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Cicero

Cicero

c. 106 BCE–c. 43 BCE · Arpinum

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BCE) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, orator, and philosopher of the late Republic, born at Arpinum and active chiefly in Rome. A "new man" without inherited senatorial rank, he reached the consulship in 63 BCE, when he suppressed the Catilinarian conspiracy; he was later exiled in 58 BCE and recalled in 57 BCE. He is best known for his judicial and political speeches and for a body of rhetorical and philosophical works—including On the Orator, On Duties, On the Nature of the Gods, and the Tusculan Disputations—that adapted Greek thought (Academic skepticism and Stoicism) into Latin and shaped European prose and political theory. After opposing Mark Antony in the Philippics, he was proscribed by the Second Triumvirate and killed in 43 BCE.

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Did you know?

  • Rome's greatest orator was killed for his words — and displayed on the platform he spoke from

    In the proscriptions that followed Julius Caesar's assassination, the orator Cicero was hunted down and killed in December 43 BCE. Ancient sources record that his severed head and hands were then displayed on the Rostra — the speaker's platform in the Roman Forum from which he had delivered his most famous speeches.

    How we know

    Cicero 106–43 BCE, executed 7 December 43 BCE in the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate; head and hands displayed on the Rostra (Plutarch; Appian).

Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→

Stop 1 of 7106 BCEBorn

Arpinum

What they did here

Born in the Volscian hill town of Arpinum to a prominent equestrian family; same town that produced Marius.

About Arpinum

Arpinum, modern Arpino in the Lazio region of central Italy, was a town in the Volscian hills southeast of Rome. It was the birthplace of the orator, statesman, and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (and earlier of the general Gaius Marius).

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Cicero’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Cicero’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(59)