Started a biography of Cicero by Anthony Everitt. “His big idea, which he tirelessly publicized, was that of a mixed or balanced constitution.” (p.7)
Marcus Tullius Cicero was born on 3 January 106 BC in Arpinum and died in 43BC, time running backwards from our perspective, at 63, spoiler, beheaded by Marc Anthony, which was OK because routinely killed. He wrote more than three-quarters of extant Latin literature that is known to have existed in his lifetime. He was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic. “Very few other men have both stood at the centre of world events and written so well and fully about the part they played. ” (Michael Grant Cicero: Selected Works)
According to Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, "the Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity." He impact on leaded Enlightenment thinkers and political theorists such as John Locke, David Hume, Montesquieu and Edmund Burke. His name means chickpea. "Plutarch explains that the name was originally given to one of Cicero's ancestors who had a cleft in the tip of his nose resembling a chickpea. However, it is more likely that Cicero's ancestors prospered through the cultivation and sale of chickpeas." (Wikipedia)
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