Catharine Edwards, FBA is a British ancient historian and academic. She is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a specialist in Roman cultural history and Latin prose literature, particularly Seneca the Younger.
Cicero’s Tongue: The Life of Rome’s Greatest Orator, and the End of the Republic
When the great Roman orator Cicero was murdered in the Autumn of 43 BCE, Fulvia, the wife of Marc Antony – who had ordered his killing – had his tongue cut out and pierced with pins: so great a weapon it was.
But Cicero was more than a brilliant orator – his life almost perfectly mirrors the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, and his actions and reactions to the rising tyranny of the nascent politicos of the day have fascinating, if occasionally uncomfortable, parallels with today.
Unique witness (particularly through his extraordinarily vivid letters) to a time of intense, sometimes violent, transformation, Cicero has had a host of admirers – and of detractors, too. Celebrated for his brilliant speeches, admired for his stance in defence of constitutional government, he has also been criticised for vacillation at key political moments – and mocked for his pomposity and self-righteousness. Often himself under intense pressure, derided by some as an upstart, Cicero, in his letters above all, conveys a gripping sense of unfolding events – and of his own struggles to do the right thing.
Cicero’s Tongue: The Life of Rome’s Greatest Orator, and the End of the Republic is the summation of a life’s work and study, breathing new life into one the ancient world’s most notable figures, and offering a fresh take on the end of the Roman Republic in the bargain.