ABSTRACT
In 146 b.c. the Greeks were conquered by a new aggressive people—to the Greeks they were barbarians—known as Romans. Rome, the Eternal City. The home of many of the ideas and achievements that make America proud to think of itself as the New World Rome, duplicated in part in the people own capital, Washington. The word “forum,” akin to Latin foris and fores, came to mean a marketplace or public place to conduct judicial and public business. There were forums, or open gathering places, in most Roman cities. The process of Romanization carried with it much of the popular culture of the vast empire, and made Latin the universal language of the empire. The best biography, by Gaston Boissier, was published in France in 1857, and translated into English forty years later. Passionately devoted to the Republic, Cicero was neither a populist nor demagogue. Cicero was one of history’s most prolific letter writers, and over 800 of them have endured.
