I asked a friend if the historical Cicero was as smarmy as he is portrayed in HBO's Rome. His answer, "Who knows? He was a lawyer."

I've been pondering that response. (My friend is also a lawyer, so his reply does not necessarily denote a hatred of lawyers.)

The lines written for Cicero are just so… lawyerly. So full of weasel words. So patently playing both ends against the middle to achieve a result. The part is unbelievably well-written. . . one can see that the person being portrayed was a lawyer—a litigator—and so used to chopping logic and parsing phraseology on-the-fly that it was second nature to him. So used to being a money-whore* that he no longer realizes that's what he is.

I think Cicero's is a very well-done role played by an extremely competent actor.

________________

*Lawyers are allowed to use the phrase "money whore" if we want to. Nobody else is. That would be like a non-Catholic telling Catholic jokes or a non-Scot telling Scottish jokes.