Perhaps no other single Roman speech exemplifies the connection between oratory, politics and imperialism better than Cicero's De Provinciis Consularibus, pronounced to the senate in 56 BC. Cicero puts his talents at the service of the powerful "triumviri" (Caesar, Crassus and Pompey), whose aims he advances by appealing to the senators' imperialistic and chauvinistic ideology. This oration, then, yields precious insights into several areas of late republican life: international relations between Rome and the provinces (Gaul, Macedonia and Judaea); the senators' view on governors, publicani (tax-farmers) and foreigners; the dirty mechanics of high politics in the 50s, driven by lust for domination and money; and Cicero's own role in that political choreography. This speech also exemplifies the exceptional range of Cicero's oratory: the invective against Piso and Gabinius calls for biting irony, the praise of Caesar displays high rhetoric, the rejection of other senators' recommendations is a tour de force of logical and sophisticated argument, and Cicero's justification for his own conduct is embedded in the self-fashioning narrative which is typical of his post reditum speeches. This new commentary includes an updated introduction, which provides the readers with a historical, rhetorical and stylistic background to appreciate the complexities of Cicero's oration, as well as indexes and maps.

Perhaps no other single Roman speech exemplifies the connection between oratory, politics and imperialism better than Cicero's De Provinciis Consularibus, pronounced to the senate in 56 BC. Cicero puts his talents at the service of the powerful "triumviri" (Caesar, Crassus and Pompey), whose aims he advances by appealing to the senators' imperialistic and chauvinistic ideology. This oration, then, yields precious insights into several areas of late republican life: international relations between Rome and the provinces (Gaul, Macedonia and Judaea); the senators' view on governors, publicani (tax-farmers) and foreigners; the dirty mechanics of high politics in the 50s, driven by lust for domination and money; and Cicero's own role in that political choreography. This speech also exemplifies the exceptional range of Cicero's oratory: the invective against Piso and Gabinius calls for biting irony, the praise of Caesar displays high rhetoric, the rejection of other senators' recommendations is a tour de force of logical and sophisticated argument, and Cicero's justification for his own conduct is embedded in the self-fashioning narrative which is typical of his post reditum speeches. This new commentary includes an updated introduction, which provides the readers with a historical, rhetorical and stylistic background to appreciate the complexities of Cicero's oration, as well as indexes and maps.

A dramatic account of the fateful year leading to the ultimate crisis of the Roman Republic and the rise of Caesar's autocracy When the Senate ordered Julius Caesar, conqueror of Gaul, to disband his troops, he instead marched his soldiers across the Rubicon River, in violation of Roman law. The Senate turned to its proconsul, Pompey the Great, for help. But Pompey's response was unexpected: he commanded magistrates and senators to abandon Rome--a city that, until then, had always been defended. The consequences were the ultimate crisis of the Roman Republic and the rise of Caesar's autocracy. In this new history, Luca Fezzi argues that Pompey's actions sealed the Republic's fate. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, including Cicero's extensive letters, Fezzi shows how Pompey's decision shocked the Roman people, severely weakened the city, and set in motion a chain of events that allowed Caesar to take power. Seamlessly translated by Richard Dixon, this book casts fresh light on the dramatic events of this crucial moment in ancient Roman history.

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.

Cicero saw publication as a means of perpetuating a distinctive image of himself as statesman and orator. He memorialized his spiritual and oratorical self by means of a very solid body of texts. Educationalists and schoolteachers in antiquity relied on Cicero's oratory to supervise the growth of the young into intellectual maturity. By reconstructing the main phases of textual transmission, from the first authorial dissemination of the speeches to the medieval manuscripts, and by re-examining the abundant evidence on Ciceronian scholarship from the first to the sixth century CE, Cicero and Roman Education traces the history of the exegetical tradition on Cicero's oratory and re-assesses the 'didactic' function of the speeches, whose preservation was largely determined by pedagogical factors.