Editing Cicero (section)

==Legacy==
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[[File:Thys Boke Is Myne.jpg|thumb|[[Henry VIII]]'s childhood copy of ''[[De Officiis]]'', bearing the inscription in his hand, "Thys boke is myne Prynce Henry"]]
Cicero has been traditionally considered the master of Latin prose, with [[Quintilian]] declaring that Cicero was "not the name of a man, but of eloquence itself."<ref>Quintilian, [[Institutio Oratoria]] 10.1.112</ref> The English words ''[[wikt:Ciceronian|Ciceronian]]'' (meaning "eloquent") and ''[[wikt:cicerone|cicerone]]'' (meaning "local guide") derive from his name.<ref>{{OEtymD|Ciceronian}}</ref><ref>{{OEtymD|cicerone}}</ref> He is credited with transforming Latin from a modest utilitarian language into a versatile literary medium capable of expressing abstract and complicated thoughts with clarity.<ref>''Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature'', "Ciceronian period" (1995) [https://books.google.com/books?id=eKNK1YwHcQ4C&pg=PA244 p. 244]</ref> Julius Caesar praised Cicero's achievement by saying "it is more important to have greatly extended the frontiers of the Roman spirit than the frontiers of the Roman empire".<ref>Pliny, ''Natural History'', 7.117</ref> According to [[John William Mackail]], "Cicero's unique and imperishable glory is that he created the language of the civilized world, and used that language to create a style which nineteen centuries have not replaced, and in some respects have hardly altered."<ref>Cicero, ''Seven orations'', 1912</ref>

Cicero was also an energetic writer with an interest in a wide variety of subjects, in keeping with the [[Hellenistic philosophy|Hellenistic philosophical]] and rhetorical traditions in which he was trained. The quality and ready accessibility of Ciceronian texts favored very wide distribution and inclusion in teaching curricula, as suggested by a graffito at Pompeii, admonishing: "You will like Cicero, or you will be whipped".<ref>Hasan Niyazi, ''From Pompeii to Cyberspace – Transcending barriers with Twitter'' {{Cite web |url=http://www.3pipe.net/2011/05/from-pompeii-to-cyberspace-transcending.html |title=Account Suspended |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121114062841/http://www.3pipe.net/2011/05/from-pompeii-to-cyberspace-transcending.html |archive-date=14 November 2012 |access-date=7 September 2012}}</ref>

Cicero was greatly admired by influential [[Church Fathers]] such as [[Augustine of Hippo]], who credited Cicero's [[Lost literary work|lost]] ''[[Hortensius (Cicero)|Hortensius]]'' for his eventual conversion to Christianity,<ref>Augustine of Hippo, ''Confessions'', 3:4</ref> and St. [[Jerome]], who had a feverish vision in which he was accused of being "follower of Cicero and not of Christ" before the judgment seat.<ref>Jerome, ''Letter to Eustochium'', XXII:30</ref>

This influence further increased after the [[Dark Ages (historiography)|Early Middle Ages]] in Europe, where more of his writings survived than any other Latin author's. Medieval philosophers were influenced by Cicero's writings on [[natural law]] and innate rights.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Goodey |first=C.F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zgaiAgAAQBAJ&q=Medieval+philosophers+were+influenced+by+Cicero%27s+writings+on+natural+law+and+innate+rights.&pg=PA154 |title=A History of Intelligence and 'Intellectual Disability': The Shaping of Psychology in Early Modern Europe |publisher=Ashgate Publishing |year=2013 |isbn=978-1-4094-8235-2 |language=en |access-date=25 October 2020 |archive-date=19 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240619065550/https://books.google.com/books?id=zgaiAgAAQBAJ&q=Medieval+philosophers+were+influenced+by+Cicero%27s+writings+on+natural+law+and+innate+rights.&pg=PA154#v=onepage&q=Medieval%20philosophers%20were%20influenced%20by%20Cicero's%20writings%20on%20natural%20law%20and%20innate%20rights.&f=false |url-status=live }}{{page needed|date=December 2020}}</ref>{{additional citation needed|date=December 2016}}

