Octavian traded Cicero to Antony for the proscription list, and Antony's wife pierced the dead orator's tongue with her hairpins

Cicero was Rome's most famous orator. He backed the young Octavian for the consulship. Octavian then joined Antony and Lepidus, and the three drew up a list of men to be killed and their property taken. Plutarch says Cicero's name caused the most dispute. Octavian held out, then agreed: "Caesar was to abandon Cicero, Lepidus his brother Paulus, and Antony Lucius Caesar." Cicero's brother Quintus was betrayed and killed. Cicero was carried in a litter toward the sea. The centurion Herennius caught him and killed him in his sixty-fourth year. Antony had his head and hands cut off and displayed on the speakers' platform in the Forum. Cassius Dio says Antony's wife Fulvia took the head on her knees, pulled out the tongue and pierced it with her hairpins. Dio records that the triumvirs promised widows their dowries and children a share of their fathers' estates, and that few ever received them. Years later Octavian found a boy reading Cicero and called him "a learned man, my child, a learned man and a lover of his country". As consul Octavian took Cicero's son as his colleague, and the Senate pulled down Antony's statues.