The third marriage of Cicero’s beloved daughter Tullia ended in divorce in 46, though she was pregnant with Dolabella’s child. She gave birth in February 45 but died of complications soon afterward (and the child also died). Cicero was devastated. Trying to write his way out of depression, he wrote a Consolation, which included, at the end, the vow to create a shrine for his daughter as a divinity. Cicero set about to find a property suitable to contain the shrine, but the project was still pending at his death. At the same time, he resumed philosophical writing, first on epistemology, on which he produced two dialogues, Catulus and Lucullus, later changed to four Academic Books with new characters and dedication to Varro. Then he went on to ethics, with On Ends, consisting of three dialogues in five books and setting out the views of the Epicureans, Stoics, and Peripatetics.

Cicero was elected consul together with Antonius, whose cooperation he won by conceding him the lucrative province of Macedonia, which had been allotted to him for the year after his consulate. Cicero began his term of office by delivering a series of speeches in opposition to an agrarian reform bill proposed by the plebeian tribune Servilius Rullus. He also defended C. Rabirius in court on a charge of treason. In general, he followed optimate policies, opposing restoration of political rights to the children of those who had been proscribed by Sulla. In addition, he quieted an angry mob at the games of Apollo and enabled the noble L. Lucullus to celebrate a triumph for his command against Mithridates. He also presided over the election for next year’s consuls, in which Catiline, once again, was defeated.

This chapter explores the depictions of the barbarians, and indeed the very concept barbaros, in Plutarch’s works. It reviews Plutarch’s rhetoric dealing with non-Greeks, which was circumscribed on the one hand by the Roman imperial political reality and on the other by memories of the old Hellenic valor, which was filtered only through texts and oratory. The chapter examines Plutarch’s play with the established stereotypes in a way that shows ethnic labeling to be elusive. It studies Plutarch’s ethnic taxonomic schemes (i.e. a twofold arrangement of barbarians vs. Greeks/Romans and a threefold scheme of Greeks vs. Romans vs. barbarians), and the subtle moral and political implications thereof. It also looks into the literary significance of the use of barbarians in the narrative and of the mismatch between Greek and barbarian practices as presented mostly in the Lives.