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Plutarch presents the reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius in his Life of Brutus. Cassius is driven to make peace by one politically decisive consideration: everyone he approaches with the proposal of a violent attempt to eliminate Caesar replies that he would be party to it only if Brutus were to take the lead. Should Brutus refuse, then any such enterprise must be considered a failure, precisely because Brutus had rejected it. This is why Cassius decided to restore the contact with Brutus that had been broken off when he found himself competing with him for the praetorship.

Having related the reconciliation of Brutus and Cassius, Plutarch informs us that both began to get in touch with their friends. But he really only relates the steps taken by Brutus. According to Plutarch, Brutus received only two notes: both from persons who had had very close ties to Cato and would later die at Philippi in the republican ranks — Statilius and Favonius. Favonius, the fanatical Catonian, said that ‘civil war is worse than illegal monarchy’. Statilius was scornful, and said that ‘it did not become a wise and sensible man to be thrown into turmoil and peril for the sake of feeble and foolish folk’.

The death of the consuls at Mutina left a vacuum at the summit of the administration at Rome, which in the short term gave more scope to those like Cicero who were pursuing the interests of the conspirators and wished to maintain the fight with Antonius. This chapter focuses on Cicero's correspondence for three more months, which mainly consists of campaign reports by the commanders of the armies and Cicero's replies, sometimes encouraging and sometimes revealing the fragility of the situation in Italy. The correspondence with Marcus Brutus; and how, upon his death, Cicero' life became a weapon in literary struggle between the new Caesar and his opponents are discussed.

Before 133 BC, the Roman republic had solved political crises by compromise and without violence; after that year, murder was acceptable in Roman politics, and the civil wars followed. Was it what Tiberius Gracchus did that made the difference, or what was done to him? The former, according to the optimate tradition, was followed by Cicero — as if legislation in the People's interest were enough to justify killing the legislator. This chapter investigates the history of that idea, and its application by Cicero and Brutus to the murders of Clodius and Caesar. It is clear from the Pro Milone and from Cicero's correspondence that the optimates automatically equated successful popularis politicians as Greek tyrants, and applied Plato's analysis of the ‘tyrannical man’ as a self-evident justification for murder.

In Republican Rome, it was a father's task to instruct his son and turn him into a worthy representative of his family. However, social reality did not confirm the picture of an exclusive father-to-son relationship since the concept of imitatio patris was challenged by high mortality rates as well as divorce and remarriage. It can be shown that the fragmentation of Roman families was countered by substitute parenting, especially by cognate kin or by the single mother herself thereby offering an alternative role model. However, the primary aim of Roman socialization, the ideal of imitatio patris to perpetuate the agnatic lineage not only in name but also in action, was thus missed and was replaced with the exercise of imitatio alieni. To outline the alternatives to paternal socialization, four different cases of surrogate parenting is discussed in which the impact on the moulding of tradition can be observed.

There is a tradition that pays particular attention to the role of Cassius in the events leading to Caesar's murder. It emerges here and there in the sources and may well provide a valuable element of information. The clearest text is also the most interesting: Plutarch's account of the coup at the beginning of his Life of Brutus, which uses sources very close to the events and the protagonist. Describing the beginning of the conspiracy, Plutarch tells how Brutus was gradually won over by Cassius to the idea of eliminating the ‘tyrant’ by assassination, despite the very high favour he enjoyed with Caesar. Here Plutarch uses a particularly significant expression: ‘Indeed, had he wished it, he might have been first among Caesar's friends and exercised the greatest power; but the party (hetairia) of Cassius drew him away from such a course’. In the rest of his account Plutarch clearly describes the further efforts of ‘Cassius' hetairia’ to draw Brutus in.

This chapter examines three types of face-threatening act that regularly occur in the social interaction and correspondence of Roman aristocrats: making requests, issuing refusals, and offering advice. As the discussion shows, various conventionalized expressions of redressive politeness arose in Roman epistolary manners in order to ease the social tension often caused by these situations. Typical strategies used when making a request include acknowledging explicitly the imposition upon the addressee and offering a ready-made “out” (a valid reason for refusing). Conversely, when issuing a refusal, a Roman patron would often be careful to give reasons for his decision and to show that the refusal was not an easy one to make. Finally, when offering advice (especially to powerful peers), the Roman aristocrat frequently took pains to stress that such suggestions should not be taken to imply a certain ignorance on the part of the addressee. The extent to which this strategy prevailed shows again the Roman grandee's concern with personal status and dignitas. This latter topic is analyzed with reference in particular to the letters of Pompey and Decimus Brutus, and to the conventionalized use of the Latin phrase ut facis.

