Cicero
Another book from my favorite bookstore, McLeod’s Books, on Pender St., a couple/few blocks east of Granville. I can’t even remember the cross street, but this is a great book store. I buy these little penguin classics for ~$3. What a bargain! Its hard to imagine such a bargain as $3 for some of the greatest ideas to ever spring from a human brain, translated into my language of preference and annotated to aid understanding.
In this one, I read, in his own words, some of the ideas of one of the greatest speakers ever. Cicero lived in interesting times too, attempted revolution, corruption, military commanders trying to take over the empire, and through it all remained a liberal democrat. Something that surely speaks to our age. As Praetor he put down a revolution, and never failed to support the republican cause against the military dictators of his generation. His outspoken opposition to Antony finally resulted in the loss of his head, and hands.
Those who write well surely define history. I don’t think Antony left much of note, and so his defense is lost. He won the battle but lost the war.
Cicero seems to have lived as a moral man, and half this book contains his philosophical ideas on how a person should live, written to his son who, apparently was in great need of such a document. Like many Romans, he was essentially a Stoic and so reason and cause were everything. “Only the right is right”, pretty much sums up the Stoic ideal. Happiness, pleasure, feelings of any sort are things that do not factor in decisions, only reason can determine what is the right thing to do. He rails against the Epicureans who were also extremely ascetic by today’s standards, but thought that happiness must be the goal of life. Not endless drunken parties but the happiness that comes from friends and companionship. Cicero paints them more as the drunken party types, which maybe they had become by Roman times, I don’t know.
The introduction and footnotes in this book were really helpful. Especially with the letters, where the translator sets up what is happening to Cicero a that moment in time. I came away knowing something of Cicero’s ideas, something of the history of that time and a hint of his powers of oratory.
Worth 3 bucks? Hell yeah.
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