D.R. Shackleton Bailey, in his otherwise unremarkable 1971 biography Cicero writes:
His judgments were as variable as his feelings, and his principles, though far from being a mere cover for self-seeking, were apt to give under strain. His level of sincerity, sentimental or intellectual, was often shallow, even when he was not consciously playing a part. As his professed philosophy (Romans of culture usually favoured one or other among the current Greek systems) he chose the Academic, which discountenanced dogma and condoned inconstancy of opinion – though he sometimes leaned toward the rigorous positivities of the Stoics. All allowances made for the exigencies of public life and the professional flexibility of an advocate, there remains in him an elusive, ambiguous quality to baffle historians and biographers. Cicero the upright patriot (with human weaknesses) and Cicero the time‑serving humbug are familiar figures. Neither convinces. (emphasis mine)
An interesting topic for Wednesday's chat would be, how this character analysis plays in the novelistic portrait Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Robert Harris, and how the latter compares to other fictional treatment largely known to our group. Such as the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough, or the mysteries by Steven Saylor and John Maddox Roberts.
Or on another plane, how Cicero is perceived in modern biographies and histories:
- Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt;
- The Roman Revolution by Ronald Syme (clearly not a Cicero fan), which we discussed not long ago;
- The Last Generation of the Roman Republic by Erich S. Gruen, which could be subtitled A History of the Ciceronian Age;
- and not to forget Michael Parenti's intellectually dishonest (don't get me going) The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome in which the Catalinian Conspiracy is a figment of Cicero's ambitious imagination and Catalina a persecuted upright popularis.
(There are more such books known to us individually if not collectively, such as the humorous Cicero The Patriot.)
The above image is from Wikimedia Commons: Marcus Tullius Cicero, by Bertel Thorvaldsen as copy from roman original, in Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen.
