We know more of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC), lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, than of any other Roman. Besides much else, his work conveys the turmoil of his time, and the part he played in a period that saw the rise and fall of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic.
The statesman defends a friend and assails an enemy.
Cicero(Marcus Tullius,106–43BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician, andphilosopher, ofwhom weknowmore than of any other Roman, livedthrough thestirring erathat sawthe rise, dictatorship, and death ofJuliusCaesar in atotteringrepublic. In his political speeches especially and in his correspondencewe see the excitement, tensionandintrigue ofpoliticsand the part heplayed in the turmoil ofthetime. Of about106speeches, deliveredbefore the Roman peopleortheSenate ifthey werepolitical, beforejurors if judicial,fifty-eightsurvive(a few ofthem incompletely). InthefourteenthcenturyPetrarchandotherItalian humanists discoveredmanuscriptscontainingmorethan900letters of which more than800 werewrittenby Cicero and nearly 100by others to him. Theseafford arevelationof the manallthe morestriking because mostwere notwritten forpublication.Sixrhetoricalworks survive andanother infragments.Philosophicalworksincludeseven extantmajor compositionsand anumber ofothers; andsome lost.There isalso poetry, someoriginal,some astranslationsfrom theGreek.
The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.
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