Invectives against Antony

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BC), Roman advocate, orator, politician, poet, and philosopher, lived through the stirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In Cicero’s political speeches and in his correspondence, the excitement, tension, and intrigue of politics, along with the part he played in the turmoil of the time, are vividly captured.

Of about 106 speeches, 58 survive (a few incompletely), 29 of which are addressed to the Roman people or Senate, while the rest are to jurors. 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 nearly 100 by others to him. This correspondence provides a revelation of the man, all the more striking because most of the letters were not intended for publication.

Six works on rhetorical subjects survive intact, and another in fragments. Seven major philosophical works are extant in part or in whole, alongside a number of shorter compositions either preserved or known by title or fragments. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.