Cicero, it would seem, has refused to die, despite a tragic and ignominious assassination in 43 B.C., and the fact that today Latin is decreasing as a language that is commonly taught. This book offers a thorough study of why Cicero and his works have continued, through the centuries, to have an enormous influence, for example, on education, literature, legal training—an influence that brings the past into the present.
'any service I may have rendered my countrymen in my active life I may also extend to them... now that I am at leisure' Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), Rome's greatest orator, had a career of intense activity in politics, the law courts and the administration, mostly in Rome. His fortunes, however, followed those of Rome, and he found himself driven into exile in 58 BC, only to return a year later to a city paralyzed by the domination of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. Cicero, though a senior statesman, struggled to maintain his independence and it was during these years that, frustrated in public life, he first started to put his excess energy, stylistic brilliance, and superabundant vocabulary into writing these works of philosophy. The three dialogues collected here are the most accessible of Cicero's works, written to his friends Atticus and Brutus, with the intent of popularizing philosophy in Ancient Rome. They deal with the everyday problems of life; ethics in business, the experience of grief, and the difficulties of old age.
In Cicero in Heaven: The Roman Rhetor and Luther’s Reformation, Carl Springer traces the historical outlines of Cicero’s rhetorical legacy, paying special attention to the momentous impact that he had on Luther, his colleagues at the University of Wittenberg, and later Lutherans. While the revival of interest in Cicero’s rhetoric is more often associated with the Renaissance than with the Reformation, it would be a mistake to overlook the important role that Luther and other reformers played in securing Cicero’s place in the curricula of schools in modern Europe (and America). Luther’s attitude towards Cicero was complex, and the final chapter of the book discusses negative reactions to Cicero in the Reformation and the centuries that followed.
In the first century BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero, orator, statesman, and defender of republican values, created these philosophical treatises on such diverse topics as friendship, religion, death, fate and scientific inquiry. A pragmatist at heart, Cicero's philosophies were frequently personal and ethical, drawn not from abstract reasoning but through careful observation of the world. The resulting works remind us of the importance of social ties, the questions of free will, and the justification of any creative endeavour. This lively, lucid new translation from Thomas Habinek, editor of Classical Antiquity and the Classics and Contemporary Thought book series, makes Cicero's influential ideas accessible to every reader.
Many new and fruitful avenues of investigation open up when scholars consider forgery as a creative act rather than a crime. We invited authors to contribute work without imposing any restrictions beyond a willingness to consider new approaches to the subject of ancient fakes, forgeries, and questions of authenticity. The result is this volume, in which our aim is to display some of the many possibilities available to scholarship. The exposure of fraud and the pursuit of truth may still be valid scholarly goals, but they implicitly demand that we confront the status of any text as a focal point for matters of belief and conviction. Recent approaches to forgery have begun to ask new questions, some intended purely for the sake of debate: Ought we to consider any author to have some inherent authenticity that precludes the possibility of a forger's successful parody? If every fake text has a real context, what can be learned about the cultural circumstances which give rise to forgeries? If every real text can potentially engender a parallel history of fakes, what can this alternative narrative teach us? What epistemological prejudices can lead us to swear a fake is genuine, or dismiss the real thing as inauthentic? Following Splendide Mendax and Animo Decipiendi?, this is the latest installment of an ongoing inquiry, conducted by scholars in numerous countries, into how the ancient world - its literature and culture, its history and art - appears when viewed through the lens of fakes and forgeries, sincerities and authenticities, genuine signatures and pseudepigrapha. How does scholarship tell the truth if evidence doesn't? But fabula docet: The falsum does not simply make the great, annoying stone before the door of the truth (otherwise this here would really be a "council of antiquarians and paleographers"). The falsum makes a delicate, fine tissue. It allows the verum to shine through, in nuances and reliefs that were less noticeable without its counterpart, really tied at the head. And, treated differentiated, it becomes even itself perlucidum, shines out with "hidden values."
This collection explores the historical origins of our modern concepts of intellectual or learning disability. The essays, from some of the leading historians of ideas of intellectual disability, focus on British and European material from the Middle Ages to the late-nineteenth century and extend across legal, educational, literary, religious, philosophical and psychiatric histories. They investigate how precursor concepts and discourses were shaped by and interacted with their particular social, cultural and intellectual environments, eventually giving rise to contemporary ideas. The collection is essential reading for scholars interested in the history of intelligence, intellectual disability and related concepts, as well as in disability history generally.
This is the first volume to explore the reception of the Pythagorean doctrine of cosmic harmony within a variety of contexts, ranging chronologically from Plato to 18th-century England. This original collection of essays engages with contemporary debates concerning the relationship between music, philosophy, and science, and challenges the view that Renaissance discussions on cosmic harmony are either mere repetitions of ancient music theory or pre-figurations of the ‘Scientific Revolution’. Utilizing this interdisciplinary approach, Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony offers a new perspective on the reception of an important classical theme in various cultural, sequential and geographical contexts, underlying the continuities and changes between Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This project will be of particular interest within these emerging disciplines as they continue to explore the ideological significance of the various ways in which we appropriate the past.
"By any metric, Cicero's works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. In this book, Michael Hawley suggests that perhaps Cicero's most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism's unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero's thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero's vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people's collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero's original articulation through the American Founding. It concludes by exploring how our modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome's great philosopher-statesman"--
This volume addresses the idea of the Baroque in European literature in Latin. With contributions by scholars from various disciplines and countries, and by looking at a range of texts from across Europe, the volume offers case studies to deepen scholarly understanding of this important literary phenomenon and inspire future research. A key aim of the volume is to address the distinctiveness of these texts by interrogating the usefulness and specificity of the term 'Baroque', especially in relation to the classical rules it transgresses to produce effects of grandeur, richness, and exuberance in a range of secular and sacred arts (e.g. music, architecture, painting), as well as various forms of literature (e.g. prose, poetry, drama). The contributors consider how and why Latin writing mutated from earlier humanist paradigms, thus exploring how ideas of 'early modern' and 'Baroque' are related, and examine the interplay of the theory and practice of the 'Baroque', including its debts to and deviations from ancient models, and its limits and limitations.
The Greeks and Romans have been charged with destroying the ecosystems within which they lived. In this book, however, M. D. Usher argues rather that we can find in their lives and thought the origin of modern ideas about systems and sustainability, important topics for humans today and in the future. With chapters running the gamut of Greek and Roman experience – from the Presocratics and Plato to Roman agronomy and the Benedictine Rule – Plato's Pigs brings together unlikely bedfellows, both ancient and modern, to reveal surprising connections. Lively prose and liberal use of anecdotal detail, including an afterword about the author's own experiments with sustainable living on his sheep farm in Vermont, add a strong authorial voice. In short, this is a unique, first-of-its-kind book that is sure to be of interest to anyone working in Classics, environmental studies, philosophy, ecology, or the history of ideas.
