'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.

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.

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.