Although this commentary on one of the most interesting and enjoyable of Cicero's speeches for the modern reader is heavily slanted to the needs of US students for Advanced Placement Latin, it is nevertheless a great introduction to the speeches of Cicero for anyone learning Latin anywhere. There is a lot of help with grammar and vocabulary, and the methodical way in which the structure of Cicero's periods (long, involved sentences) is explained is particularly clear and helpful. The introductory sections giving the context and historical background to the speech are reasonably comprehensive without being unduly detailed. The notes draw fairly heavily on Professor Austin's Oxford University Press commentary, to which reference is made on more detailed points. However, Austin's edition is for the more learned. For anyone still in the Latin learning process, this book is much more accessible.

On the downside, the commentary does not cover the whole speech. Lines 620 to 892 (about a quarter of the whole) are completely without notes or vocabulary, which is probably not a problem for Advanced Placement students, but disappointing for everybody else.

This book contains all of the Cicero required for the AP Latin Literature. It says in the preface that this book was designed specifically for AP students. Each section consists of about 30 lines of Latin (two or three "chapters") followed by explanation of words and difficult grammar (and some of it is extremely difficult). It is difficult to translate, but well worth it. This is the epitomy of persuasion.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), Roman orator, advocate, politician, philosopher, and an introvert who led the most public of lives. Cicero lived through the stormy era of the Republic and testified the rise, the dictatorship and the assassination of Julius Caesar in addition to seditious movements of those who inherited his political legacy.

Drawn from Cicero's letters of correspondence with his friend Atticus and various modern sources, Everitt deftly recreates a vivid chronicle of Cicero's life and restores him to the pantheon of our common past.

To help readers understand the political infrastructure of the Roman Republic, Everitt begins with a chapter that explores the fault lines of the Republic that gave rise to all the seditious movements and military melee and thus inevitably led to the decadence. Cicero and his contemporaries helplessly inherited a self-constraining, self-defeating political system that inculcated the virtues of fortitude, justice, and prudence. Such inwardly unsound gesture was implemented to thwart any overmighty citizen seizing power.

The very same precautionary measure ironically pushed the Republic to the verge of hostilities and wars. The yearlong co-consulship, the lack of a prosecuting service and the continuous class struggle between the Patricians and People manifested venality, bribery, and collusion among officials.

In his portrait of the tenuous political situation, Everitt delineates Cicero as a man who was born and lived at the wrong time, or rather, the cruel times had dragged him along. Not a single day passed did Cicero not to worry about his opponents and those whom he had testified against with his instigation. Cicero thwarted and put down collusion and conspiracies, acted in defense and won acquittal of Roscius convicted of parricide, challenged the dictatorship of Sulla and the decadence of his regime. During his consulship, Cicero pursued the sedition of Catilina and thwarted his attacks on the Senate. Cicero vehemently opposed Julius Caesar and his despotic attempt to form a new Roman government. Even though Caesar took a liking of Cicero and looked up to him, Cicero asserted his preference for Pompey in the First Triumvirate and supported Pompey during Caesar's reign to restore Rome back to republicanism. In the remaining days of Caesar's dictatorship, Cicero remained a thorn to Caesar until his assassination.

Everitt's account also leaves readers in awe of Cicero's merits. Cicero had administrative gifts and oratorical skills of a very high order that none of his contemporaries could deploy. In a society where politicians were also expected to be good soldiers, Cicero was preeminently a civilian, a philosopher, a writer (Cicero admitted his physical weakness and nervousness) and this makes his success all the more remarkable. Cicero ceaselessly advertised and spread anti-war sentiment. He devoted his whole life, through his influence as a statesman; to negotiate a republic made of a mixed constitution. Cicero, when his career ended, must be in searing pain as he no longer entertained hopes that the Republic will be restored. Everitt deftly pointed that for the long years Cicero was a bystander in the working of Rome was not due to his lack of talent but a "surplus of principle." The republic collapsed around his neck as he tried to find more able men to run the government and enacted more efficient laws to keep these men in order.

