Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cicero

In essays that are articulate, meditative and inspirational, Cicero presents his views on the significance of friendship and duty to state and family, and outlines a clear system of practical ethics that is both simple and universal.

On the Good Life

For the great Roman orator and statesman Cicero, 'the good life' was at once a life of contentment and one of moral virtue - and the two were inescapably intertwined. This volume brings together a wide range of his reflections upon the importance of moral integrity in the search for happiness. In essays that are articulate, meditative and inspirational, Cicero presents his views upon the significance of friendship and duty to state and family, and outlines a clear system of practical ethics that is at once simple and universal. These works offer a timeless reflection upon the human condition, and a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the greatest thinkers of Ancient Rome.

Quintus Tullius Cicero

This volume aims to render De Officiis, Cicero's last theoeretical work, more intelligible by explaining its relation to its own time and place.

Cicero: On Duties

Rhetorica ad Herennium (Loeb Classical Library No. 403)

The nature of the gods

De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) is a philosophical dialogue by Roman orator Cicero written in 45 BC. It is laid out in three books, each of which discusses the theology of different Roman and Greek philosophers. The dialogue uses a discussion of Stoic, Epicurean, and skeptical theories to examine fundamental questions of theology.The dialogue is on the whole narrated by Cicero himself, though he does not play an active part in the discussion. Gaius Velleius represents the Epicurean school, Quintus Lucilius Balbus argues for the Stoics, and Gaius Cotta speaks for Cicero's own Academic skepticism. The first book of the dialogue contains Cicero's introduction, Velleius' case for the Epicurean theology and Cotta's criticism of Epicureanism. Book II focuses on Balbus' explanation and defense of Stoic theology. Book III lays out Cotta's criticism of Balbus' claims. Cicero's conclusions are ambivalent and muted, "a strategy of civilized openness"; he does, however, conclude that Balbus' claims, in his mind, more nearly approximate the truth (3.95).This work, although not written by an orthodox Epicurean or Stoic, is important because it supplements the scant primary texts that remain from Epicureans and Stoics discussing their views on religion and theology. In particular, heated scholarly debate has focused on this text's discussion at 1.43-44 of how the Epicurean gods may be said to "exist"; David Sedley, for example, holds that Epicureans, as represented in this text and elsewhere, think that "gods are our own graphic idealization of the life to which we aspire", whereas David Konstan maintains that "the Epicurean gods are real, in the sense that they exist as atomic compounds and possess the properties that pertain to the concept, or prolēpsis, that people have of them."This work, alongside De Officiis and De Divinatione, was highly influential on the philosophes of the 18th century; Voltaire called it "perhaps the best book of all antiquity".

On the Nature of the Gods

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves � and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives � and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Amongst the most famous and influential of all political polemics, Cicero�s scathing speeches against the dictatorial ambitions of Mark Antony are the passionate last testament of the greatest statesman of his age; a final attempt to restore his beloved Republic that was to cost him his life.

An Attack on an Enemy of Freedom

C. Philosophical Treatises (Loeb Classical Library)

Tusculan Disputations

Cicero:On Ends

We know more of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 43 BCE), 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.

On the Republic. on the Laws

On Old Age On Friendship On Divination (Loeb Classical Library No. 154)

Cicero's speeches "In Defence of Sextus Roscius of Amerina," "In Defence of Aulus Cluentius Habitus," "In Defence of Gaius Rabirius," "Note on the Speeches in Defence of Caelius and Milo," and "In Defence of King Deiotarus" provide insight into Roman life, law, and history.

Murder Trials

Yasalar Üzerine

Ana Gómez Rabal

L'amistat

Amid the corruption and power struggles of the collapse of the Roman Republic, Cicero (106-43BC) produced some of the most stirring and eloquent speeches in history. A statesman and lawyer, he was one of the only outsiders to penetrate the aristocratic circles that controlled the Roman state, and became renowned for his speaking to the Assembly, Senate and courtrooms. Whether fighting corruption, quashing the Catiline conspiracy, defending the poet Archias or railing against Mark Antony in the Philippics - the magnificent arguments in defence of liberty which led to his banishment and death - Cicero's speeches are oratory masterpieces, vividly evocative of the cut and thrust of Roman political life.

Selected Political Speeches

Philip Freeman

Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life

How to Grow Old

Kader Üzerine

Defense of a poet, and five speeches from after exile. Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106-43 BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician, and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era that 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, fifty-eight 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.

Cicero

About

Books

Join the club