Lawyer, philosopher, statesman and defender of Rome's Republic, Cicero was a master of eloquence, and his pure literary and oratorical style and strict sense of morality have been a powerful influence on European literature and thought for over two thousand years in matters of politics, philosophy, and faith. This selection demonstrates the diversity of his writings, and includes letters to friends and statesmen on Roman life and politics; the vitriolic Second Philippic Against Antony; and, his two most famous philosophical treatises, "On Duties" and "On Old Age" - a celebration of his own declining years. Written at a time of brutal political and social change, Cicero's lucid ethical writings formed the foundation of the Western liberal tradition in political and moral thought that continues to this day....

De Officiis (On Duties) is Cicero's last theoretical work and contains his analysis, in a Greek theoretical framework, of the political and ethical values of the Roman governing class in the late Republic. It has often been treated merely as a key to the Greek philosophical works that Cicero used, but this volume aims to render De Officiis, which had a profound impact upon subsequent political thinkers, more intelligible by explaining its relation to its own time and place. All the standard series features are present, including a wholly new translation, a concise introduction by a leading scholar, select bibliography, chronology, notes on vocabulary and brief biographies of the most prominent individuals mentioned in the text....

The ten speeches in this volume illustrate Cicero's entire career and exemplify all the major contexts for his oratory: before the senate, the people, and the courts. They illuminate the major political crises of Cicero's time and offer portraits of many of the major political figures. Several of these speeches also shed light on the most important cultural and literary debates of the late Republic.


James Zetzel's general Introduction discusses Cicero's public life; the social, political, and cultural contexts of his speeches; and the challenges of translating them into modern English. This edition also includes an introduction to each speech, a section on Roman institutions and offices, a chronological table, maps, a bibliography, and a biographical index....

The third and fourth books of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations deal with the nature and management of human emotion: first grief, then the emotions in general. In lively and accessible style, Cicero presents the insights of Greek philosophers on the subject, reporting the views of Epicureans and Peripatetics and giving a detailed account of the Stoic position, which he himself favors for its close reasoning and moral earnestness. Both the specialist and the general reader will be fascinated by the Stoics’ analysis of the causes of grief, their classification of emotions by genus and species, their lists of oddly named character flaws, and by the philosophical debate that develops over the utility of anger in politics and war. Margaret Graver’s elegant and idiomatic translation makes Cicero’s work accessible not just to classicists but to anyone interested in ancient philosophy and psychotherapy or in the philosophy of emotion. The accompanying commentary explains the philosophical concepts discussed in the text and supplies many helpful parallels from Greek sources....

A unique selection of Cicero's most accessible philosophical works which deal with the problems encountered in everyday life This edition includes On Old Age, On Friendship, and the whole of Books 1, 2, and 5 of the Tusculan Disputations, with the prefaces and summaries of 3 and 4. Lively introduction sets out the historical context, with notes that are fuller and more reliable than in any previous translation The translation preserves Cicero's literary, artistic, and emotional force as a philospher while achieving new standards of accuracy Editorial material includes Chronology and a Note on the Text The Appendix covers Cicero's two letters that deal with the same issues as On Friendship and show how rooted in real moral diemmas of the period the treatise is Texts translated by John Davie, translator of the OWC Seneca, Disalogues and Essays, and Horace, Satires and Epistles...