Laura Losito (Durham University (UK))
Scholarship on Book 5 of Cicero’s Letters to Friends has often considered it an incoherent assemblage of letters belatedly discovered and arranged together, without much scheme, only after the compilation of the other books in IV-V AD (Cavarzere 2007; White 2010). I argue that its letters (as in other books in the collection: Beard 2002; Gunderson 2007; Gibson 2012; Grillo 2016; Martelli 2017; Gibson 2022) were posthumously selected and re-organized around specific narrative and thematic threads.
Book 5 stands out for its unique features. It has the longest chronological range of any unit (62-44 BCE); and all of Cicero’s correspondents in Book 5 are united by their varying connections with Cicero’s enemies Catiline and Clodius. It includes all the major events of Cicero’s personal and political careers: the defeat of the Catilinarian conspiracy (5.1-2; 5.5-6; 5.7), exile at the hands of Clodius (5.4), the outbreak of the civil war (5.9-11), and the death of Cicero’s daughter Tullia (5.14-15). Nonetheless, its peculiarity is not due to the extended chronological range or to the choice of the addressees. Its uniqueness can be found in the editorial choice of selecting and arranging the twenty-one letters that compose the Book, in such a way as to create a posthumous monograph on Cicero’s career: a decision underlined by the editor’s artistic placement of the famous letter to the historian Lucceius (from whom Cicero requested a biographical account of his own involvement in the Catilinarian conspiracy) at the heart of the book.
Dealing precisely with the concept of counter-history and, therefore, through making use of Martelli’s analysis [2017] of Book 15, I will make the case that these letters were invested with a metaphorical significance they could not have had at the time of original composition. Starting from the letter to Lucceius, the ancient editor creates a more intimate – and perhaps more realistic – narrative of Cicero’s life and career: one that is in clear contrast with that of the self-made man and saviour of the State by which he wanted to be remembered. By reading the letters in the order in which they were re-arranged, the reader observes the parabola of Cicero’s life: from political resonance, social prestige and determination (5.1-11) to political inactivity, social isolation and disillusion (5.13-21). It is precisely this element of counter-history that makes Book 5 one-of-a-kind piece of artistry.
My paper addresses these tasks and investigates that counter-image of Cicero. It also evaluates the reasons behind such editorial choice and the resonance that a narration on Cicero’s life and career like that could have had at the time of its ‘publication’.