Author: Breunesse, Merlijn & van Gils, Lidewij
Title: Cicero and Political Agency in Late-Republican Rome
Review/Collection: In: Silvia Castelli and Ineke Sluiter, Agents of Change in the Greco-Roman and Early Modern Periods, Brill, 2023 (chapter 6).
Place edition: Leiden-Boston
Editor: Brill
Year edition: 2023
Pages: 129–147
Keywords: Histoire - Storia - History
Description: Cicero has taken up the role of agent of change in many fields, most notably that of education, philosophy, and politics.1 However, he was always anchoring his innovations: instead of presenting his ideas as disruptions or novelties, he prefers to present them as a logical continuation of preceding traditions. As a result, he has been judged a conservatist rather than an innovator. (…) In this chapter, we shall investigate Cicero’s explicit ideas about political agency and about his role as a political agent in the last of these conflicts, namely the one between Octavian and Mark Antony, focusing on Cicero’s apparent awareness of the complex social dynamics and of his own (possible) influence on it. Cicero opposed the tendency to grant too much personal power to individual generals and strived for a restoration of the traditional res publica. We know that his efforts did not counter the tendency towards dictatorship that had already started with the civil war between Sulla and Marius, and maybe he had been fighting a losing battle from the very beginning, but he tried everything within his power to force a political change of direction. In this chapter, we consider whether he was aware of key elements needed for political or other social changes, whether he consciously used these elements, and if and how he reflected on their use [Author]
Works:
Link: https://brill.com/display/book/9789004680012/BP000016.xml?body=fullhtml-60832
Author initials: Breunesse & van Gils 2023
Title: Cicero and Political Agency in Late-Republican Rome
Review/Collection: In: Silvia Castelli and Ineke Sluiter, Agents of Change in the Greco-Roman and Early Modern Periods, Brill, 2023 (chapter 6).
Place edition: Leiden-Boston
Editor: Brill
Year edition: 2023
Pages: 129–147
Keywords: Histoire - Storia - History
Description: Cicero has taken up the role of agent of change in many fields, most notably that of education, philosophy, and politics.1 However, he was always anchoring his innovations: instead of presenting his ideas as disruptions or novelties, he prefers to present them as a logical continuation of preceding traditions. As a result, he has been judged a conservatist rather than an innovator. (…) In this chapter, we shall investigate Cicero’s explicit ideas about political agency and about his role as a political agent in the last of these conflicts, namely the one between Octavian and Mark Antony, focusing on Cicero’s apparent awareness of the complex social dynamics and of his own (possible) influence on it. Cicero opposed the tendency to grant too much personal power to individual generals and strived for a restoration of the traditional res publica. We know that his efforts did not counter the tendency towards dictatorship that had already started with the civil war between Sulla and Marius, and maybe he had been fighting a losing battle from the very beginning, but he tried everything within his power to force a political change of direction. In this chapter, we consider whether he was aware of key elements needed for political or other social changes, whether he consciously used these elements, and if and how he reflected on their use [Author]
Works:
Link: https://brill.com/display/book/9789004680012/BP000016.xml?body=fullhtml-60832
Author initials: Breunesse & van Gils 2023