This chapter considers the role of polite language in the political negotiations that followed Caesar's assassination in 44 B.C. It examines in particular the correspondence of Mark Antony with the leaders of the conspirators, Marcus Brutus and Cassius Longinus, and the letters exchanged between Cicero and Munatius Plancus. In the former case, Brutus and Cassius appear to deploy a highly respectful and restrained manner in order to present themselves as solid, conservative types, an image necessary given their radical use of violence against Caesar. Antony, by contrast, seems to have adopted a harsher, more abusive style in his later public letters in order to define himself more starkly as a Caesarian staunchly opposed to the assassins. In the following year, Cicero and Munatius Plancus employed affiliative politeness with remarkable energy during their high-stake political negotiations. The latter's eventual defection to Antony highlights the duplicitous potential inherent in this type of language, even though both parties seem to have been well aware of the political game they were playing. In this connection, Cicero's correspondence with Octavian and Dolabella during this period is also examined.

With Cato dead at Utica, laudationes of the republican martyr and model Stoic followed one upon another. It was Cicero, with his innate imprudence, who inaugurated the series of posthumous commemorations whose political significance as ‘opposition’ is plain. At the request of Marcus Junius Brutus, Caesar's favourite, but Cato's nephew and admirer, Cicero began writing a Laus Catonis as early as April 46 bc, as soon as the news reached Rome of Cato's suicide in Africa.

Speaking in the Senate on 19 September 44 bc, in the absence of Cicero, Antony made a serious accusation: ‘When Caesar had been slain, Brutus, whom I name with respect, at once lifting high his bloody dagger, shouted for Cicero by name, and congratulated him on the recovery of freedom’. From Brutus' remark Antony concluded, perhaps rightly, that Cicero was not unaware of the conspiracy. In the Second Philippic, a savagely Demosthenian reply that was never delivered, Cicero accurately quotes Antony's words and hits back with a detailed and deadly polemical retaliation: he recalls the blackest stain on Antony's ‘Caesarian’ career — his complicity in the plan to assassinate Caesar the previous year, shortly after Munda. Cicero's reminder was also a gift to Octavian, since at the time he actually published this damaging pamphlet he was already in touch with Octavian.

The conspirators lost everything in the moment when they left the body of the dictator unattended and abandoned the idea of getting rid of it by throwing it into the Tiber. The Caesarians begin to regain ground when they were able to make political and emotional capital out of the corpse, whose cumbrous presence weighed increasingly heavily, and in the end decisively, on Roman politics. In the very first moments after the murder, Brutus and the others make every possible effort to get the situation under control. Their efforts were mostly doomed to failure. The fact that for a brief moment they seemed to have succeeded is demonstrated by Antony's panic: he dressed as a plebeian and fled. Brutus tried to talk to the senators, but they were bent on fleeing with all speed from the scene of the attack they witnessed. Neglecting to dispose of the body and proceeding to a renunciation of all Caesar's works, they could think of nothing better than to go to the Capitol, waving their daggers and calling on imaginary citizens to ‘make the most of their freedom’. In the space of a few hours the conspirators lost all the advantages of surprise and the confusion of their opponents, by trying to present to the people some abstract ‘freedom’.

Cicero conceived literature as a social undertaking in which texts not only expressed the preferences of communities engaged in their revision, but by being the topic of discussion could also be used as the basis for community formation. I believe that this led Cicero to articulate a surprising view on literary finish: he valued the incomplete over the complete precisely because what was not yet perfect could be discussed and therefore serve as the site of communal dialogue.

This chapter examines what constitutes, and how one may cultivate, a properly masculine self. It argues that Brutus creates a teleological history of Roman rhetoric in which Cicero, with a potent ambiguity, presents himself as the end of his narrative: he is both the culmination of the history of rhetoric and the conclusion of that tradition in a Rome dominated by Caesar. It adds that in the Brutus, self-fashioning appears as literary polemic, particularly in Cicero's attacks against the ‘Atticists’, who constructed their regime of oratorical purity and restraint in opposition to Cicero's alleged ‘Asianist’ bombast, license, and emotionalism. It narrates that the Brutus defends Cicero's oratorical style and that it gave further evidence of the content of their polemics, a dispute which applies literary aesthetics to the body and this indicates that these disputes over style involved issues fundamental to these orators' selfhood.

