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Virtual Macedonia Bookstore - Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
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List Price: $15.95
Our Price: $6.00
Your Save: $ 9.95 ( 62% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 937.05092
EAN: 9780375758959
ISBN: 037575895X
Label: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: 2003-05-06
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Release Date: 2003-05-06
Studio: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: competent and comprehensive, but at a pedestrian freshman college level
Comment: This is a fairly good book that offers nothing really new: you get very solid overviews of how the government functioned, what people believed in, and how a major politician (and far better writer) tried to mold things in his own way. Alas, there is nothing whatsoever original in Everitt's interpretation, no provocative thesis based on new evidence (written or archaeological). So what you get, essentially, is the version that Cicero and a few of his contemporaries present of themselves, which is bound to be wrapped up in propaganda. As a classics major, I knew all of this already. There is no doubt that this is a good undergraduate-level panoramic view, but it does not make the man or his era come to life. You hear the details of Caesar's life, Cato's, Crassus', and Pompey's, but not intimately or in any sense living. It is too dryly scholarly for that.
Cicero was a conservative "new man", who wanted to preserve the Republic (and the institution that allowed him to rise from a local Voscan, i.e. non-Roman, aristocrat to the pinnacle of the Roman State). His entire career was shaped by this, though he made many compromises and was Caesar's client for quite a long time. He made one major early career move, squashing a conspiracy (Cataline's) that allowed executions and de-thrownings in certain circumstances, which would ultimately help to undermine the Republic. Then, very late in his career, he opposed Marc Anthony in the name of restoring the Republic and paradoxically supported the future dictator Octavian, only to lose his life in Anthony's revenge when Anthony cut a deal with Octavian. About all of this, Cicero wrote with unequalled elegance in Latin, much of which is quoted to very good effect in translation here. This is a great pleasure to read in Everitt's prose.
So much is known - in this standard interpretation - and Everitt presents it well, indeed comprehensively. However, there are other ways to see this. Perhaps Cicero was not really a good politician, but a rhetorician and naive amateur whose actions were ultimately destructive to his cause, the Republic. His words survive to spin his motives as "good and just". Perhaps he was a fussy man with unrealistic ideas - the Roman state had become too big to govern by the fractious and mediocre men in the Senate, which had been decimated repeatedly for 60-some years - and was ultimately a fool under the thumb of other, shrewder politicians like Octavian. Unfortunately, Everitt does not develop these lines of argument at all or question the conventional line. Instead, he accepts Cicero's portrayal of events almost verbatim, at least in my reading, without the slightest skepticism of the slippery political agenda beneath the eloquence. This is superficial.
I do not regret having read this. However, if you want the era to really live, I would suggest reading McCullogh's series, starting with the First Man of Rome. You will learn as much as any textbook can offer, but with much more flavor and daring.
Recommended as a competent intro, if rather dry.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I wanted Cicero to live!
Comment: Even though I already knew the eventual fate of the great Cicero, I was still hoping somehow he would be spared his terribly unjust death. Man, this was history come alive! You really find yourself cheering for Cicero and depising his enemies. You feel the frustration and depression that Cicero himself must have felt at the slipping away of the Roman Republic, and you share his sadness when tragedy stikes. Its a shame that even more of his letters and books didn't survive to our time. If you have even a weak interest in Roman history, you will enjoy this book. Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Absorbing and well written biography
Comment: This is a splendid biography of Cicero. The book is exceptionally well-written, its clarity a product of true mastery of a broad range of historical material. I particularly enjoyed the way that Everitt brings historical figures like Julius Caesar to life. The book retains a clear and sometimes critical view of its subject, keeping it from the realm of hagiography. Cicero emerges as a flawed but ultimately and perhaps accidentally principalled man. The highest compliment I can give Everitt's book is that I am now looking forward to reading Cicero's works.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Everett's Cicero
Comment: Anthony Everitt does an excellent job with this introduction type book of Cicero. Gives a great account of the man as well as the people in his life. Vivid description and good amount of primary analysis.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction to a Great Man
Comment: Odds are, you have heard of Cicero. Considered one of Rome's greatest orators, his writings are the main influence on how way we remember the last days of the Roman republic. The story of Cicero's life is the story of end of Republican Rome. All of the major players of the era: Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, Brutus and Octavian (soon to be Augustus) all make an appearance in his life. In his role as one of the world's first brilliant statesman and backroom player, Cicero was friends and enemies with all of them. From Everitt's book, it seems Cicero was, at times, courageous in his rhetoric and at times, he was cowardly. He always tried to see all the angels and jockeyed for a position that put him in the best place politically while betraying as few of his political convictions as possible. In the end, he wound up on the wrong side of Marc Antony and was killed.
The story in getting from provincial boy to one of the most powerful men in Rome is fascinating. I am no expert on Roman history. I have read no other biography of Cicero. But to my tastes, Everitt's biography of Cicero is excellent for the reader with a casual interest in this time period in Rome. Not only does it give us insight into what a complicated person Cicero was (both arrogant and generous; brilliant in the courtroom and terrified of physical injury) but also perhaps more importantly it is an excellent primer on the death of the Roman republic. The story of Rome's decent into dictatorship, the attempt at recovering republicanism, and then the reassertion of dictatorship is the stuff that western history is made of, and Everitt's book is a good place to get a sense of who did what when and what Cicero had to say about it. Recommended.
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Editorial Reviews:
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“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 American revolutionaries 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.
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