Cicero's Role Models

Abstract

This book is about Cicero's rhetorical and political strategy as a newcomer in Roman republican politics. It argues that Cicero advertised himself as follower of chosen models of behaviour from the past — his role models or exempla. As an ambitious new man, a homo novus, in a political culture which favoured men descended from famous consuls and generals, Cicero had to devise alternative strategies to reach political office and influence. Through his main means to political power, his oratory, Cicero adopted the traditional claim to political offices through ancestry and adapted it to his own situation. Instead of references to the virtues and achievements of his own ancestors, Cicero presented himself as emulating specific historical figures with the purpose of building up and strengthening his public persona and thereby supporting his claim to political offices and influence. His treatises provided further possibility for promoting himself as a political thinker and brilliant orator. Chapters on the importance of the ancestors in Roman political culture and their role as historical examples for emulation lead up to the central part on Cicero's role models; role models which he utilized to build up and maintain self‐presentations as a leading orator, a prominent consul and statesman, a triumphantly recalled exile and, furthermore, as a role model to his own family, contemporary Romans and posterity.