My Account
| |
Help
My Dashboard
My Dashboard
Get Published
Home
Books
Academic eBook Collections
eBook Library Collections
Journal and Magazine Collection
Audio eBook Collection
Library Exhibits
Search
Support
How-To Tutorials
Suggestions
Machine Translation Editions
Noahs Archive Project
About Us
Terms and Conditions
Get Published
Submission Guidelines
Self-Publish Check List
Why Choose Self-publishing?
Home
|
Books
|
Search
|
Support
|
About Us
|
Sign in with your eLibrary Card
close
We appreciate your support of online literacy with your eLibrary Card Membership. Your membership has expired. Please click on the Renew Subscription button in the SUBSCRIPTION AND BILLING section of your Settings tab.
Close
Most Popular
New Releases
Top Picks
Library Exhibits
Cicero
Death and Legacy
Cicero
Ten orations of Cicero
(by
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
)
Cicero's life and letters. The life by M...
(by
Middleton, Conyers
)
Cicero against Catiline : First Oration
(by
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
)
Philippics
(by
Cicero, Marcus Tullius
)
Cicero
(by
Marcus Tullius Cicero
)
Bunyan's Country : Studies in the Bedfor...
(by
Albert John Foster
)
The Sources of Plutarch's Life of Cicero
(by
Gudemann, Alfred
)
Cicero, Voltaire, and the Philosophes in...
(by
Sharpe
)
I Metaphors Cicero Lived by the Role of ...
(by
Aron Sjöblad
)
Marcus Tillius Cicero
, Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher, is said to be one of the greatest orators and largest influence on the European literature. Through his numerous translations, letters, and orations, he introduced the Romans to the breadth of Greek philosophy and made a permanent mark on Latin by introducing new neologisms, rhetoric, and clarity of logic.
From his youthful writing of
De Inventione
, in which scholars credited the first use of the term “liberal arts,” to
De Oratore
published in his latter years, Cicero drew up the foundations of a well-rounded speaker, one who well-schooled in a breadth of general knowledge and delivers speeches with dignity and restraint. Furthermore, he outlined the qualities of good rhetoric as pathos, the appeal to emotion; ethos, the appeal to authority; and, logos, the appeal to reason.
Cicero’s public use of his oratory powers led to his demise. In the power struggle ensuing after Julius Caesar's death, Cicero launched a series of
condemning speeches
against Mark Antony, collected in
Philippics
. In retribution for the speeches and in a new alliance of the second triumvirate with Octavian and Lepidus, Antony ordered Cicero killed, severing his head and right hand to display in the Roman forum. Cicero was assassinated December 7th, 43 BC.
Cicero's undaunted legacy as a writer and orator was built on a well balanced philosophy of the
stoicism
of
Diodotus
, the
epicureanism
of
Phaedrus
, and the
skepticism
of
Philo of Larissa
. Although he is mostly viewed as a stoic, his breadth of education allowed him to adapt to adapt his philosophies to the situation at hand.
While he didn't create a new school of philosophy, his command and inventiveness with Latin provided the foundation for new thought. Julius Caesar said of him, "it is more important to have greatly extended the frontiers of the Roman spirit than the frontiers of the Roman empire." Many historians attribute the beginning of the Renaissance to
Plutarch's discovery
of Cicero's letters in 1345. Polish historian
Tadeusz Zieliński
claimed, "Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity.” Many of America's founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, name Cicero's letters as a key teachings which informed the Declaration of Independence. Cicero's name later came to mean "eloquent."
For more on Cicero, read Cicero’s
Old Age
,
Grasp and Dissent: Cicero and Epicurean Philosophy
by Maso Stefano,
Cicero Select Letters
by Albert Watson,
Cicero
by William Lucas Collins, and
Ten Orations of Cicero
.
By Thad Higa
About Us
Privacy Policy
Contact Us
Copyright © World Library Foundation. All rights reserved. eBooks from World eBook Fair are sponsored by the
World Library Foundation
,
a 501c(4) Member's Support Non-Profit Organization, and is NOT affiliated with any governmental agency or department.