Power and Persuasion in Cicero's Philosophy

Nathan Gilbert · Margaret Graver · Sean McConnell

jan 2023 · Cambridge University Press

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Extensively trained as a philosopher, Cicero was also a working politician with a keen awareness of the distance between pure intellectual endeavor and effective strategies of persuasion. This volume explores a series of interrelated problems in his works, from the use of emotion, self-correction, and even fiction in intellectual inquiry, to the motives of political agents and the morality of political arguments, to the means of justifying the use of force in international relations. It features close readings of works from all periods of Cicero's philosophical career, from the threshold of Rome's civil war to the year following the assassination of Julius Caesar. For a richer body of evidence, the volume also makes use of material from Cicero's personal letters and political speeches. Power and Persuasion in Cicero's Philosophy will be essential reading not only in Roman philosophy but also for the political and rhetorical culture of the Roman Republic.

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NATHAN GILBERT is an Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at University of Durham.

MARGARET GRAVER is Aaron Lawrence Professor of Classics at Dartmouth College and the author of Seneca: The Literary Philosopher, forthcoming 2023 from Cambridge University Press. Her other publications include Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4 (2002); Stoicism and Emotion (2007); and, with A. A. Long, a complete annotated translation of Seneca's Letters on Ethics.

SEAN McCONNELL is an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Otago. He is the author of Philosophical Life in Cicero's Letters (Cambridge, 2014).