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Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Gallic Wars > Item 26
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Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
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by Anthony Everitt
Sales Rank: 19273
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List Price: $15.95
$10.85
At Amazon
on 6-21-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 400 pages
Published by: Random House Trade Paperbacks May 6, 2003
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 037575895X
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0375758959
Book Dimensions:
7.9 x 5.2 x 1 inches
Weighs: 10.4 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
Using Cicero's letters to his good friend Atticus, among other sources, Everitt recreates the fascinating world of political intrigue, sexual decadence and civil unrest of Republican Rome. Against this backdrop, he offers a lively chronicle of Cicero's life. Best known as Rome's finest orator and rhetorician, Cicero (103 -43 B.C.) situated himself at the center of Roman politics. By the time he was 30, Cicero became a Roman senator, and ten years later he was consul. Opposing Julius Caesar and his attempt to form a new Roman government, Cicero remained a thorn in Caesar's side until the emperor's assassination. Cicero supported Pompey's attempts during Caesar's reign to bring Rome back to republicanism. Along the way, Cicero put down conspiracies, won acquittal for a man convicted of parricide, challenged the dictator Sulla with powerful rhetoric about the decadence of Sulla's regime and wrote philosophical treatises. Everitt deftly shows how Cicero used his oratorical skills to argue circles around his opponents. More important, Everitt portrays Cicero as a man born at the wrong time. While Cicero vainly tried to find better men to run government and better laws to keep them in order, Republican Rome was falling down around him, never to return to the glory of Cicero's youth. A first-rate complement to Elizabeth Rawson's Cicero or T.N. Mitchell's monumental two-volume biography, Everitt's first book is a brilliant study that captures Cicero's internal struggles and insecurities as well as his external political successes. Maps. (On sale June 11)
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Everitt's first book is a good read that anyone interested in ancient Rome will enjoy. It is also the first one-volume life of the Roman leader in 25 years. To create a work that flowed and was therefore more colorful for the lay reader, Everitt, the former secretary-general of the Arts Council for Great Britain, has taken liberties when describing a human being or a place that may annoy scholars. Yet reading this book is an great way to understand the players of the period and the culture that produced them. Bloody, articulate, erudite, sexist, slave-owning-Cicero and his circle were all that, but Everitt is careful to recognize that the orator was a product of his age. This is not strictly a political history; Everitt scrutinizes Roman society in discussing events of the orator's life and, when describing Cicero's marriage, acquaints the reader with various aspects of that institution and the home of the era. Throughout, he is willing to admit when the evidence for a theory is weak and when he is extrapolating from the assumptions of scholars. Recommended for public and undergraduate collections.
Clay Williams, Hunter Coll. Lib., New York
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician (Hardcover)
It is not my practise to review books for which I have little taste. There are cases where I make exceptions, particularly where I notice that there is an overwhelming tsunami of opinion that tends in the opposite direction to my views. I feel suich a situation requires some balance. Virtually every reviewer of this book has praised it to the skies as if it were the most important book to emerge on Cicero in recent memory. Let me at the outset state that the best recent biography of Cicero is NOT this one. It is Elizabeth Rawson's "Cicero: A Portrait". It is not as lavishly produced, but its pedigree and credentials are infinitely superior to Everritt's rather disappointing (though lengthy) effort. And it is every bit as readable - and in fact is more succinct and to the point. In fact this book is NOT the most important or best biography of our times. It is rather business-like and pedestrian. Serious students of the period and specialists should not reach for this book in the expectation of something ground-breaking. It is anything but that. It is a decent, well-written account (by a non-specialist) of one of the most famous and influential figures in all of history. The causal reader will enjoy it (as the other reviewers suggest) but they would profit more from an acquaintance with Rawson's book, which I have reviewed as well. Everritt's book is filled significant mistakes in the Latin . And Everritt has adopted a policy that is dangerous for the non-specialist - he ignores the modern writers and goes back to the "ancient-sources". As a result he is at their mercy. As Mary Beard has remarked, "the result, almost inevitably, is a patchwork of ancient texts, sewn together with a thread of common sense, guesswork and sheer fantasy". This book is also what Everritt terms, a "rehabilitation". Whether Cicero is or isn't due for such a thing one may debate. As I fall clearly in the "pro-Ciceronian" camp, it was heartening to read a thorough-going account rendered by a friend as opposed to a foe. But for those who know these issues and the history, we are ultimately left wishing for so much more. As Mary Beard wrote, "What we have been waiting for is not another 'straight' biography of Cicero; there are more than enough of those. Much more to the point would be a biographical account that tried to explore the way his life-story has been constructed and reconstructed over the last two thousand years; how we have learned to read Cicero through Jonson, Voltaire, Ibsen and the rest; what kind of investment we still have, and why, in a thundering conservative of the first century BC and his catchy oratorical slogans. Why, in short, is Cicero still around in the 21st century? And on whose terms? Quo usque tandem?" Marcus Junius Brutus is the subject of a thoroughly charming biography of this kind -- "The Noblest Roman", by M.L. Clarke. Out of print but readily available through the used book shops. You can read my review of it. Surprisingly such a biography of Cicero simply doesn't exist. And so we (and Cicero) wait....
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Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
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