Reviews
Book of the Year-The Telegraph "I enjoyed Anthony Everitt'sCiceroand found it the most wonderfully written and perfectly paced book I've read in ages. The way Everitt carefully and comprehensively unfolded the drama brought back the excitement of ancient history superbly." -Andrew Roberts, author ofNapoleonandWellington "We know more about Cicero than about almost any other figure of antiquity. We know so much about him, thanks to the happy chance which has seen so much of his correspondence preserved, that it is possible to write the sort of biography of Cicero that one might write about someone from, say, the nineteenth century. Anthony Everitt has done just that, sympathetically and very well. This is an engrossing book, written lucidly for the general reader." -Allan Massie,Literary Review "Of all the arts, that of politics has advanced least since the days of Greece and Rome. This . . . new biography of Rome's most famous politician by Anthony Everitt tries to answer the question, why? . . . Cicero mastered the essence of politics. He preached the difference between authority and power. He was an orator who wrote poetry, a politician who read history, ruthless yet able to articulate the demands of clemency, democracy and the rights of free men under law. . . . If good government is rooted in history and history in biography, Cicero is the man of the hour." -Simon Jenkins,The Times "In the course of Cicero's long life, he made several powerful enemies, often through his own witty put-downs, and he was accused of everything from cowardice and self-importance to histrionics, homosexuality, and incest. But the great majority of his contemporaries-and of course posterity itself-were much kinder to Cicero, and this engrossing new biography by Anthony Everitt does a superb job of explaining why. . . . [Everitt] is admirably informative. . . . He has a sophisticated conception of character, too, including a willingness-so crucial in biographers-to embrace contradictions." -Independent on Sunday "Anthony Everitt . . . is a brilliant guide to the intricacies of Roman politics. . . . [He] has written a book which is unobtrusively crammed with fascinating information about Roman life and customs, splendidly clear and coherent in its narrative and altogether convincing in its portraiture." -Dublin Sunday Independent "We can relate to Rome in the 1st century BC, an era of public egos and private armies, cut-throat politics, spiritual confusion, conspiracy, luxury, and war. Anthony Everitt's Cicero emerges as the epitome of that time, in all its passions and contradictions. In lucid, fast-moving prose, Everitt deftly depicts the whole man--the brilliant orator and loving father, anguished politician and lousy poet, man of letters and inveterate self-stylist. Everitt's eye for the telling detail and his superb grasp of the ancient sources bring new life to the single most complex personality of a fascinating and violent age." -Richard Martin, Professor of Classics, Stanford University
