Cicero is one of the most studied persons of antiquity. This status is based not only on the fact that he left a rich collection of writings, but that his speeches and letters allow for a detailed (elite and certainly biased) look at everyday life in late republican Rome. His writings, letters and speeches are and have constantly been mined for information about the ancient world. Likewise, his reception history is as varied as his own writings and began early on, shortly after his death, creating an image which changed and yet remained constant throughout the ages.
The present volume contains the proceedings of a conference which took place at the Warburg Institute in May 2015, dedicated to the ‘Afterlife’ of Cicero. Its focus is on a segment of this afterlife, beginning in the thirteenth century, that is at the onset of the Renaissance. The focus of the book is two-fold: the first six papers trace the impact of Cicero on Italian duecento to cinquecento politics, while the second group of papers goes beyond the Italian context to the Latin American, revolutionary French and Anglophone context. What is missing is a consideration of (the figure of) Cicero in the German-speaking world, which is only briefly referenced in the contribution by Matthew Fox. However, this gap might well be due to the fact that other case studies have already focused on this aspect, notably various essays in William H. F. Altman (ed.), Brill's Companion to the Reception of Cicero (2015).
Manuwald's edited volume instead puts much stress on the political influence of Cicero in earlier centuries. That his influence was continuously great becomes clear in the case studies presented for the Italian context. Contrary to (possible) expectations, Petrarch figures only in the contribution of Laura Refe (ch. 2), where she discusses the marginalia in the Troyes codex on Cicero's De natura deorum, underlining the ‘discussion’ Petrarch engaged in with the ancient author. Focusing instead on lesser-known examples, the volume offers a rich variety of instances in which Cicero the man, the philosopher, the politician and the authority were used to bolster the claims of one or the other, or both sides, to rule.
The volume opens with Catherine M. Keen's contribution (ch. 1), in which she discusses the parallels Bruno Latini drew between himself and the Roman homo novus in the Guelf/Ghibelline conflict, drawing on the figure of the rhetor to stress the importance of speech and oratorical skills in the Florentine polity. Carole Mabboux (ch. 3) then moves to the changing political landscape of due- and trecento Italian towns, demonstrating how the necessity for speech and thus eloquence assigned prime authority to Cicero, while also citing him as moral authority, demonstrating a continuous Ciceronian presence in the writings of that time, even where his perception as historical person shifted.
The visual arts take centre stage in three contributions to the volume, the first of which is Virginia Cox's juxtaposition of Martino Filetico's ‘textual portrait’ of Battista Sforza with Piero della Francesca's ‘visual portrait’ at the palace of Urbino (ch. 4). In both cases, the figure of Cicero serves to underline the supposed and desired virtues of the ruling house of Montefeltro, depicting Battista as a quasi female Cicero while her husband is portrayed as the embodiment of the togate consul, learned and wise. These virtues also explain the absence of a portrait type of Cicero in the Renaissance, as L. B. T. Houghton states (ch. 6), with artists of the cinquecento rather developing a type of Cicero which personified or translated the qualities of an exemplary character, above all eloquence and erudition. The final paper considering Cicero in the visual arts, by Nina L. Dubin (ch. 11), considers the ambiguous role of letters in the context of the visual arts of the French Revolution. While documents in writing were supposed to provide proof, the introduction of the public postal service eroded trust in the written word, as letters were easily manipulated. By comparing various artwork of that time, the author outlines the crux of the revolution, ‘grappling with what it meant to found a republic on contingencies of trust – that is, on paper’ (196).
The question of style is central to Martin McLaughlin's contribution (ch. 5), which outlines the controversy between Ciceronianism and Apuleianism in the sixteenth century and links it to papal policies. By adopting a Ciceronian style for their briefs, questions of style became political statements. David Marsh's consideration of the Caesarian speeches throughout history establishes why this set of speeches was held up as a model despite the fact that the orator was perceived as opportunist, in that he provided a model for courtly, elite discourse in an increasingly monarchical Europe (ch. 7).
Andrew Laird (ch. 8) then outlines Ciceronian influence in Latin America, where the mission-centred education system, in which the Societas Iesu played an important part, led to a Cicero-centred curriculum proliferating in the universities of the ‘new world’. Turning to lesser known texts to outline the development which divorced the figure of Cicero the man from the authority of Cicero the teacher of rhetoric and philosophy in the context of emerging historicism, Matthew Fox (ch. 9) traces a development which acknowledged Cicero as foremost orator, but which judged him — from a supposed higher, modern, moral ground — a deplorable philosopher. The role of Ciceronian philosophy (that is, of his scepticism as expressed in De natura deorum and De divinatione) in the Freethinking controversy is the topic of Katherine East's paper (ch. 10), in which she demonstrates that the authority of Cicero had, after all, remained intact to such a degree that both sides easily referred to him and employed his writings to bolster their own case.
The final paper by Lynn Fotheringham (ch. 12) opens up another, little considered aspect of the afterlife of Cicero: she considers (English-language) biographies written between 1741 and 1894 as physical and commercial objects, introducing Cicero to a wider, non-specialist public with upwardly-mobile aspirations, stressing the authority the figure of Cicero still conveyed as a symbol of education and erudition.
The volume offers a number of intriguing case studies that draw a vivid picture of the interaction with Cicero in different centuries and various media, allowing for glimpses of the changing image of Cicero, while his (rhetorical) authority (though not the regard he was held in) was largely left intact throughout the centuries. The editor states in the preface that the volume was meant to give examples of the way in which Cicero was exploited over the centuries, without a claim to completeness (something that can hardly ever be done); but the reader misses a discussion not only beyond the Italian and Anglophone context, but also beyond the implicit temporal boundaries of the volume. While the expansive focus on the Italian context provides numerous examples of the variability and esteem in which Cicero was held, other areas remain unexplored, e.g. the (lack of) Ciceronian reception in the popular culture of the twentieth century.
However, M. offers a collective volume which introduces the reader to the wide realm of the Ciceronian afterlife, in which the different aspects under which the man from Arpinum may be considered are presented in beautiful and well-selected case studies.
The volume includes various illustrations and a brief index of names.
