Parent and father of the fatherland,
Was Cicero styled by liberated Rome.

On the defeat of Catiline in 63 BC, Cicero was hailed as “Father of his country,” in the general relief felt at the suppression of the conspiracy, and he was hardly the man to forget the public distinction thus conferred (see Pro Sestio, 57). Lucan (9, 601) also salutes Cato Uticensis as Ecce parens verus patrie! (“Behold the true parent of his country!”), in his admiration of the single-handed opponent of Cæsar’s advance to power. Romulus was the first so dubbed (Ovid, Fasti 2, 127), and under the Cæsars the title denoted the paternal “clemency” of the sovereign (Seneca, De Clementia 1, 14, 2). | Father’s death