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Title: Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt ISBN: 0-375-75895-X Publisher: Random House Trade Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (50 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A marvelous effort
Comment: It's easy to see why this marvelous effort by Anthony Everitt became a bestseller. It is a beautifully written, intelligently organized and well-researched history of the famous Roman statesman whose name is certainly familiar to most American high school students. By tying the name to the story of the life of a remarkable man, Mr. Everitt has created a classic biography, one which might set the standard for future Cicero biographies.
I cannot praise too highly how well written this history is. There is no jargon, no scholarly arrogance which insults the reader, no slipshod verbosity. It is everything a biography for the general reader ought to be: a terse, focused, illuminating history of a memorable personality; a pleasure to read.
That Cicero was a giant of his time is also well documented elsewhere, but Mr. Everitt brings out his status with refreshing clarity. More than that, to aid the reader to understand how Rome ruled its people so as to fully appreciate Cicero's place in its history, the author describes in a straight forward way, its political processes, explaining the duties and powers of Quaestors, Aediles, Praetors and Consuls.
One can sense the passions of the time and see how a gifted orator that was Cicero earned his status and reputation. We come to know Cicero the gifted lawyer, Cicero the husband and father, Cicero the faithful brother, Cicero the enlightend slave master, Cicero the wary Statesman who worried at the rise of the ambitious Caesar.
And, finally -- at the end --, there is Cicero, the valiant, who bared his neck to his sword-wielding assassin with the pragmatic remark loosely translated as "Make a good job of it."
And thanks to Mr. Everitt for this outstanding biography, for he did, indeed, make of a good job of it.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Resurrection of Marcus Tullius Cicero
Comment: Everitt in his preface makes no bones about his bias: "This book is an exercise in rehabilitation. Many writers from ancient times to the present day have seriously undervalued Cicero's consistency and effectiveness as a politician."
The portrait that Everitt proceeds to paint, therefore, is principally one of a political figure. To that end, he describes in great and accessible detail the turbulent politics of the deal (the death of the Roman Republic and the birth of the Roman Empire). As a sort of bonus, then, this biography of Cicero discusses in some detail the political careers of such contemporaries as Cato and the First Triumvirate (Pompey, Crassus and Caesar).
Everitt succeeds remarkably well at bringing to life the necessary context to make Cicero's political decisions and ideas comprehensible. We see his conservatism and his attachment to the constitution of the Republic and also the career- and life-threatening perils that induced him, from time to time, to side with the anti-Republican forces (i.e., Caesar).
Cicero was no Cato, willing to die for the Republic. He had other peccadilloes, too, which Everitt also recounts: a certain vanity, a habit of writing bad poetry, a lack of affection that may have ended his first marriage. But he was an excellent writer of prose, a deep thinker on political issues, and enormously attached to his children. And he was a great orator, and, from time to time, an immensely popular leader. This well-written biography brings the interesting man to life.
Rating: 4
Summary: Solid, but not spectacular
Comment: This is a standard biography of Cicero's life, written well to meet those aims. Everitt drops in nice tidbits of Roman life--shopping malls, insurance-arson scams, and Vestigial Virgin drag queens--but this biography lacks both A.) historical perspective and B.) philosophical perspective on Cicero. Someone who knows little of Cicero before reading this book, would not know a whole more about Cicero's worldview. We learn that he believed in the representative Republic, in some degree of personal freedom--but he also believed in deterministic, pantheistic Stoicism. How could these be reconciled? How is determinism and liberty compatible? How is determinism and virtue compatible? How could these beliefs impact the Founding Fathers? This is what lacks from the book--why Cicero's beliefs led to his life, and why his life led to the Enlightenment.
This book nonetheless does it's basic job, and the portrayals of Cato, Pompey, Caesar, and Octavian are strong. Cato comes off as the noble idealist--as Cicero would have seen him--and the emperors and would-be emperors come off as the practical power mongerers that they probably were. Crassus and Cataline are like cartoonish villains, yet, by their idiotic deeds and schemes they might have been. This would be a good book simply to flesh out one's knowledge of a time slowly being forgotten in the Postmodern West.
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Title: Selected Works (Classics S.) by Marcus T. Cicero ISBN: 0140440992 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1960 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan ISBN: 0670032115 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 08 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives : Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Cicero (Penguin Classics) by Plutarch, Rex Warner, Robin Seager ISBN: 0140440844 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1954 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Caesar by Christian Meier ISBN: 046500895X Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1997 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Republic and the Laws: And, the Laws (Oxford World's Classics) by Marcus Tullius Cicero, Jonathan Powell, Niall Rudd ISBN: 0192832360 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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