Cicero Sentence Examples
Cicero is splendid, but his orations are very difficult to translate.
Aemilius Scaurus, praetor in 53 B.C. Cicero, speaking no doubt to his brief, gives them a very bad character, adding " ignoscent alii viri boni ex Sardinia; credo enim esse quosdam ".
His name is Dr. Cicero.
When Cicero was quaestor in Sicily (75 B.C.), he found the tomb of Archimedes, near the Agrigentine gate, overgrown with thorns and briers.
It may work even in Cicero's determination that his daughter should enjoy "- as he writes to Atticus - or receive the "honour" of consecratio (fragment of his De Consolatione).
B.C. there were still traces of Phoenician influence (Cicero, Pro Scauro, 1 5, 4 2, 45).
Philomelion was probably a Pergamenian foundation on the great Graeco-Roman highway from Ephesus to the east, and to its townsmen the Smyrniotes wrote the letter that describes the martyrdom of Polycarp. Cicero, on his way to Cilicia, dated some of his extant correspondence there; and the place played a considerable part in the frontier wars between the Byzantine emperors and the sultanate of Rum.
He also published commentaries on portions of Cicero (especially the De finibus), on Ausonius, Juvenal, Curtius Rufus, and other classical authors.
The metaphysics of Aristotle, the ethics of Spinoza, the philosophical works of Cicero, and many kindred works, were also frequent subjects of study.
During his term of office he aided Publius Clodius in bringing about the exile of Cicero.
AdvertisementNothing but Cicero's wish to do a favour to Pompey could have induced him to take up what must have been a distasteful task; indeed, it is hinted that the half-heartedness of the defence materially contributed to Gabinius's condemnation.
Cicero may have had villas both at Portus Caietae and at Formiae' proper, and the emperors certainly possessed property at both places.
It was among the towns that had the right of coinage, and it manufactured carts, baskets, &c. Cicero speaks of it as a place of some importance.
Both jus naturale and lex naturalis are as early as Cicero, and the jus gentium of the Roman lawyers is earlier still.
From Socrates, in Xenophon's Memorabilia, downwards, the argument is tolerably common; it is notable in Cicero; in the modern discussion it dominates the 18th-century mode of thought, is confidently appealed to though not worked out by Butler, and is fully stated by Paley.
AdvertisementPerhaps the most important of these popular thinkers was Marcus Tullius Cicero - no great philosopher, but a graceful and effective man of letters.
It has been truly observed' that the lineaments of Cicero intuitionalism are very clear in him.
Formally, Cicero adhered to the Academic 3 philosophy during its " middle " or almost sceptical period.
According to Cicero (Timaeus, r), Figulus endeavoured with some success to revive the doctrines of Pythagoreanism.
See Cicero, Ad Fam.
AdvertisementThe question of the relation of Cicero's De inventione to the Rhetorica has been much discussed.
Marx, puts forward the theory that Cicero and the Auctor have not produced original works, but have merely given the substance of two r xvai (both emanating from the Rhodian school); that neither used the 'r xvat directly, but reproduced the revised version of the rhetoricians whose school they attended, the introductions alone being their own work; that the lectures on which the Ciceronian treatise was based were delivered before the lectures attended by the Auctor.
Cicero, who entertained a high opinion of Deiotarus, whose acquaintance he had made when governor of Cilicia, undertook his defence, the case being heard in Caesar's own house at Rome.
In his speech Cicero briefly dismisses the charge of assassination, the main question being the distribution of the provinces, which was the real cause of the quarrels between DeIotarus and his relatives.
See Cicero, Philippica, ii.
AdvertisementSulla was defended by Cicero and Hortensius, and acquitted.
Of Creuzer's other works the principal are an edition of Plotinus; a partial edition of Cicero, in preparing which he was assisted by Moser; Die historische Kunst der Griechen (1803); Epochen der griech.
To judge, however, from the insignificant remains of his writings, and from the opinions of Cicero and Horace, he can have had no pretension either to original genius or to artistic accomplishment.
Before silver coinage was introduced (269 B.C.) the value of the as was about 6d., in the time of Cicero less than a halfpenny.
In the second, which took place in the Church of St John and St Paul, and lasted three days, he undertook to refute innumerable errors in Aristotelians, mathematicians and schoolmen, to conduct his dispute either logically or by the secret doctrine of numbers, &c. According to Aldus, who attended the debate and published an account of it in his dedication to Crichton prefixed to Cicero's "Paradoxa" (1581), the young Scotsman was completely successful.
Aldus in his edition of Cicero's De universitate (1583), dedicated to Crichton, laments the 3rd of July as the fatal day; and this account is apparently confirmed by the Mantuan state papers recently unearthed by Mr. Douglas Crichton (Proc. Soc. of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1909).
Milo was tribune of the plebs in 57 B.C. He took a prominent part in bringing about the recall of Cicero from exile, in spite of the opposition of Clodius.
Cicero was afraid to speak, and the extant Pro Milone is an expanded form of the unspoken defence.
The proposal was supported by Cicero in his speech, Pro lege Manilia, and carried almost unanimously.
Manilius was later accused by the aristocratical party on some unknown charge and defended by Cicero.
Cicero remarks on the existence among the Gauls of augurs or soothsayers, known by the name of Druids, with one of whom, Divitiacus, an Aeduan, he was acquainted.
At Langres he discovered Cicero's Oration for Caecina, at Monte Cassino a MS. of Frontinus.
The Gaius Maecenas mentioned in Cicero (Pro Cluentio, 56) as an influential member of the equestrian order in 91 B.C. may have been his grandfather, or even his father.
His taste, however, was curious; he preferred Cato the elder, Ennius and Caelius Antipater to Cicero, Virgil and Sallust, the obscure poet Antimachus to Homer and Plato.
The work was very much used (mention is made of an abridged edition) by Pliny the elder, Asconius Pedianus (the commentator on Cicero), Nonius, and the philologists.
Cicero's evidence is the less valuable in that he always assumed that Menedemus was a follower of the Megarians.
As an orator he was the leader of the opponents of the florid Asiatic school, who took the simplest Attic orators as their model and attacked even Cicero as wordy and artificial.
