Cicero's Tongue: The Life of Rome's Greatest Orator and the End of the Republic

A new biography of Cicero, one of the most influential and fascinating figures in classical history.

When the Roman statesman Cicero was murdered in 43 BCE, his head was cut off, and his tongue pierced with pins – a final, brutal act of revenge against a man whose words had shaped a generation and made him many enemies. Rising from provincial obscurity to the highest elected office in Rome, Cicero became the greatest orator of his age, a figure who believed that speech itself could defend a ...