Literature and history

come.

Hello and Welcome to Literature

History. Episode 46, The Republic at Twilight.

This program is the first of three shows that will do on the Roman orator and statesman,

Marcus Tullius Cicero.

When Cicero was born in 106 B.C.E. The Roman Republic was beginning to reveal signs of structural weakness, a firebrand

populist here, an illegally long-term in office there a murdered tribune here, a headstrong celebrity general there.

And 63 years later, when Cicero was murdered in 43 BC, a casualty of the cash hungry purges of Mark Antony and Octavian,

the Republic was finished.

For almost all of his adult life, Cicero lived at the center of the Roman world.

And as a succession of populist politicians began to scorn the rule of law in the late republic, fanning the flames of popular unrest for their own game,

Cicero tried his best to reform and preserve the traditional government of Rome, a government that, just as it had assumed sovereignty

over the Mediterranean, began to decay from within.

There are topics and works of literature that we've studied together in this

podcast that seem distant from our lives and experiences today. We might have a

historical and anthropological interest in, for instance, the sacrificial

rights of 7th century B.C. E. Judah. or the contemporary historical allusions of Pindar, or the funerary spellbooks of ancient Egypt.

But we don't sacrifice pigeons anymore, nor do we hire Bard's to sing about Olympic athletes,

nor do we lay our loved ones to rest alongside mystical

incantations and mummified cats.

In short, a lot of what we've explored together so far in literature and history has been a relicary of ancient customs

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