Africa’s Global Infrastructures

Cicero's exile and return (58-57 BCE) appears to have provoked a crisis in his thinking about motives for involvement in politics and about the particularly republican form of politics he had championed. The prominence of this theme in his literary oeuvre in the mid to late-50s BCE suggests that prior to his exile, he had lived more or less thoughtlessly in accordance with the ideals of traditional Roman political culture. He had played the part of a good Roman vir, pursuing a career in public life and relishing the rewards of status (dignitas) and glory from his fellow-citizens in recompense for public service, in keeping with what Robert Kaster has aptly termed "the contractualist premises of Roman republicanism."1 It is true that Cicero's political activity before exile was already characterized by a certain eccentric Ciceronianism. Cicero relied more exclusively on the power of the spoken word and a comparative neglect of military feats to attain prominence,2 and he pointed to literature and learning as an important inspiration for his own political career.3 And yet Cicero's motives were, at least insofar as he was willing to express them at the time, utterly traditional. Even in Pro Archia, where as he argued for a greater influence of liberal learning on oratory and political activity than was customary in ancient Rome, Cicero was nevertheless unambiguous in validating the traditional drive for glory as the proper motive for political engagement: