprising, since the legislation Clodius used to drive Cicero out of the city concerned the same events. By dedicating his private image of Minerva as custos urbis on the Capitoline, it was as though Cicero were returning to the divine council to resign the gods' commission. Since he was no longer able to use the arts Minerva had taught him to perform the mission that Jupiter had entrusted to him, Minerva would have to guard the city herself. As Bodel has observed, Minerva must have agreed to the move.²⁹ Her evocatio out of Cicero's home eerily foreshadowed the structure's destruction, in a manner that likened it to the transfer of the Palladium, also an image of Minerva, from fallen Troy to Italy.

The Dream of Marius

As Cicero journeyed through Italy into exile, he had a dream en route to Brundisium.³⁰ He reported this dream in the De Divinatione, written in 44 BCE.³¹ In the dream, Cicero encountered his fellow Arpinan Marius, who, accompanied by lictors bearing fasces wreathed in laurel, asked Cicero why he was so downtrodden. Cicero responded that he had been driven into exile by his enemies, at which point Marius took him by the hand, told him to take courage, and then ordered his senior lictor to lead Cicero into the Temple of Honos and Virtus, where he should find safety (salus).³² Upon hearing the dream, Cicero's freedman Sallustius cried out that Cicero would have a swift and glorious return. As it turned out, the Senate later passed the decree for Cicero's recall from exile while meeting in the same temple that appeared in his dream. One cannot easily dismiss the strong possibility that Cicero's recollection of the dream was transformed, if even unconsciously, in light of later events. It is therefore difficult to ascertain the reliability of Cicero's later report of a dream he had many years before. It could be that Marius appeared in the initial dream as one who, like Cicero, had fled Rome to escape his personal enemies. As a young man, Cicero had listened to Marius describe his personal misery as an exile, and upon Cicero's own return, Cicero would speak of the deep impression Marius' speech had made on him.³³ There can be no doubt, then, that the exile's mind had turned to the memory of Marius' speech. Cicero might also have taken comfort in the realization that Marius had returned from exile, although the elder consular died not two years later. Another possibility, however, is that Cicero recounted the dream accurately and that his friends, who had heard him talk about it before, purposely arranged the vote for his recall to take place in the Temple of Honos and Virtus in fulfillment of it.

The overwhelmingly positive tenor of the dream, however, raises suspicions. It is difficult to believe that Cicero—a man who was devastated by the abandonment of friends, including Pompey; who was driven out of the city in an act of repudiation of the heroism on which he founded his reputation; and who claimed to have considered suicide—dreamed of a triumphal Marius guiding him into the Temple of Honos and Virtus so soon after leaving Rome to go into exile. Yet possibly as early as 59, Cicero had written an epic poem about Marius in which he referred to the divine signs Jupiter sent Marius, as Rome's savior, foretelling a triumphal reditus.³⁴ Perhaps Cicero's poem about Marius had offered an epic version of an event that Marius had recounted in his speech of 88 concerning his exile. This possibility seems more likely given the resonance between Cicero's reference to the fausta signa suae laudis reditusque that his epic Marius witnessed, on the one hand, and Marius' appearance as a triumphator in Cicero's exilic dream, on the other. Already identifying with Marius as a conservator of Rome, Cicero appears to have closely identified with his exilic experience too, perhaps to the point that he had a dream of Marius in which his deceased fellow countryman served as an omen of his eventual return and vindication.³⁵ Accurately or not, Cicero viewed his own career and travails as comparable to those of Marius, and his depiction of the gods' involvement in his exilic departure and return well reflect that.

One is also struck by the Sullan nature of Cicero's gesture of using a divinely sent dream to construct a type of epic narrative, ending in Cicero's ultimate vindication and triumph. That Sullan element is also present in Cicero's poem Marius, in which the phrase fausta signa suggests Marius' possession of a felicitas similar to that of Sulla, which, as mentioned in chapter 1 of this book, was in evidence not only in Sulla's dreams but also in the favorable divine signs that appeared to Sulla before he attacked cities.³⁶ As discussed in chapter 1, the felicitas of Marius was also a feature of Sallust's portrait of Marius. There is, thus, an appropriately ambiguous overlapping of the figures of Marius and Sulla in Cicero's thought, and that overlap raises very unpleasant associations concerning a prototypical great man who, ejected from the city, returns to visit a bloody revenge on his opponents. During the Sullan civil war, both Marius and Sulla had returned to Rome and mercilessly slaughtered their enemies. Thus, while Marius' return from exile could be some comfort to Cicero, these darker associations suggest something of Cicero's own fierce anger and desire for revenge. Indeed, the combination of the dream visitation of Marius and the implicit reference to Sulla, who had once dreamed of Bellona giving him the power to strike down his enemies, leaves an unsettling impression.³⁷

What is most striking about Cicero's dream of return is its triumphal imagery. Marius appeared with his lictors bearing fasces wrapped in laurel, as they would on the day of a triumph. One imagines Marius and his army gathered outside of Rome, preparing to cross the pomerium when the Senate has given permission for a triumph. The triumphal imagery is crucially important to the interpretation of Cicero's report of his dream, because it foreshadowed not only that Cicero's return would be decreed by the Senate but also that his homecoming would be triumphal in spirit. The oldest Temple of Honos and Virtus located outside of the Porta Capena had strong triumphal associations.³⁸ Marius also built a Temple of Honos and Virtus from the spoils of his victory over the Cimbri and Teutones and in commemoration of both that victory and the related triumph.³⁹ It was a moment, however, that was not untouched by the jealousy of others. Q. Lutatius Catulus sought to overshadow Marius' achievements and monuments with his own triumph, Temple of Fortuna Huiusce Diei, and memoir.⁴⁰ Marius' triumphs and subsequent struggles provided Cicero a model for his own shifting fortunes. Ultimately, Marius returned to Rome and had his prophesied seventh consulship. This parallel hints at the future vindication of Cicero's legacy as conservator of Rome during the Catilinarian affair—a legacy that was under attack from Clodius, a man who sought to associate himself with Catulus.⁴¹

