Orator: The Life of Cicero and the End of the Roman Republic

Marcus Tullius Cicero was Rome’s most celebrated orator: a lawyer, politician, philosopher and prolific writer whose career unfolded during the violent final decades of the Roman Republic. In Orator, classicist Catharine Edwards presents an intimate biography of a brilliant but deeply complicated figure, following his ascent as a political outsider and his attempts to navigate a world increasingly dominated by powerful generals, civil conflict and political violence.

Drawing closely on Cicero’s speeches, letters and other writings, Edwards explores the relationship between eloquence and power, as well as the tensions between Cicero’s principles, ambitions and instinct for survival. His encounters with figures including Pompey, Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavian place his personal story at the centre of the Republic’s collapse. At once a study of an individual and of a political system in crisis, Orator offers an accessible route into Cicero’s life and the turbulent end of republican Rome.