Un-parallel lives? The younger Quintus and Marcus Cicero in Cicero’s Letters

• Published in: Hermathena no. 202/203; pp. 71 - 104
• Main Author: Ash, Rhiannon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Trinity College Dublin 01-06-2017
• ISSN: 0018-0750

This article considers the characterisation of two intertwined but increasingly contrasting figures from Cicero’s letters, namely the younger Marcus (Cicero’s son) and Quintus Cicero (Cicero’s nephew), reconstructing and adding nuance to significant moments in their lives as depicted in Cicero’s writings. By tracing diachronically the two cousins’ depictions across his letter collections, this article takes us into the deep recesses of family life and explores expectations about educational and career trajectories of young aristocrats. It also shows how the cousins’ portraits shadow and develop in intriguing ways the relationship between their fathers, Cicero and his brother Quintus, adding further foiling and complexity to all four portraits.
The trajectories of the boys’ lives, initially so closely entwined and unfolding in parallel, gradually diverge: the firecracker Quintus becomes increasingly alienated and angry, while the jovial Marcus, constantly indulged by his father, can apparently do no wrong, despite unwitting hints in the letters that he is not the paragon that Cicero assumes him to be.