Cicero
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas developed by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC) to support and reinvigorate the Roman Republic when, as it transpired, it was in its final years, threatened by civil wars, the rule of Julius Caesar and the triumvirates that followed. As Consul he had suppressed a revolt by Catiline, putting the conspirators to death summarily as he believed the Republic was in danger and that this danger trumped the right to a fair trial, a decision that rebounded on him. While in exile he began works on duty, laws, the orator and the republic. Although left out of the conspiracy to kill Caesar, he later defended that murder in the interests of the Republic, only to be murdered himself soon after.
→ Listen on BBC Sounds website
Guests
- Melissa Lane
11 episodes
The Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University and 2018 Carlyle Lecturer at the University of Oxford - Catherine Steel
6 episodes
Professor of Classics at the University of Glasgow -
Valentina Arena No other episodes
Reader in Roman History at University College London
Reading list
-
Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic
Valentina Arena (Cambridge University Press, 2013) Google Books → -
Cicero on Politics and the Limits of Reason: The Republic and the Laws
Jed Atkins (Cambridge University Press, 2013) Google Books → -
In Defence of the Republic
Cicero (trans. Siobhan McElduff) (Penguin, 2011) Google Books → -
On duties
Cicero (trans. M.T. Griffin and ed. E.M. Atkins) (Cambridge University Press, 1991) Google Books → -
The State of Speech: Rhetoric and Political Thought in Ancient Rome
Joy Connolly (Princeton University Press, 2007) Google Books → -
Cicero as Historical Evidence: A Historian's Companion
Andrew Lintott (Oxford University Press, 2011) Google Books → -
Cicero: A Portrait
Elizabeth Rawson (Bloomsbury, 2013) Google Books → -
Reading Cicero: Genre and Performance in Late Republican Rome
Catherine Steel (Duckworth, 2005) Google Books → -
The Cambridge Companion to Cicero
Catherine Steel (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2013) Google Books → -
Cicero: Politics and Persuasion in Ancient Rome
Kathryn Tempest (Continuum, 2011) Google Books → -
Cicero: The Philosophy of a Roman Sceptic
Raphael Woolf (Routledge, 2015) Google Books → -
Cicero: On the Commonwealth and On the Laws: Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
James E. G. Zetzel (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Related episodes
-
The Roman Republic
30 Dec, 2004 930 History of the Ancient World -
The Gracchi
3 Apr, 2025 930 History of the Ancient World -
Julius Caesar
2 Oct, 2014 930 History of the Ancient World -
Tacitus and the Decadence of Rome
10 Jul, 2008 930 History of the Ancient World -
Roman Satire
22 Apr, 2010 870 Latin and Italic literatures -
Seneca the Younger
23 Feb, 2017 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism -
Catullus
9 Jan, 2020 870 Latin and Italic literatures -
The Augustan Age
11 Jun, 2009 930 History of the Ancient World -
Marcus Aurelius
25 Feb, 2021 180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy -
Edward Gibbon
17 Jun, 2021 900 History
Programme ID: b09nrsfg
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09nrsfg
Auto-category: 937 (Roman Republic)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello. In 63 BC Marcus Tullius Cicero was elected as one of the two consuls in Rome, the highest political position, a remarkable rise for someone born outside the establishment.