[[Petrarch]]'s rediscovery of Cicero's letters provided the impetus for searches for ancient Greek and Latin writings scattered throughout European monasteries, and the subsequent rediscovery of [[classical antiquity]] led to the [[Renaissance]]. Subsequently, Cicero became synonymous with classical Latin to such an extent that a number of humanist scholars began to assert that no Latin word or phrase should be used unless it appeared in Cicero's works, a stance criticised by [[Erasmus]].<ref>Erasmus, [[Ciceronianus]]</ref>

His voluminous correspondence, much of it addressed to his friend Atticus, has been especially influential, introducing the art of refined letter writing to European culture. [[Cornelius Nepos]], the first century BC biographer of Atticus, remarked that Cicero's letters contained such a wealth of detail "concerning the inclinations of leading men, the faults of the generals, and the revolutions in the government" that their reader had little need for a history of the period.<ref>Cornelius Nepos, ''[http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/nepos.htm#Atticus Atticus] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107233658/http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/nepos.htm#Atticus |date=7 November 2017 }}'' 16, trans. John Selby Watson.</ref>

Among Cicero's admirers were [[Desiderius Erasmus]], [[Martin Luther]], and [[John Locke]].<ref>Richards 2010, p. 121</ref> Following the invention of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, ''[[De Officiis]]'' was the [[List of editiones principes in Latin|second book printed in Europe]], after the [[Gutenberg Bible]]. Scholars note Cicero's influence on the rebirth of religious toleration in the 17th century.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12681 |title=John Marshall. John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture: Religious Toleration and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and Early Enlightenment Europe |last=Gibson |first=William |year=2006 |publisher=H-Albion |access-date=8 July 2012 |archive-date=8 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130608173102/http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12681 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Cicero was especially popular with the [[Philosophes]] of the 18th century, including [[Edward Gibbon]], [[Diderot]], [[David Hume]], [[Montesquieu]], and [[Voltaire]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Peter Gay |title=The Enlightenment: An Interpretation |publisher=W.W. Norton |year=1966 |page=105}}</ref> Gibbon wrote of his first experience reading the author's collective works thus: "I tasted the beauty of the language; I breathed the spirit of freedom; and I imbibed from his precepts and examples the public and private sense of a man...after finishing the great author, a library of eloquence and reason, I formed a more extensive plan of reviewing the Latin classics..."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Peter Gay |title=The Enlightenment: An Interpretation |publisher=W.W. Norton |year=1966 |page=56}}</ref>

Voltaire called Cicero "the greatest as well as the most elegant of Roman philosophers" and even staged a play based on Cicero's role in the [[Catilinarian conspiracy]], called ''Rome Sauvée, ou Catilina'', to "make young people who go to the theatre acquainted with Cicero."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Peter Gay |title=The Enlightenment: An Interpretation |publisher=W.W. Norton |year=1966 |page=106}}</ref> Voltaire was spurred to pen the drama as a rebuff to his rival [[Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon|Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon's]] own play ''Catilina'', which had portrayed Cicero as a coward and villain who hypocritically married his own daughter to Catiline.<ref name="Matthew Sharpe">{{Cite book |last=Matthew Sharpe |title=Cicero, Voltaire and the philosophes in the French Enlightenment |page=329}}</ref>

Montesquieu produced his "Discourse on Cicero" in 1717, in which he heaped praise on the author because he rescued "philosophy from the hands of scholars, and freed it from the confusion of a foreign language".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Montesquieu |title=Discourse on Cicero |publisher=Political Theory Vol. 30, No. 5 |pages=733–737}}</ref> Montesquieu went on to declare that Cicero was "of all the ancients, the one who had the most personal merit, and whom I would prefer to resemble."<ref name="Matthew Sharpe" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Montesquieu |title=Discourse on Cicero |publisher=Political Theory Vol. 30, No. 5 |page=734}}</ref>

