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Brief Lives

Cicero (106-43 BC)

Hilarius Bogbinder considers the inconstant career of the most famous politician-philosopher named after a legume.

The name comes from the Latin word for chickpea, cicer. Apparently, the statesman-cum-writer’s ancestors had grown this plant – although more unkind souls suggested that one ancestor had a mole shaped like the legume on his chin. In any case, Marcus Tullius Cicero was not an aristocrat. Rather he came from a provincial middle-class family. He was one of the ‘new men’ – novi homines – who entered public life in Rome to pursue a political career.

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