We learn from Cicero, Vitruvius, Seneca, Suetonius, Pliny and others, that the Romans had both general and topographical maps.
The members of the commission were to be invested with powers so extensive that Cicero spoke of them as ten "kings."
Cicero delivered four speeches against the bill, of which three are still extant, although the first is mutilated at the beginning.
It is explained by Cicero as being due to his theory that the scepticism of Carneades was merely a means of attacking the Stoics on their own ground.
Cicero and Livy bear testimony to the disappearance of a free plebs from the country districts and its replacement by gangs of slaves working on great estates.
Clodius and Milo used bands of gladiators in their city riots, and this action on the part of the latter was approved by Cicero.
This of course presupposes the recognition of the right of the slave to his peculium; and the same is implied in Cicero's statement that a diligent slave could in six years purchase his freedom.
The first, dedicated to Tubero, is eulogized by Cicero in the De officiis, and Seneca refers to him frequently in the De beneficiis.
Cicero shows that he was much interested in casuistical questions, as, for example, whether a good man who had received a coin which he knew to be bad was justified in passing it on to another.
Cicero speaks of it as a prcsperous country town, which had not as yet fallen into the hands of large proprietors; and inscriptions show that under the empire it was still flourishing.
His reputation was helped by several clever if somewhat wrong-headed publications, including a satirical pamphlet entitled The Theology and Philosophy of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis (1751), a defence of the Hutchinsonians in A Fair, Candid and Impartial State of the Case between Sir Isaac Newton and Mr Hutchinson (1753), and critiques upon William Law (1758) and Benjamin Kennicott (1760).
Cicero's De Officiis abounds in the kind of question afterwards so warmly discussed by Dr Johnson and his friends.
But, then, Cicero and Seneca took common-sense as their guide.
Quite in the great doctor's spirit is Cicero's counsel to his son, to hear what the philosophers had to say, but to decide for himself as a man of the world.
Cicero was on friendly terms with both him and Roscius, the equally distinguished comedian, and did not disdain to profit by their instruction.
Plutarch (Cicero, 5) mentions it as reported of Aesopus, that, while representing Atreus deliberating how he should revenge himself on Thyestes, the actor forgot himself so far in the heat of action that with his truncheon he struck and killed one of the servants crossing the stage.
Aesopus made a last appearance in 55 B.C. - when Cicero tells us that he was advanced in years - on the occasion of the splendid games given by Pompey at the dedication of his theatre.
About this time the influence of the equestrian order reached its height, and Cicero's great object was to reconcile it with the senate.
The first of these charges cannot be denied; but it is hard to see why a lawyer of the 6th century, himself born in a Greek-speaking part of the empire, should be expected to write Latin as pure as that of the age of Cicero, or even of the age of Gaius and the Antonines.
Cicero was in friendly relations with it, and exerted influence that it might retain its property in Gaul, so that it is obvious that it had then recovered municipal rights.
Some general information as to the Platonic doctrines (chiefly in a Neoplatonic garb) was obtainable from the commentary with which Chalcidius (6th century) accompanied his translation, from the work of Apuleius (2nd century) De dogmate Platonis, and indirectly from the commentary of Macrobius (c. 400) on the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero, and from the writings of St Augustine.
On account of the classic purity of his style in prose, Faludi was known as the " Magyar Cicero."
Diogenes Laortius and Cicero both speak of him with respect and describe him as an accurate and polished thinker.
Both Cicero and Sallust express a high opinion of Bestia's abilities, but his love of money demoralized him.
He was tribune elect in 63, and it had been arranged that, after entering upon his office, he should publicly accuse Cicero of responsibility for the impending war.
He was accused of bribery during his candidature, and, in spite of Cicero's defence, was condemned.
His pupil Richer has left us a detailed account of his system of teaching at Reims. So far as the trivium is concerned, his text-books were Victorinus's translation of Porphyry's Isagoge, Aristotle's Categories, and Cicero's Topics with Manlius's Commentaries.
It is close to the site of the ancient Aquinum, a municipium in the time of Cicero, and made a colony by the Triumviri, the birthplace of Juvenal and of the emperor Pescennius Niger.
Several Roman inscriptions are built into it, and many others that have been found indicate the ancient importance of the place, which, though it does not appear in early history, is vouched for by Cicero and Strabo.'
He was credited with having originated the doctrine of metempsychosis, while Cicero and Augustine assert that he was the first to teach the immortality of the soul.
But the gossip, not discouraged by Terence, lived and throve; it crops up in Cicero and Quintilian, and the ascription of the plays to Scipio had the honour to be accepted by Montaigne and rejected by Diderot.
His great characteristics are humanity and urbanity, and to this may be attributed the attraction which he had for the two chief representatives of these qualities in Roman literature - Cicero and Horace.
Cicero frequently reproduces his expressions, applies passages in his plays to his own circumstances, and refers to his personages as typical representations of character.'
He came to Rome in the reign of Hadrian, and soon gained such renown as an advocate and orator as to be reckoned inferior only to Cicero.
There was a fierce 1 The laws of Hiero are often mentioned with approval in Cicero's speeches against Verres.
The most eminent of these earlier Greek physicians at Rome was Asclepiades, the friend of Cicero (born 124 B.C. at Prusa in Bithynia).
According to this account the poet was born in 95 B.C.; he became mad in consequence of the administration of a love-philtre; and after composing several books in his lucid intervals, which were subsequently corrected by Cicero, he died by his own hand in the forty-fourth year of his age.
A single mention of his poem, the De rerum natura (which from the condition in which it has reached us may be assumed to have been published posthumously) in a letter of Cicero's to his brother Quintus, written early in S4 B.C., confirms the date given by Donatus as that of the poet's death.
Cicero, by his professed antagonism to the doctrines of Epicurus, by his inadequate appreciation of Lucretius himself and by the indifference which he shows to other contemporary poets, seems to have been neither fitted for the task of correcting the unfinished work of a writer whose genius was so distinct from his own, nor likely to have cordially undertaken such a task.
Nor is there any great difficulty in believing that Cicero edited it; the word "emendavit," need not mean more than what we call "preparing for press."
