Politics
106 to 43 BC, Arpinum and Rome
Rome’s great orator-statesman, who gave the West natural law and the mixed republic.
Start learning Cicero →Cicero’s defence of the Roman republic as the best form of government - a balanced mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy that checks the corruption to which each pure form decays.
Cicero’s doctrine of natural law - that there is one eternal, universal law, grounded in reason and nature, above all human enactments, binding all people and all nations alike.
Cicero’s ethics of duty - his argument, in On Duties, that the truly honourable and the truly useful can never really conflict, and that nothing genuinely advantageous is ever immoral.
Cicero’s lifelong conviction that the ideal is the union of eloquence and wisdom - the philosopher who can speak and the orator who knows - and his defence of rhetoric against those who would divorce it from truth.
Cicero’s two beloved late dialogues - On Old Age and On Friendship - and their humane wisdom about how to grow old well and what makes a true friend.
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