Cicero, Exile, and Epistlography: Building a Maison d'Être out of Letters
Gillian McIntosh, Professor of Classics
Minds in the Making

Editor's note: This address was given at a conference of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in 2004.

Crisis

Soon after Cicero left Rome in 58, he began writing letters to Atticus and to his family, all of whom remained in the city. All but two of the letters are addressed either to Cicero's 'second self' (so he calls Atticus) or to those in his domestic embrace. The content of most of the letters is personal: Cicero does mix politics and economics into some letters, but for the most part, he describes both the despair and the hope that he feels concerning his departure and return.

Exile forced upon Cicero a spatial transience. For the first month, he traveled to Vibo, Nares Lucanae, Thurium, Tarentum, and Brundisium, before settling at Thessalonica for five months. After Thessalonica, he moved to Dyrrachium where he stayed until his return to Rome. In these letters, there is an emotional outpouring, one that pertains to the freshness of Cicero 's banishment, as well as to his transience. Cicero has lost his home, but he is also lost in space. The chaos of non-place interrelates with the unhappiness in his letters.

Until he settles, Cicero continues to write about all the places at which he has stayed, and from which he has been forced to leave. In Att 3.8, there is an especially strong sense of spatial instability. Cicero has traveled from Brundisium not to Epirus because of Achaia; he has arrived at Dyrrachium, and has learned that Quintus has set out from Ephesus to Athens by way of Macedonia. Cicero accordingly sent a letter to Athens to tell Quintus to meet him at Thessalonica. Meantime, he has gone to Thessalonica, and is concerned about Rome. His slave has set out from Ilium towards Macedonia in order to meet Cicero at Pella.

This is all Cicero writes about, except to add that he is wretched (miser), and is remaining cooped up at Thessalonica out of fear (metu). The chaos of space should be apparent: lacking home, Cicero lacks local stability.

While the proliferation of places, and the complexities of arranging meetings, were typical of any man's exile, they are especially important here because they are written down, and written about. That Cicero focuses on place suggests that place is the point of the letter.

Cicero 's chaotic relation to-and predominant focus on-space bespeaks a certain panic about the loss of the home. In the early letters, he writes of little else other than all the places he has gone to, or been forced out of. The despair of the loss of the home is more evident in other letters as well. This hopelessness is most evident in Att 3.15. [17 Aug. 58] Cicero writes:

Cicero frets about his belongings (bona); but he is particularly concerned about the home-hence, the question 'can it be restored.' Cicero cannot perceive of life without the home. He emphasizes the sustaining potency of the home, and links it to his life, by the repeated use of posse. His ability, his potency, rests with the home.

Cicero inscribes worry, that all will be lost when the home is gone, at another place in this letter. He writes:

Cicero does not have (he desires, desidero) not only mea, nor only meos, but even me ipsum. Amid all the loss, Cicero is himself at a loss for words. The ellipsis of bona, and amicos bespeaks a sense that all is lost with the home's erasure. The only 'thing' remaining is me ipsum, but quid enim sum reveals the insufficiency of self when all else is gone: Cicero too is lost. Home, contents, and master are lost.

House of Blues: the General Malaise

Att 3.15 substantiates the equivalence between loss of home and loss of Cicero. But the specific concern in 3.15 of losing the home gives way to a general anxiety. Cicero 's general concerns are: he cannot write because his tears prevent him; he is beyond consolation; he repeatedly enumerates all his losses, and wants even to lose his own life; and, he confesses, he seems to be losing his mind. Each of these concerns is documented in the letters, and merits further discussion; for now, I focus on Cicero 's expressed inability to write.

