-
Historical Context
-
Gracchi
- Liberals sort of
- Old Roman family, but pleb oriented
-
Favored Land Reform
- give everyone bounty from conquest
- Both were killed in Riots
-
Sulla turns Republic into de facto Military Dictatorship
- Pompey
- Julius Caesar
- Control of the Military means control of Rome
- Young People in the old days were
expected to go into public life
-
Educated Romans turned to Philosophy
-
Stoics
- Leave your wife and son
- Immortality of the Soul
-
Stoicism attracted early Christians
- Pan-Divination
- Everyone holds a
bit of the divine
inside them.
- Cicero: Why do we have slaves then?
-
Epicurians
- Max Pleasure over time
- Nope. Life is it.
The period is it.
-
"Carpe Diem"
- From Mr. Horace
-
Agnostics?
- No.
- Gods were too perfect to deal with our bullshit
- One cannot look to the Gods for an answer.
-
Cleopatra and Caesar
-
She banged him in the 40s
-
Had a child by Caesar
- He was called "Caesarian"
- Literally, little Caesar
- Caesarian was put to death by Augustus
-
Why did Caesar make Octavian the heir?
- Genetic, Familial thing..
-
Forge a Caesarian Dynasty
- Iulius did trace his line back to Venus and Aeneas
- Saw Antony as a threat to his fame.
-
For example, Alexander
beqathed it to his generals
- because he wanted them to
fight civil wars instead
becoming more famous.
-
Caesar Augustus
-
Imperium
- Power. power a general achieves
to keep discipline during a campaign
- He would not have called himself Emporer
- Imperium is given up after the campaign
-
Think of the War wariness.
- Civil War from 49 - 31.
- So then, Augustus achieved the title Imperator for Life
- Beginning of the technical, historical, empire.
-
Origins
- Not a patrician
-
Death
-
Proscribed
- 43 BC
- Killed by Marc Antony
-
Consul
- 63 BC
-
Novus Homo
- First in his family
to be elected
consul
-
Literary Figure
-
Most of his works survive
- Atticus preserved Cicero's cultural works
-
Genres
-
Rhetoric
-
Orator
- Power of Persuasive Speech
-
The greatest Rhetorician of all time
- Always more conservative than Caesar
- How to be an orator
-
Poetry
- Oh Noetry
- Bad Poetry
-
Forensic
- Speaking in Defense
- Really, Forensic comes from Latin Forum
- Forensic speech defends an individual accused.
-
Deliberative
- Speaking to the people, forum,
- Advocating policy
-
Epistolary
- Letters to everyone
- A bounty of important figures in Republican Rome.
- Geniune Correspondence
- Some places, he was sending a Letter per day.
-
Translator into Latin
- Difficult Greek Works of Astronomy
-
Philosophical Treatises
- He was not an original thinker
- Made greek philosophy practical and open
- Had to adjust Latin for philosophic purposes/descriptions
- Enrichment of the Latin Language to cover Philosophical Greek Ideas
-
Eclectic Philsopher
- Picks and Chooses his ideas
-
University Education
- Tremendous Influence
- Taught from his death
till Today in University.
-
Works
-
De Officiis
- On Duties
- Response to the
first round of
Civil War,
Assassination
- Cicero came out of
Retirement, wrote
speeches after Caeser
assassination
- Intended to be circulated widely