The 68-year-old classicist says he first became interested in Cicero when he was a high school student in England. By any measure, Cicero was an important political figure in Roman history, but Bailey says he is especially interesting to study because he was a voluminous letter writer, and many of his letters have been preserved. Bailey has authored a comprehensive translation of Cicero's approximately nine hundred letters which still remain--it is likely that the letters which exist today are just a fraction of those that Cicero actually wrote.

Bailey says it is unusual to have so many letters of ancient figures preserved. "It's very rare--these are actual, personal, quite uninhibited letters written to close friends. They bring you right into touch with him and his life," he says.

"The letters are about politics, personal affairs, business affairs, and personal details keep cropping up. He didn't write so much about general topics like life and death--he focused more on everday things," said Bailey.

Segal got the idea for writing the play when he read Cicero for his own edification. "It occurred to me that the end of his life was a ready-made tragic drama," Segal says.

Segal's play starts one year after Julius Caesar's death, when his adopted son Octavian returns to Italy. Octavian wants to reclaim his inheritance, which Mark Antony has stolen, and he is determined to fight for his fortune. Octavian was confident of his military power, but he needed some political clout, so he persuades Cicero to come out of retirement, go back to the Senate, and challenge Mark Antony's supremacy.

But Octavian gets corrupted, and makes a deal with Mark Antony--"at that point, Cicero is finished," Segal says. Octavian is forced to sign for Cicero's execution--reluctantly, he does it.

Cicero is an unlikely hero, Segal says, because for most of his life, he was the quintessential politician. "He was a Lyndon Johnson type. He was very successful, and basically bent with the wind. He was never a moral leader," says the writer. "Cicero was a major figure in contributing to the world of great power, great money and great corruption, but at the end of his life, he fought against this corruption. It was heroic, because he didn't have to do it. He could have just led a rich, quiet and safe life in retirement."

"Shackleton explained to us that Cicero took on Mark Antony because he thought he could win--he didn't do it to be a martyr. But at the end, he decides he prefers death to running away," Segal says.

Segal says that if Cicero is a success, he has discussed with Bailey the possibility of working on even bigger projects, including a television miniseries about Cicero and ancient Rome. Cicero, who always wanted to make a name for himself, would never have expected to go from ancient Rome to off-off Broadway to the television screen.