Cicero composed his incendiary Philippics only a few months after Rome was rocked by the brutal assassination of Julius Caesar. In the tumultuous aftermath of Caesar’s death, Cicero and Mark Antony found themselves on opposing sides of an increasingly bitter and dangerous battle for control. Philippic 2 was a weapon in that war. Conceived as Cicero’s response to a verbal attack from Antony in the Senate, Philippic 2 is a rhetorical firework that ranges from abusive references to Antony’s supposedly sordid sex life to a sustained critique of what Cicero saw as Antony’s tyrannical ambitions. Vituperatively brilliant and politically committed, it is both a carefully crafted literary artefact and an explosive example of crisis rhetoric. It ultimately led to Cicero’s own gruesome death. This course book offers a portion of the original Latin text, vocabulary aids, study questions, and an extensive commentary. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, Ingo Gildenhard’s volume will be of particular interest to students of Latin studying for A-Level or on undergraduate courses. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis to encourage critical engagement with Cicero, his oratory, the politics of late-republican Rome, and the transhistorical import of Cicero’s politics of verbal (and physical) violence.

The Philippics form the climax of Cicero’s rhetorical achievement and political activity. Besides, these fourteen speeches are an important testimony to the critical final phase of the Roman Republic. Yet for a long time they have received little scholarly attention. This two-volume edition now provides a comprehensive scholarly commentary on Philippics 3-9, seven central speeches of the corpus. Full annotations explain the speeches in terms of linguistic, literary and historical issues (vol. 2); they are based on a revised Latin text with a facing translation into English as well as a detailed introduction dealing with problems relevant to the whole corpus; a bibliography and indices complete the edition (vol. 1). Besides a running commentary on each speech, the study shows these orations to be rhetorical constructs in a historical conflict; hence particular emphasis is placed on an analysis of Cicero’s rhetorical techniques and political strategies. The format of the commentary is also intended to present scholarly information to a wide and diverse readership.

Cicero's Philippics and Their Demosthenic Model: The Rhetoric of Crisis

Although Cicero's Phillipics are his most mature speeches, they have received little attention as works of oratory. On the other hand, scholars in this century have considered Cicero's attitudes toward and dependence on Demosthenes to be an issue of importance. Cecil Wooten brings together these two concerns, linking Cicero's use of Demosthenes as a model in the Phillipics to precise analyses of style, rhetorical modulation, and narrative technique. In doing so he defines and demonstrates the effectiveness of a type of oratory that he terms "the rhetoric of crisis." Characteristic of such rhetoric is the polarization of a conflict into a dichotomy between good and evil, right and wrong. The orator adopts a stance in which he is obsessed with the struggle, with victory, and with the preservation of a tradition. He defines his present crisis in terms of patterns that have appeared in the past, which means that he is likely to choose from the past a model for his own response to the crisis. In Demosthenes, Cicero found a statesman that had faced a similar political situation. Demosthenes' speeches were directed against Philip of Macedon, whose expanding empire threatened the survival of the Greek city-states. Antony posed an equally severe threat to the Roman republic, and Cicero therefore turned to Demosthenes' speeches as a model for his own. The oratory of both was forged during a period of supreme crisis, at a critical turning point in civilization. "Tremendous talent," Wooten writes of this oratory, "is coupled with the instinct for survival, the most basic of human impulses, to produce a form of oratory that is characterized by extreme clarity of vision, purposefulness, vividness, and rapidity of presentation, an oratory that is clean and direct and decisive, in which the organic synthesis of content, arrangement, and style is remarkable and striking." Originally published 1983. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.