It has been doubted whether Cicero,' in his short criticism in the letter already referred to, concedes to Lucretius both the gifts of genius and the accomplishment of art or only one of them.
But with Cicero it was different.
Further, it is certain that Hero used physical and mathematical writings by Posidonius, the Stoic, of Apamea, Cicero's teacher, who lived until about the middle of the 1st century B.C. The positive arguments for the more modern view of Hero's date are (1) the use by him of Latinisms from which Diels concluded that the 1st century A.D.
A native of Apamea in Syria and a pupil of Panaetius, he spent after his teacher's death many years in travel and scientific researches in Spain (particularly at Gades), Africa, Italy, Gaul, Liguria, Sicily and on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. When he settled as a teacher at Rhodes (hence his surname "the Rhodian") his fame attracted numerous scholars; next to Panaetius he did most, by writings and personal intercourse, to spread Stoicism in the Roman world, and he became well known to many leading men, such as Marius, Rutilius Rufus, Pompey and Cicero.
Cicero, who submitted to his criticism the memoirs which he had written in Greek of his consulship, made use of writings of Posidonius in De natura deorum, bk.
See Cicero, De Fato, 6, 7, 9; Aristotle, Metaphysica, 0 3; Sext.
The extracts from Cicero and Ovid, Origen and St John, Chrysostom, Augustine and Jerome are but specimens of a useful custom which reaches its culminating paint in book xxviii., which is devoted entirely to the writings of St Bernard.
His reading ranges from Arabian philosophers and naturalists to Aristotle, Eusebius, Cicero, Seneca, Julius Caesar (whom he calls Julius Celsus), and even the Jew, Peter Alphonso.
The De re publica of Cicero is supposed to be founded on one of Dicaearchus's works.
Cicero states that from the earliest period down to the pontificate of Publius Mucius Scaevola (c. 131 B.C.), it was usual for the pontifex maximus to record on a white tablet (album), which was exhibited in an open place at his house, so that the people might read it, first, the name of the consuls and other magistrates, and then the noteworthy events that had occurred during the year (per singulos dies, as Servius says).
These records were called in Cicero's time the Annales Maximi.
After the pontificate of Publius, the practice of compiling annals was carried on by various unofficial writers, of whom Cicero names Cato, Pictor and Piso.
The basis of discussion is furnished chiefly by the above-quoted passage from Cicero, and by the common division of the work of Tacitus into Annales and Historiae.
His commentary on Cicero's De Inventione (in Halm's Rhetores Latini Minores, 1863) is very diffuse, and is itself in need of commentary.
The fertility of the neighbourhood is celebrated both by Virgil and by Cicero.
It cannot be said, however, that Ramus's innovations mark any epoch in the history of logic. His rhetorical leaning is seen in the definition of logic as the "ars disserendi"; he maintains that the rules of logic may be better learned from observation of the way in which Cicero persuaded his hearers than from a study of the Organon.
A still nearer approach to literature was probably made in oratory, as we learn from Cicero that the famous speech delivered by Appius Claudius Caecus against concluding peace with Pyrrhus (280 B.C.) was extant in his time.
Cicero, who speaks of 150 of these speeches as extant in his day, praises them for their acuteness, their wit, their conciseness.
Sulpicius Galba and others, and along with it the development of prose composition, went on with increased momentum till the age of Cicero.
But the interval between the death of Ennius (169) and the beginning of Cicero's career, while one of progressive advance in the appreciation of literary form and style, was much less distinguished by original force than the time immediately before and after the end of the second Punic war.
Among the writers before the age of Cicero he alone deserves to be named with Naevius, Plautus Ennius and Cato as a great originative force in literature.
The only extant prose work which may be assigned to the end of this period is the treatise on rhetoric known by the title Ad Herennium (c. 84) a work indicative of the attention bestowed on prose style and rhetorical studies during the last century of the republic, and which may be regarded as a precursor of the oratorical treatises of Cicero and of the work of Quintilian.
Yet Cicero denies to Rome the existence, before his own time, of any adequate historical literature.
The five chief representatives of this age who still hold their rank among the great classical writers are Cicero, Caesar and Sallust in prose, Lucretius and Catullus in verse.
And, although Demosthenes is a Cicero.
The Roman oratory of the law courts had to deal not with petty questions of disputed property, of fraud, or violence, but with great imperial questions, with matters affecting the well-being of large provinces and the honour and safety of the republic; and no man ever lived who, in these respects, was better fitted than Cicero to be the representative of the type of oratory demanded by the condition of the later republic. To his great artistic accomplishment, perfected by practice and elaborate study, to the power of his patriotic, his moral, and personal sympathies, and his passionate emotional nature, must be added his vivid imagination and the rich and copious stream of his language, in which he had no rival among Roman writers or speakers.
But the Verres, Catiline, Antony of Cicero are living and permanent types.
The story told in the Pro Cluentio may be true or false, but the picture of provincial crime which it presents is vividly dramatic. Had we only known Cicero in his speeches we should have ranked him with Demosthenes as one who had realized the highest literary ideal.
The Letters of Cicero are thoroughly natural - colloquia absentium amicorum, to use his own phrase.
Cicero's letters to Atticus, and to the friends with whom he was completely at his ease, are the most sincere and immediate expression of the thought and feeling of the moment.
Of C. Julius Caesar (102-44) as an orator we can judge only by his reputation and by the testimony of his great rival and adversary Cicero; but we are able to appreciate the special praise of perfect taste in the use of language attributed to him.'
Like Varro, he survived Cicero by some years, but the tone and spirit in which his works are written assign him to the republican era.
Satire, debarred from comment on political action, turned to social and individual life, and combined with the newly-developed taste for ethical analysis and reflection introduced by Cicero.
The hexameter no longer, as in Lucilius, moves awkwardly as if in fetters, but, like the language of Terence, of Catullus in his lighter pieces, of Cicero in his letters to Atticus, adapts itself to the everyday intercourse of life.
Self-culture rather than the fulfilment of public or social duty, as in the moral teaching of Cicero, is the aim of his teaching; and in this we recognize the influence of the empire in throwing the individual back on himself.
