person106–43 BCE

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Disciplines:

Summary

Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher — Consul (63 BCE) — who translated Greek philosophy into Latin, defended the Republic against Caesar and Antony, and whose execution by Antony's soldiers made him the martyr of Roman republicanism.

Core Contribution

Creates the Latin philosophical vocabulary — Cicero's translations of Greek philosophy into Latin (creating words like qualitas, essentia, humanitas, moralis) defined the vocabulary through which the Western Middle Ages and Renaissance received ancient thought; without Cicero, medieval European philosophy would have had no Latin philosophical language.

Key Spikes & Highlights

His severed hands were nailed to the Roman Forum's rostra (speaker's platform) beside his head — Fulvia (Antony's wife) allegedly stabbed his tongue with her hairpin; his death is the most symbolically appropriate political murder in Roman history: the orator's voice silenced at the very place it had been most powerful
Petrarch rediscovered Cicero's letters to Atticus in 1345 — finding that the man he had revered as a philosopher and statesman had been petty, fearful, and politically inconsistent in private; the discovery that great writers are flawed humans is attributed to this specific moment of Petrarch's disillusionment

Notable Works & Achievements

De Re Publica

De Legibus

De Oratore

De Officiis

Tusculan Disputations

Philippics

Historical Influences

Plato Stoicism Demosthenes

Intellectual Lineage

Arpinum, Latium Rome Athens Senate Exile Murder

Contemporaries & Peers

Julius Caesar Marc Antony Pompey Atticus

Minds Influenced

Latin Christianity Renaissance humanism

Intellectual Posterity

Latin philosophical vocabulary Ciceronian Latin De Republica De Officiis Philippics

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