That Cicero cannot write for all his worry should not be surprising. The ellipsis of words in Att 3.15 is symptomatic of a larger problem, namely that of writing at all. Cicero repeatedly bemoans his inability to write. Several excerpts illustrate this point readily:

It is clear, from this sample, that tears keep hindering Cicero. That they keep hindering Cicero is crucial: for as often as Cicero laments that tears prevent writing, so often is he trying to write. He keeps writing. So eventually (by Fam 14.2) Cicero says that he cannot write without tears (non queo sine lacrimis scribere, 14.2.1), whereas previously he claimed that the tears prevented him from writing at all. Note, however, that in none of these portraits of crying does the home explicitly appear. Cicero seems to have drowned the home out by crying. With the (panic of) home gone, Cicero needs a place to house and process his emotions. One place is the letters. At first the match fails (he cannot write), but over time, and with persistence (he keeps at it), Cicero builds the space for facing, and hopefully effacing, his troubles. In this way, he seeks solace in letter-writing, and the activity itself becomes a 'home away from home.'

The letters, we might say, document the domestic ruins even as they become a site upon, and within which, to rebuild and house a self. The site that provoked grief is exchanged for a site within which grief is performed and may be overcome. Cicero once asked of the house, "Can it be restored? If it can't, can I?" (Att 3.15.6) He asked as well, "So what am I?" (quid enim sum?) (Att 3.15.2). Cicero is answering these questions.

So what is he? He is the man who writes letters to his friends. He writes to them who he is and what he is. He thus is being restored and repaired before our very eyes even as the house itself remains a ruin with an uncertain future. Even when the home is missing, when Cicero does not mention it explicitly, the questions of identity that cluster around the house nevertheless exert a presence.

Amid my optimism of the therapeutics of writing, though, it is important to cull from Cicero what Cicero explicitly says, and that is that the crisis of exile and forced homelessness has produced a serious case of the blues.

Hope

And yet, within his presentation of crisis, Cicero also portrays hope. That sense of hope lies in the emerging importance of epistlography on the loss of home. The testimony of crisis is itself a testimony of change. Cicero shows his friends and family that he has sat down and faced the facts. To an extent, those letters cited above already witness a sense of hope and order amidst Cicero 's sadness and his chaotic relation to space. There are, however, more explicit signs that evidence an ebb in crisis. These signs are apparent via Cicero 's changing relation to the home, through his reasoned reflection, and by the articulation of both hope and despair. Each sign of hope again merits specific focus; for now, I explore the evidence that Cicero provides of a changed relation to the home.

Recall that earlier on, Cicero was desperate to regain the home, since without it he was nothing. Over time, he still recognizes the importance of the home, but his despair at its loss seems to have waned. Att 3.20.2 [4 Oct, 58] reveals:

Of all things, Cicero cares mostly for his home; if his home were returned, then everything else would be too. While the home is undoubtedly important in this portrait, it is no longer explicitly tied to Cicero 's being. Every "thing" and "everything" is or will be fine if the house is restored, but the house is also one thing among many. And, noticeably, Cicero is himself no longer a thing, a quid. He is here much more his own person than a function of either his things or the house that contains them. The old logic of "if the house cannot be restored, how can I be?" (Att 3.15.6) has shifted. Cicero is not a-panic about his own ability to exist independently of his house. Rather, his recognition of the import of the home seems rather dispassionate. Self and home are now different matters.

The home appears in the next letter as well (Fam 14.2 [5 Oct, 58]). Cicero presents a greater dependence on the home, more aligned with his earlier portrait, but with a crucial difference. He writes:

The phrase hoc est de area is a rather bitter correction, but Cicero opts out of wallowing. The illa that follows now points to either notion: empty space or home. It both does and does not make a difference which one one chooses. And this itself marks a difference in attitude on Cicero 's part. Cicero presents a certain changed relation to the home: the home is still important, but it no longer seems crucial for his existence.

The optimism of hope transpires, here, to be rather Eeyore-ish, but it's there nonetheless. Thus, from crisis to general melancholy, and now to hope, Cicero shows a gradual change as he faces the lost home, within the emerging letters. This process continues, and in some letters, there is evidence of actual solution (of self despite no home).

Testimony of Change

Some of the exilic letters show the success of this transformation (Att 3.23 and 3.24), but generally speaking, the letters that most clearly witness a change in Cicero were written once he returned to Rome (Att 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3).

