Cicero’s Philosophy of Histor

Author: Fox, Matthew
Title: Cicero’s Philosophy of Histor
Place edition: Oxford
Editor: Oxford University Press
Year edition: 2007
Pages: 368
Keywords: Philosophie - Filosofia - Philosophy
Review:

Jonathan P. Zarecki, "Bryn Mawr Classical Review" 2008.06.3

Gildenhard, Ingo, "Gnomon", 84, 8, 2012, 752-754

Description: [Abstract] Cicero has long been seen to embody the values of the Roman republic. This provocative study of Cicero’s use of history reveals that rather than promoting his own values, Cicero uses historical representation to explore the difficulties of finding any ideological coherence in Rome’s political or cultural traditions. Matthew Fox looks to the scepticism of Cicero’s philosophical education for an understanding of his perspective on Rome’s history, and argues that neglect of the sceptical tradition has transformed the doubting, ambiguous Cicero into the confident proponent of Roman values. Through close reading of a range of his theoretical works, Fox uncovers an ironic attitude towards Roman history, and connects that to the use of irony in mainstream Latin historians. He concludes with a study of a little-known treatise on Cicero from the early eighteenth century which sheds considerable light on the history of Cicero’s reception. Contents : 1.Introduction 1 - 2.Struggle, Compensation, and Argument in Ciceros Philosophy 22 - 3.Reading and Reception 55 - 4.Literature, History, and Philosophy: The Example of De re publica 80 - 5.History with Rhetoric, Rhetoric with History: De oratore and De legibus 111 - 6.History and Memory 149 - 7.Brutus 177 - 8.Divination, History, and Superstition 209 - 9.Ironic History in the Roman Tradition 241 - 10.Cicero from Enlightenment to Idealism 274 - 11.Conclusions 304 - Bibliography 322
Author initials: Fox 2007