As Cicero tones down his oratory in his moral treatises, so Horace tones down the fervour of his lyrical utterances in his Epistles, and thus produces a style combining the ease of the best epistolary style with the grace and concentration of poetry - the style, as it has been called, of "idealized common sense," that of the urbanus and cultivated man of the world who is also in his hours of inspiration a genuine poet.
We know him in the intense liveliness of his feeling and the human weakness of his nature more intimately than any other writer of antiquity, except perhaps Cicero.
Aelius Stilo Praeconinus, who was the teacher of Varro and Cicero, much interest had been taken in literary and linguistic problems at Rome.
Ambrosius Macrobius Theodosius (c. 400) wrote a treatise on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis and seven books of miscellanies (Saturnalia); and Martianus Capella (c. 430), a native of Africa, published a compendium of the seven liberal arts, written in a mixture of prose and verse, with some literary pretensions.
Domenico, which marks the site of the villa in which Cicero was born and frequently resided.
In 54 B.C. the people of Reate appealed to Cicero to plead their cause in an arbitration which had been appointed by the Roman senate to settle disputes about the river, and in connexion with this he made a personal inspection of Lake Velinus and its outlets.
Interamna is also mentioned in Cicero's time as being the place where Clodius wished to prove that he was on the night when he was caught in Caesar's house at the celebration of the rites of the Bona Dea.
The Romans did not treat the Maltese as conquered enemies, and at once gave them the privileges of a municipium; Cicero (in Verrem) refers to the Maltese as " Socii."
Cicero follows the account of Varro, which is also in general adopted by Pliny.
Cicero took lessons from him.
In 76 B.C. he was sued by C. Fannius Chaerea for 50,000 sesterces (about 400), and was defended by Cicero in a famous speech.
He was educated partly at Athens, together with Horace and the younger Cicero.
As an orator, he followed Cicero instead of the Atticizing school, but his style was affected and artificial.
Later critics considered him superior to Cicero, and Tiberius adopted him as a model.
The reputation which Lucilius enjoyed in the best ages of Roman literature is proved by the terms in which Cicero and Horace speak of him.
In 1 744 he published another translation of Logan's, Cicero On Old Age, which Franklin thought typographically the finest book he had ever printed.
Appietas) is coined by Cicero (Ad Fam.
When Catiline left Rome after Cicero's first speech In Catilinam, Lentulus took his place as.
In conjunction with C. Cornelius Cethegus, he undertook to murder Cicero and set fire to Rome, but the plot failed owing to his timidity and indiscretion.
Fabius Sanga, their "patron" in Rome, who in his turn acquainted Cicero.
In 63 B.C. he was curule aedile, assisted Cicero in the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy, and distinguished himself by the splendour of the games he provided.
Lentulus played a prominent part in the recall of Cicero from exile, and although a temporary coolness seems to have arisen between them, Cicero speaks of him in most grateful terms. From 56-53 Lentulus was governor of the province of Cilicia (with Cyprus) and during that time was commissioned by the senate to restore Ptolemy XI.
It is pretty clear that the common accounts of the Renaissance and of the revival of learning grossly exaggerate the influence of the writers of Greece and Rome, for they produced no obvious rationalistic movement, as would have been the case had Plato and Cicero, Lucretius and Lucian, been taken really seriously.
The strongest statement regarding the inviolability of such dogmas is in Cicero's Academics, ii.
It is certain that originally each household had only one Lar; the plural was at first only used to include other classes of Lares, and only gradually, after the time of Cicero, ousted the singular.
Cicero calls his style "copious and polished," Quintilian, "sweet, pure and flowing"; Longinus says he was "the most Homeric of historians"; Dionysius, his countryman, prefers him to Thucydides, and regards him as combining in an extraordinary degree the excellences of sublimity, beauty and the true historical method of composition.
Cicero, who frequently quotes from him with great admiration, appears (De optimo genere oratorum, i.) to rank him first among the Roman tragic poets, as Ennius among the epic, and Caecilius among the comic poets.
The fragments of Pacuvius quoted by Cicero in illustration or enforcement of his own ethical teaching appeal, by the fortitude, dignity, and magnanimity of the sentiment expressed in them, to what was noblest in the Roman temperament.
He read also the older Church Fathers and soon won for himself fame as a student, whilst his skill in the classics led his friends to hail him as "the undoubted Cicero of our age."
After this it does not appear in history, and in the time of Cicero and Strabo was almost entirely deserted if not destroyed.
About this time Agrippa married Pomponia, daughter of Cicero's friend Pomponius Atticus.
Aristotle, however, discerned Theramenes' real policy, and, like Cicero and Caesar, in later years ranked him among the greatest Athenian statesmen.
In the time of Cicero it was flourishing, though not of great importance.
On this occasion the defence was undertaken by Cicero in the extant speech Pro Cluentio.
The speech delivered by Cicero on this occasion is considered one of his best.
Ameria is not mentioned in the history of the Roman conquest of Umbria, but is alluded to as a flourishing place, with a fertile territory extending to the Tiber, by Cicero in his speech in defence of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, and its fruit is often extolled by Roman writers.
An attack on Quintus Cicero (brother of the orator), then quartered with a legion in the territory of the Nervii, failed owing to the timely appearance of Caesar.
For the life of Marius the original sources are numerous passages in Cicero's works, Sallust's Jugurtha, the epitomes of the lost books of Livy, Plutarch's Lives of Sulla and Marius, Velleius Paterculus, Florus and Appian's Bellum civile.
Cicero defended one of its members in an extant speech.
Etienne Dolet calls him "enemy of Cicero, and jealous detractor of the French name."
He writes from himself, and not out of Cicero.
He was the author of a collection of aphorisms in verse mentioned by Cicero (of which a few fragments remain), and of a legal work entitled De Usurpationibus.
Through the intervention of Pompey, he became reconciled to Cicero, who had been greatly offended because Claudius had indirectly opposed his return from exile.
During this period he carried on a correspondence with Cicero, whose letters to him form the third book of the Epistolae ad Familiares.
Claudius resented the appointment of Cicero as his successor, avoided meeting him, and even issued orders after his arrival in the province.
This led him to make advances to Cicero, since it was necessary to obtain witnesses in his favour from his old province.
