Cicero - Anthony Everitt [188]
4. After his suicide following the battle of Utica, Cato won a reputation as a heroic idealist and defender of political freedom, which has echoed down through the ages. In your opinion, does Cato deserve this heroic reputation, or was he simply an obstinate reactionary who got what he deserved?
5. Pompey the Great was an outstanding general but a mediocre politician, and Cicero helped him several times by supporting legislation that was favorable to him and his troops. Do you feel Pompey let Cicero down in the 50s BC? Why did Pompey choose not to use Cicero’s political acumen to negotiate with Caesar in 49 BC?
6. Cicero is often criticized for speaking and writing so much about himself. Today, what media does a middle-class person with no family history in politics use to promote him- or herself? Are there similarities?
7. Everitt emphasizes Cicero’s inability to hold a grudge and his eagerness to mentor younger men. In light of this characterization, discuss why, in your opinion, Cicero did not simply forgive Mark Antony and try to work with him.
8. When the early Italian Humanist Francesco Petrarch found Cicero’s letters to Atticus, which had been virtually unknown since antiquity, he lamented that the ideal picture of Cicero conveyed in the speeches and philosophical works was forever shattered by the revelation of how Cicero acted in his daily life. Compare Cicero the lawyer and politician to the man who emerges in his letters.
For Dolores and Simone
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have seen the light of day without the advice and support of Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson and the generous temerity of Grant McIntyre at John Murray in taking on a greenhorn. A special debt of gratitude goes to Antony Wood, with whose kindly but ruthless editorial support a shapeless bundle of pages was put into good order, and to Joy de Menil of Random House, whose sharp-eyed enthusiasm refocused the biography for the American reader. However, whatever is flawed in my study of Cicero is nobody’s responsibility but my own.
I am deeply indebted to D. R. Shackleton Bailey for permission to reproduce passages from his translation of Cicero: Letters to Atticus and to His Friends in the Penguin Classics edition.
I am grateful to the Publishers and Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library for their kind permission to reprint passages from Cicero, vol. XVI, Loeb Classical Library Volume L213, translated by Clinton Walker Keyes, pp. 167, 245, 317, 345, 347, 361, 367, 373, 375, 499, 503, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1928. (The Loeb Classical Library is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.)
I should also like to thank Penguin Books, Ltd., for permission to reproduce passages from the following translations of works by Cicero which appeared in Penguin Classics: Letters to Atticus and to His Friends, Copyright © D. R. Shackleton Bailey, 1978; Selected Political Speeches, Copyright © Michael Grant Publications, Ltd., 1969; Sallust, The Jugurthine War; Conspiracy of Catiline, Copyright © the Estate of S. A. Handford, 1963; and Plutarch, Fall of the Roman Republic, Copyright © Rex Warner, 1958.
For the illustrated reconstruction of the Roman Forum, I am indebted to John E. Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City, p. 112. © 1988 [Copyright holder]. Reprinted with permission of the Johns Hopkins University Press.
SOURCES
GENERAL
By classical standards the sources for the period of Cicero’s life are voluminous, although many histories written within a generation or so of his time are lost. Much has been translated and, for the reader who would like to know more at firsthand about Cicero and the fall of the Roman Republic, some accessible literature is cited below. Titles of classical