The triumphal component of the dream of Marius also touches on issues of the relationship between private and public space that were raised by Cicero's departure into exile. Cicero's dedication of the statue of Minerva on the Capitoline had involved transporting a private statue of the goddess from his house on the Palatine to the Capitolium, translating it from private to public space and thereby changing the image's function and significance. The typical triumph traveled in the opposite direction of Cicero's profectio, drawing its participants from outside the city within the pomerium, then up the Capitoline, and finally back to the house of the triumphator. The Temple of Honos and Virtus, located near Marius' house, raised the issue of the relationship between public and private space in a manner that was applicable to Cicero's own experience during his departure from Rome, the subsequent destruction of his house, and the erection of a shrine of Libertas on the site. The destruction of Cicero's home effectively removed his ritual presence in the city, in that the aedes in which his household gods had resided was now gone. The dream thus provided Cicero new divine patrons in the deceased Marius and the gods Honos and Virtus.⁴² The importance of Honos and Virtus in this context reminds Cicero's reader that novi homines such as Marius and Cicero might lay claim to deities that highlighted their personal history and merits; in contrast, members of the old Roman nobility could exploit claims of divine and heroic ancestors.⁴³ Upon returning to the city, Cicero could not return to a home laden with the associations that Cicero's achievements and those of its previous owners conferred on it, because it was demolished. Marius' Temple of Honos and Virtus served as a substitute for such a refuge in the dream, but its Marian associations also strongly highlighted the difference between these men and other nobles, in that these Arpinans depended on their own achievements, not an illustrious ancestry, for their claim to honor in Rome.

It seems likely, then, that Cicero's dream of Marius, as reported in the De Divinatione, is the product of years of Cicero's rumination on different aspects of his experience of exile. Cicero depicted this experience as a theological narrative, drawn from epic, to explain, justify, and provide shape and purpose to the major events of his life, during which his geographical and legal relationship with the city was in flux. In this narrative, Cicero emerges as a kind of Odysseus figure, who, buffeted by his enemies and feeling abandoned, is rescued by the gods and returned to his home to exact vengeance on his enemies and to restore order in his homeland.⁴⁴ That Cicero saw himself in this way is strongly suggested by the little we know about his post-exilic epic poem about his life, De Temporibus Suis, which once again featured a divine council, though one at which, unlike the council of the De Consulatu Suo, the author himself was not depicted as present. Of the council in De Temporibus Suis, Harrison hypothesizes that Jupiter, considering the sufferings of Cicero in exile, prepared the way for the consular hero's return to Rome but advised the orator to avoid coming to the immediate attention of his enemies.⁴⁵ Harrison also suggests that Minerva may have appeared in the council to argue Cicero's case, just as she did for Odysseus in the Odyssey.⁴⁶

Cicero used a variety of strategies to theologize various events in his career, including both public and private performances and literary self-representations. That his literary productions were clearly related to his public performances raises important questions about the distinction between religious expression and literary form. While it would be fairly easy to dismiss the divine machinery of Cicero's epic poetry as mere literary convention, it is much more difficult to dismiss the influence of the divine councils described in Cicero's autobiographical epic on Cicero's dramatic profectio into exile. The epic's divine council scene provides Cicero's departure with a clear context that is indispensable for a full appreciation of the meaning he intended to convey when he dedicated his personal Minerva on the Capitoline as he departed. Not only is it difficult to imagine Cicero being unaware of the implications, in the context of his epic poem, of his dedication of Minerva as the custos urbis, but it is also difficult to imagine Cicero peevishly and cynically dedicating the statue of Minerva without any intention of leaving his fellow Romans in the goddess' care. Thus one is left with the somewhat uncomfortable realization that Cicero saw his epic, private, and civic theologies, in their interaction with each other, as a form of serious religious expression.⁴⁷ While he doubtless did not view them as being interchangeable, it was nevertheless the case that they interacted substantively for Cicero in ways that we might not have previously imagined. At one point, Cicero considered revising his divine council in the De Temporibus Suis to include a prophecy of Apollo regarding the disreputable reditus of Gabinius and Piso.⁴⁸ One is struck by how readily the historical reditus ceremony is fit into an epic apparatus. The religious implications of such returns for the city are one of the most powerful reasons why this should be the case. Cicero meant to contrast the salutary effects of his own reditus from exile with the baleful effects of the returns of Piso and Gabinius. The depictions of those reditus in epic did not detract from their religious significance; epic instead added another dimension to their religious significance.

While Cicero's dream of Marius did not, so far as we know, find its way into De Temporibus Suis, it similarly partakes of an ambiguity involving likely literary artifice and historical personal experience. This personal prophetic experience provided a different theological and narrative framework from that provided later in the De Temporibus Suis, but one that is concerned with similar issues. This suggests that, much as public divine epiphanies and omens contributed to the production of authority and meaning as expressions of the partnership of the gods and humans in the unfolding of history, different media and messages were brought to bear on the same events in Cicero's life in ways that were mutually reinforcing, if not always logically consistent. Cicero saw his return to Rome as divine providence, and he used a variety of evidences and modes of expression to drive that point home. This suggestion is affirmed by other representations of Cicero's return from exile, in which, through a variety of different legal, religious, and narrative tools, Cicero sought to cast the event as triumphal and recover his lost place among the senatorial elite as well as his house, even though it had been demolished by Clodius.⁴⁹

A Divine Republic?

Through his epic poetry and his dream of Marius, Cicero represented his own journey into exile and return in strongly theological terms that assimilated him to the status of both an epic hero and a Republican hero. His profectio performance in dedicating a statue of Minerva as custos urbis was perhaps the most public reference to that epic theme outside of his writings. In his Post Reditum speeches, however, Cicero's self-presentation, while equally dramatic, cut a more traditionally magisterial pose, albeit one that was no less theologically rich and significant.⁵⁰ In the opening of Ad Quirites, Cicero characterized his departure as an act of devotio, wherein he dedicated himself and his fortune to Jupiter for the safety of the city, as a commander would for his imperiled army.⁵¹ Indeed, in the Post Reditum speeches, he set himself in a civic theological context, through which he took on traditional civic roles while the personified Res Publica and Italia eclipsed other gods as the most important figures to share the stage with him.⁵² Cicero closely identified his own safety with the welfare of the Republic in these speeches.⁵³ He further amplified the pathos by personifying Res Publica and speaking of its death and funeral. In the Pro Sestio in particular, he spoke of a wounded Republic being plundered while it drew its final breaths.⁵⁴

Cicero's personification of the Republic evokes the Greek and Hellenistic practice of representing cities as goddesses or of identifying tutelary goddesses with their cities.⁵⁵ Stone carvings in Athens show the city in female anthropomorphic form, extending her hand to visiting embassies. Tutelary goddess figures such as Tyche and Magna Mater were often depicted with mural crowns, a symbol that spoke both to the function of the goddess as a protector of the city and to the strong identification of deity and polis. Greeks worshiped the goddess Roma in the East, whereas the term Roma had a primarily geographic significance at Rome.⁵⁶ Romans of the Late Republic cast no single goddess in the role of civic guardian, but instead depicted various goddesses as fulfilling that role. Two popular choices were Venus and Magna Mater, but others could fill the role as well. The bloodied and gasping image of Cicero's Res Publica was not explicitly a goddess, but an allusion to such a divine figure could not have been far away from Cicero's and his listeners' minds. Romans did not generally personify Res Publica, and they did not pay her divine cult. This is not to say, however, that the Republic could not be imagined in such a way. Neither does Cicero's representation of Res Publica as mortally wounded and near death strongly militate against the association. After all, Aphrodite herself was wounded in the Iliad, and she was not the only deity who suffered injury.⁵⁷ Hephaestus, too, was injured when he was cast from Olympus, with the result that he suffered a permanent limp.⁵⁸

Cicero's strongest indication of the divine status of his personified Res Publica is in her departure from and return to Rome.⁵⁹ In her departure, Res Publica is reminiscent of the departure of Aidos and Nemesis in Hesiod's Works and Days or Aratus' account of the departure of Dikê.⁶⁰ Upon the departure of these deities, the world descended into a final nadir of evil and sorrow in the Iron Age, from which there was seemingly no respite or salvation. Res Publica, in Cicero's view, could only reside where the conditions for her existence were favorable, or perhaps she was a gift that only went to those deserving of her. Cicero wanted to stress the relationship between his presence or absence and the location of Res Publica. Where Cicero was absent, Res Publica would be absent also. When Cicero returned, the conditions were once again favorable for the presence of Res Publica in Rome. Well over a decade after Cicero's exile, his Pro Marcello would build on this association of the state of the Republic with the presence or absence of key individuals. The Pro Marcello, in which Cicero marked the dual returns of himself and Marcellus as a hopeful harbinger of the state of the Republic's return, will be explored in greater detail in the next chapter.

In 57, Cicero says that when Res Publica, an exile herself, was restored to Rome, she carried Cicero back along with her.⁶¹ Ironically, one is reminded of the return of the tyrant Peisistratus to Athens in the company of his “Athena.”⁶² It is important to remember, however, that Peisistratus was building on the tradition of Athena's care for heroes like Heracles and Odysseus. Athena not only assisted heroes in battle but accompanied them as they made their way up to the heights of Olympus. Res Publica took on the role of Athena as companion and protector of her hero, Cicero. Like Odysseus returning to a chaotic Ithaca to reclaim his wife, home, and kingdom with the assistance of Athena, Cicero returned to Rome with the support of the Res Publica in order to rejoin his family, reclaim his home, and set Rome aright. Cicero's use of the topos of Athena as the hero's companion is thus consistent with Cicero's theological representation of himself in other contexts, although Res Publica here takes the role of Athena. There is an apparent contradiction here, since Minerva cannot be the custos urbis left on the Capitolium to guard the city in Cicero's absence at the same time that she is Res Publica in exile with Cicero. Cicero's use of Minerva as a model for his Res Publica in the Post Reditum speeches does not, however, make her Minerva. Nevertheless, like Athena-Minerva, she can be viewed as a divine protector.

Cicero, Salus, and the Censorship

In addition to theologizing his return from exile through treating Res Publica as his divine patroness in his Post Reditum speeches, Cicero provided a more straightforwardly factual account of his return journey to Rome in an epistle to Atticus.⁶³ One is glad to have the letter inasmuch as it provides elements of historical fact in its description of the events of Cicero's return from exile. Nevertheless, one must imagine that in preparing his letters for publication, Cicero took appropriate care in crafting a literary production that was every bit as artfully crafted as any of his other works.⁶⁴ Given its acknowledged literary nature, the letter to Atticus may also contain a theological angle worthy of exploration. Did Cicero inject a particular theological message in his depiction of his own arrival in his letter to Atticus? The evidence is sufficiently strong as to be unambiguous.

Having left Dyrrachium on the fourth of August in the year 57, Cicero arrived at Brundisium on the fifth. He was there greeted by the sight of his beloved daughter Tullia, whose birthday it happened to be. As chance would have it, the day also marked the dies natalis of the colony of Brundisium, as well as that of the Temple of Salus in Rome, which was located next to Atticus' house.⁶⁵ Of course, this fortuitous circumstance is perhaps not a coincidence at all. Although it is doubtful that Cicero would have extended his exile in order to time his arrival at Brundisium so significantly, one need not doubt that he, upon finding that a felicitous date was approaching, timed his arrival and coordinated the celebration in such a way as to have the greatest possible impact. Indeed, Kaster suggests that Cicero and his friends, especially Lentulus, coordinated the timing of Cicero's arrival to fall on this significant date.⁶⁶ At the very least, one can be confident that, after the fact, Cicero saw great significance in the “coincidences” involved in his return to Italy and deliberately drew attention to them in order to make the case that divine providence had a hand in all of it.

