Books on Cicero Rome's Greatest Politician

Books on Cicero Rome's Greatest Politician

Books in list (9)


Title: Cicero: Ancient Classics for English Readers

Author(s): Rev. W. Lucas Collins
ISBN 13: 9781406514667

Title: Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician

“All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined.”
—John Adams

He squared off against Caesar and was friends with young Brutus. He advised the legendary Pompey on his somewhat botched transition from military hero to politician. He lambasted Mark Antony and was master of the smear campaign, as feared for his wit as he was for exposing his opponents’ sexual peccadilloes. Brilliant, voluble, cranky, a genius of political manipulation but also a true patriot and idealist, Cicero was Rome’s most feared politician, one of the greatest lawyers and statesmen of all times. Machiavelli, Queen Elizabeth, John Adams and Winston Churchill all studied his example. No man has loomed larger in the political history of mankind.

In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life in these pages as a witty and cunning political operator.

Cicero leapt onto the public stage at twenty-six, came of age during Spartacus’ famous revolt of the gladiators and presided over Roman law and politics for almost half a century. He foiled the legendary Catiline conspiracy, advised Pompey, the victorious general who brought the Middle East under Roman rule, and fought to mobilize the Senate against Caesar. He witnessed the conquest of Gaul, the civil war that followed and Caesar’s dictatorship and assassination. Cicero was a legendary defender of freedom and a model, later, to French and American revolutionaries who saw themselves as following in his footsteps in their resistance to tyranny.

Anthony Everitt’s biography paints a caustic picture of Roman politics—where Senators were endlessly filibustering legislation, walking out, rigging the calendar and exposing one another’s sexual escapades, real or imagined, to discredit their opponents. This was a time before slander and libel laws, and the stories—about dubious pardons, campaign finance scandals, widespread corruption, buying and rigging votes, wife-swapping, and so on—make the Lewinsky affair and the U.S. Congress seem chaste.

Cicero was a wily political operator. As a lawyer, he knew no equal. Boastful, often incapable of making up his mind, emotional enough to wander through the woods weeping when his beloved daughter died in childbirth, he emerges in these pages as intensely human, yet he was also the most eloquent and astute witness to the last days of Republican Rome.

On Cicero:

“He taught us how to think."
—Voltaire

“I tasted the beauties of language, I breathed the spirit of freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and examples the public and private sense of a man.”
—Edward Gibbon

“Who was Cicero: a great speaker or a demagogue?”
—Fidel Castro

From the Hardcover edition.

Author(s): Anthony Everitt
ISBN 13: 9780375758959
Pages: 400

Title: Cicero : Murder at Larinum: Selections from Pro Cluentio

Author(s): Humfrey Grose-Hodge
ISBN 13: 9780862920937

Title: Cicero and the Fall of the Roman Republic

“Genius is fostered by energy.” - Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) was one of the most famous Romans in his day, and posterity has been even kinder to him. Cicero was a legend in his own time for his oratory abilities, which he used to persuade fellow Senators and denounce enemies like Catiline and Mark Antony, but he was also one of Rome’s most prodigious writers and political philosophers. Alongside Pericles, Cicero was one of antiquity’s greatest politicians, and he has remained one of the most influential statesmen in history, relied upon by the Romans of his day, political philosophers like John Locke, Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau, and America’s Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson credited Cicero as an inspiration for the Declaration of Independence, and John Adams asserted, "As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight.” While De re publica (The Republic) is his most well known work, Cicero’s letters were also preserved. Cicero’s letters include informal correspondences to friends, as well as long-winding thoughts about political topics that could pass as their own treatises. Nothing escaped Cicero’s attention, indicating the extent to which Cicero kept up with events and how frequently he put his thoughts down on paper. The period covered by the letters of Cicero is one of the most important periods not just for Rome but for the history of the world, and it was covered by one of the most knowledgeable authorities at the time. Cicero’s works were monumental, but he also happened to live during one of the most crucial times in all of Rome’s history. He was an important Senator during the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and the side he chose came back to haunt him years later when Mark Antony and Octavian took power in the wake of Caesar’s assassination. Although he was in old age, Cicero himself was ultimately hunted down by the forces of Mark Antony and Octavian and put to death. Antony hated him so thoroughly that he had Cicero’s head and hands displayed publicly in the Forum, a gruesome testament to the fact that Cicero’s words and writings had been so important.
Author(s): J.L. Strachan-Davidson
ISBN 13: 9781500101671
Pages: 222

Title: Selected Letters of Cicero

Author(s): Marcus Tullius Cicero, D. S. Bailey
ISBN 13: 9780140444582

Title: Cicero : A Portrait

Author(s): Elizabeth Rawson
ISBN 13: 9780862920517
Pages: 368

Title: Cicero Vol. 2: Letters to His Friends

Author(s): Marcus Tullius Cicero, D. Shackleton Bailey
ISBN 13: 9780140443417

 


Next book list: Books on Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau >>