The Life of Cicero

“Cicero was 'almost a Christian, even before the coming of Christ…'


Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) was an orator, statesman, philosopher and writer, who rose in Rome in the turbulent last years of its republican government. He is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.


Anthony Trollope, best known as a novelist, admired Cicero greatly and wrote this two-volume biography late in life in order to argue his virtues against those critics who had granted him literary greatness but questioned his influence as a politician and historical figure. 


Trollope saw great humanity in Cicero: a something almost of Christianity, a stepping forward out of the dead intellectualities of Roman life into moral perceptions, into natural affections, into domesticity, philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty, which do not seem to have been as yet fully appreciated. 


To have loved his neighbor as himself before the teaching of Christ was in those days, no small achievement.


Trollope’s The Life of Cicero remains a useful picture of an historical figure still popular today that benefits from Trollope's great knowledge of his subject, the genius behind it, and his instinctive perception of human varieties.




ANTHONY TROLLOPE (1815-1882) was a British novelist and journalist, one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. He wrote insightful novels on political, social, and gender issues, and on other topical matters. Among his masterworks are the Palliser novels, The Warden, Barchester Towers, and The Way We Live Now.