Behind the political success laid Cicero's internal struggles. From Everitt's account, it seems the only people whom Cicero engaged in an emotional bonding were his daughter Tullia and his best friend Atticus. His divorce of Terentia (on the basis of her thoughtlessness and financial mismanagement) and his failed marriage with Publilia brought him nothing but loneliness. When Tullia died from a miscarriage, Cicero was completely devastated and read every book that the Greek philosophers had to say about grief. Atticus recounted his friend's grief as something of a new intensity too raw and too astonishing to be publicized. His rabid disagreement with Quintus, who heaped all the blame of his ill behavior on Cicero and switched to Caesar, pricked his heart. All the unfulfilled dreams led to Cicero's drastic change in personality that he was willing compromise his beliefs to stay in power and to exercise unscrupulous methods to restore the republic.

Everitt's book astutely captures the success, struggles, uproars and the spirits of truly the greatest politician of Rome. The book is up to the par of Boissier's Cicero and His Friends and Cowell's Cicero and the Roman Republic. Recommended. 4.5 stars.

Though my own knowledge of Cicero was next to nothing before reading this book, most people will find this biography by Anthony Everitt as a very readable and a well organized book on the life of a remarkable politician, Cicero. A man determined to defend the republic against the tumultous years of war and dictators that brought down the republic and ushered in the first Roman Emperor Augustus.

Cicero was gifted as a lawyer, politician and ranked among if not considered the greatest orator in history. He won both friends like Atticus and enemies like Antony. He was a man forced through conviction to support Pompey against Caesar, yet won the admiration of that very man he was so often against, Caesar himself. Caesar, before the war, had asked Cicero to join him in forming what became known as the first triumvirate; Cicero refused.

But Cicero was not without his own weaknesses. He could be ruthless at times, extremely boastful, lacking in courage, and unable to make up his mind. Yet his strengths are clear and his influence abundantly clear even though more than 2,000 years have elapsed since his death.

This biography of Cicero gives at least a partial glimpse of many of the major players in Rome during his day. From friends and family members like Atticus, Quintas and Marcus Cicero to leading politicians and leaders like Cato, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Antony and Octavian, this extremely well-written biography is a must for any interested reader in the life of Cicero and the decline of the Roman Republic.

We tend to view the ancient Greeks and Romans as marble statues, cold, noble, and remote. Anthony Everitt's biography of Marcus Tullius Cicero brings the world of the late Roman Republic to life in all its excess, wealth, violence, and glory. The central figure is Cicero himself, who strove to maintain the traditional Roman governmental structure in the face of heavy opposition from both the populares or reformers and the optimates or conservatives. Everitt uses modern terminology to help us understand the issues and personalities and complexities of Cicero's life and times. I recommend this book to Roman scholars and to general readers who, for example, enjoyed the "I, Claudius" miniseries on Masterpiece Theater in the 1970s or Steven Saylor's "Roma Sub Rosa" mysteries (which feature Cicero as a major character).

Though the writing is clear and lucid, his overall argument lacks clarity. The theories presented are interesting, but often a bit of a reach. The detailed nature of his accounts, though at times is fascinating, it can elsewhere contribute to the soporific tone of the book. However, it is evident that the author has a great deal of affinity for his subject, which contributes to an enthusiastic basis for the book, but cannot justify the obvious biases that he let seep into his writing.

Fascinating in every respect, The Hand of Cicero uses the life and career of Rome's most famous orator in order to illuminate the centrality of writing and documentation to the ancient Latin world, long thought to be an almost exclusively oral culture. The book is elegantly written and persuasively argued. But in its extended meditations on Cicero's life, it is also utterly engrossing, as all great stories are. This is the best book that I have read about Cicero or about ancient rhetoric, aesthetics, and law in the last five years. I recommend it with unstinting enthusiasm to academic and non-academic readers alike.

