On Government by Marcus Cicero

Author:Marcus Cicero
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

THE PHILIPPICS (IV, V, X):

AGAINST RULE BY ONE MAN

Cicero’s fourteen passionate, rancorous, brilliant speeches against Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), of which two were addressed to the Assemblies1 and the others to the Senate, were given, by himself – half in jest – the name of Philippics, after the speeches delivered by the equally eloquent Athenian Demosthenes against Philip II of Macedonia, nearly three centuries earlier.

Cicero was a passionately convinced Republican, and had deplored the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, even though (mainly on the basis of their shared literary interests) the two men maintained polite social relations. But after Caesar had been assassinated it seemed to the orator intolerable that a second-rate character like Marcus Antonius (Antony) should aspire to carry on the same sort of autocracy.2 To recapitulate what was said in the Introduction, Cicero was not a courageous man, but at this critical juncture he risked his life (and eventually lost it) by these speeches which tried to block Antonius’s path to despotism. They were his ultimate and most splendid contributions to the art of government, and the bravest expressions of his adamant belief that dictatorial rule could not be endured. He had put up with Caesar, but he was not prepared to put up with Antonius, and he risked everything, fatally, in order to say so.3

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.