Berkeley Undergraduate Journal of Classics

The summer of 44 B.C. that followed the death of Julius Caesar was a time of political tension for Marcus Tullius Cicero. The future of his beloved Republic was unsure, and Cicero was confronted with the ambition and power of Mark Antony. The correspondences of Cicero’s Att. 14.13 (composed the month after Caesar’s death) illuminate Cicero’s thoughts leading to the openly, invective first Phillipic in the fall of that same year. This inquiry carefully examines Cicero’s complex self-fashioning in an essential passage of the correspondence (14.13B.1-2) to show how Cicero resists compromising his authority and dignitas from a seemingly disadvantageous position.