If we reproach Cicero with weakness and cowardice in his political life, the story of his end may atone for it. After Cæsar’s murder, when Antony was master of Rome, a man utterly unscrupulous and wedded to a still more unscrupulous wife, Cicero flung away all his timidity and hesitation. Convinced that the consul was trying to re-establish a monarchy, the old orator came down to the senate and launched at him the series of ferocious but most eloquent philippics. Some were spoken, some merely written and published. It was courting death in the cause of liberty. Cicero was not blind to the danger he was running. But he is probably sincere when he says that life has no more attractions for him. defendi rempublicam adolescens; non deseram senex: contempsi Catilinæ gladios; non pertimescam tuos. quin etiam corpus libenter obtulerim, si repræsentari morte mea libertas ciuitatis potest; ut aliquando dolor populi Romani pariat quod iamdiu parturit. etenim si, abhinc prope annos uiginti, hoc ipso in templo, negaui posse mortem immaturam esse consulari, quanto uerius nunc negabo seni! mihi uero, iam etiam optanda mors est, perfuncto rebus iis quas adeptus sum quasque gessi. duo modo hæc opto: unum, ut moriens populum Romanum liberum relinquam; hoc mihi maius a dis immortalibus dari nihil potest: alterum ui ita cuique eueniat, ut de republica quisque mereatur.[29] As he foresaw so plainly, the philippics caused his doom. When the triumvirate drew up its proscription-lists, Octavian is said to have pleaded for his life. But Antony’s wrath was implacable. Cicero’s head and his hands were nailed to the rostra from which he had so often poured out his rhetoric, and the virago Fulvia, so the story goes, thrust her needle through his eloquent, venomous tongue.