He was beheaded by order of Mark Antony

One of the interesting facts about Cicero is that he was beheaded by order of Mark Antony. Cicero sympathized with the assassins despite not being a conspirator in Julius Caesar's death. Cicero was added to the list of banned men during the Second Triumvirate proscriptions as a result of this, as well as a personal rivalry with Mark Antony. According to Roman legend, Octavian argued for two days against adding Cicero to the list. Cicero was one of the most brutally and tenaciously pursued of the condemned. Other victims included the tribune Salvius, who, after siding with Antony, switched his allegiance entirely to Cicero. A considerable portion of the population sympathized with Cicero, and many individuals hesitated to report seeing him. He was apprehended on December 7, 43 BC, leaving his villa in Formiae in a litter and heading to the coast, where he sought to board a ship to Macedonia. His own slaves said they had not seen him when the assassins arrived, but he was given away by Philologus, a freed slave of his brother Quintus Cicero.

His pursuers decapitated him. He bowed to his captors after being discovered, lowering his head out of the litter in a gladiatorial gesture to facilitate the work. He was demonstrating to the soldiers that he couldn't resist by baring his neck and throat to them. His hands were also severed and nailed to the Rostra in the Forum Romanum, following in the footsteps of Marius and Sulla, who both exposed the heads of their opponents in the Forum. He was the sole victim of the Triumvirate's laws to be presented in this fashion. According to Cassius Dio (in a myth frequently misattributed to Plutarch), Antony's wife Fulvia snatched Cicero's head, pulled out his tongue, and repeatedly stabbed it with her hairpin in last retaliation for Cicero's power of speech.