He wrote a work on augury, the first book of which he dedicated to Cicero.
But the authors whom he quotes most frequently are Virgil, and, next to him, Terence, Cicero, Plautus; then Lucan, Horace, Juvenal, Sallust, Statius, Ovid, Livy and Persius.
Aelius Stilo (c. 1 54 - c. 74), who is described by Cicero as profoundly learned in Greek and Latin literature, and as an accomplished critic of Roman antiquities and of ancient authors.
His most famous pupil was Varro (116-27), the six surviving books of whose great work on the Latin language are mainly concerned with the great grammatical controversy on analogy and anomaly - a controversy which also engaged the attention of Cicero and Caesar, and of the elder Pliny and Quintilian.
His contemporary Asconius is best known as the author of an extant historical commentary on five of the speeches of Cicero.
In his survey of the " liberal arts " St Augustine imitates (as we have seen) the Disciplinae of Varro, and in the greatest of his works, the De Civitate Dei (426), he has preserved large portions of the Antiquitates of Varro and the De Republica of Cicero.
He frequently quotes from the speeches of Cicero, and it has been surmised that the survival of those speeches may have been due to the influence of Gerbert.
His favourite author is Cicero, and in all the Latin literature accessible to him he is the best-read scholar of his age.
His standard authors in Latin prose are Cicero, Livy, Pliny, Frontinus and Orosius.
Petrarch had discovered Cicero's Speech pro Archia at Liege (1333) and the Letters to Atticus and Quintus at Verona (1345).
Boccaccio had discovered Martial and Ausonius, and had been the first of the human'sts to be familiar with Varro and Tacitus, while Salutati had recovered Cicero's letters Ad Familiares (1389).
Thirteen of Cicero's speeches were found by him at Cluny and Langres, and elsewhere in France or Germany; the commentary of Asconius, a complete Quintilian, and a large part of Valerius Flaccus were discovered at St Gallen.
A complete MS. of Cicero, De Oratore, Brutus and Orator, was found by Bishop Landriani at Lodi (1421).
He here urges that the foundation of all true learning is a " sound and thorough knowledge of Latin," and draws up a course of reading, in which history is represented by Livy, Sallust, Curtius, and Caesar; oratory by Cicero; and poetry by Virgil.
The Latin poets to be studied include Virgil, Lucan, Statius, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and (with certain limitations) Horace, Juvenal and Persius, as well as Plautus, Terence and the tragedies of Seneca; the prose authors recommended are Cicero, Livy and Sallust.
Among the Latin authors studied were Virgil and Lucan, with selections from Horace, Ovid and Juvenal, besides Cicero and Quintilian, Sallust and Curtius, Caesar and Livy.
At Subiaco and at Rome they had produced in 1465-1471 the earliest editions of Cicero, De Oratore and the Letters, and eight other Latin authors.
Petrarch was not only the imitator of Virgil, who had been the leading name in Latin letters throughout the middle ages; it was the influence of Petrarch that gave a new prominence to Cicero.
We have already seen that a strict imitation of Cicero was one of the characteristics of the Italian humanists.
They did much, however, for the cultivation of original composition modelled on Cicero and Virgil.
In Rome he lectured on rhetoric and philosophy, and collected around him many eminent pupils, amongst whom Cicero was the most famous and the most enthusiastic. None of his works is extant; our knowledge of his views is derived from Numenius, Sextus Empiricus and Cicero.
See Cicero, De Div.
Antonius Gnipho, a native of Gaul (by which Cisalpine Gaul may be meant), who is said to have been equally learned in Greek and Latin literature, and to have set up in later years a school of rhetoric which was attended by Cicero in his praetorship 66 B.C. It is possible that Caesar may have derived from him his interest in Gaul and its people and his sympathy with the claims of the Romanized Gauls of northern Italy to political rights.
The bill was defeated by Cicero, consul in 63 B.C. In the same year the conspiracy associated with the name of Catiline came to a head.
He returned to Rome in 60 B.C. to find that the senate had sacrificed the support of the capitalists (which Cicero had worked so hard to secure), and had finally alienated Pompey by refusing to ratify his acts and grant lands to his soldiers.
He even made a generous, though unsuccessful, endeavour to enlist the support of Cicero.
At Aduatuca (near Aixla-Chapelle) a newly-raised legion was cut to pieces by the Eburones under Ambiorix, while Quintus Cicero was besieged in the neighbourhood of Namur and only just relieved in time by Caesar, who was obliged to winter in Gaul in order to check the spread of the rebellion.
With respect to the first moves made in the struggle, and the negotiations for peace at the outset of hostilities, Caesar's account sometimes conflicts with the testimony of Cicero's correspondence or implies movements which cannot be reconciled with geographical facts.
He increased the number of senators to goo and introduced provincials into that body; but instead of making it into a grand council of the empire, representative of its various races and nationalities, he treated it with studied contempt, and Cicero writes that his own name had been set down as the proposer of decrees of which he knew nothing, conferring the title of king on potentates of whom he had never heard.
In the time of Cicero it had lost all importance; Strabo names it as a mere village, in private hands, while for Pliny it was one of the lost cities of Latium.
According to Cicero, P. Sulpicius Rufus and Cotta were the best speakers of the young men of their time.
He is introduced by Cicero as an interlocutor in the De oratore and De natura deorum (iii.), as a supporter of the principles of the New Academy.
See Cicero, De oratore, iii.
After the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy, Cotta proposed a public thanksgiving for Cicero's services, and after the latter had gone into exile, supported the view that there was no need of a law for his recall, since the law of Clodius was legally worthless.
See Cicero, Orelli's Ononiasticon; Sallust, Catiline, 18; Suetonius, Caesar, 79; Livy, Epit.
But this arrangement soon gave way before the ambition of one of these tetrarchs, Deiotarus, the contemporary of Cicero and Caesar, who made himself master of the other two tetrarchies and was finally recognized by the Romans as king of Galatia.
Not long afterwards we find the citizens receiving the present of a gymnasium from Ptolemy, and building in his honour a stoa or portico; but the city never recovered altogether from the disasters of the siege, and Cicero describes it as almost deserted.
