Plutarch wrote Parallel Lives, paired biographies of Greeks and Romans meant to show character, virtue, and vice. This life is Cicero, matched with the Athenian orator Demosthenes. Cicero was a Roman from Arpinum in the hills of central Italy, in a Republic run by a senate and elected officials rather than a king.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, a new man without consular ancestors, talked his way to the consulship — one of two officials elected to run Rome for a year — and broke Catiline’s conspiracy in the Senate with four speeches. The accomplices were hanged without a trial. He called it the year Rome was saved; others called it murder. Exile, a governorship, a civil war he could not stop, then the Philippics, speeches against Mark Antony. The second triumvirate, three men sharing power, put his name on a list. Soldiers caught him in his litter. The head and hands went to the Rostra, the speakers’ platform in the Forum. Fulvia put a pin through the tongue.