Ahve, and welcome to Emperor of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is

Rianna Evans, an associate professor in classics and ancient history at Latrobe

University. This is episode CC.C.X.X. and part six of the Catalan conspiracy, the exile of Cicero.

Cicero may have won the battle against Catalan, but he wouldn't win the war.

With too many enemies in the Senate, he makes a tactical retreat, leaving behind his beloved

Rome for the safety of the coast of Greece. Here's Rianna Evans.

After Catalan is defeated in battle and the other conspirators have been executed,

Cisiro is expecting to be hailed as a hero as a kind of war hero for

defeating Catalan, for protecting Rome particularly.

And he is the father of his country and he is hailed as such.

That's referring to the title that he got given.

Being a hero of war though, it doesn't quite go this way.

If anything, I find that the only reason that we know him as a

hero of war in this time is because he wrote about it himself. And I imagine that

contemporarily it would have been Antonius who actually led the battle but didn't

participate in the battle who is hailed as the hero of Rome. So this is something we

could talk about a lot because it hits on a whole kind of set of ideas around Cicero.

Yes, he didn't go into battle, but he casts himself as someone who does battle in the forum.

All right? And that's what he does because he's not a war leader. So yeah you're right it's because of his speeches and his writings that we think of him like this. It's also the way he's portrayed in other works, but then they're dependent on his

version, so that's a bit of a circular argument. But yeah, traditionally the war

leader gets the glory and it's still going to happen, it's still going to happen

...