In his letter to Atticus describing his reditus, Cicero brought together three overlapping spheres of primary concern for the Republican statesman (domus, Roma, and Italia), in a theological framework centering on the topos of birth. Cicero's landing at Brundisium occurred on the birthday of his daughter, the birthday of Brundisium, and the birthday of the Temple of Salus in Rome. By noting this fortuitous coincidence, Cicero was prompting his reader to think of Cicero's return as a divinely appointed day of rebirth for his family, for Rome, and for Italy. The first sphere is the domus. Tullia's presence represented not only the re-gathering of loved ones to the home but also the reconstruction of the domus, which included the reacquisition of the site of the structure on the Palatine and the rebuilding of the residence itself. The second sphere is Italia. As noted before, Brundisium was an important destination on the itinerary of a general or governor returning from the East, and so it had acquired a strong association with great triumphs. Doubtless, Cicero was raising that image here. At the same time, the timing of the arrival on the dies natalis of the colony had even deeper and more powerful resonance with Roman colonization ritual and the founding of a new city.

The final sphere is Roma: Cicero's reference to the dies natalis of the aedes Salutis symbolized a new birth of the welfare of the Republic. It is noteworthy that construction on this temple, vowed by the consul C. Junius Bubulcus in 311 BCE in connection with the Second Samnite War, began during Bubulcus' censorship.⁶⁷ Furthermore, in this temple, the Senate set up a statue in honor of Cato Censorius, the most iconic of Roman censors.⁶⁸ Inscribed on this statue was the following tribute to the censor: “When the Roman state was in decline and inclining to a worse condition, he was appointed censor and by useful guidance and wise practices and teachings set it right again.”⁶⁹ This inscription thus related the office of censor with the healing power of the god Salus in restoring a sickly Republic. Educated Romans who read Cicero's letter, such as Atticus, would have therefore thought of the censorship in connection with this Temple of Salus and considered the example of Cato in rescuing a tottering Republic. In the letter, Cicero made special mention of the fact that it was the people of Brundisium who had taken note of the coincidence of his arrival with the dies natalis of the Temple of Salus. The most likely occasion in which such information would have been conveyed was during a speech given in honor of Cicero's arrival at the city (logos epibaterios), wherein the coincidence of his arrival's timing may have been described as an omen pointing to the salvation of Rome and Italy from its troubles. Cicero's arrival had been timed to fall on the foundation date of the colony, which the people of the colony were already celebrating on that day. Cicero would have appeared as an honored visitor, and he would have been given special recognition in the festivities of that day. As the Brundisians addressed their special guest upon his arrival, they took note of the connection between their city's foundation, the birthday of the temple, and the fortuitous circumstance of the visit of the two Tullii.

Cicero's purpose in reporting this coincidence to Atticus probably goes beyond a trivial observation. Cicero both sees and wants Atticus to see a good omen in these circumstances—perhaps one that points to Cicero receiving a greater honor of some kind in connection with his return to the city. The nature of that honor is suggested by the censorial associations of the Temple of Salus. A subsequent letter to Atticus confirms that the desired honor was election to the office of censor, which Pompey had helped other friends acquire in 70.⁷⁰ Cicero may have hoped that Pompey, seeing his error in allowing Cicero to go into exile and desiring to make some recompense in their reconciliation, would support Cicero's bid for the censorship to help him regain his place of honor among the boni. If that had been Cicero's hope, it did not materialize. Cicero was instead appointed a legate to assist Pompey in his curatorship over the grain supply, with the stipulation that Cicero was to stay in Rome.⁷¹

Cicero's interest in the censorship was perhaps inspired by his desire to repeal Clodius' lex Clodia de censoria notione, which limited the power of the censors in the lectio senatus.⁷² The law “prevented the censors from excluding anyone from the album senatorum, or from punishing them with any sort of ignominia, unless both censors agreed on the punishment and only after the individual had been accused in their presence.”⁷³ Soon after his return, Cicero set about attacking his enemy's law, on the grounds that it fatally compromised the power of the censor. It is hard not to see an element of revenge in Cicero's motivations. Whatever his larger aims were, he seemed, in the shorter term, to have considered a revitalized censorship a useful weapon that he could wield against Clodius and his allies to get them thrown out of the Senate. It would have been a housecleaning reminiscent of the mass expulsion of 70, in which the censors ejected sixty-four senators from the Senate. Cicero, however, would never be censor, and the lex Clodia de censoria notione would not be reversed until 52.⁷⁴ Metellus Scipio was the one to accomplish this reversal.

The rest of Cicero's description to Atticus of his time in Brundisium and his journey to Rome was devoted to projecting an image of broad and miraculous consensus for his return.⁷⁵ He recounted how, on the eighth of August, a letter arrived informing him that, filled with marvelous enthusiasm (mirifico studio), an unbelievable gathering (incredibili concursu) of voters came from all over Italy to vote in the comitia for his return. Cicero's language implies that divine inspiration motivated the voters.⁷⁶ The cream of Brundisium's local elite sent Cicero off on his journey, and he was greeted along the way by embassies from various communities. As Cicero drew near Rome, a flood of people of all orders issued forth to welcome him. In his speech In Pisonem (52), Cicero depicted Rome as a goddess who nearly pulled herself out of her foundations to embrace her savior: cum mihi ipsa Roma prope convolsa sedibus suis ad complectendum conservatorem suum progredi visa est.⁷⁷ According to his letter to Atticus, Cicero entered the city through the Porta Capena. People crowded the steps of the Temple of Honos and Virtus, located just outside the gate, to applaud his arrival and shout their congratulations.⁷⁸ The importance of the Velian Temple of Honos and Virtus as a triumphal symbol in Cicero's dream of Marius suddenly took on a new layer of significance, especially when one remembers that the work in which the extant report of it appears, De Divinatione, was written over a decade after these events. A wondrous crowd (miranda multitudo) gathered in the Forum and on the Capitoline to watch him as he mounted the hill, in the company of another throng, to pay his respect to Jupiter.