He retired to Mytilene, and afterwards to Smyrna, where he spent the rest of his life, and where Cicero saw him as late as the year 78.
See Cicero, Pro Fonteio, 17, Brutus, 22, 30; Livy, edit.
It was originally a Latin colony, but became a municipium probably in 90 B.C. The customs boundary of Italy was close by in Cicero's day.
In the unique MS. of Cicero's treatise De Republica, 2, 33, 57, secutus appears as "secututus secutus."
He also attacked Isocrates, according to Cicero, and perhaps even set up a rival school of rhetoric. At any rate he had pupils of his own, such as Eudemus of Cyprus, Theodectes and Hermias, books of his own, especially dialogues, and even to some extent his own philosophy, while he was still a pupil of Plato.
Here we can read the young Aristotle, writing in the form of the dialogue like Plato, avoiding hiatus like Isocrates, and justifying the praises accorded to his style by Cicero, Quintilian and Dionysius.
Nicomachean means " addressed to Nicomachus," and Eudemian " addressed to Eudemus "; but, as Cicero thought that the Nicomachean Ethics was written by Nicomachus, so the author of the Scholium thought that the Eudemian Ethics, at least so far as the first account of pleasure goes, was written by Eudemus.
Cicero says of him that he was no orator, but a careful writer.
See Cicero, Acad.
Cicero, Pompey and Crassus all spoke on his behalf, and he was acquitted.
During the civil war he endeavoured to get Cicero to mediate between Caesar and Pompey, with the object of preventing him from definitely siding with the latter; and Cicero admits that he was dissuaded from doing so, against his better judgment.
Subsequently, Balbus became Caesar's private secretary, and Cicero was obliged to ask for his good offices with Caesar.
His doctrine is a kind of utilitarianism, with a strong leaning on the speculative side to the modified literary scepticism of Cicero, for whom he had unbounded admiration.
He was a humanist before the Renaissance, surpassing all other representatives of the school of Chartres in his knowledge of the Latin classics, as in the purity of his style, which was evidently moulded on that of Cicero.
Under Napoleon, of whom in 1806 he made a nude statue now at Dijon, Houdon received little employment; he was, however, commissioned to execute the colossal reliefs intended for the decoration of the column of the "Grand Army" at Boulogne (which ultimately found a different destination); he also produced a statue of Cicero for the senate, and various busts, amongst which may be cited those of Marshal Ney, of Josephine and of Napoleon himself, by whom Houdon was rewarded with the legion of honour.
Cicero says in the Tusculans that the goods of the soul entirely outweighed for him the other goods ("tantum propendere illam bonorum animi lancem").
But in Cicero's time they were elected by the Comitia Tributa.
When Catiline left Rome in 63 B.C., after Cicero's first speech, Cethegus remained behind as leader of the conspirators with P. Lentulus Sura.
He himself undertook to murder Cicero and other prominent men, but was hampered by the dilatoriness of Sura, whose age and rank entitled him to the chief consideration.
Cicero (De fato, 5) describes him as a man of the highest character.
On the other hand, it has been recorded by Cicero" that a certain physiognomist, Zopyrus, who professed to know the habits and manners of men from their bodies, eyes, face and forehead, characterized Socrates as stupid, sensual and dull (bardus), " in quo Alcibiades cachinnum dicitur sustulisse."
In 1600 he edited the remains of Aratus, with the versions of Cicero, Germanicus and Avienus.
He was a passionate Ciceronian, and perhaps his chief contributions to scholarship are the corrected editions of Cicero's letters and orations, his own epistles in a Ciceronian style, and his Latin version of Demosthenes.
Cicero calls Ahala's deed a glorious one, but, whether Maelius entertained any ambitious projects or not, his summary execution was an act of murder, since by the Valerio-Horatian laws the dictator was bound to allow the right of appeal.
His acquaintance with Cicero is clearly proved by the form in which he cast some of the most important of his speculations.
On the other hand, it is argued that the authority of Galen and Cicero (pro Cluentio) place it beyond a doubt that, so far from being allowed to pass with impunity, the offence in question was sometimes punished by death; that the authority of Lysias is of doubtful authenticity; and that the speculative reasonings of Plato and Aristotle, in matters of legislation, ought not to be confounded with the actual state of the laws.
Among them was Cicero, whose letters abound with allusions to his Pompeian villa.
Porcius (the former the fatherin-law of that P. Servilius Rullus, in opposition to whose bill relating to the distribution of the public lands Cicero made his speech, De lege agraria), at a period when no permanent edifice of a similar kind had yet been erected in Rome itself, and is indeed the oldest structure of the kind known to us.
We know from Cicero that Capua was remarkable for its broad streets and widespread buildings, and it is probable that the Campanian towns in general partook of the same character.
Cicero pondered over the fact; Arcesilaus explained the secession to the Epicurean camp, compared with the fact that no Epicurean was ever known to have abandoned his school, by saying that, though it was possible for a man to be turned into a eunuch, no eunuch could ever become a man.
All the persons spoken of by Cicero have Greek names save - a most speaking exception - Gaius Heius of Mamertina civitas.
Through the influence of Nobilior's son, Ennius subsequently obtained the privilege of Roman citizenship (Cicero, Brutus, 20.79).
Several of the more important fragments are found in Cicero, who expresses a great admiration for their manly fortitude and dignified pathos.
But the work which gained him his reputation as the Homer of Rome, and which called forth the admiration of Cicero and Lucretius and frequent imitation from Virgil, was the Annales, a long narrative poem in eighteen books, containing the record of the national story from mythical times to his own.
He helped Cicero in the composition of the De Officiis.
It enjoyed a great reputation for letters and the arts (Cicero pro Archia, 3); but the only names of distinction in these pursuits during the Seleucid period, that have come down to us, are Apollophanes, the Stoic, and one Phoebus, a writer on dreams. The mass of the population seems to have been only superficially Hellenic, and to have spoken Aramaic in non-official life.
He is said to have made an epitome of the Tactica of Aeneas, probably referred to by Cicero, who speaks of a Cineas as the author of a treatise De Re Militari.
