Ancient Roman Text Offers Tips On Winning Elections

February 7, 2012
Classics professor Philip Freeman translated the ancient book, "How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians." The book was written by Quintus Tullius Cicero, the brother of the great orator Marcus Cicero, for when Marcus ran for office in Rome in 64 B.C. The ancient Roman guide for campaigning still holds lessons for today's elections.

Quintus Tullius Cicero wrote a long letter of advice to his brother who was running for the highest office in the land. Among his many pearls of wisdom was this one:

" Running for office, as wearisome as it is, has the advantage of allowing you to meet and get to know many different types of people you wouldn't normally associate with in your daily life. This is perfectly respectable during a campaign. In fact, you would be thought a fool if you didn't take advantage of it so that you can eagerly and unashamedly cultivate friendships with people no decent person would talk to."''

Well, the campaign in question for the most powerful office in the world was way back in 64. Not 1964, just 64 - 64 B.C., in fact. The campaign was for consul of Rome and the advice was from Quintus Tullius Cicero, intended for his brother the great orator Marcus Cicero.

Professor Philip Freeman, a classicist at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, has provided a translation and an introduction to this little landmark in the history of political consulting. It's called, "How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians." Philip Freeman, welcome to the program.

PHILIP FREEMAN: Thanks very much.

SIEGEL: And first, tell us about Cicero's campaign and why his brother thought the candidate was in need of advice.

FREEMAN: Well, Cicero was, first of all, an outsider. He was not part of the Roman nobility and he was certainly not in line to rise to the consulship, to the highest office in Rome. Also, he was a bit shy and reserved and he was not particularly good at associating, making small talk with people. So Quintus decided to give him this no-holds-barred advice about how to win an election, all the down and dirty facts.

SIEGEL: And there's one piece of wisdom at the beginning that I found most striking and sounded to me most modern. He said, every day as you go down to the forum, you should say to yourself, I am an outsider. I want to be consul. This is Rome.

FREEMAN: It was great advice for him to do every day because as an outsider, Marcus Cicero, stood very little chance of being elected as consul, so he always had to remind himself just what he was up against.

SIEGEL: He sounded to me there like a sports psychologist, telling him to visualize, you know, imagine yourself...

FREEMAN: Oh, absolutely.

SIEGEL: ...being consul of Rome. I also love this line. He wrote, now, my brother, you have many wonderful qualities, but those you lack you must acquire and it must appear as if you were born with them.

FREEMAN: Absolutely. Cicero, like I said, was a fairly shy and reserved person, so Quintus wanted him to learn to be an actor. And that's really at the heart of a lot of the advice he gives him, is how to act like a person who cares about voters, even if you really don't.

SIEGEL: So he tells him, learn to be flattering to people, don't be so stiff around people.

FREEMAN: Oh, absolutely. Flatter people shamelessly, no matter what their social station in life, shake their hand, look them in the eye and make them believe that you really care about them.

SIEGEL: What's some other political advice that you find still germane to elective politics?

FREEMAN: Oh, there's so much in the letter. First of all, he says to make sure that your family and friends are on board before you decide to run for office because things that can go wrong will very often originate with those closest to you. And one of his best pieces of advice is promise everything to everybody and to adapt your message to the particular audience of the day.

SIEGEL: Yes. I guess in ancient Rome, all politics was pretty local and pretty personal.

FREEMAN: Oh, it was. There was no such thing as an absentee ballot. If you were a Roman citizen and you wanted to vote in the elections, you had to come physically to Rome to do it.

SIEGEL: So tell us about whom Marcus Cicero was running against and what the outcome of the 64 election was for consul.

FREEMAN: Well, he was running against four or five other people and two of them were a bit of a challenge. One was named Antonius and the other was named Catiline. And Catiline is the person who would, a year or two later, try to overthrow the Roman government and Cicero managed to defeat him, to expose the conspiracy. But Cicero had a very tough race, but he did manage to win the consulship.

SIEGEL: There were two winners, though.

FREEMAN: Yes. There were always two winners. Antonius was the other one. But Cicero was elected as the chief consul.

SIEGEL: Now, I was thinking about negative campaigning in this year's Republican primaries. In this case, when Quintus was writing to his brother of Antonius, who was the second place finisher, he wrote scathingly about him. He said, how can the man establish friendships when he can't even remember anyone's name.

FREEMAN: Oh, absolutely. That's one of Quintus' pieces of advice is always remember the names of your supporters. That was one of the tamer things he said about Antonius.

