Cicero

Life and writing

Stanford’s account gives Cicero’s lifetime as 106–43 BCE and places his work in the politics of the late Roman republic. It describes philosophical interests extending beyond the expressly philosophical books into rhetoric, speeches and letters. The profile uses that account for separate life and writing context, without converting those years into quotation composition dates. The Gutenberg catalogue’s authority dates differ from this biography; the profile does not use them to revise the archive. The separate Marcus Tullius Cicero contributor identity remains unmerged.

The leisure passage in De Officiis III.1 reports a remark of Scipio through Cato before Cicero discusses his own circumstances. Its source setting therefore complicates reading the anthology’s line as a direct personal declaration by Cicero. In I.42, the argument criticises a gift that is funded by injury to another person. Walter Miller’s 1913 English renders both passages differently from the anthology. The selected links preserve those anthology texts while inviting a reader to examine reported speech and the relationship between generosity and justice.

Reading this voice

Read III.1 and notice who originally speaks the leisure remark: Cicero reports Scipio through Cato, then compares his own enforced leisure. The anthology keeps only one part of the reported saying. Read I.42 next to see why a benefit to one person does not excuse injury to another. Both English counterparts differ from the archive. No author field or quotation date is changed, and the supplied records associated with the name remain independently unverified.

Subjects to explore

Words to begin with

• He is never less at leisure than when at leisure.
• Those who injure one party to benefit another are quite as unjust as if they converted the property of others to their own benefit.