Cicero had already compared the sites consecrated by the memory of some illustrious name with those hallowed by recollections of a loved one.
During the times of the republic, a victorious general, who had been saluted by the title of imperator by his soldiers, had his fasces crowned with laurel (Cicero, Pro Ligario, 3).
As an orator he well deserved the epithet of "the Hungarian purple Cicero."
And yet it is singular that no mention of them occurs in Cicero or Livy, and that altogether literary allusions to them are very scarce.
In due course it passed from Pergamene to Roman dominion, and according to Cicero, was plundered of many artistic treasures by Verres.
Cicero uses the name vicarius to describe an under-slave kept by another as part of his private property.
Astura was the site of a favourite villa of Cicero, whither he retired on the death of his daughter Tullia in 45 B.C. It appears to have been unhealthy even in Roman times; according to Suetonius, both Augustus and Tiberius contracted here the illnesses which proved fatal to them.
In Cicero's time it was a municipium, and continued in this position throughout the imperial period.
In the first of his Dialogues (fair models of Cicero), Severus puts into the mouth of an interlocutor (Posthumianus) a pleasing description of the life of coenobites and solitaries in the deserts bordering on Egypt.
Of one family, of the plebeian Claudian gens, only a single member, Gaius Claudius Cicero, tribune in 454 B.C., is known.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), Roman orator and politician, was born at Arpinum on the 3rd of January 106 B.C. His mother, Helvia, is said to have been of good family.
Cicero spent his boyhood partly in his native town and partly at Rome.
Cicero also, according to Roman practice, received military training.
Cicero then left Rome on account of his health, and travelled for two years in the East.
Cicero, therefore, was fully aware of the danger which would threaten himself from his execution of the Catilinarian conspirators.
Caesar had made every possible effort to conciliate Cicero,' but, when all overtures failed, allowed Publius Clodius to attack him.
Cicero found himself deserted, and on the advice of Cato went into exile to avoid bloodshed.
Cicero was again deserted by his supporters and threatened with fresh exile.
Cicero took an active part in the trials which followed, both as a defender of Milo and his adherents and as a prosecutor of the opposite faction.
Cicero's legate was his brother Quintius Cicero (below), an experienced soldier who had gained great distinction under Caesar in Gaul.
The fears of Parthian invasion were not realized, but Cicero, after suppressing a revolt in Cappadocia, undertook military operations against the hill-tribes of the Amanus and captured the town of Pindenissus after a siege of forty-six days.
Under Caesar's dictatorship Cicero abstained from politics.
Cicero returned to Rome on the 9th of December, and from that time forward led the republican party in the senate.
Cicero, an incurable optimist in politics, may have convinced himself of Octavian's sincerity.
The breach, however, was bound to come, and the saying, maliciously attributed to Cicero, that Octavian was an " excellent youth who must be praised and - sent to another place," neatly expresses the popular view of the situation.'
Whether Cicero was right or wrong, none can question his amazing energy.
The literary works of Cicero may be classed as (1) rhetorical; (2) oratorical; (3) philosophical and political; (4) epistolary.
Brutus, sketching a portrait of the perfect and ideal orator, Cicero's last word on oratory.
Cicero preferred the cretic -, which he says is the metrical equivalent of the paean.
Cicero gives various clausulae which his ears told him to be good or bad, but his remarks are desultory, as also are those of Quintilian, whose examples were largely drawn from Cicero's writings.
Other investigators had shown that Cicero's clausulae are generally variations of some three or four forms in which the rhythm is trochaic. Dr Thaddaeus Zielinski of St Petersburg, after examining all the clausulae in Cicero's speeches, finds that they are governed by a law.
Cicero's juvenile work de Inventione appears to be drawn partly from this and partly from a treatise by Hermagoras.
Other minor works written in later life, such as the Partitiones Oratoriae, a catechism of rhetoric, in which instruction is given by Cicero to his son Marcus; the Topica, and an introduction to a translation of the speeches delivered by Demosthenes and Aeschines for and against Ctesiphon, styled de optimo genere oratorum, also need only be mentioned.
Livy's practice is exactly opposite to that of Cicero, since he has a marked preference for the S forms, "thereby exemplifying Cicero's saying that long syllables are more appropriate to history than to oratory.'
The extant speech was written by Cicero at his leisure.
Cicero's method was to construct a commentaries or skeleton of his speech, which he used when speaking.
Cicero in his speeches must be given all the privileges of an advocate.
Cicero had a perfect mastery of all weapons wielded by a pleader in Rome.
Thus Cicero frequently speaks as if his client were to be put to death, though a criminal could always evade capital consequences by going into exile.
Caesar used to have a collection of Cicero's bon-mots brought to him.
Cicero as a philosopher belonged to the New Academy.
Cicero set himself to supply this want.
The only merits, therefore, which can be claimed for Cicero are that he invented a philosophical terminology for the Romans, and that he produced a series of manuals which from their beauty of style have had enduring influence upon mankind.
Porcius Cato sets forth the doctrine of the Stoics which is shown by Cicero to agree with that of Antiochus of Ascalon; in v.
Tusculanae Disputationes, so called from Cicero's villa at Tusculum in which the discussion is supposed to have taken place.
Cicero here draws from a work of Theophrastus on the same subject and from Aristotle.
When writing to Atticus Cicero frequently sent copies of letters which he had received.
There is a great variety in the style not only of Cicero's correspondents, but also of Cicero himself.
Caelius writes in a breezy, school-boy style; the Latinity of Plancus is Ciceronian in character; the letter of Sulpicius to Cicero on the death of Tullia is a masterpiece of style; Matius writes a most dignified letter justifying his affectionate regard for Caesar's memory.
Antony writes bad Latin, while Cicero himself writes in various styles.
Other letters of Cicero, especially those written to persons with whom he was not quite at his ease or those meant for circulation, are composed in his elaborate style with long periods, parentheses and other devices for obscuring thought.
Cicero is telling Appius, his predecessor in Cilicia, of the measures which he is taking on his behalf.
In the letters to Atticus, on the other hand, we have Cicero's private journal, his confessions to the director of his conscience, the record of his moods from day to day, without alterations of any kind.
Cicero's letters are the chief and most reliable source of information for the period.
