‘Cicero, The Last Republican,’ Theatre in English at St. Mark’s Florence

St. Mark’s English Church, via Maggio 16, is hosting Cicero,The Last Republican, a new play about the last days of the Roman Republic by Justin Butcher, who is also starring as Cicero.  Rewind to 43 BC.: the Roman Republic is on the point of collapse. Civil war looms. Julius Caesar has been assassinated. His heir Octavian and the corrupt demagogue Mark Antony set about making themselves the new rulers of Rome. Marcus Brutus, lifting his bloodstained dagger after the assassination, calls upon Cicero to restore the Republic. All eyes now look to the revered elder statesman, lawyer and orator to lead a last stand against tyranny.  Immediately Cicero sets about composing a series of speeches exposing and satirising Mark Antony’s criminal corruption known as the Philippics, which he delivers in the Senate. Public support for Cicero soars. Antony is declared an enemy of the state, and for a brief tantalising period, it seems as if Cicero will succeed in restoring the rule of the Senate. But then events turn fatally against him.

The play is set in the garden of Cicero’s seaside villa in Formiae, as he prepares his speeches against Antony. His beloved daughter Tullia, who has died two years earlier, appears to Cicero in a waking dream and warns him to flee into exile. Death defending the Republic to the last is preferable to life in exile, he argues – and so a fierce debate erupts: his own life weighed against the destiny of Rome. Politically, the story has huge resonances with today – a brave, principled, old school politician fighting a last-ditch battle to save the Roman republic.  He weighed up the cost, and willingly put his own life on the line to stand up for what he believed in, and paid the ultimate price. But he nearly succeeded.Isn’t this the kind of politician, the kind of leader, we need today?  In an era of new demagogues, with democracies under threat from a rising tide of new extremism, the story of this desperate, heroic episode from the ancient world has never been more salutary.

Justin Butcher is the multi-award winning writer of Scaramouche Jones, The Madness of George Dubya and The Devil’s Passion, and winner of the 2022 Off West End Best Actor’s Award. He studied Latin & Greek Literature & Philosophy at Oxford University and has lectured widely on the life and works of Cicero.