He reminded Cicero to expose all of the sexual scandals that Antonius had been involved in, which were pretty bad. He got elected anyway but still, that was important was to always keep in mind your opponent's weaknesses and to exploit them.

SIEGEL: Well, Philip Freeman, thanks a lot for talking with us about your new translation of "How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians."

FREEMAN: Oh, my pleasure.

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Quintus Tullius Cicero

Quintus Tullius Cicero (/ˈsɪsᵻroʊ/; Classical Latin: [%CB%88k%C9%AAk%C9%9Bro%CB%90]; 102 BC – 43 BC) was the younger brother of the celebrated orator, philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was born into a family of the equestrian order, as the son of a wealthy landowner in Arpinum, some 100 kilometres south-east of Rome.

Biography

Cicero's well-to-do father arranged for him to be educated with his brother in Rome, Athens and probably Rhodes in 79-77 BC. He married about 70 BC Pomponia (sister of his brother's friend Atticus), a dominant woman of strong personality. He divorced her after a long disharmonious marriage with much bickering between the spouses in late 45 BC. His brother, Marcus, tried several times to reconcile the spouses, but to no avail. The couple had a son born in 66 BC named Quintus Tullius Cicero after his father.

Quintus was Aedile in 66 BC, Praetor in 62 BC, and Propraetor of the Province of Asia for three years 61-59 BC.[5] Under Caesar during the Gallic Wars, he was Legatus (accompanying Caesar on his second expedition to Britain in 54 BC and surviving a Nervian siege of his camp during Ambiorix's revolt), and under his brother in Cilicia in 51 BC. During the civil wars he supported the Pompeian faction, obtaining the pardon of Caesar later.

During the Second Triumvirate when the Roman Republic was again in civil war, Quintus, his son, and his famous brother, were all proscribed. He fled from Tusculum with his brother. Later Quintus went home to bring back money for travelling expenses. His son, Quintus minor, hid his father, and did not reveal the hiding place although he was tortured. When Quintus heard this, he gave himself up to try and save his son; however, both father and son, and his famous brother, were all killed in 43 BC, as proscribed persons.

Personality and relationship with brother Marcus

Quintus is depicted by Caesar as a brave soldier and an inspiring military leader. At a critical moment in the Gallic Wars he rallied his legion and retrieved an apparently hopeless position. Caesar commended him for this with the words Ciceronem pro eius merito legionemque collaudat (He praised Cicero and his men very highly, as they deserved) (Bello Gallico 5.52). However, later the legate was purportedly responsible for a near-disaster in Gaul but does not receive condemnation from Caesar as a result. (Bello Gallico 6.36)

Quintus had an impulsive temperament and had fits of cruelty during military operations, a behaviour frowned on by Romans of that time. The Roman (and Stoic) ideal was to control one’s emotions even in battle. Quintus Cicero also liked old-fashioned and harsh punishments, like putting a person convicted of patricide into a sack and throwing him out in the sea (the felon was severely scourged then sewn into a stout leather bag with a dog, a snake, a rooster, and a monkey, and the bag was thrown into a river).[8] This punishment he meted out during his propraetorship of Asia.[9] (For the Romans, both patricide and matricide were one of the worst crimes.) His brother confesses in one of his letters to his friend Titus Pomponius Atticus (written in 51 BC while he was Proconsul of Cilicia and had taken Quintus as legatus with him) that he dares not leave Quintus alone as he is afraid of what kind of sudden ideas he might have.[10] On the positive side, Quintus was utterly honest, even as a governor of a province, in which situation many Romans shamelessly amassed private property for themselves. He was also a well-educated man, reading Greek tragedies - and writing some tragedies himself.

The relationship between the brothers was mostly affectionate, except for a period of serious disagreement during Caesar’s dictatorship 49-44 BC.[11] The many letters from Marcus ad Quintum fratrem show how deep and affectionate the brothers’ relationship was, though Marcus Cicero often played the role of the "older and more experienced" lecturing to his brother what was the right thing to do. Quintus might also feel at times, that the self-centred Marcus thought only how his brother might hinder or help Marcus’ own career on the Cursus honorum.

Authorship
As an author he wrote during the Gallic wars four tragedies in Greek style. Three of them were titled Troas, Erigones, and Electra, but all are lost. He also wrote several poems on the second expedition of Caesar to Britannia, three epistles to Tiro (extant) and a fourth one to his brother. The long letter Commentariolum Petitionis (Little handbook on electioneering) has also survived, although its validity has been much questioned. It is in any case a valuable guide to political behaviour in Cicero’s time.

Source :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Tullius_Cicero