Some 2,000 years give or take before our current leader (?) kicked up his first tweetstorm another statesman/orator/philosopher launched the Roman equivalent of a tweetstorm. On September 2, 44 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero delivered the first of a series of speeches known as the Philippics (or Philippicae in Latin) hectoring his favorite enemy Mark Antony.
As every schoolchild knows, a group of unhappy Roman senators had removed Julius Caesar from office a year earlier. Cicero had not taken part in the affair, but he heartily approved of it. In a letter written afterward, he said: “How I wish that you had invited me to that most glorious banquet on the Ides of March!”
Cicero was not a fan of Caesar’s protege, Mark Antony, either. He was convinced that Antony was planning revenge upon the Ides gang. Cicero’s attacks on Antony rallied the Senate in his favor and established him as the leading politician of his age.
Antony did not take these insults lightly (Cicero had called him a sheep and said he had small hands). He and his supporters prepared to march on Rome and “lock him up, lock him up,” forcing Cicero to hit the road. But to no avail; Cicero was intercepted and executed.
“O tempora! O mores!” (Oh what times. Oh what standards.)
O Tempora, O Swine
Another Cicero might be more familiar to a lot of us. That would be Cicero Pig, a diminutive version of his famous Uncle Porky. He first appeared in the cartoon “Porky’s Naughty Nephew” as a bit of a brat. He was called Pinky at the time, then Algernon, and finally Cicero. He never went by the name Marcus Tullius, and no one ever called Marcus Tullius Pinky — although Mark Antony probably would have had he thought of it.
Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig. — Robert Heinlein
Carry a Big Shtick
Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was somewhat of an orator himself. He delivered a speech at the Minnesota State Fair On September 2, 1901 in which he publicly used the phrase with which he would always be associated: Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far. Four days later, President William McKinley was shot by an assassin and following his death eight days later, Roosevelt became President.
My father always wanted to be the center of attention. When he went to a wedding, he wanted to be the bridegroom. When he went to a funeral, he wanted to be the corpse. — Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Wretched Richard's Almanac 