In 3.23 and 3.24, Cicero is concerned with the politics and legalities of his return. In both, Cicero presents an increase in reason, an increase in interest in the legal aspects of return, no chaotic spatial references, no suicidal tendencies, and no life-dependency on the home. In these respects, the later exilic letters evidence a stabilized Cicero .

The post reditum letters substantiate the idea that Cicero has changed. And, even though the home appears front-and-centre in 4.2 and 4.3, I shall focus on 4.1. In 4.1 [Sept, 57] Cicero describes his return to Rome.

He starts the letter by thanking Atticus for all the help that he has offered over the past year and a half. Cicero has now returned, and has retrieved all that he had, except for his home. Cicero asks Atticus for advice as he tries to pick up the pieces of "the family thing," of his estate more generally even as the rubble of the Palatine home specifically goes unmentioned (4.1.3). He then describes his return, taking Atticus on the journey that he himself endured [from Brundisium to the Porta Capena to the Capitol]. Once he reached the Capitol, his political life resumed. He describes various persons present, speeches made, and laws voted on. Regarding issues of debate, however, he holds his tongue, explaining that, concerning his home, the pontifices have yet to reach a decision. If things go well, Cicero will have a splendid space (area praeclara). If not, he will at least get the value of a site and a house.

This passage is important in a couple of ways. First, area here recalls the space referred to at Fam 14.2.3 [5 Oct, 58]. There, Cicero corrected himself when he used domus; he meant area, the empty space where the home used to be. Now, however, the space upon which Cicero depends is not just an empty substitute for home; it is praeclara. It is outstanding in character, in its features, in purpose, in achievement, and in reputation. It is outstanding in what it was, what it has become, and what it might yet still be. And it is all of these things precisely because the home no longer stands there. Formerly the question of possibility, of posse , was nightmarish: "Can it be restored? If it can't, how can I be?" (Att 3.15). Now emptiness provides the promise of a renaissance of possibility rather than the guarantee of the end of everything.

It is also important to note that Cicero may not get that space back. At this possibility, Cicero no longer presents distress; he no longer presents worry about losing his sense of self. He seems, in fact, to be rather indifferent: he will get the value of the site and home, and build another elsewhere. By this time, then, Cicero shows that he has separated his self from his home. He presents a changed Cicero . Indeed, he says:

A new maison in the letters: A Liberating Conclusion?

So it is, then that by the end of his exile, and upon his return, Cicero has leant to the side of remedy. He has let go of his dependence on the home, he has stopped crying, and continued writing. The letters testify to Cicero's regimen of cure. Indeed, the letters are his regimen of cure. They are a cure, and they are a space Cicero builds for curing.

Thus, as Cicero 's dependence on the home wanes, his proclivity for letters waxes. The disappearance of the home within the letters transpires to be a positive thing. In turn, the erasure of the home on the Palatine is a liberating crisis for Cicero. For even as the loss seemed to destroy Cicero , it ultimately permitted him to dwell. Heidegger's perception of space and building applies well to the Ciceronian experience. Heidegger argues that 'to build' means 'to construct' and 'to nurture'; when man builds, he creates a place in which to dwell. Dwelling is intimately tied to being. Indeed 'building' and 'dwelling' are semantically tied (bauen and bin).

At the same time, space is a 'clearing-away' ('Raumen' and 'room' are tied). 'Clearing-away', Heidegger claims, is to bring forth the free, to release room for man's original dwelling.

Thought of in this light, Cicero 's home concealed his dwelling; it concealed his being. The erasure of the home released Cicero from the 'concealedness' of his being. It liberated him, and released the space for him to dwell without home. In this free space (area), Cicero found the site of letters. This location allowed Cicero to build (to construct and to nurture) a dwelling, and then to dwell. The process of building letters into epistles (epistlography) was a necessary process of transformation for Cicero. In the traditional dwelling he failed to dwell, but in the locus of letters, Cicero built a maison d'être.

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