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Case file s1513 · Greece and Rome · 43 BCE
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43 BCE
Cicero: Bust of Cicero (1st-cent. BC) - Palazzo Nuovo - Musei Capitolini - Rome 2016
Cicero. José Luiz. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
43 BC (Cicero)
Place
Palatine, Rome, Italy
Field
orator, consul
Legal tradition
Roman exile and confiscation; pontiffs' ruling on consecrated ground · Roman law
Historical event
Cicero's exile, 58 to 57 BC
Religion
Cicero: Ancient and traditional religions (recorded as ancient Roman religion on Wikidata)
Member of
optimates (Wikidata)
Greece and RomeAncient worldEuropeItaly

Clodius burned Cicero's house and built a shrine to Liberty on the site, and Cicero's son was consul the year Antony's statues came down

In 58 BC the tribune Publius Clodius drove Cicero into exile. Plutarch says Clodius burned Cicero's villas and his house and built a temple of Liberty on the house site. He put the rest of Cicero's property up for sale every day, and nobody would buy. In 57 BC the Senate refused to do business until Cicero was recalled and decreed that his house and villas be restored at public cost. The pontiffs ruled that part of the site could be returned to him without sacrilege. Clodius's allies urged men to defend "their shrine of Liberty." Cicero wrote to Atticus that the consuls valued the Palatine house at 2,000,000 sesterces, the Tusculan villa at 500,000 and the Formian villa at 250,000, and that people called the figures too low. In November his builders were driven off the site by armed attack. After Cicero was killed in 43 BC, Octavian made Cicero's son Marcus his colleague as consul. Plutarch says that in that consulship the Senate took down Antony's statues and decreed that no Antony should bear the name Marcus. Cassius Dio says the news of Antony's death came while the younger Cicero was consul.

What the law took from it

An estate confiscated in politics came back by a vote, and the valuation of the loss was set by the same officials who restored it.

Sources
  1. University of Chicago, LacusCurtiusScholarship
  2. University of Chicago, LacusCurtiusScholarship
  3. attalus.orgPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Clodius burned Cicero's house and built a shrine to Liberty on the site, and Cicero's son was consul the year Antony's statues came down,” story s1513, https://www.celebrity.estate/cicero-house-43-bc, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Greece and RomeAncient worldEuropeRoman lawItaly