Roman Hero. Marcus Tullius Cicero is the single figure of Greco-Roman antiquity about whom we know the most — in large part because of the vast literary legacy he has left in a variety of genres. In the Middle Ages his writings were prized as a mirror of the ancient world; in the Renaissance a Ciceronian style in one's use of Latin was the hallmark of an educated man. Essentially conservative in outlook, Cicero was to many of his contemporaries a heroic figure, the one who (as he put it) "saved the Republic" in a time of political crisis. What he could not see, of course, is that the shifting sands of Roman politics meant inevitable change for Rome. As Cicero is arguably the single most important figure in the Roman Republic, and certainly in the history of Latin prose, a summary...