Rawson's biography of Cicero is probably the ONE indispensable modern portrait that we have. Readers are advised to start here and avoid Anthonmy Everitt's better publicised and more lavishly produced volume, "Cicero, A Turbulent Life". Cicero has, of course, been the subject of innumerable books. His importance to any understanding of his age (or indeed our own) simply can not be underestimated. So prolific was he that during the middle ages he was actually thought to be two people. Tullius and Cicero.

With each succeeding generation, new biographers shoulder forward to offer their own interpretations. Cicero's reputation has suffered somewhat of late. A fantastic example of this is the crudely distorted and utterly unhistorical (though admittedly novelistic) treatment he receives in one of Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series (which series seems to steadily deteriorate in quality and coherence from volume to volume). Here Cicero (a tub in the mind of McCollough to Caesar's whale) squeaks and grovels his way through some of the most momentous moments in Roman history. McCollough (who comically purports in one of her "After Words" to have her "nose glued to the historical record") is not alone -- but her purportedly "historical" portrait surely remains the most distempered and dyspeptic view of Cicero in recent memory.

To my view Rawson offers a readable, erudite, accessible biography that canvasses all of the important aspects of his life and thought. She is sympathetic and an admirer, but she is not blind to his many foibles.

As a young man I had a perhaps unreasoning admiration for Cicero. I held him in a somewhat old-fashioned esteem. Rather like the English aristocracy of the 1500s - they loved their Tully so much that it became a fashion to name their daughters Tully. I confess I named a succession of dogs after him!

But it was Rawson who provided me with the necessary perspective on him. You really need no other. I think that what is important about this volume is the careful attention devoted to Cicero's political and philosophical works. As you can see from my review of Everitt's book, Mary Beard has best described what we are waiting for: "a biographical account that tried to explore the way his life-story has been constructed and reconstructed over the last two thousand years; how we have learned to read Cicero through Jonson, Voltaire, Ibsen and the rest; what kind of investment we still have, and why, in a thundering conservative of the first century BC and his catchy oratorical slogans. Why, in short, is Cicero still around in the 21st century? And on whose terms? Quo usque tandem?"

Cicero's reputation gets a much needed shot in the arm IN Rawson's volume. She writes, "whatever the shortcomings of Cicero's political works, there is no evidence that any of his contemporaries understood the problems of the time as clearly or indeed produced nearly so positive a contribution towards solving them as he did."

Her penultimate chapter on his final year in Rome also offers a closely argued reassessment of his place in the "final conflict". In Rawson's view it was in 43 that he became the "true ruler of Rome" -- for however brief a period.

The book is filled with little gems. It is often remarked that one of Cicero's principal contributions to Rome was his elevation of the language itself. But it was unknown to me that words such as "quality", "essence" and "moral" were first found in Cicero (though derived from Greek roots).

Also reproduced here are some of the marvelous witticisms for which he was so justly famous. Upon hearing that Brutus deemed Caesar to have "joined the boni", Cicero remarked that he did not know "where Caesar would find them, unless he first hanged himself." Cicero is also famous for the oft quoted expression "o tempore, o mores" which comes from his famous attack on Cataline that began, " How far, then Cataline, will you go on abusing our patience. How long, you madman, will you mock at our vengeance? Will there be no end to your unbridled audacity".

Perhaps the most poignant assessment of Cicero was Plutarch's, though he puts the words in, of all people, Augustus' mouth. The story is extremely famous. August discovers a young grandson reading a volume of Cicero. The terrified boy trembles while his grandfather leafs through the book at length. At last he hands it back with the famous words: "an eloquent man, my boy, an eloquent man....and a patriot."

Cicero is one of the most important personages in all history. Indeed it is almost impossible for us to understand the roots of our culture unless we understand him. If you read nothing else of him, read this wonderful book.

