Philippics

The Philippics are a collection of 14 speeches delivered by Cicero against the character of Marc Antony. The speeches were given in front of the Roman Senate, after the end of the Civil War, and the assassination of Julius Caesar. While Cicero had not been apart of the conspiracy to kill Caesar, he agreed with it in principal, and urged Brutus and Cassius to kill Marc Antony as well.The speeches were effective in convincing the Senate to declare Marc Antony an enemy of the state and send an army against Marc Antony, who has attempting to take Cisalpine Gaul by force. Cicero was at the height of his popularity in Rome. At the Battle of Mutina, the army sent by the Senate was victorious over Antony, but its two commanders were killed in battle while pursuing Antony into Transalpine Gaul. That army fell into the command of Octavian, the legal heir to Julius Caesar. Octavian and Antony next entered into a Triumvirate with Lepidus, and joined forces to exact revenge against Caesars assassins. Before marching east to confront the armies amassing under Brutus and Cassius, the Triumvirate proscribed a list of enemies that were to be murdered. The Philippics against Antony had earned Cicero a place on the list.

The Philippics form the climax of Cicero’s rhetorical achievement and political activity. Besides, these fourteen speeches are an important testimony to the critical final phase of the Roman Republic. Yet for a long time they have received little scholarly attention. This two-volume edition now provides a comprehensive scholarly commentary on Philippics 3-9, seven central speeches of the corpus. Full annotations explain the speeches in terms of linguistic, literary and historical issues (vol. 2); they are based on a revised Latin text with a facing translation into English as well as a detailed introduction dealing with problems relevant to the whole corpus; a bibliography and indices complete the edition (vol. 1). Besides a running commentary on each speech, the study shows these orations to be rhetorical constructs in a historical conflict; hence particular emphasis is placed on an analysis of Cicero’s rhetorical techniques and political strategies. The format of the commentary is also intended to present scholarly information to a wide and diverse readership.

Cicero's Philippics and Their Demosthenic Model: The Rhetoric of Crisis

Cicero's letters to friends span the period from 62 BCE, when his political career was at its peak, to 43 BCE, when he was put to death by the victorious Triumvirs. Cicero was a prodigious letter writer, and happily a splendid treasury of his letters has come down to us: collected and in part published not long after his death, over 800 of them were rediscovered by Petrarch and other humanists in the fourteenth century. Among classical texts this correspondence is unparalleled; nowhere else do we get such an intimate look at the life of a prominent Roman and his social world, or such a vivid sense of a momentous period in Roman history. The 435 letters collected here represent Cicero's correspondence with friends and acquaintances over a period of 20 years, from 62 BCE, when Cicero's political career was at its peak, to 43 BCE, the year he was put to death by the victorious Triumvirs. They range widely in substance and style, from official dispatches and semi-public letters of political importance to casual notes that chat with close friends about travels and projects, domestic pleasures and books, and questions currently debated. This new Loeb Classical Library edition of the Letters to Friends, in three volumes, brings together D.R. Shackleton Bailey's standard Latin text, now updated, and a revised version of his much admired translation first published by Penguin. This authoritative edition complements the new Loeb edition of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, also translated by Shackleton Bailey.

Cicero composed his incendiary Philippics only a few months after Rome was rocked by the brutal assassination of Julius Caesar. In the tumultuous aftermath of Caesar’s death, Cicero and Mark Antony found themselves on opposing sides of an increasingly bitter and dangerous battle for control. Philippic 2 was a weapon in that war. Conceived as Cicero’s response to a verbal attack from Antony in the Senate, Philippic 2 is a rhetorical firework that ranges from abusive references to Antony’s supposedly sordid sex life to a sustained critique of what Cicero saw as Antony’s tyrannical ambitions. Vituperatively brilliant and politically committed, it is both a carefully crafted literary artefact and an explosive example of crisis rhetoric. It ultimately led to Cicero’s own gruesome death. This course book offers a portion of the original Latin text, vocabulary aids, study questions, and an extensive commentary. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, Ingo Gildenhard’s volume will be of particular interest to students of Latin studying for A-Level or on undergraduate courses. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis to encourage critical engagement with Cicero, his oratory, the politics of late-republican Rome, and the transhistorical import of Cicero’s politics of verbal (and physical) violence.