In ancient times Patara possessed one of the best harbors on the Lycian coast. Modern visitors will be forced to use their imaginations to visualize the port of Patara, since the harbor eventually fell victim to the effects of silting from the Xanthos River. Today a beach and sand dunes cover the mouth of the ancient harbor, while the inner part of the harbor is now a marsh. Patara served as the port city for Xanthos, the leading city of the region of Lycia, which was located about 6 miles up the Xanthos River. Patara is located on the southwestern shore of Turkey, due east from the island of Rhodes. It is situated about halfway between Fethiye and Kale, near the present-day village of Gelemiş, about 3.5 miles south of the modern road (highway 400) that runs along Turkey’s Mediterranean shore. Patara is approximately 6 miles east of the mouth of the Xanthos River. A stream from the Xanthos flowed into the sea at Patara and deposited the river’s silt there. Important in the past because of its harbor, the area around Patara is known today for its 11 miles of excellent, sandy beaches. Supposedly named after Patarus, a son of Apollo, the city was famous in antiquity for its Temple of Apollo (no archaeological evidence of the temple has yet been found) and the oracle of Apollo. According to ancient tradition, Apollo liked to spend the winter at Patara and thus the oracle of Apollo was operative only during the winter months. Pottery finds at Patara provide evidence for a settlement here as early as the 6th century B.C.E. In 334–333 B.C.E. Patara, along with several other Lycian cities, surrendered to Alexander the Great. During the subsequent Hellenistic period, the city came first under the control of the Ptolemies and then the Seleucids. Ptolemy II Philadelphus (r. 282–246 B.C.E.) expanded the city and renamed it Arsinoe in honor of his wife, but the new name never took hold. In 196 B.C.E., the Seleucid ruler Antiochus III of Syria captured several Lycian cities, including Patara.

Neapolis, modern Kavala, still shows clearly why it was an obvious place for a port in ancient Greece. Nestled snugly about a half-moon bay, the city looks down upon a natural harbor that became the principal location in northern Macedonia for travel to and from Asia Minor. Kavala is the site of ancient Neapolis, the principal port of Philippi. Founded in the 7th century B.C.E. as a colony of Thasos, it was significant both for its port and for its commanding location along the coastal route from Thessalonica to Asia Minor. The fleet of Brutus was stationed at Neapolis at the time of the battle of Philippi. The Apostle Paul first set foot in Europe at Neapolis on his first missionary voyage. In later centuries the town was renamed Christoupolis, and it was burned by the Normans on their way to Constantinople in 1185. The city was under Ottoman rule until 1912, and on three separate occasions it has been under Bulgarian occupation, including more than two years during World War II. Virtually nothing remains of the ancient city. The impressive aqueduct on the hills above the city dates from the 16th century, when it was built by Sulëyman the Magnificent. In 1769 Mehmet Ali, pasha of Egypt, was born in Kavala. In Troas Paul had a vision in which he saw a man of Macedonia asking him to come to his country: “During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them” (Acts 16:9–10). The rapid expansion of Christianity to the west largely was due to Paul’s decision to follow the prompting of this vision. This biblical statement is significant also because it is the first use of the first-person plural, we, in the Acts narrative, possibly indicating that the writer of Acts, traditionally regarded as Luke, now accompanies Paul on this portion of his travels.

An important city in the Roman and early Christian period, Philippi exists today only as an archaeological site. The impressive remains of this once flourishing city on the Via Egnatia, the important Roman highway in the area, are frequently visited by modern pilgrims retracing the steps of the Apostle Paul, who started a Christian church in the city. The ruins of ancient Philippi are easy to find. The archaeological site is located in the region of Macedonia, alongside highway 12 between Kavala and Drama, next to the village of Krenides. Settlement in the area occurred as early as the Middle Neolithic period (ca. 5000 B.C.E.). In 360 B.C.E., Greek colonists from the island of Thasos, led by the exiled Athenian politician Kallistratos, founded the colony of Krenides on the site of what later became Philippi. The colony at Krenides (which means “spring,” because of the abundant streams in the area) provided the Thasians with access to the rich resources of the area, particularly its silver and gold mines. Threatened by the Thracian tribes in the area, the colonists at Krenides asked Philip II of Macedonia for military assistance in 356 B.C.E. Eager to gain control of the area, and particularly its rich resources, Philip conquered the city and renamed it Philippi in his honor. Philip fortified the city with new walls, increased the city’s population with Macedonian mercenaries, and extracted large amounts of gold and silver from the mines in the area. Although little is known of the city during the Hellenistic period, this was apparently a prosperous time for Philippi. In the 2nd century B.C.E., the Romans occupied Macedonia and turned the area into a Roman province. During the Roman period, the most i important event associated with Philippi took place. In 42 B.C.E. the forces of Octavian (later known as Augustus) and Mark Antony defeated the armies of Brutus and Cassius (the murderers of Julius Caesar) on the plains just outside the west wall of Philippi. This battle brought to an end the Roman Republic.