The literary work of Cicero is in amount much greater than the extant work of any other Latin writerand'in value is second only to the poems of Virgil. It consists of orations, rhe torical' works, philosophical essays and collec tions of letters, and will be taken up in that order.
Of the orations we possess 57 in nearly com plete form and the titles of some 50 more are known. The extant orations are about equally divided between speeches to the Senate or the people on public questions and legal pleas. Cicero spoke by preference .on the side of the defense in both civil and criminal trials, some times making a. clone legal argument, but not infrequently using also political and even liter ary discussions to relieve the formal argument. The public orations are to a considerable extent invectives, especially the four orations against Catiline and the 14 Philippics against Antony, and these are at times bitter to a degree that modern taste would condemn, even in the most excited political struggles. But the wit, the fire, the humor and breadth, the easy handling of complex argument and the perfection of stylistic form are such that no critic, either an cient or modern, has seriously questioned Cicero's supremacy in Roman oratory.
The rhetorical works deal chiefly with ora tory; several are text-books on the theory and practice bf public speaking, one is a history of Roman oratory and one is a discussion of the ideal in oratory. While Cicero did not attempt a wholly novel treatment of these subjects, there is in the works much of the ripe judg ment of the practised speaker who was inter ested also in the theory of his life work, and they contain some of his most finished and de lightful writing.
The philosophical works are constitutional and ethical essays in dialogue form. Cicero. himself regarded them as useful means of mak ing educated Romans better acquainted Greek philosophy, especially of the Academic and Stoic schools, and made for them no claim to originality of thought.
We possess also a collection of nearly 800 letters by Cicero, with nearly 100 more from his correspondents. They begin with the year 68 and with some breaks continue down to year of his death. About half of them are addressed to his intimate friend T. Pomponius Atticus, the rest to various persons, including almost all the eminent men of his time. Sow few of them are formal and guarded in expres sion, but the majority, especially those ad dressed to Atticus, are extremely Intimate and confidential, written without thought of publica tion. They give a most interesting picture of the progress of events and changes of opinion during a critical period of Roman history, and they also reveal some of the weaknesses of Cicero's character and have furnished the ma terial upon which the harsher judgments of his conduct have been founded.
The uncertainty of the judgment of poster ity— to which appeal is often made as if it were always precise and infallible— was never better illustrated than in the history of opinion in regard to Cicero. During the earlier cen turies after the Revival of Learning, when tention was fixed upon correct and elegant Latinity, the judgment which scholars formed in regard to Cicero's public career was really determined by their Just admiration for his Latin style. And most scholars up to the be
ginning of the 19th century continued to oc-' cupy the uncritical position. But with the rise of historical science a revision of opinion was inevitable. This found expression in Drumann's history of Rome and later in Mommsen's history; in both of these writers, however, the extravagant and passionate dis crediting of Cicero was as marked as the earlier unquestioning worship had been. The influence of Mommsen's authority is still- to be in popular and school histories, though scholars have long understood its inaccuracy. But though opinion varies within narrower limits, it still varies somewhat, for reasons which are to be found partly in the character of Cicero and partly in the nature of the constitutional and political questions that are connected with his career. Cicero was, as tnost orators are, a man in whose temperament emotion and sensi bility were more controlling than intellect or will. Such a man is always liable to the charge of inconsistency and his conduct is certain to show extremes of weakness and of strength. On three occasions, in the trial of Roscius, in the affair with Catiline and in the struggle with Antony, he showed the hot courage of attack, but in the trial of Milo he failed to ex hibit the cool and steady courage required to face mob violence. At the outbreak of the civil war he hesitated long—not wholly with out reason—and after the death of Cksar his vacillation amounted to weakness, but taken as a whole his public life was a consistent expres sion of his patriotic feeling. His depression during his exile was great but not greater than his cheerfulness during the unhappy years pre ceding 44. His vanity — of which Mommsen makes much—is indeed repellant to our taste, but it was a foible of his race; Caesar, not in general a vain man, wrote the extraordinary dispatch, Veni, vidi, vici, and Horace, certainly a modest man, wrote the Exegi monumentun. A character in which an instinctive artistic per ception and a trained intelligence are directed by the emotional temperament of the orator is not to be summarized in a formula.
The political situation, also, when an old constitution was giving way to personal rule, is of a kind about which men will always differ; half the discussion in regard to the character of Cicero is fundamentally an expression of opin ion or feeling about such constitutional crises. The severest critics of Cicero have been Ger man scholars, eminent indeed, but accustomed to feudal traditions and inexperienced in the workings of a free constitution. The judgment of English scholars, though not unanimous, has been more liberal,
The best edition is C. F. W Miiller's