Lecture 1 - Coping with Conscience: Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cicero (106-43 BC) was a brilliant orator and all-round intellectual whose political life was entangled with the collapse of the republican values that he championed. Charles will explore the highs and lows of his political and legal career, including his famous demolition of the fraudulent governor of Sicily, Verres, and his role in the Cataline conspiracy. As politics become more brutal, he agonizes over his position and retreats to write about Greek philosophy. In 43 he is assassinated. Yet he becomes a hero during the Renaissance as the ideal orator and republican politician in an age when republicanism in in the Italian cities was looking for a champion. His Latin was the model for humanist scholars. When the humanist Petrarch discovered his letters to his friend Atticus, his personality was revealed in all its complexity.