‘We have no ties of fellowship with a tyrant, but rather the bitterest feud.’

- Cicero, Letter to Atticus, 45 BC

Cicero’s tireless efforts to influence Caesar to restore the Republic were fruitless. Victory at Munda in 45 BC provided Caesar with autocratic power that would soon become permanent. The ancient historian, Cassius Dio, tells us that Caesar was buoyed by an omen that filled him with “arrogance, as if immortal.”

Cicero’s conciliatory approach leading up to Munda changed to one of despair and resignation, and grief over the death of his daughter, Tullia, peppered much of his writing:

“For what is there that has not been so grievously damaged, but that you might as well admit that it has been destroyed and annihilated? Look around at all the limbs of the state which are best known to you; not one will you find, I am sure, that has not been broken or incapacitated; and I should pursue the subject, if I either saw things more clearly than I know you do or could talk about them without sorrow.”

While he accepted that Caesar’s tyranny was all but complete, he was determined to not remain silent, writing to his good friend, Atticus, that there shall be ‘no lack of courage and firmness in my bearing or my words.’

Cicero saw only two choices – fight or die trying. In Cicero’s world, his weapons were his words.

He attacked Caesar in private while remaining courteous to him in public.

He championed the benefit of wisdom: to stay on Caesar’s good side, he begins to cast blame for the rise of autocracy on victory itself rather than the man himself – Caesar being the victim of his own success.

He watched on while Caesar increased the size of the Senate with little regard to the men’s lineage – were they soldiers or sons of freedmen?

He turned to the use of flattery in a way to maintain his attempts to alert Caesar of what was ahead – he had no crystal ball of the approaching assassination, not even being involved in the plot, but he was determined to not give up completely on his mission to restore the Republic.

In his defence of Deiotarus, king of Galatia, Cicero used the opportunity to extoll the virtues and vices of kingship. His speech contained a subtle warning to Caesar while leveraging upon the dictator’s clemency:

“I would therefore have you bear in mind, Gaius Caesar, that your verdict of today will bring upon the kinds either pitiable ruin and deep disgrace, or deliverance and a restored reputation: to desire the former suits with the implacability of our opponents; to preserve the latter with the clemency which is yours.”

It had been a long and tortuous year with failed attempts to influence Caesar confounded with personal tragedy. By the start of 44 BC his disgust with affairs in Rome was palpable. While he was able to maintain his wit concerning serious situations, the bitter jokes underscored what he considered an insult to the Roman commonwealth.

Permanent and autocratic power was intolerable even for many of Caesar’s followers. The consideration that Caesar had been lumbered with responsibility to maintain state harmony in emergencies was not lost on Cicero, but he had now reached a level of utter disgust at being involved in public life, rendering a fix impossible.

Cicero would write about the honourableness of tyrannicide in his work, De Officiis, in 44 BC as he prepared himself to confront an even worse tyrant in Antony and an underestimated foe in Octavian.