O Tempora! O Mores! is designed to fit a variety of pedagogical approaches. Shapiro's historical essays bring a new dimension to Latin study, explaining the history and politics behind the texts. The volume is further amplified by a vocabulary, maps, a bibliography, and appendices.

The First Oration Against C Verres is a classic work of Roman oratory by the famous statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero. The speech was delivered in 70 BCE in defense of the Sicilian people against the corrupt practices of the governor Verres. The speech is a masterpiece of rhetorical persuasion and a scathing indictment of Verres' crimes. The book provides a fascinating glimpse into the politics, law, and culture of ancient Rome. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Catilinarians are a set of four speeches that Cicero, while consul in 63 BC, delivered before the senate and the Roman people against the conspirator Catiline and his followers. Or are they? Cicero did not publish the speeches until three years later, and he substantially revised them before publication, rewriting some passages and adding others, all with the aim of justifying the action he had taken against the conspirators and memorializing his own role in the suppression of the conspiracy. How, then, should we interpret these speeches as literature? Can we treat them as representing what Cicero actually said? Or do we have to read them merely as political pamphlets from a later time? In this, the first book-length discussion of these famous speeches, D. H. Berry clarifies what the speeches actually are and explains how he believes we should approach them. In addition, the book contains a full and up-to-date account of the Catilinarian conspiracy and a survey of the influence that the story of Catiline has had on writers such as Sallust and Virgil, Ben Jonson and Henrik Ibsen, from antiquity to the present day.

'Two things alone I long for: first, that when I die I may leave the Roman people free...and second, that each person's fate may reflect the way he has behaved towards his country.' Cicero (106-43 BC) was the greatest orator of the ancient world and a leading politician of the closing era of the Roman republic. This book presents nine speeches which reflect the development, variety, and drama of his political career,among them two speeches from his prosecution of Verres, a corrupt and cruel governor of Sicily; four speeches against the conspirator Catiline; and the Second Philippic, the famous denunciation of Mark Antony which cost Cicero his life. Also included are On the Command of Gnaeus Pompeius, in which he praises the military successes of Pompey, and For Marcellus, a panegyric in praise of the dictator Julius Caesar. These new translations preserve Cicero's rhetorical brilliance and achieve new standards of accuracy. A general introduction outlines Cicero's public career, and separate introductions explain the political significance of each of the speeches. Together with its companion volume, Defence Speeches, this edition provides an unparalleled sampling of Cicero's oratorical achievements.

By its very nature, the art of oratory involves character. Verbal persuasion entails the presentation of a persona by the speaker that affects an audience for good or ill. In this book, James May explores the role and extent of Cicero's use of ethos and demonstrates its persuasive effect. May discusses the importance of ethos, not just in classical rhetorical theory but also in the social, political, and judicial milieu of ancient Rome, and then applies his insights to the oratory of Cicero. Ciceronian ethos was a complex blend of Roman tradition, Cicero's own personality, and selected features of Greek and Roman oratory. More than any other ancient literary genre, oratory dealt with constantly changing circumstances, with a wide variety of rhetorical challenges. An orator's success or failure, as well as the artistic quality of his orations, was largely the direct result of his responses to these circumstances and challenges. Acutely aware of his audience and its cultural heritage and steeped in the rhetorical traditions of his predecessors, Cicero employed rhetorical ethos with uncanny success. May analyzes individual speeches from four different periods of Cicero's career, tracing changes in the way Cicero depicted character, both his own and others', as a source of persuasion--changes intimately connected with the vicissitudes of Cicero's career and personal life. He shows that ethos played a major role in almost every Ciceronian speech, that Cicero's audiences were conditioned by common beliefs about character, and finally, that Cicero's rhetorical ethos became a major source for persuasion in his oratory.