Later in the same letter to Atticus, Cicero connected Pompey's success in obtaining the task of managing the corn supply to his own popularity at the time of his return to Rome. He spoke in favor of the proposal, at the instigation of a crowd's applause. It was not any ordinary command. As Cicero related in the same letter, the commission was similar to Pompey's command against the pirates, in that it took in the breadth of the empire and had a duration of five years. Also, Pompey was allowed fifteen legates for the grain commission, on the list of whom Cicero held the place of honor. Cicero further bragged that Pompey said he would regard Cicero as a second self in his execution of the responsibility. Another law was also proposed that would have granted Pompey money, a fleet, an army, and maius imperium in the provinces to execute his task. Cicero told Atticus that he refrained from comment in the controversy over the two bills, since the pontifices had not yet decided on the matter of his house. As Cicero closed the letter, he remarked that he was on the threshold of a second life. This second life was surely related, in his eyes, to his reconnection with Pompey, who, in the discussion of the cura annonae as just reported by Cicero, had called Cicero a second self (me alterum se fore dixit).

Cicero's letter to Atticus concerning his return from exile therefore has elements of a ring composition. His landing at Brundisium was filled with birth and foundation days, and the letter ended by referring to his “second life.” Cicero thus used his adventus, which followed the path of great victors returning from the East, to lay out a path to his rebirth and political rejuvenation as Pompey's right-hand man. As he depicted it, his entry into Rome was like the reditus of a victorious general; in this way, he harked back to and, in a sense, fulfilled his dream of a triumphing Marius welcoming him into the Temple of Honos and Virtus to secure his welfare (salus). Like a triumphing general, Cicero was greeted enthusiastically and made a procession to the Capitoline. The victorious display of his adventus, facilitated and attended by wondrous occurrences, led, at least in his own estimation, to the political success of procuring a grain assignment of sweeping scope for his ally and friend Pompey, in which Cicero occupied a symbolic position of honor. Although he did not explicitly mention it in the letter, he alluded to hopes of a censorship in the positive signs attending his arrival at Brundisium. Cicero remained in Rome in the hope of securing election to the position, but an election for censorship was not held.

Conclusion

Although Cicero's career scarcely resembles those of men like Marius, Sulla, and Pompey, Cicero exploited the themes of departure and arrival within his own sphere and in his own way, in his theologization of his rescue of the state from Catiline and Clodius. His representation of the Catilinarian affair even hit on themes of secular crisis, such as those discussed in the first chapter of this book, taking the form of prodigies and prophecies in the time of Sulla's conflict with Marius. The dire pronouncements of the haruspices in 65 and the claims of Lentulus Sura were ample material for Cicero to turn to his own purposes.⁷⁹ In any case, he was able to secure the honor of being officially declared pater patriae, thanks, in no small part, to the exaggerated sense of crisis at the time. As pater patriae, Cicero was assimilated to Rome's founder Romulus.⁸⁰ Furthermore, according to Cicero's own theology, Jupiter had appointed him the task of saving Rome from Catiline, and Minerva's arts had enabled him to pull it off.

The differences between Sulla's and Cicero's strategies reflected not only the different scope of their respective actions and methods but also their respective origins. As a member of Rome's ancient patrician nobility, Sulla would appeal more emphatically to symbols and narratives of Rome's ethnic origins, regal past, and priestly power. A Cornelius such as Sulla could credibly do so. Cicero turned to the crafting of a memoir in epic form, wherein he was commissioned by the gods to be Rome's savior. The orator from Arpinum also took comfort in his providential dream about Rome's other savior from Arpinum, Marius. The report of the dream was a more private expression of his theology, but it still related to his public performances. In his public performances, Cicero presented himself very much in the tradition of Roman commanders and magistrates. Here his theological framework was more civic in its orientation. The personified Res Publica was the goddess who carried him home from exile. Thus he did not emulate Marius' Dionysiac pretensions or Sulla's special relationship with Bellona. Yet the use of a theological framework in lending meaning, justification, and purpose to the significant departures and arrivals in his career is undeniable.

1. On Marius, see Gnauck 1936; Carney 1960; Santangelo 2008. On Sulla, see Ridley 1975; Diehl 1988; Dowling 2000.

2. Cic. Catil. 3.9–10.

3. Carney 1960.

4. Cic. Man. 41–42. Cicero speaks of Pompey as one sent down from heaven: itaque omnes nunc in eis locis Cn. Pompeium sicut aliquem non ex hac urbe missum, sed de caelo delapsum intuentur. He also suggests the possibility that Pompey was born according to divine plan to wage the wars he prevailed in: ad omnia nostrae memoriae bella conficienda divino quodam consilio natus esse videatur. Cicero's use of this theology in connection with a command against Mithradates was fitting, since Mithradates exploited messianic and apocalyptic prophecies in his own propaganda. See chapter 1, n. 5.

5. Cic. Ver. 3.81–82; Ridley 1975, 91–92. Although Sulla is unnamed, Cicero refers to him as one who auctioned off the property of Roman citizens as though it were his own booty.

6. On Catiline, see Dowling 2000, 307–8. Even in drawing this connection between Sulla and Catiline, however, Cicero went out of his way to point out Sulla's initial justification for his acts. Cicero alleged that Catiline murdered M. Marius Gratidianus before the tomb of the Lutatii. See Q. Cic. Pet. 10; Sal. Hist. 1.44 M; Asc. 83.26–84, 87.16–18, 89.25–27, 90.3–5; V. Max. 9.2.1; Plu. Sull. 32.2. Marshall (1985a, 132–33) suggests that it was not Catiline but Q. Catulus who executed Gratidianus before the tomb of the Lutatii, as an act of revenge for the murder of his father. Cicero blamed Catiline in his speech In toga candida because it suited his purposes, while charging the powerful Catulus would have been unwise.

7. On the omens of 65 and the haruspices' interpretation, see Cic. Catil. 3.19. See Plu. Cic. 19.4–20.3 for the Bona Dea prodigy. The Invectiva of pseudo-Sallust (3) credits the influence of Terentia for helping Cicero with the decisions that raised him to a higher status (sed, ut opinor, illa te magis extollunt, quae post consulatum cum Terentia uxore de re publica consuluisti), although these occur after his consulship. For a discussion of Cicero exploiting the theme of the fatalis annus, see Havas 2000.