This 60 page book provides aspiring latin scholars with the chance to understand and translate an important part of history. With it's glossary and included grammar helps a student with three years of latin should find this an interesting and exciting piece of authentic literature.

When I saw the title and the author I first thought: such an old book, not worth to read. But since there are very few books about this topic, I gave it a try. And I was fascinated! The book is written like a protocolled talk with a famous man, called Laelius (who was a real existing person!). He was known as a good friend to someone who had died recently and they asked him if he was sad. He sad he was of course sad, but happy that his friend had a good life and a "quick" death, without pain. So many thoughts about friendship and what it means, the difference to love, the value of it are discussed in this text. Often I had the feeling of having had the same thoughts, but there were many new ideas and point of views about friendship which made me contemplate. Sometimes it took me several minutes to go on in the text - just because I had to think about one single sentence. The book isn't too long and it's not - as one could think - some weird philosophical stuff - it's just making you think about friendship! I loved this book and I wished everyone would read it!

I read most of Taylor Caldwell's books when I was a freshman in high school. I discovered Mary Renault in my sophomore year. Guess which author's earned more of my appreciation and respect . . . and if you guess Caldwell, I will have to entreat you to read Renault. Please.

That's not to say that Caldwell wasn't entertaining, and her view of history offers an alternative perspective. But she could not resist showing us her interpretations of famous people through her dark glasses of right-wing American politics and Christianity. "A Pillar of Iron" is no exception; its very title comes from the Book of Jeremiah.

Caldwell presents Cicero's birth and childhood as the appearance of a grand prodigy; whether any of it is based on fact (aside from the fact that the Cicerones did move to Rome from Arpinum to give the young Cicero a good education) is something for which I've never found proof. His young life and career veers into Caldwell's apparent foundation that Marcus Cicero was Rome's first spiritual Christian. (Marcus Cicero is probably still laughing his head off at that one). She glosses over Cicero's greatest faults, namely his immense egotism and his timidity; she presents him as the heroic defender of the Republic during the Catilinian conspiracy, but sees nothing wrong with the fact that he denied those conspirators executed at Rome the right to a trial; and she resolutely turns every opponent he has into a villain. Although her portrayal of Catiline is over-the-top fun--let's face it, people have loved mad, bad, beautiful people since the dawn of time--Caldwell can't make anyone else equally entertaining. Julius Caesar especially suffers, shown as one-dimensional and annoying, the sort of politician and public presence who in Rome would have been laughed out of Italy, not opposed by some of the mightiest men Rome had produced.

One figure that keeps popping up (so to speak) is the "Unknown God", Caldwell's milking of an altar in Greece dedicated to, well, an unknown god; her decision to make that god Jehovah was hers to make. I can't say I agree with it, but who knows? It might have worked if Caldwell hadn't laid it on so thick. After a while it palls. The Romans were religious expedients; they prayed to different gods to cover all the bases. Monotheism wasn't something they agreed with; they may have referred to a single god in later writings, but it's a good bet they had a particular deity from the pantheon in mind.

"A Pillar of Iron" is an interesting way to pass the time, but it's riddled with inaccuracies down to its tiniest conceit. It's a shame. Cicero is a fascinating man and deserves to have a decent book written about his life.

I read Pillar of Iron some years back and, when I saw that it is still available for purchase through Amazaon, and that I could write a review of it, I decided to take advantage of both opportunities.

I recently read a reviewer's commentaries panning the book as poorly researched, based on the near fictitious relationship between Cicero and Caesar, and the spiritual slant taken on Cicero's personality (and the Romans in general) as being too "Christian".

I am no more put off by Caldwell's liberties taken with such obvious fictionalization as the two C's relationship, then I was with Schaeffer's liberties taken with those between Mozart and Sallieri. It is obvious to me that Caldwell needed to beef up the characers for fiction, and she did it in a way that brought city life in Roman times very much alive, and succeeded in portraying Cicero as a man moved more by his spirituality than by pragmatic politics, which I believe to be true, based on his own writings. From rush hour in Rome to Casesar's divorce, and the ingenious interweaving of Cicero's deeply moving original texts and landscape fiction, Caldwell's book is worthy of high praise.

