A Written Republic : : Cicero's Philosophical Politics / / Yelena Baraz.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Baraz, Yelena,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2012]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (272 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Acknowledgments --; Abbreviations and Translations --; Introduction --; Chapter 1. Otiose Otium: The Status of Intellectual Activity in Late Republican Prefaces --; Chapter 2. On a More Personal Note --; Chapter 3. The Gift of Philosophy : The Treatises as Translations --; Chapter 4. With the Same Voice: Oratory as a Transitional Space --; Chapter 5. Reading a Ciceronian Preface: Strategies of Reader Management --; Chapter 6. Philosophy after Caesar: The New Direction --; Bibliography --; Index Locorum --; General Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781400842162; 9783110442502
• DOI: 10.1515/9781400842162?locatt=mode:legacy
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Yelena Baraz.

In the 40s BCE, during his forced retirement from politics under Caesar's dictatorship, Cicero turned to philosophy, producing a massive and important body of work. As he was acutely aware, this was an unusual undertaking for a Roman statesman because Romans were often hostile to philosophy, perceiving it as foreign and incompatible with fulfilling one's duty as a citizen. How, then, are we to understand Cicero's decision to pursue philosophy in the context of the political, intellectual, and cultural life of the late Roman republic? In A Written Republic, Yelena Baraz takes up this question and makes the case that philosophy for Cicero was not a retreat from politics but a continuation of politics by other means, an alternative way of living a political life and serving the state under newly restricted conditions. Baraz examines the rhetorical battle that Cicero stages in his philosophical prefaces--a battle between the forces that would oppose or support his project. He presents his philosophy as intimately connected to the new political circumstances and his exclusion from politics. His goal--to benefit the state by providing new moral resources for the Roman elite--was traditional, even if his method of translating Greek philosophical knowledge into Latin and combining Greek sources with Roman heritage was unorthodox. A Written Republic provides a new perspective on Cicero's conception of his philosophical project while also adding to the broader picture of late-Roman political, intellectual, and cultural life.