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).