It is due to them that the Romans of the day are living figures to us, and that Cicero, in spite of, or rather in virtue of his frailties, is intensely human and sympathetic. The letters to Atticus abound in the frankest selfrevelation, though even in the presence of his confessor his instinct as a pleader makes him try to justify himself.
The historical value of the letters, therefore, completely transcends that of Cicero's other works.
The value of the letters lies in the fact that in them we get behind Cicero and are face to face with the other dramatis personae; also that we are admitted behind the scenes and read the secret history of the times.
We hear of the extraordinary agreement made by two candidates for the consulship in Caesar's interest with the sitting consuls of 54 B.C., which Cicero says he hardly ventures to put on paper.
It is not necessary to dwell upon the other forms of literary composition attempted by Cicero.
The works which were most read were the de Inventione and Topica - though neither of these was quite so popular as the treatise ad Herennium, then supposed to be by Cicero - and among the moral works, the de Officiis, and the Cato Maior.
A good deal of textual criticism must have been devoted to Cicero's works during this period.
Thus, writing to Ansbald of Prum, he says, " I will collate the letters of Cicero which you sent with the copy 3 Quintil.
Petrarch says that among his countrymen Cicero was a great name, but was studied by few.
He found the speech pro Archia at Liege in 1333, and in 1345 at Verona made his famous discovery of the letters to Atticus, which revealed to the world Cicero as a man in place of the " god of eloquence " whom they had worshipped.
Petrarch was under the impression in his old age that he had once possessed Cicero's lost work de Gloria, but it is probable that he was misled by one of the numerous passages in the extant writings dealing with this subject.'
He brought back no less than ten speeches of Cicero previously unknown to the Italians, viz.
The second book of Cicero's letters to Brutus was first printed by Cratander of Basel in 1528 from a MS. obtained for him by Sichardus from the abbey of Lorsch.3 All these MSS.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, only son of the orator and his wife Terentia, was born in 65 B.C. At the age of seventeen he served with Pompey in Greece, and commanded a squadron of cavalry at the battle of Pharsalus.
He had the satisfaction of carrying out the decree which ordered that all the statues of Antony should be demolished, and thus " the divine justice reserved the completion of Antony's punishment for the house of Cicero" (Plutarch).
See Plutarch, Cicero, Brutus; Appian, Bell.
See Cicero, ad Att.
This is perhaps fortunate for the history of doctrine, for it produces the commentator, your Aspasius or Alexander of Aphrodisias, and the substitute for the critic, your Cicero, or your Galen with his attempt at comprehension of the Stoic categories and the like while starting from Aristotelianism.
Gaius Octavius was born in Rome on the 23rd of September 63 B.C.,the year of Cicero's consulship and of Catiline's conspiracy.
Cicero, much charmed at the attitude of Antonius, hoped to make use of him, and flattered him to the utmost, with the expectation, however, of getting rid of him as soon as he had served his purpose.
Cicero was murdered at the demand of Antonius.
This was nearly completed, when Cicero earnestly requested him to write a separate history of his (Cicero's) consulship. Cicero had already sung his own praises in both Greek and Latin, but thought that a panegyric by Lucceius, who had taken considerable interest in the affairs of that critical period,_.
Cicero offered to supply the material, and hinted that Lucceius need not sacrifice laudation to accuracy.
Crassus is one of the chief speakers in the De oratore of Cicero, who has also preserved a few fragments of his speeches.
Further, it is difficult not to accept Cicero's statement that Anaximenes made air a conscious deity; we are, at all events, justified in regarding Anaximenes as a link (perhaps an unconscious link) between crude Hylozoism and definitely metaphysical theories of existence.
The germ of the idea is to be found in Cicero, De natura deorum, ii.
The humanists which it produced, interested only in its splendid revelations, forgot or ignored the achievements of the period which intervened between Cicero and Petrarch.
Thus we find that Didymus, writing in the time of Cicero, does not quote the readings of Aristarchus as we should quote a textus receptus.
With regard to the statements which attribute some work in connexion with Homer to Peisistratus, it was noticed by Wolf that Cicero, Pausanias and the others who mention the matter do so nearly in the same words, and, therefore, appear to have drawn from a common source.
The best dissertations, Landino's Camaldunenses, Valla's De Voluptate, were laboured imitations of Cicero's Tusculans.
Antonius's reputation for eloquence rests on the authority of Cicero, none of his orations being extant.
He is one of the chief speakers in Cicero's De Oratore.
In spite of his bad reputation, he was elected tribune in 71, praetor in 66, and consul with Cicero in 63.
He secretly supported Catiline, but Cicero won him over by promising him the rich province of Macedonia.
It was said that Cicero had agreed with Antonius to share his plunder.
Cicero's defence of Antonius two years before in view of a proposal for his recall, and also on the occasion of his trial, increased the suspicion.
In spite of Cicero's eloquence, Antonius was condemned, and went into exile at Cephallenia.
For a time he co-operated with P. Clodius Pulcher, probably out of hostility to Cicero, who had caused Lentulus Sura to be put to death as a Catilinarian; the connexion was severed by a disagreement arising from his relations with Clodius's wife, Fulvia.
Deputy-governor of Italy during Caesar's absence in Spain (49), second in command in the decisive battle of Pharsalus (48), and again deputy-governor of Italy while Caesar was in Africa (47), Antony was second only to the dictator, and seized the opportunity of indulging in the most extravagant excesses, depicted by Cicero in the Philippics.
Octavian obtained the support of the senate and of Cicero; and the veteran troops of the dictator flocked to his standard.
A reign of terror followed; proscriptions, confiscations, and executions became general; some of the noblest citizens were put to death, and Cicero fell a victim to Antony's revenge.
Cicero, in his Philippics, actuated in great measure by personal animosity, gives a highly unfavourable view of his character.
The origin of the Latin word religio or relligio has been the subject of discussion since the time of Cicero.
Pseudonymous epistles were especially numerous under the early Roman empire, and mainly attached themselves to the names of Plato, Demosthenes, Aristotle and Cicero.
Some of the letters of Cicero are rather epistles, since they were meant ultimately for the general eye.