Orator

'A wonderful book' TOM HOLLAND'Marvellous... highly entertaining' EMMA SOUTHON'Orator gives us a Cicero for our times... Compelling and beautifully written' EVE MACDONALDA gripping new biography of one of the most influential and fascinating figures in classical history: CiceroWhen the Roman statesman Cicero was murdered in 43 BCE, his head was cut off and his tongue pierced with pins – a final, brutal act of revenge against a man whose words had shaped a generation and made him many enemies. Rising from provincial obscurity to the highest elected office in Rome, Cicero became the greatest orator of his age, a figure who believed that speech itself could defend a republic.Yet Cicero was far more than a master of rhetoric. His long and turbulent life unfolded alongside the collapse of the Roman Republic, and often at its very centre. He moved among Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, crushed a conspiracy that threatened the foundations of Rome and cast himself as the republic’s last hope. His writings on politics, philosophy and society would prove enormously influential, while his uneasy response to the rise of autocratic power continues to provoke admiration and debate.In this gripping new biography, the distinguished classicist Catharine Edwards brings Cicero vividly to life, revealing both the brilliance and the contradictions of a man caught between principle and ambition. At a moment when democratic institutions feel fragile, and the power of persuasion is once again under scrutiny, Cicero’s life speaks to us with renewed urgency.

Catharine Edwards is a professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck, University of London where she has taught since 2001, and is one of the world’s foremost experts on Roman History. A Fellow of the British Academy, she has published extensively on Roman cultural history. She translated Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars for Oxford World’s Classics, is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, presented a three-part TV series on Roman imperial women for BBC Four in 2018, and writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement.