The state at the peak of its power. Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BC), a Roman lawyer, orator, politician, and philosopher, about whom we know more than any other Roman, lived during the tumultuous era that witnessed the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a flood-ridden republic. In his political speeches, as well as his correspondence, we observe the enthusiasm, tension, and intrigues of politics and the role he played in the turmoil of the time. Of approximately 106 speeches delivered before the Roman people or the Senate if political, before jurors if judicial, fifty-eight survive (some of them incomplete). In the fourteenth century, Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and almost 100 by others to him. These provide a revelation of the man, even more impressive as most were not written for publication. Six rhetorical works survive and one more in fragments. Philosophical works include seven surviving major compositions and several others, some of which are lost. There is also poetry, some original, some as translations from Greek. The edition of the Loeb Classical Library is in twenty-nine volumes.