Marcus Tullius Cicero

160-43 b.c.e.

Orator, statesman, philosopher

Sources

Indispensable Man. Cicero was born in 106 B.C.E. in the town of Arpinum, north of Rome. His family’s connections in the Roman nobility secured him a rhetorical education and an apprenticeship in law and practical politics. His exceptional skills as a public speaker became apparent in his career as a courtroom advocate. This ability allowed him to run for and win a series of magistracies, all the way up to the consulship in 63 B.C.E. (he was only the second person in a century to reach the highest office without having an ancestor who had held any office). His greatest public achievement was putting down an attempted coup during his consulship. During the course of this coup, however, he executed some of the conspirators without trial, and he was later (58 B.C.E.-57 B.C.E.) briefly exiled for having done so. His legal career continued, but he was overshadowed in politics for the rest of his life. In 43 B.C.E. he spoke out strongly against Marc Antony, who seized power after the assassination of Caesar, and was one of many of Antony’s opponents who was executed. Fifty-eight of his orations and more than nine hundred of his letters are extant.

Sources

Paul MacKendrick, The Speeches of Cicero (London: Duckworth, 1995).

Thomas N. Mitchell, Cicero: The Ascending Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).

Mitchell, Cicero: The Senior Statesman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).

Ann Vasaly, Representations: Images in the World of Ciceronian Oratory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).