Cicero

Cicero was born at Arpinum, a small town south of Rome, into the equestrian class rather than the nobility. He rose through the courts and the Senate on the strength of his oratory, was elected consul in 63 BCE and crushed the conspiracy of Catiline. He then chose the losing side in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, attacked Antony savagely after Caesar's death, and in 43 BCE was killed by Antony's men, his head and hands nailed to the speakers' platform in the Forum.

Most of his philosophical works were written in years of political eclipse, above all in 45 and 44 BCE after his daughter's death. He did not see himself as an original philosopher but as the translator of the Greek schools into Latin for Roman readers. To do so he coined a large Latin vocabulary, words such as qualitas, essentia and moralis, which passed from Latin into every European language.

In epistemology he leaned to the moderate scepticism of the Academy, in ethics toward the Stoics, and in politics he argued for a mixed constitution and natural law. On Duties, a moral handbook for his son, was read as a classic through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Petrarch's discovery of his letters began the humanist movement. He is the bridge between Greece and Europe.