"All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and
philosopher combined."
--John Adams
He squared off against Caesar and was friends with young Brutus. He
advised the legendary Pompey on his somewhat botched transition
from military hero to politician. He lambasted Mark Antony and was
master of the smear campaign, as feared for his wit as he was for
exposing his opponents'' sexual peccadilloes. Brilliant, voluble,
cranky, a genius of political manipulation but also a true patriot
and idealist, Cicero was Rome''s most feared politician, one of the
greatest lawyers and statesmen of all times. Machiavelli, Queen
Elizabeth, John Adams and Winston Churchill all studied his
example. No man has loomed larger in the political history of
mankind.
In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us
into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its
most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary
speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded
letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life in these
pages as a witty and cunning political operator.
Cicero leapt onto the public stage at twenty-six, came of age
during Spartacus'' famous revolt of the gladiators and presided
over Roman law and politics for almost half a century. He foiled
the legendary Catiline conspiracy, advised Pompey, the victorious
general who brought the Middle East under Roman rule, and fought to
mobilize the Senate against Caesar. He witnessed the conquest of
Gaul, the civil war that followed and Caesar''s dictatorship and
assassination. Cicero was a legendary defender of freedom and a
model, later, to French and Americanrevolutionaries who saw
themselves as following in his footsteps in their resistance to
tyranny.
Anthony Everitt''s biography paints a caustic picture of Roman
politics--where Senators were endlessly filibustering legislation,
walking out, rigging the calendar and exposing one another''s
sexual escapades, real or imagined, to discredit their opponents.
This was a time before slander and libel laws, and the
stories--about dubious pardons, campaign finance scandals,
widespread corruption, buying and rigging votes, wife-swapping, and
so on--make the Lewinsky affair and the U.S. Congress seem chaste.
Cicero was a wily political operator. As a lawyer, he knew no
equal. Boastful, often incapable of making up his mind, emotional
enough to wander through the woods weeping when his beloved
daughter died in childbirth, he emerges in these pages as intensely
human, yet he was also the most eloquent and astute witness to the
last days of Republican Rome.
On Cicero:
"He taught us how to think."
--Voltaire
"I tasted the beauties of language, I breathed the spirit of
freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and examples the public
and private sense of a man."
--Edward Gibbon
"Who was Cicero: a great speaker or a demagogue?"
--Fidel Castro
"From the Hardcover edition.