Portraying Cicero in Literature, Culture, and Politics From Ancient to Modern Times
SBTMR, Classical studies, Latin authors, Latin, Classical and ancient near eastern studies, Literary studies, Antiquity, Classical tradition and reception
Recent Scholarship on the Imperial Reception of Cicero
February 2022
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Journal article
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Mnemosyne
<p>This article reviews two monographs recently published on the subject of Cicero’s reception in the imperial period: Keeline’s 2018 <em>The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire</em> and La Bua’s 2019 <em>Cicero and Roman Education</em>. As Cicero’s <em>Nachleben</em> is assuming a position of increasing salience in classical studies, this review contextualizes these two volumes within over a century of scholarship on the subject. Keeline’s book demonstrates the critical importance of the schoolroom in shaping almost every aspect of Cicero’s posthumous reception, while La Bua’s methodically elucidates how Cicero’s speeches were taught and read in the classrooms of the empire. The article concludes with an argument for a new approach to studying the reception of Cicero in this period.</p>
Ille regit dictis animos: Virgil’s Perspective on Cicero’s Final Years
December 2020
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Chapter
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Reading Cicero's Final Years Receptions of the Post-Caesarian Works Up to the Sixteenth Century - With Two Epilogues
This volume contributes to the ongoing scholarly debate regarding the reception of Cicero. It focuses on one particular moment in Cicero's life, the period from the death of Caesar up to Cicero's own death.
Quintus Cicero's Commentariolum: A philosophical approach to Roman elections
January 2016
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Chapter
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Splendide Mendax: Rethinking Fakes and Forgeries in Classical, Late Antique, and Early Christian Literature
The debate over the authorship of the Commentariolum Petitionis is both longstanding and unlikely to be decisively resolved in the near future. Largely as a result of this, it remains one of antiquity’s most underrated documents; frequently side-lined as a curiosity, or dismissed as a forgery. The position I take for this paper is to argue that with the debate on the text’s authenticity seemingly deadlocked on a philological level, it is necessary to advance arguments addressing the other major objection to the possibility of its author being Quintus Cicero, that is to say, the purpose of this baffling document. I propose that an approach to this text which takes its philosophical context into account both supports Quintus Cicero’s claim to authorship and provides evidence for certain aspects of his brother’s historic election to the consulship. I situate the text within the contemporary debate which attempted to categorize all activities as either a teachable technē or an innate dunamis. By showing that this election should be understood as the former, Quintus could promote the idea that his brother’s rise was to be attributed to successful electioneering, not backdoor Pompeian intrigue.
Roman Republic, Roman history, Commentariolum Petitionis, Roman politics, Latin philosophy, Latin literature, Quintus Cicero, Marcus Tullius Cicero
