"Cicero" meant "chickpea" in Latin: not an impressive name, perhaps, in its literal meaning, and one that belonged to a man not born into Rome's senatorial class. But Marcus Tullius Cicero achieved fame much greater than his circumstances at birth would have predicted. His talents, especially as an eloquent lawyer, allowed him to rise in Roman politics, and he received important positions that culminated in his election to the consulship in 63 B.C.
As Rome became caught up in turmoil that threatened its republican constitution, Cicero urged reconciliation. He was not able, however, to outwit men like Marc Antony, and eventually paid for his political misjudgments with his life. Yet his eloquence and patriotism received posthumous praise from none other than the emperor Augustus, and his unequalled Latin style would become the model for persuasive writing some 1,500 years later, during the period of the Renaissance.
- The University of Texas Department of Classics maintains a homepage for Cicero. This site has links to portraits, bibliographies, a chronology, Plutarch's account of Cicero's life, and Cicero's writings.
http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/Cic.html
- Cicero's lasting fame is as a great public speaker. He described the elements of successful speaking in De Oratore, excerpts from which are available in an English translation at
http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/gallery/rhetoric/figures/ (click on cicero from this page)
- The following websites contain interesting maps of the Rome and the Roman empire around the time when Cicero was alive:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1274/
and
http://www.dalton.org/groups/rome/RMAPS.html
- Take a virtual tour through the architectural remains of ancient Rome at
http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/curriculum/soc_studies/rome/Rome.html
or
http://harpy.uccs.edu/roman/html/roman.html
-
Jakob Burckhardt, a famous 19th-c. historian of Renaissance Italy, explained why Cicero, who died in 43 B.C., became the model for excellent rhetoric in the fourteenth century; read an excerpt from Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy at
http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/3-9.html
