Philippicae

Philippicae
Public domain · source
Name	Philippicae
Author	Marcus Tullius Cicero
Language	Latin
Country	Roman Republic
Subject	Marcus Antonius, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus
Genre	Rhetoric, Oratory
Release date	44 BC

Philippicae The Philippicae are a sequence of speeches by Marcus Tullius Cicero delivered in 44–43 BC that attack Marcus Antonius and defend the political order associated with Gaius Julius Caesar's assassination and the senatorial cause. Rooted in the factional struggles after the Assassination of Julius Caesar, the speeches intersect with events such as the Liberatores' machinations, the actions of Octavian, and the formation of the Second Triumvirate. Cicero's rhetorical project engages personalities, institutions, military events, and legal procedures central to late Republican politics.

Background and Historical Context

Cicero composed the Philippicae during the immediate aftermath of the Assassination of Julius Caesar and amid power contests involving Marcus Antonius, Octavian, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and supporters such as Publius Cornelius Dolabella. The speeches respond to episodes including the Battle of Mutina, the political maneuvers of the Senate of the Roman Republic, and initiatives by provincial governors like Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus. They relate to legal and constitutional crises tied to offices like the consulship, the role of the pontifex maximus, and measures passed in the Comitia Centuriata. The context includes pressures from veterans of the Roman legions, conflicts with urban mobs in Rome, and the competing propaganda of figures such as Lucius Munatius Plancus, Titus Labienus, and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus.

Cicero's Philippics

Cicero's set of orations—modeled on earlier attacks like Demosthenes's speeches against Philip II of Macedon—target Marcus Antonius's conduct after Caesar's Death, accusing him of undermining republican norms and proscriptions. Key addresses include the Fourth, which defends the senators’ course after Mutina, and the Fourteenth, a vitriolic denunciation that prompted retaliation by Antonius and allies such as Publius Cornelius Dolabella and Lucius Antonius. The speeches engage procedural references to the senatorial decrees, invective strategies used against figures like Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, and appeals to precedents involving Scipio Aemilianus and Cato the Younger. Cicero's tactic draws on connections with patrons and allies such as Marcus Tullius Cicero Minor and uses public assemblies like the Comitia Tributa to broadcast his positions.

Other Uses of "Philippicae" (Ancient and Modern)

Beyond Cicero, the term references analogous invective series: Demosthenes's attacks on Philip II of Macedon—ancient Philippics that influenced Thucydides-era rhetoric—and later rhetorical exercises by Quintilian and commentators in the Silver Age of Latin literature. Medieval and Renaissance humanists such as Petrarch, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Lorenzo Valla studied or imitated Philippic models in polemical writings against figures like Giovanni de' Medici, Luther, and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. In modern contexts the label has been applied to political diatribes by statesmen including Winston Churchill, polemical journalism in publications like The Spectator (1711), and speeches within assemblies such as the United States House of Representatives during periods invoking classical rhetoric.

Literary Style and Themes

Cicero's Philippics deploy techniques from Rhetorica ad Herennium and the teachings of Aristotle's rhetoric and Isocrates' pedagogical tradition, incorporating periodic sentences, anaphora, and sententiae. Themes include appeals to civic virtue exemplified by Cato the Younger and references to libertas through allusion to the Roman Republic's founding myths about Romulus and Remus and the Twelve Tables. Cicero juxtaposes ethical charges against Marcus Antonius with praise for allies like Marcus Junius Brutus and invokes legalistic frameworks such as trials before the centumviri and sanctions like proscription. Stylistically, the Philippics mix forensic, deliberative, and epideictic elements familiar from the rhetorical curricula of Cicero's contemporaries, echoing historians such as Sallust and the panegyrics of Livy.

Reception and Influence

Ancient reception included immediate political consequences: the speeches contributed to the deterioration of relations with Marcus Antonius and shaped senatorial alignments with Octavian. Later Roman authors—Tacitus, Suetonius, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio—used the Philippics as source material for narratives of late Republican collapse. During the Renaissance, editors and printers in Venice and Florence propagated editions used by figures like Niccolò Machiavelli and Girolamo Savonarola for statecraft and moral critique. In modern scholarship, classicists including Theodor Mommsen, Wilhelm von Christ, E. T. Salmon, Ernst Badian, and Miriam Griffin have debated authorship, chronology, and political impact; the speeches also inform interpretations by historians of the Transition from Republic to Empire and rhetorical theorists studying Latin style.

Editions, Translations, and Manuscript Tradition

The Philippics survive in medieval manuscript families copied in scriptoria associated with centers such as Lorsch Abbey, Monte Cassino, and Bobbio Abbey. Notable manuscripts were collated by Renaissance editors like Erasmus of Rotterdam and later critical editions by scholars at institutions including Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and the Bodleian Library. Important modern editions and commentaries have appeared from publishers in Leipzig, Paris, and Cambridge University Press, with translations into English, French, German, and Italian by translators such as Robert E. Smith, D. R. Shackleton Bailey, and G. W. Pigman. Philologists have used codicological evidence, palaeography, and stemmatic methods informed by editors like Karl Lachmann to reconstruct text families, and textual criticism continues in journals hosted by universities like Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard University.

Category:Works by Marcus Tullius Cicero