The Nature of the Gods by Marcus Tullius Cicero

He warned: violence is more ruinous than anything else.Ĭicero never challenged Roman slavery, which was among the most brutal in history, but he was more humane than his contemporaries. A war which is launched without provocation, he wrote, cannot possibly be just. He refused to build a personal army like other leading Roman politicians, and he spoke out against violence. Grose Hodge observed that Cicero at his best offered a sustained interest, a constant variety, a consummate blend of humour and pathos, of narrative and argument, of description and declamation while every part is subordinated to the purpose of the whole, and combines, despite its intricacy of detail, to form a dramatic and coherent unit.Īmidst a violent age, Cicero was a man of peace. On one occasion when Cicero spoke, mighty Julius Caesar reportedly trembled so much that he dropped papers he was holding.

Historian Edward Gibbon, who elegantly chronicled Rome’s decline, recalled that when reading Cicero I tasted the beauties of language, I breathed the spirit of freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and examples the public and private sense of a man.Īs Rome’s most famous orator, Cicero prosecuted crooked politicians and defended citizens against rapacious officials. As a writer, Thomas Jefferson called Cicero the first master of the world. Roman author Quintilian remarked that Cicero was the name not of a man, but of eloquence itself. He transformed Latin from a utilitarian language, which served generals, merchants, and lawyers, into a poetic language. Stoic natural law doctrines heavily influenced the Roman jurists of the second and third centuries A.D., and thus helped shape the great structures of Roman law which became pervasive in Western civilization.įor centuries, people read Cicero because of his beautiful Latin prose.

Rothbard praised Cicero as the great transmitter of Stoic ideas from Greece to Rome. When government runs amok, people have a right to rebel-Cicero honored daring individuals who helped overthrow tyrants. Above all, Cicero declared, government is morally obliged to protect human life and private property. These standards became known as natural law.

He insisted on the primacy of moral standards over government laws. Marcus Tullius Cicero expressed principles that became the bedrock of liberty in the modern world.

The Nature of the Gods by Marcus Tullius Cicero