About the Book:

He squared off against Caesar and was friends with young Brutus. He advised the legendary Pompey on his somewhat botched transition from military hero to politician. He lambasted Mark Antony and was master of the smear campaign, as feared for his wit as he was for exposing his opponents’ sexual peccadilloes. Brilliant, voluble, cranky, a genius of political manipulation but also a true patriot and idealist, Cicero was Rome’s most feared politician, one of the greatest lawyers and statesmen of all times. Machiavelli, Queen Elizabeth, John Adams and Winston Churchill all studied his example. No man has loomed larger in the political history of mankind.

In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life in these pages as a witty and cunning political operator.

Cicero leapt onto the public stage at twenty-six, came of age during Spartacus’ famous revolt of the gladiators and presided over Roman law and politics for almost half a century. He foiled the legendary Catiline conspiracy, advised Pompey, the victorious general who brought the Middle East under Roman rule, and fought to mobilize the Senate against Caesar. He witnessed the conquest of Gaul, the civil war that followed and Caesar’s dictatorship and assassination. Cicero was a legendary defender of freedom and a model, later, to French and American revolutionaries who saw themselves as following in his footsteps in their resistance to tyranny.

Anthony Everitt’s biography paints a caustic picture of Roman politics—where Senators were endlessly filibustering legislation, walking out, rigging the calendar and exposing one another’s sexual escapades, real or imagined, to discredit their opponents. This was a time before slander and libel laws, and the stories—about dubious pardons, campaign finance scandals, widespread corruption, buying and rigging votes, wife-swapping, and so on—make the Lewinsky affair and the U.S. Congress seem chaste.

Cicero was a wily political operator. As a lawyer, he knew no equal. Boastful, often incapable of making up his mind, emotional enough to wander through the woods weeping when his beloved daughter died in childbirth, he emerges in these pages as intensely human, yet he was also the most eloquent and astute witness to the last days of Republican Rome.

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

This is a book that is a strange topic for me to read.  Politics is usually something that I avoid with pronounced effort.  I find politics irritating, and politicians only a couple steps above the polished criminal.  (I know — a trite, cliched stereotype.)  But that is how I have usually felt on the topic.  So, when I came across a quote by Cicero, somewhere, I couldn’t place the history to which he belonged.  I don’t even really remember where the quote came from, and I thought it was a very unusual, and insightful quote, on the role of government.  So, I went on a quest to find out who the man was, and what his history was.  This is the book I started with.

Well written, especially for a history book — I was very intrigued at this very eloquent lawyer/politician.  Considered one of, if not the best lawyer of Rome; Cicero eventually rose through the social, and political ranks to ultimately be considered one of the greatest political minds of his time.

What I found particularly interesting in this historical account, is he was a man that was central to the story of the fall of the Roman Republic — and his downfall became synonymous with the shift of the Republic into a dictatorship.  His writing is challenging reading — but his story is fascinating.  And Mr. Everitt has done a wonderful job of maintaining all of the suspense and drama of the time, as he tells the story of this amazing man’s life.

The history is also of particular interest — since in all of the Republics that have ever existed throughout history — there is a distinct pattern that evolves within the societies, which foretells the demise of these governments, and ultimately the societies as a whole.  It is of particular interest, therefore, to read about this history, and see several of the same symptoms that occur in our own society.  It is, if not scary, at the very least educational.

This is a really interesting book to read.  It is not burdened with a lot of background history, to detract from the focal point of the story.  Mr. Everitt has successfully taken a brief era, within the Roman history, and has expounded it under a magnifying glass — sufficient enough for a reader to gain a complex picture of a troubled society.

Tags: Government, History, Legal, Non-Fiction, Rome

Category: Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Politics