ABSTRACT
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), statesman, lawyer, scholar, writer, and, reputedly, Rome’s greatest legal orator, was declared by the legal historian, Maitland, to have left his ideas ‘on every page of western jurisprudence’. As a jurist, he sought to bring the lessons of Greek philosophy into a consideration of law as the highest reason, implanted in man and providing a universal standard by which justice and injustice might be measured. Born in Arpino, he studied with Philo in Rome and Antiochus in Athens. He became one of Rome’s consuls in 63 BC, and participated as a principal figure in the crushing of the insurrection by Catiline. Following exile in 58 BC, he returned to Rome, became an augur in 53 BC, and was promoted to govern Cilicia. He opposed Mark Antony’s seizure of power after Caesar ’s assassination. Antony gave personal orders for the murder of Cicero, which took place in brutal fashion in 43 BC. Cicero’s major political and legal tracts were completed between 54-44 BC; all have been studied extensively by generations of scholars, and reflect his view of the significance of the basis of the state and the essence of law in a manner which gives them relevance for our day.
