Post

The sculptors gave me a long neck and an intense expression, which is accurate on both counts. I was not handsome. My name means chickpea — a family nickname from a wart on an ancestor's nose — and I was advised to change it when I entered public life. I refused. I said I would make the name Cicero more famous than names like Scaurus or Catulus.

I did. Then Mark Antony had my head and hands nailed to the Rostra — the very speaking platform from which I had delivered the Philippics against him. He wanted to silence my voice. Instead he made it permanent. No one has ever been silenced by execution. They only become more legible.