CICERO, MARCUS TULLIUS. — Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher, born on 3 January 106 BC at Arpinum, murdered by Antony’s assassins near Gaeta on 7 December 43 BC. He pursued his studies in Rome under the orators M. Antonius and L. Crassus. In 75 BC, barely thirty years old, he was chosen to govern Sicily, and in 63 BC he became consul. Exiled in 58 BC by Clodius, he was recalled to Rome a year later by Pompey. After Pompey’s fall and unable to tolerate monarchy, he withdrew from public life. As a statesman, he was one of the most representative figures of the late Roman Republic; as a writer, he ranks among the greatest of all time. For the breadth of ideas that shaped his personality and for his mastery of style, he served for centuries as a model and teacher like few others among the ancients. Besides fragments of lost works—including poetic and historical ones—57 orations, 7 rhetorical treatises, 12 philosophical works, and 4 collections of letters survive (850 items in all).
PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. — Cicero’s philosophical activity began with the De re publica, composed between 54 and 51 BC in six books. About one-third survives, discovered in 1819 by Cardinal A. MAGI (v.) in a Vatican palimpsest; previously only the Somnium Scipionis, preserved by Macrobius, was known. In 52 BC he began the De legibus, left unfinished; three books (perhaps of six) and fragments of the rest survive in a fragmentary state. Both works follow Plato in form but draw much of their content from the Stoic Panaetius, from Posidonius (also a Stoic), whom Cicero heard at Rhodes, and from the Academic Antiochus of Ascalon, whom he heard in Athens. The Paradoxa Stoicorum dates to 47–46 BC. In 45 BC he wrote the Consolatio on the death of his daughter Tullia and the Hortensius (both now lost); the latter, an exhortation to philosophy that influenced St. Augustine, drew on the Protrepticus of Aristotle and Posidonius. Also in 45 BC he composed the Academica, originally in two books and later expanded to four, and the De finibus bonorum et malorum (On the Supreme Good and Supreme Evil) in five books. Of the Academica only the first book of the first edition (Lucullus) and the first of the second remain; they treat the problem of knowledge according to the doctrines of the Middle and New Academy. The De finibus expounds and refutes the ethical doctrines of the Epicureans and Stoics and finally presents the Academic-Peripatetic view (Antiochus), which Cicero considers the best. Between 45 and 44 BC he wrote the Tusculanae Disputationes in five books, dealing with death, grief, the passions, and virtue, which alone ensures happiness. In 44 BC he produced the De natura deorum in three books, the Cato Maior de senectute, the Laelius de amicitia, the De divinatione in two books, the fragmentary De fato, the De officiis in three books, and two lost minor works, De gloria (still known to Petrarch) and De virtutibus.