Commentariolum Petitionis
Rome
Q
Quintus Tullius Cicero
Quintus Tullius Cicero
c. 102 BCE–c. 43 BCE · Rome
Quintus Tullius Cicero (c. 102-43 BCE) was a Roman politician and military officer, the younger brother of the famous orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. He held public offices, served as a commander under Julius Caesar in Gaul, and is sometimes credited with a short handbook on electioneering (the Commentariolum Petitionis) addressed to his brother, though its authorship is debated. He died in the proscriptions of 43 BCE.
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RomeרומאItaly
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About Rome
# Rome In the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, Rome lay within the Papal States, the territorial domain of the Catholic Church, though its temporal glory as an empire had long faded. The city sprawled across its famous hills along the Tiber River, a landscape of crumbling ancient monuments, medieval fortifications, and Romanesque churches that dominated the skyline. The Jewish community of Rome was among Europe's most ancient, tracing roots to the second century BCE, and it flourished in a precarious but resilient position under papal authority; while confined to restricted quarters and subject to discriminatory laws, Roman Jews maintained a sophisticated intellectual and commercial life, with Hebrew scholarship and biblical commentary flourishing despite—or perhaps because of—the community's isolation. The Jewish quarter itself, densely packed and vibrant, became a center of learning where skilled scribes copied manuscripts and rabbinical discussions drew on centuries of local tradition. What made Rome extraordinary for Torah study was not merely its learned scholars but the tangible presence of antiquity itself: the community lived amid the ruins of pagan temples and Roman law, giving their interpretations of Jewish law a unique resonance, as if they were rebuilding Jewish civilization in the very streets where Roman power had once reigned supreme.
In Rome at the same time
Posidonius of Apamea, Nepos, Cornelius, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Lucretius, Sallust
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Quintus Tullius Cicero’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Quintus Tullius Cicero’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.