Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics. He is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists and the innovator of what became known as "Ciceronian rhetoric". Cicero was educated in Rome and in Greece. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC.
First-century AD bust of Cicero at the Capitoline Museums, Rome
Arpino, Italy, birthplace of Cicero
The Young Cicero Reading by Vincenzo Foppa (fresco, 1464), now at the Wallace Collection
Marcus Tullius Cicero dragged from his litter and assassinated by soldiers under the command of Marc Antony 43 BC (1880 illustration)
In modern historiography, ancient Rome encompasses the founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC, the Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic, Roman Empire, and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.
The Capitoline Wolf, now illustrating the legend that a she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus after their mother's imprisonment in Alba Longa
Etruscan painting of dancer and musicians from the Tomb of the Leopards in Tarquinia
The Capitoline Brutus, a bust traditionally identified as L. Junius Brutus, one of the founders of the Republic
The Roman siege of the Celtiberian stronghold of Numantia in Spain in 133 BC