Cicero, The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt

Many people don’t understand that “May you live in interesting times” is a curse. It is certainly one that befell Cicero, who was indeed Rome’s greatest politician, in the sense both of statesman and opportunist. Marcus Tullius Cicero was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, and Augustus, the figures that did most to shape Rome into the empire we know. But Cicero was not an aristocrat, but a man who rose by virtue of oratorical skill to be the most powerful Roman who didn’t command an army. The Rome of the first century B.C. was in chaos. Its system of government, with interminable layers of checks and balances (which served as the primary model for the writers of our constitution) was paralyzed. Only consensus could make law, and consensus was virtually impossible to achieve. Dissidents had only two courses: they could argue loudly for reform and usually end up assassinated for their trouble, or they could raise an army and impose reform. During this time, Cicero, who was not even a native Roman, achieved the rank of Senator and Consul through pure force of intellect. Luckily, the evidence of his intellect, with all his human foibles, is preserved—in his speeches as a lawyer and senator, his philosophical treatises, and in 900 letters to friends and rivals. Everitt has done a marvelous job of synthesizing this material, as well as all the other evidence, to create a readable biography not just of the man who walked a delicate line defending the Roman republic during its slide into dictatorship, but of that interesting time itself.