On Duties

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106–43 BCE), a Roman lawyer, orator, politician, and philosopher of whom we know more than any other Roman, lived through the stirring era of the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In his political speeches and correspondence, we see the excitement, tension, and intrigue of politics and the role he played during the turmoil of the time.

Of about 106 speeches, delivered either before the Roman people or the Senate if political, and before jurors if judicial, 58 survive (a few of them incompletely). In the fourteenth century, Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters, of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and nearly 100 by others to him. These letters provide a striking revelation of the man, particularly because most were not intended for publication.

Six rhetorical works survive and another in fragments. His philosophical works include seven extant major compositions and several others, some of which are lost. Additionally, there is poetry, some original and others as translations from the Greek.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.