![]() ![]() Taking this case was a courageous move for Cicero parricide and matricide were considered appalling crimes, and the people whom Cicero accused of the murder-the most notorious being Chrysogonus-were favorites of Sulla. However, the first major public case of which a written record is still existent was his 80 BC defense of Sextus Roscius on the charge of parricide. The earliest known case is the Pro Quinctio, a private dispute from 81 BC delivered when Cicero was 26. Several years later he would write to his friend, Titus Pomponius Atticus who was collecting marble statues for Cicero's villas: "Why do you send me a statue of Mars? You know I am a pacifist!" Ĭicero started his career as a lawyer around 83–81 BC. Cicero was first and foremost an intellectual. In 90–88 BC, Cicero served both Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo and Lucius Cornelius Sulla as they campaigned in the Social War, though he had no taste for military life. However, in 90 BC he was too young to apply to any of the offices of cursus honorum except to acquire the preliminary experience in warfare that a career in civil service demanded. There was just one path to these: public civil service along the steps of cursus honorum. He pursued dignitas (position) and auctoritas (authority), symbolized by the purple-bordered toga praetexta and the Roman lictors' rod. Early career Ĭicero's childhood dream was " Ever to Excel" (αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν), a line taken from Homer's Iliad. Asinius Pollio, a contemporary Roman statesman and historian. "Would that he had been able to endure prosperity with greater self-control and adversity with more fortitude!" wrote C. His indecision may be attributed to his sensitive and impressionable personality he was prone to overreaction in the face of political and private change. However, his career as a statesman was marked by inconsistencies and a tendency to shift his position in response to changes in the political climate. ĭuring the chaotic middle period of the first century BC, marked by civil wars and the dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar, Cicero championed a return to the traditional republican government. Cornelius Nepos, the 1st-century BC biographer of Atticus, remarked that Cicero's letters to Atticus contained such a wealth of detail "concerning the inclinations of leading men, the faults of the generals, and the revolutions in the government" that their reader had little need for a history of the period. His voluminous correspondence, much of it addressed to his friend Atticus, has been especially influential, introducing the art of refined letter writing to European culture. ![]() Today, he is appreciated primarily for his humanism and philosophical and political writings. An impressive orator and successful lawyer, Cicero probably thought his political career his most important achievement. He introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary, distinguishing himself as a linguist, translator, and philosopher. Ĭicero is generally perceived to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome. A contemporary of Julius Caesar, Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. Cicero, a Roman statesman, lawyer, political theorist, philosopher, and Roman constitutionalist, reached the height of Roman power, the Consulship, and played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. The political career of Marcus Tullius Cicero began in 76 BC with his election to the office of quaestor (he entered the Senate in 74 BC after finishing his quaestorship in Lilybaeum, 75 BC), and ended in 43 BC, when he was assassinated upon the orders of Mark Antony. Politician, lawyer, orator and philosopher
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