Nicole Giannella (Cornell University)
(Marcus Tullius) Tiro, Cicero’s enslaved, and later freed, literary worker, has been the subject of much study. Scholars have looked at the way Tiro is represented in Book 16 of Cicero’s Ad Familiares and his possible role in editing that book of letters (e.g., Beard) as well as considering the relationship between enslaved and enslaver (e.g., McDermott, Gunderson). This paper instead looks at Tiro’s relationship and social standing with people beyond Cicero and his immediate family. Of course, Tiro, even once finally freed, can’t escape the world of the Ciceros, and especially not this Tiro, who is generated through Cicero’s epistolary habit. Yet the Tiro of Book 16 is at a distance from the Ciceros and this separation provides room for thinking about social relationships of enslaved and freed people beyond their (ex-)owner’s house.
While Cicero expresses his own love for Tiro repetitively (on this see Gunderson especially), he is careful to point out how much other free people like Tiro too. Read in manuscript order, Book 16 begins with Cicero praising Tiro’s charm (suavitas) as he informs him that a host on his own journey to Corcyra in 50 BCE “is as fond of you as if he had spent his life with you” (Xenomenes hospes tam te diligit quasi vixerit tecum, 16.5.1). And on various occasions Cicero asserts that no one who loves Cicero doesn’t love Tiro (e.g., 16.4.4, 16.7.). The people who are said to care for Tiro range from an aristocratic matron (Cicero’s wife Terentia, 16.9) to Roman politicians (the Quaestor Mescinius Rufus and A. Varro, 16.4 and 16.12, see Shackleton Bailey and Treggiari) to Greek hosts (the aforementioned Xenomenes). The declarations of other people’s affections often come attached to discussions of the practicalities of Tiro’s imminent travel back to Cicero, a recurrent theme in Book 16.
The travel plans reveal that, whatever courtesies were extended to Tiro because of his famous ex-owner, they did not go so far as to protect him on the road. Cicero, for example, tells Tiro to sail back to him with Mescinius or “some other honorable man whose authority the skipper will respect” (honesto aliquo homine, cuius auctoritate navicularius moveatur, 16.9.4). Tiro’s role as literary assistant and editor in Cicero’s literary production, as well as his ex-owner’s affection for him, places Tiro at the heart of an aristocratic labor (Habinek) and at the heights of an elite Roman household. However, the protestations of admiration show us a limit of Tiro’s situation: Tiro’s high status in the eyes of Cicero and his circle leave a chasm when it comes to the everyday vulnerabilities of an (ex-)slave.