|
by: Anthony Everitt
List Price: $15.95Amazon.com's Price: $10.85 You Save: $5.10 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 937.05092
EAN: 9780375758959
ISBN: 037575895X
Label: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: May 06, 2003
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Release Date: May 06, 2003
Sales Rank: 31049
Studio: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
“All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined.”
—John Adams
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.
On Cicero:
“He taught us how to think.'
—Voltaire
“I tasted the beauties of language, I breathed the spirit of freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and examples the public and private sense of a man.”
—Edward Gibbon
“Who was Cicero: a great speaker or a demagogue?”
—Fidel Castro
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - competent and comprehensive, but at a pedestrian freshman college level
This is a fairly good book that offers nothing really new: you get very solid overviews of how the government functioned, what people believed in, and how a major politician (and far better writer) tried to mold things in his own way. Alas, there is nothing whatsoever original in Everitt's interpretation, no provocative thesis based on new evidence (written or archaeological). So what you get, essentially, is the version that Cicero and a few of his contemporaries present of themselves, which ... Read More
Rating:  - I wanted Cicero to live!
Even though I already knew the eventual fate of the great Cicero, I was still hoping somehow he would be spared his terribly unjust death. Man, this was history come alive! You really find yourself cheering for Cicero and depising his enemies. You feel the frustration and depression that Cicero himself must have felt at the slipping away of the Roman Republic, and you share his sadness when tragedy stikes. Its a shame that even more of his letters and books didn't survive to our time. If you have ... Read More
Rating: - Absorbing and well written biography
This is a splendid biography of Cicero. The book is exceptionally well-written, its clarity a product of true mastery of a broad range of historical material. I particularly enjoyed the way that Everitt brings historical figures like Julius Caesar to life. The book retains a clear and sometimes critical view of its subject, keeping it from the realm of hagiography. Cicero emerges as a flawed but ultimately and perhaps accidentally principalled man. The highest compliment I can give Everitt's ... Read More
Rating: - Everett's Cicero
Anthony Everitt does an excellent job with this introduction type book of Cicero. Gives a great account of the man as well as the people in his life. Vivid description and good amount of primary analysis.
Rating: - Excellent Introduction to a Great Man
Odds are, you have heard of Cicero. Considered one of Rome's greatest orators, his writings are the main influence on how way we remember the last days of the Roman republic. The story of Cicero's life is the story of end of Republican Rome. All of the major players of the era: Caesar, Marc Antony, Cleopatra, Brutus and Octavian (soon to be Augustus) all make an appearance in his life. In his role as one of the world's first brilliant statesman and backroom player, Cicero was friends and enemies with ... Read More
|