8. Cic. fr. 8 Courtney: O fortunatam natam me consule Romam. Considered in the context of the prediction by the haruspices of the end of Rome and its empire in 65, this claim looks less ridiculous.

9. Plin. Nat. 7.117. Appian (BC 2.7) credits Cato with proposing the honor. In Pliny, the term used is parens patriae. On pater patriae, see Weinstock 1971, 175–228; Miles 1997, 99–100. The most complete discussion of the concept of the father of the country in Rome is Alföldi 1978.

10. Ennius (Ann. fr. 113 Vahlen) addresses Romulus as follows: o pater, o genitor, o sanguen dis oriundum. The names of certain deities sometimes have the word pater appended to them, a practice that sometimes takes the form -piter directly attached to the end of the name, hence Marspiter, Iuppiter, and so forth. See Gel. 5.12.5. For Marspiter, see CIL I².970; Var. L. 8.49, 10.65; Cato Agr. 141; Gel. 5.12.5; Macr. 1.19.3. Aeneas bore the name Indiges Pater in an elogium at Pompeii (CIL X.808).

11. Cicero had purchased the house, built for M. Livius Drusus (trib. 91) and situated on a slope of the Palatine overlooking the Forum, from a Crassus in 62 (Cic. Fam. 5.6.2; Vell. 2.14.3; Gel. 12.12; Allen 1939–40a, 134–43; 1939–40b, 291–95).

12. Cicero generally idolized his fellow Arpinan, going so far as to refer to Marius as “divine” (Cic. Rab. Perd. 10.29). See Carney 1960, 121–22 n. 13.

13. Vell. 2.45.1; Tatum 1999, 153–56; Lintott 1967, 163–64.

14. Cic. Fam. 12.25.1; Leg. 2.42; Plu. Cic. 31.5; App. BC 2.15; D.C. 38.17.5.

15. The destruction of one's house was part of the official declaration of a man as a hostis. See Varner 2004, 16–17. Bodel (1997, 7–9) discusses how the early victims of this form of damnatio had aimed at regnum and how temples were later built on the cleared sites. On the destruction of Cicero's house in particular, see LTUR 2.202–4; LTUR 5.255; Flower 2006, 101–2; Tatum 1999, 157–65; Berg 1997, 122–35; Nippel 1988, 116–23. Originally, hostis meant “stranger,” so the declaration that one was a hostis was a form of exclusion from the community, not simply an identification of a citizen as an enemy. On the significance of the word hostis, see Cic. Off. 37.

16. Allen 1944, 3; Carandini 1986, 264; Berg 1997, 125–26. As Berg (127–28) points out, Cicero felt a sense of strong connection to the Porticus Catuli (which stood next to his house) and to the Catulus family.

17. On the casa Romuli, see D.H. 1.79.11; Plu. Rom. 20.4; NTDAR s.v. Casa Romuli. On Cicero's self-styling as Romulus and on the role of the Palatine in that connection, see Havas 2000, 71–88. Havas (81) observes: “Den Staate hätte auf die Weise des Romulus ein Neuankömmling und zugleich potentieller neuer Bewohner des Palatium, der in Arpinum geborene Cicero wieder festigen sollen, seinen eigenen romulusartigen Ritus vollbringend, den neuen Remus: Catilina bzw. Lentulus Sura aufopfernd.” Cicero is called Romulus Arpinas in [Sal.] Inv. 4.7. The homes of famous men could acquire a kind of sacred aura. Cicero (Phil. 2.68) characterized Antony's use of Pompey's home, which Cicero likened to a temple, as a kind of sacrilege: o audaciam immanem! tu etiam ingredi illam domum ausus es, tu illud sanctissimum limen intrare, tu illarum aedium dis penatibus os impurissimum ostendere? For the religious aura of the house of Scipio Africanus, see V. Max. 2.10.2.

18. Tatum 1999, 166; Berg 1997, 130; Cic. Dom. 137; Har. 33, 58.

19. Berg 1997, 139–41.

20. Quint. Inst. 11.1.23–24; [Sal.] Inv. 2.3, 4.7.

21. Cic. Dom. 92: hic tu me etiam gloriari vetas; negas esse ferenda quae soleam de me praedicare, et homo facetus inducis etiam sermonem urbanum ac venustum, me dicere solere esse me Iovem, eundemque dictitare Minervam esse sororem meam. On Demetrius as brother of Athena, see Plu. Demetr. 24.1.

22. Harrison 1990, 462: “[T]hat Clodius produces a more distorted version than the author of the ‘Invectiva’ merely confirms that real political rhetoric was more animatedly unscrupulous than the invective of declamation, no surprise to anyone who has read Cicero's own ‘In Pisonem.’”

23. On the authorship of the Invectiva and its allusions to Cicero's poetry, see Canfora 1984, 101–9.

24. [Sal.] Inv. 2.3: atque haec cum ita sint, tamen se Cicero dicit in concilio deorum inmortalium fuisse, inde missum huic urbi civibusque custodem absque carnificis nomine, qui civitatis incommodum in gloriam suam ponit. Quasi vero non illius coniurationis causa fuerit consulatus tuus et idcirco res publica disiecta eo tempore, quo te custodem habebat. Sed, ut opinor, illa te magis extollunt, quae post consulatum cum Terentia uxore de re publica consuluisti; 4.7: sed quid ego plura de tua insolentia commemorem, quem Minerva omnis artis edocuit, Iuppiter Optimus Maximus in concilio deorum admisit, Italia exulem umeris suis reportavit?

25. Quint. Inst. 11.1.24: et ‘Iovem illum a quo in concilium deorum advocatur’, et ‘Minervam quae artes eum edocuit’: quae sibi ille secutus quaedam Graecorum exempla permiserat.