I read this book while taking Economics in high school about 1 week ago. It was the highlight of the course. Thanks Mrs. Mara! I kick myself for not keeping a copy. It is a good story from one perspective of life in Rome. Cicero was among the first to habitually publish his writings and speeches (it was one of his greatest sources of income). However, since it is he was writing about, they were somewhat subjective. Another spin on Cicero, Caesar, and others can be found in the novels by Colleen McCullough. She begins her historical fiction tales from the time just before the birth of Cicero and Caesar and continues through the death of both. The series is several books and covers the Roman lifestyle in much greater depth. Very good reading.

Cicero's "De Natura Deorum" is a work the great orator used to present his own position towards philosophy, the gods, and how they work in the universe and in the lives of individuals. Cicero presents his thesis by opening a dialogue between three distinguished philosophers from the major schools of the first century BC: namely the Stoics, Epicureans, and Academics. Velleius, in book one, expounds upon the general tenets of the Epicureans; in book two, Balbus the Stoic in turn attempts to refute the claims made by Velleius; and finally, in book three, Cotta takes the position of the Academics, which should be understood as Cicero's opinions himself. If judged correctly, Cicero's opinions are quite clear, but they should be left for the reader to discover on his own. As pure philosophy, this book obviously lacks merit; but as for creativity and sheer eloquence Cicero's work will make for an entertaining and insightful read, especially as an introductory to the philosophical maxims during the decay of the Roman Republic. Despite the works lack of philosophical ingenuity, its influence may possibly be greater than what is customarily maintained, since it is likely that "De Naturae Deorum" impacted Boethius in writing his "Consolation of Philosophy." First of all, both works address many of the same issues, and secondly in their literary style they both use prose and verse to convey meaning. Overall, this work will make for a comforting, and at times insightful read; this will be an essential addition to the classical library.

If you're like me, you were brought up thinking the ancients understood God(s) in terms of their old polytheistic mythology. In fact quaint village myths didn't make it in the large cities. The idea of a single High God predated Christianity by centuries, and was in fact central to mainstream ancient philosophies / theologies you've probably heard of: Platonism, Stoicism, Epicureanism.

For us, religion and revelation are inseparable. Christianity, Islam, Bahai-ism, Mormonism are "revealed" religions, based on the God's direct revelation through his Son or Prophet -- Jesus, Mohamed, Bahaulla, Joseph Smith. The Greeks and Romans didn't have "revealed" religions. They had to work out their ideas of meaning and divinity without a solid, revealed, starting place. In a world without revealed religion, the ancient philosophers tried to figure out, What is God? Amazing.

If you're interested in how the ancients understood God, Cicero's book, The Nature of the Gods, is a great read. It's basically a synopsis of ancient philosophies / theologies. It will change your understanding of the history of western religious thought.

Listen to Cicero [106 - 43 BC], a non-Christian, describing God: "God dwells in the universe as its ruler and governor, and rules the stars in their courses, and the changing seasons, and all the varying sequences of nature, looking down on earth and sea, and protecting the life and goods of men."

And, "The divine power is to be found in a principle of reason which pervades the whole of nature."

I particularly like the easy to read translation in this Penguin Classics edition.

I picked this book up on a whim and read it in it's entirety in one evening, and promptly started over from the beginning. Not only is Cicero an elegant writer, but unlike many of his contemporaries his arguments are logically thought out and easy to follow. Anyone who has ever wondered if God or the gods would be encompassed in a physical or ethereal form and anyone who has ever wondered just how much involvement any god could have in the day to day lives of human beings will find this book surprisingly modern in its thoughts and conclusions.