Cicero 106 BC – 43 BC

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, orator, lawyer, and philosopher of the late Roman Republic, who served as consul in 63 BC and was murdered in 43 BC during the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate. His philosophical writings, composed largely in the last years of his life, transmitted the major schools of Hellenistic philosophy to the Latin-speaking world and coined much of the Latin philosophical vocabulary subsequently inherited by medieval and modern European thought. Major works include On Duties, On the Nature of the Gods, the Tusculan Disputations, On Friendship, and On Old Age, all written in the form of dialogues drawing on Stoic, Epicurean, and Academic Skeptic positions. His prose style became the standard for classical Latin and shaped European education for nearly two thousand years. His political ideas profoundly influenced the founders of the American and French republics.