Cicero

Abstract

Cicero was born into a culture that had its own subcultures. One cannot demarcate clearly the roles of Cicero and certain of his friends and correspondents in the political culture from their participation in the intellectual culture of the declining Republic. Cicero seems to have recovered from the wholesale assault of Theodor Mommsen who found him in all respects ordinary and in some ways nothing more than a cowardly schemer and self-interested manipulator. In the sphere of the ordinary give-and-take of politics, Cicero is found wondering what the proper limits of compromise and alliance-making in pursuing electoral success were. From De oratore to De officiis, Cicero laid out what can properly be called a reform agenda for the failing Roman Republic. Cicero wondered what had gone wrong with the cumulative and continuing process by which Roman virtue was to be nourished and passed on from generation to generation, a collective endeavour working through time.