Letters to Atticus by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Letters to Atticus by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cicero was a prodigious letter writer, and happily a splendid treasury of his letters has come down to us: collected and in part published not long after his death, over 800 of them were rediscovered by Petrarch and other humanists in the fourteenth century. Among classical texts this correspondence is unparalleled; nowhere else do we get such an intimate look at the life of a prominent Roman and his social world, or such a vivid sense of a momentous period in Roman history.

The 435 letters collected here represent Cicero's correspondence with friends and acquaintances over a period of 20 years, from 62 BCE, when Cicero's political career was at its peak, to 43 BCE, the year he was put to death by the victorious Triumvirs. They range widely in substance and style, from official dispatches and semi-public letters of political importance to casual notes that chat with close friends about travels and projects, domestic pleasures and books, and questions currently debated. This new Loeb Classical Library edition of the Letters to Friends, in three volumes, brings together D. R. Shackleton Bailey's standard Latin text, now updated, and a revised version of his much admired translation first published by Penguin. This authoritative edition complements the new Loeb edition of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, also translated by Shackleton Bailey.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius: - Marcus Tullius Cicero )3 January 106 BC - 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer and Academic Skeptic philosopher who played an important role in the politics of the late Republic and vainly tried to uphold republican principles during the crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire.[4] His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics, and he is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.[5][6] He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in the year 63 BC. His influence on the Latin language was immense: it has been said that subsequent prose was either a reaction against or a return to his style, not only in Latin but in European languages up to the 19th century.[7][8] Cicero introduced into Latin the arguments of the chief schools of Hellenistic philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary with neologisms such as evidentia, [9] humanitas, qualitas, quantitas, and essentia, [10] distinguishing himself as a translator and philosopher. Though he was an accomplished orator and successful lawyer, Cicero believed his political career was his most important achievement. It was during his consulship that the second Catilinarian conspiracy attempted to overthrow the government through an attack on the city by outside forces, and Cicero suppressed the revolt by summarily and controversially executing five conspirators. During the chaotic latter half of the 1st century BC marked by civil wars and the dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar, Cicero championed a return to the traditional republican government. Following Julius Caesar's death, Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony in the ensuing power struggle, attacking him in a series of speeches. He was proscribed as an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate and consequently executed by soldiers operating on their behalf in 43 BC after having been intercepted during an attempted flight from the Italian peninsula. His severed hands and head were then, as a final revenge of Mark Antony, displayed on the Rostra. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance in public affairs, humanism, and classical Roman culture.[11] According to Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, the Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity.[12] The peak of Cicero's authority and prestige came during the 18th-century Enlightenment, [13] and his impact on leading Enlightenment thinkers and political theorists such as John Locke, David Hume, Montesquieu and Edmund Burke was substantial.[14] His works rank among the most influential in European culture, and today still constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for the writing and revision of Roman history, especially the last days of the Roman Republic.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780140443097
ISBN 10	0140443096
Titel	Letters to Atticus
Autor	Marcus Tullius Cicero
Serie	Classics
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	Penguin Classics
Erscheinungsjahr	1978-07-27
Seitenanzahl	736
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar