Cicero's Burial

THE BIMILLENNIUM of Cicero's death is perhaps an appropriate time for the following mortuary note. The lurid details pertaining to the execution of the proscription by Antony's soldiers-the violence of Cicero's death, the subsequent severing of his head and hands, and their despatch to Rome where after ignominious treatment at Antony's house they were fastened to the Rostra-are well attested in the classical authors, and furnished material for the declamations in imperial times of rhetoricians and their pupils. Nothing is said, however, of what happened to the decapitated and handless corpse. Did it receive only perfunctory last rites from the slaves who were with Cicero at his death? Or was it attended by someone of greater prominence? In the silence of the extant classical writers, a morsel of evidence from the Latin Anthology is especially interesting. One might well ask if there is not here a vestige of a fuller account, now lost, of Cicero's obsequies. Twelve poetasters, called in the codices the Duodecim Sapientes, and conjectured to be not later than the fifth century,' are vying with one another in composing epitaphs for the imaginary tomb of Cicero, an obvious school theme. Three of these six-verse elegiac poems, attributed to Eusthenius, Vitalis, and Vomanius, respectively, mention a man named Lamia as having given proper burial to Cicero's mutilated body

Cicero · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History