Reinventing Cicero
The Afterlife of the Speeches, Letters and Dialogues between 60 and 50 BCE
Description
Exploring the reception of an influential phase in the life of the orator and politician Cicero, this volume focuses on the legacy of his public speeches, letters and political writings between 60-50 BCE. Faced with mounting public challenges, he developed an elaborate self-fashioning programme, reinventing himself as a republican statesman and political philosopher in works which have been discussed, (re)interpreted and evaluated by countless later readers.
Taking crucial moments such as the letters to Atticus and his friends, De re publica or Pro Milone, the contributors trace the profound interplay between Cicero's political strategy and its reception from antiquity to the early modern period. Together, they meticulously construct the canonical image of Cicero – an eminent literary figure, a formidable philosopher and the unrivalled orator of ancient Rome – to offer fresh insight into his enduring influence from his own lifetime through to the 21st century.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction (Leanne Jansen, Christoph Pieper)
Part I: Cicero Representing Cicero
Chapter 1: Cicero's genus dialogorum between Fact and Fiction (Gesine Manuwald)
Chapter 2: Cicero poeta in the 50s BCE (Thomas J. Keeline)
Chapter 3: Mediating the Message in Cicero's Correspondence (Lidewij van Gils)
Part II: Putting Cicero's Persona Together from the Letters and Speeches
Chapter 4: Cicero's humanitas? Valerius Maximus on Cicero's Defences of Enemies in the 50s BCE (Henriette van der Blom)
Chapter 5: Historia contexta. Atticus' Mediated History of the 50s (Andrew Sillett)
Chapter 6: Cicero solitarius. The Discovery of Cicero's Private Person and Its Impact on the Construction of Francesco Petrarca's Authorship (Karl Enenkel)
Chapter 7: Cicero ipse sordidatus! Cicero's Exile and his Enmity with Clodius in Early Modern Biographies of Cicero (Christoph Pieper)
Part III: Rethinking Cicero's Platonic Dialogues
Chapter 8: Cicero's Legal Analogies in Seneca's Political World (Maarten Klink)
Chapter 9: Platonis aemulus. Ancient Reception of Cicero's 'Platonic' Dialogues (Caroline Bishop)
Chapter 10: Cicero in the Anti-Machiavellian Tradition of the French Renaissance (Eric MacPhail)
Chapter 11: The 'Reconstruction' of Cicero's De re publica by J.E.D. Bernardi (1798/1807) (Reinhold F. Glei)
Part IV: Reading Cicero's Pro Milone in Rhetorical and Historical Contexts
Chapter 12: Cicero Unmasked? The Legacy of Pro Milone from Asconius to Cassius Dio (Leanne Jansen)
Chapter 13: Reading Some of Cicero's Speeches in Late Antiquity: Pro Milone, In Pisonem, Pro Plancio (Andrea Balbo)
Chapter 14: Positioning the Paratext. Medieval and Renaissance Readings of an Argumentum to Pro Milone (Irene O'Daly)
Chapter 15: Cicero's Pro Milone in Gerardus Vossius' Institutiones oratoriae (Verena Schulz)
Afterword (Leanne Jansen, Christoph Pieper)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Product details
| Published | 29 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 320 |
| ISBN | 9781350443310 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 4 bw illus |
| Series | Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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