Greece & Rome · 106–43 BCE
Cicero
Roman orator and statesman who brought Greek philosophy into Latin
A follower of the sceptical Academy, he weighed Stoic, Epicurean and Academic views against each other and accepted what seemed most probable. He coined much of the Latin philosophical vocabulary Europe would use for centuries.
Life and thought
Marcus Tullius Cicero, a provincial from Arpinum, rose by his oratory to the consulship in 63 BCE, when he suppressed the Catilinarian conspiracy. As a young man he had studied philosophy in Athens and Rhodes with Academics, Stoics and Epicureans. Sidelined under Caesar’s dictatorship and grieving his daughter Tullia, he wrote most of his philosophical works in a burst in 45–44 BCE. After Caesar’s murder he attacked Mark Antony and was killed on Antony’s orders in 43.
Cicero belonged to the sceptical Academy: rather than claiming certainty, he set out each school’s arguments and accepted what seemed most probable, leaving the reader free to judge. His dialogues on the gods, the highest good, duties, old age and friendship gave Latin a vocabulary for philosophy, coining words such as qualitas. For over a thousand years they were how Western Europe learned Greek philosophy; Augustine said that reading Cicero’s lost Hortensius first turned him toward wisdom.