26. See nn. 24 and 25.

27. Harrison 1990, 461. Harrison (n. 21) speculates that Minerva may have addressed Cicero as frater in the poem, which prompted Clodius' accusation that the orator claimed to have Minerva for his sister.

28. Ibid., 462–63.

29. Bodel 2008, 253.

30. Cic. Div. 1.28. See Santangelo 2008, 602; Wardle 2006, 252–56. Cf. V. Max. 1.7.

31. Cic. Div. 1.28.59: Venio nunc ad tuum. Audivi equidem ex te ipso, sed mihi saepius noster Sallustius narravit, cum in illa fuga nobis gloriosa, patriae calamitosa in villa quadam campi Atinatis maneres magnamque partem noctis vigilasses, ad lucem denique arte [te] et graviter dormitare coepisse; itaque, quamquam iter instaret, tamen silentium fieri iussisse [se] neque esse passum te excitari; cum autem experrectus esses hora secunda fere, te sibi somnium narravisse: visum tibi esse, cum in locis solis maestus errares, C. Marium cum fascibus laureatis quaerere ex te quid tristis esses, cumque te tu patria vi pulsum esse dixisses, prehendisse eum dextram tuam et bono animo te iussisse esse lictorique proxumo tradidisse ut te in monumentum suum deduceret, et dixisse in eo tibi salutem fore. Tum et se exclamasse Sallustius narrat reditum tibi celerem et gloriosum paratum, et te ipsum visum somnio delectari. Nam illud mihi ipsi celeriter nuntiatum est, ut audivisses in monumento Mari de tuo reditu magnificentissumum illud senatus consultum esse factum, referente optumo et clarissumo viro consule, idque frequentissimo theatro incredibili clamore et plausu comprobatum, dixisse te nihil illo Atinati somnio fieri posse divinius.

32. Marius constructed this temple, located near his own house, with the spoils of the Cimbri and Teutones. See LTUR 3.33–35.

33. Cic. Red. Pop. 20. The image of Marius describing his exilic sufferings in 88 BCE provides an interesting contrast with the taciturn figure one encounters in Plutarch in the narrative of Marius' invasion of Rome during the Octavian War.

34. Cic. Div. 1.47.106: conspexit Marius, divini numinis augur, / faustaque signa suae laudis reditusque notavit, / partibus intonuit caeli pater ipse sinistris. See Wardle 2006, 79–80, 362–65. For the date of the poem, see Benario 1957, 177–81. Dyck (2004, 57–58) sees the date as uncertain. Wardle (363) argues that 57 is the most likely date. Santangelo (2008, 598–601) dates the poem to the period shortly after Cicero's return from exile. See also Courtney 1993, 178.

35. On Cicero's identification with Marius in the experience of exile, see Santangelo 2008, 589–601. Cicero repeatedly called Marius the savior of Rome. Cf. Cic. Catil. 3.10, 4.21; Sull. 7.22–23; Sest. 16.37, 22.50; Pis. 19.43.

36. Cic. Div. 1.47. Marius interprets this omen to predict the praise he will receive upon his reditus. On the felicitas of Marius, see Avery 1967.

37. In other words, the very fact that both Sulla and Cicero report auspicious dreams predicting a successful return to Rome recommends interpreting Cicero's dream as an allusion to Sulla's. Even if the dream of Cicero actually happened, it is no less, in his report of it, amenable to interpretation as an allusion to Sulla's dream.

38. See map 1. Honos and Virtus appear, in fact, on the obverse of a coin Pompey minted to commemorate his triumph in 70. Cf. RRC 257. On the reverse, Roma and Italia clasp hands. Roma is wearing a diadem, holding fasces, and resting her foot on a globe. On the association of Honos, Virtus, and Victoria, see also Fears 1981b, 883–84.

39. Plu. Mar. 27.

40. Flower 2012.

41. Worth noting in this context is Caesar's resuscitation of the memory of Marius by restoring Marius' trophies commemorating his victories over Jugurtha and the Cimbri and Teutones. Sulla had demolished these trophies. See Suet. Jul. 11.

42. The presence of Honos and Virtus is also interesting because of their place in the processional route of the equestrians during the transvectio equitum, which Pompey had celebrated in 70/69. See chapter 2. Cicero often looked to the equestrians as a source of personal political support. See McDonnell 2006, 328.

43. Cicero did not refer to his own mythological ancestors, which, according to Plutarch (Cic. 1.2), may have included Tullus Attius, king of the Volscians. The emperor Vespasian derided attempts to give himself a Herculean ancestry, although one might expect a Sabine to feel comfortable doing so. See Suet. Ves. 12. Contrast this with Galba, who, in the aftermath of a century of Julio-Claudian ruling theology, did not hesitate to advertise his own descent from Jupiter and Pasiphaë in the hall of the palace. See Suet. Gal. 2.

44. Odyssean themes are also present in Plutarch's account of Marius' exile. See Nerdahl 2007, 169–90.

45. Cic. Q. fr. 2.7.1: placiturum tibi esse librum II suspicabar, tam valde placuisse scribis se quam valde gaudeo. quod me admones de non curantia suadesque ut meminerim Iovis orationem quae est in extremo illo libro, ego vero memini et illa omnia mihi magis scripsi quam ceteris. Harrison (1990, 456–57) notes, “The oration of Jupiter referred to surely took place in the divine council in the second book of ‘De Temporibus Suis’ referred to in [Q. fr. 3.1.24]; we do not need to postulate a separate epiphany of Jupiter, and the fact that his speech is called an oratio suggests that it was addressed to an Olympian audience rather than Cicero alone…. [T]he context of the letter to Quintus…makes it clear that Jupiter advised Cicero to keep a low political profile, and the most convincing emendations of the crux of non curantia confirm this. The fact that this speech occurred at the end of the second book…gives us some idea of the function it fulfilled in the plot of the poem. Those who have attempted to reconstruct the ‘De Temporibus Suis’ usually suggest that Book 1 contained the struggle with Clodius and Cicero's departure from Rome, Book 2 the sufferings of exile and Book 3 the triumphant return…. [The] divine council of Book 2 is likely to have been an assembly called to sanction the proposed return of Cicero to Rome, rather like the divine council in the first book of the Odyssey where the gods set Odysseus' return under way; Jupiter probably approved Cicero's return and gave him words of advice on how to behave when back in Rome, following Zeus' assent to the return of Odysseus (Odyssey 1.63–79).”

46. Harrison (1990, 457) writes, “[I]t may even have been that Minerva…appeared to argue the case for Cicero's return as she had done for that of Odysseus in ‘Odyssey’ 1.”

47. Feeney (1999, 19) comments on the contradictory elements of Cicero's religious thought and behavior, writing that Cicero is “possessed of a ‘religiously cold temperament’, according to Veyne, and someone who speaks to his wife as if the cult of the gods were more her responsibility than his; yet ostentatious in his cultivation of Minerva in times of personal crisis, and, most strikingly, obsessed for months with the private project of a fanum, ‘shrine,’ for his dead daughter, one which could achieve ‘apotheosis’ for her.”

48. Q. fr. 3.1.24: Itaque mirificum embolium cogito in secundum librum meorum temporum includere, dicentem Apollinem in concilio deorum qualis reditus duorum imperatorum futurus esset, quorum alter exercitum perdidisset, alter vendidisset. The triumphator brought home his armies to the city intact, having brought an end to hostilities. By contrast, Piso and Gabinius have either lost or sold their armies.

49. These other representations are in Cicero's post-exile speeches.

50. For a discussion of Cicero's representation of his own exile in general, see Kelley 2006, 152–55.

51. Cic. Red. Pop. 1.

52. This follows Varro's distinction of the three different theologies, which included the poetic and the civic. See Var. Ant. rer. div. fr. 10.

53. Nicholson 1992, 35; Glucker 1988, 6–9.

54. Cic. Sest. 54: et spirante etiam re publica ad eius spolia detrahenda advolaverunt.

55. The divine protectress of the city was a common concept in classical and Hellenistic Greece. In the Hellenistic period, such goddesses were often depicted wearing a mural crown. Cicero would also have known Cybele, wearing the crenelated crown, as a protector of Rome. His contemporary, Lucretius (2.606–7), wrote of her wearing her muralis corona and sustaining cities (sustinet urbes). Even Jerusalem was represented as a goddess with a mural crown. See Biddle 1991, 173–94.

56. Mellor 1981, 972–73.

57. Hom. Il. 5.330–43.

58. Ibid. 1.586–94; Apollod. 1.3.5.

59. At Red. Pop. 14, Cicero expressed his confidence that the Republic would bring him back with her when she returned. At Red. Sen. 34, he described the Republic bringing him back with her in a kind of triumphal procession: et illa, simul atque revocata est, me secum pariter reportavit. Cic. Red. Sen. 39 and [Sal.] Inv. 4.7 refer to Italia carrying Cicero home, a reference to the greetings he received from communities along his homeward journey across Italy from Brundisium.

60. Hes. Op. 200–201; Arat. Phaen. 96–136.

61. See n. 59.

62. Hdt. 1.59–62; Ath. Pol. 14.4.

63. Cic. Att. 4.1.4–6.

64. Hutchinson 1998, 1–24.

65. Cic. Att. 4.1.4: Brundisium veni Non. Sext. ibi mihi Tulliola mea fuit praesto natali suo ipso die, qui casu idem natalis erat et Brundisinae coloniae et tuae vicinae Salutis; quae res animadversa a multitudine summa Brundisinorum gratulatione celebrata est.

66. Kaster 2006, 371.

67. Liv. 9.43.25, 10.1.9. See also Oakley 2005, 53–54. Var. L. 5.74 identified the cult of Salus on the Quirinal as Sabine in origin. On the temple, see LTUR 4.229–30.

68. Plu. Cat. Ma. 19.3.

69. Ibid. 19.4 (trans. Astin p. 103): ὅτι τὴν Ῥωμαίων πολιτείαν ἐγκεκλιμένην καὶ ῥέπουσαν ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον τιμητὴς γενόμενος χρησταῖς ἀγωγαῖς καὶ σώφροσιν ἐθισμοῖς καὶ διδασκαλίαις εἰς ὀρθὸν αὖθις ἀποκατέστησε.

70. Cic. Att. 4.2.6: ego me a Pompeio legari ita sum passus ut nulla re impedirer. quod nisi vellem mihi esset integrum ut, si comitia censorum proximi consules haberent, petere possem, votivam legationem sumpsissem prope omnium fanorum, lucorum (“I have allowed myself to be appointed a legate by Pompey in such a way that I not be impeded by any means if I desire to be at liberty to campaign—if the next consuls should hold censorial elections—or free to take up a votive commission over nearly any shrine and sacred grove”).

71. Ibid.

72. D.C. 40.57.1–58.1. See Tatum 1999, 133–34.

73. Tatum 1999, 133.

74. D.C. 40.57.1–3. See Tatum 1999, 135.

75. See Cic. Pis. 51–52; Dom. 75–76.

76. For noteworthy comparanda, see Josephus' descriptions of the enthusiasm attending the arrival of the false Herodian Alexander at Rome (BJ 2.105; AJ 17.330–31). For a discussion of the process that led to Cicero's return, see Gelzer 1959, 145–50; Tatum 1999, 176–85.

77. In Dom. 75, Cicero mentions how, during his adventus and introitus, the people welcomed him as their lucem salutemque redditam (“light and salvation come back”).

78. Cic. Att. 4.1.4. Cicero does not name the temples, but the location of the Temple of Honos and Virtus and its association with the triumph make this an attractive suggestion. On the location of the temple outside the Porta Capena, see MAR s.v. Honos et Virtus, Aedes (Ad Portam Capenam); LTUR 3.31–33; Ziolkowski 1992, 58–60. See map 1 in the present book.

79. See n. 7.

80. As Beard, North, and Price (1998, 1:138–39) argue, Cicero's allusions to Romulus through the cult of Jupiter Stator liken him to the founder. Cf. Vasaly 1993, 49–87.