Cicero in twenty-eight volumes

Spurious composition.Cicero (Marcus Tullius,106–43 BC), Roman lawyer, orator, politician, and philosopher, ofwhom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through thestirring era that saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of JuliusCaesar in a tottering republic. In his political speechesespecially and in hiscorrespondencewe see the excitement, tension andintrigue of politicsand the part heplayed in the turmoil ofthe time. Of about 106speeches, deliveredbefore the Roman peopleortheSenate if they werepolitical, beforejurors if judicial, fifty-eightsurvive (a few ofthem incompletely). InthefourteenthcenturyPetrarchandotherItalian humanists discovered manuscriptscontainingmorethan900letters of which more than800 werewrittenby Cicero andnearly 100by others to him. Theseafford arevelationof theman all the morestriking because mostwere notwritten for publication.Sixrhetoricalworks survive andanother infragments. Philosophicalworksincludeseven extantmajor compositionsandanumber ofothers; andsome lost.There isalso poetry, some original,some astranslationsfrom theGreek.The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.