Introduction

Summary

Of the outstanding personalities of the last phase of the Roman republic, Cato Uticensis has left behind the image of a principled conservative fighting for liberty, Caesar that of an autocrat imposing order on society and the body politic. Somewhere between those two is Cicero, trying to sit on two seats, as the poet Laberius joked. The orator was not prepared to risk everything in all-out opposition to Caesar or to enroll as an unconditional follower of the dictator. As one occupying a middle position, Cicero was ill-suited to become a symbol for a course of political action. The modern world therefore entertains not one but several versions of Cicero. There is Cicero the embodiment of lawyerly eloquence invoked, for instance, by Johnny Cochrane in wrapping up his defense of O. J. Simpson. There is the Cicero enshrined in high school Latin textbooks, the defender of the state against forces of sedition and conspiracy. And there is Cicero the fountainhead of the humanist ideal of the liberally educated person looking to literature for models of morally fine behavior.