Cicero the republican inspired the [[Founding Fathers of the United States]] and the revolutionaries of the [[French Revolution]].<ref>De Burgh, W.G., "The legacy of the ancient world"</ref> [[John Adams]] said, "As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight."<ref>''American republicanism: Roman Ideology in the United States'' [[Mortimer Sellers|Mortimer N. S. Sellers]], NYU Press, 1994</ref> [[Thomas Jefferson]] names Cicero as one of a handful of major figures who contributed to a tradition "of public right" that informed his draft of the Declaration of Independence and shaped American understandings of "the common sense" basis for the right of revolution.<ref>Thomas Jefferson, "Letter to Henry Lee," 8 May 1825, in The Political Thought of American Statesmen, eds. Morton Frisch and Richard Stevens (Itasca, Ill.: F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1973), 12.</ref> [[Camille Desmoulins]] said of the French republicans in 1789 that they were "mostly young people who, nourished by the reading of Cicero at school, had become passionate enthusiasts for liberty".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Aulard |first=François-Alphonse |url=https://archive.org/details/histoirepolitiqu01aula |title=Histoire politique de la Révolution française: Origines et Développement de la Démocratie et de la République (1789–1804) |publisher=Librairie Armand Colin |year=1901 |page=[https://archive.org/details/histoirepolitiqu01aula/page/5 5]}}</ref>

In the modern era, American [[libertarian]] [[Jim Powell (historian)|Jim Powell]] starts his history of liberty with the sentence: "Marcus Tullius Cicero expressed principles that became the bedrock of liberty in the modern world."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Powell |first=Jim |url=https://archive.org/details/triumphofliberty00powe/page/2 |title=The Triumph of Liberty: A 2,000 Year History Told Through the Lives of Freedom's Greatest Champions |date=2000 |publisher=Free Press |isbn=978-0-684-85967-5 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/triumphofliberty00powe/page/2 2–10]}}</ref>

Likewise, no other ancient personality has inspired as much venomous dislike as Cicero, especially in more modern times.<ref>Bailey, D.R.S. ''Cicero's letters to Atticus'' (1978) p. 16</ref> His commitment to the values of the Republic accommodated a hatred of the poor and persistent opposition to the advocates and mechanisms of popular representation.<ref>''Letters to Atticus I & II''</ref> [[Friedrich Engels]] referred to him as "the most contemptible scoundrel in history" for upholding republican "democracy" while at the same time denouncing land and class reforms.<ref>Noted in Michael Parenti, ''The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome'', 2003:86. {{ISBN|1-56584-797-0}}</ref> Cicero has faced criticism for exaggerating the democratic qualities of republican Rome, and for defending the Roman oligarchy against the popular reforms of Caesar.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://elearning-gilman.remote-learner.net/pluginfile.php/51701/mod_resource/content/0/Cicero--Justifying_Caesar_s_Death.pdf |title=On Duties |last=Cicero |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170119051143/https://elearning-gilman.remote-learner.net/pluginfile.php/51701/mod_resource/content/0/Cicero--Justifying_Caesar_s_Death.pdf |archive-date=19 January 2017 }}</ref> [[Michael Parenti]] admits Cicero's abilities as an orator, but finds him a vain, pompous and hypocritical personality who, when it suited him, could show public support for popular causes that he privately despised. Parenti presents Cicero's prosecution of the Catiline conspiracy as legally flawed at least, and possibly unlawful.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Parenti |first=Michael |title=The assassination of Julius Caesar: a people's history of ancient Rome |date=2004 |publisher=New Press |isbn=978-1-56584-797-2 |location=New York |pages=93, 107–11 }}</ref>

Cicero also had an influence on modern astronomy. [[Nicolaus Copernicus]], searching for ancient views on earth motion, said that he "first&nbsp;... found in Cicero that [[Hicetas]] supposed the earth to move."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Spielvogel |first=Jackson |url=https://archive.org/details/westerncivilizat00jack_3/page/492 |title=Western Civilization since 1300 |publisher=Cengage Learning |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-111-34219-7 |page=[https://archive.org/details/westerncivilizat00jack_3/page/492 492]}}</ref>

Notably, "Cicero" was the name attributed to size 12 font in typesetting table drawers. For ease of reference, type sizes 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 20 were all given different names.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Tomiša|first=Mario|title=The Impact of the Historical Development of Typography on Modern Classification of Typefaces|journal=Tehnicki Vjesnik- Strojarski Fakultet|issn=1330-3651|location=Varaždin, Croatia|page=906}}</ref>