On this day in....

43 BCE, the bounty hunters sent out from Rome by Mark Anthony would finally catch up with Marcus Tullius Cicero. For the last few weeks Cicero had known that he had been proscribed as an enemy of the state and had been receiving news of the murder of dozens of his friends. This was a purge of names put together by Octavian (soon to become Augustus), Mark Anthony (soon to commit suicide with Cleopatra) and the general Lepidus (who even proscribed his own brother). Cicero had tried to escape by boat but failed due to terrible weather and spent his final days writing at his favourite home in Formiae - it was near here that he was caught with his servants, his head hacked off as were his hands and they were on their way to Rome before nightfall today.