Pro Archia poeta ; Post reditum in Senatu ; Post reditum ad quirites ; De domo sua ; De haruspicum responsis ; Pro Plancio

by Marcus Tullius Cicero, Nevile Watts (translator)

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BCE), Roman lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era which saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In his political speeches especially and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, delivered before the Roman people or the Senate if they were political, before jurors if judicial, 58 survive (a few of them incompletely). In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and nearly 100 by others to him. These afford a revelation of the man all the more striking because most were not written for publication. Six rhetorical works survive and another in fragments. Philosophical works include seven extant major compositions and a number of others; and some lost. There is also poetry, some original, some as translations from the Greek.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.

Genres: Classics, Philosophy

560 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1923

About the author

Born 3 January 106 BC, Arpinum, Italy
Died 7 December 43 BC (aged 63), Formia, Italy

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.

Alternate profiles:
Cicéron
Marco Tullio Cicerone
Cicerone

Note: All editions should have Marcus Tullius Cicero as primary author. Editions with another name on the cover should have that name added as secondary author.

Reviews

[John Cairns · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad to end my reading of Cicero here where he explains why he didn't make a fight of it but exiled himself. There was no consul with the legal wherewithal to support him. Both were in the pocket of Clodius, himself in Caesar's. Pompey was immured in his house (and unsupportive anyway). The rhetorical end of Pro Plancio, which made me smile, is perhaps the best example of what Cicero was known to be best at, the emotional appeal to a jury. Rhetoric works best where it's designed to work, in situ; what made me smile in all probability would've moved me as a juryman to let Plancius off as I suspect was the case even if we don't know the verdict.