The Works of Cicero

• The Republic by Plato. The Works of Cicero built on it. - Cicero's *De Re Publica* is built on the *Republic* by design — he borrowed its title, its six books, and its dialogue form to write Rome's answer to Plato - The *Dream of Scipio* that crowns it is a direct remaking of the *Republic*'s Myth of Er, Plato's afterlife vision recast for a Roman statesman - Read Plato first and Cicero's frame snaps into focus — you can see exactly what he's adapting and what he changes to make it Roman
• Phaedrus by Plato. The Works of Cicero built on it. - *De Oratore* names its source out loud: a character points to "Socrates as he appears in the *Phaedrus* of Plato" and asks why they shouldn't do the same - Cicero even translated bits of the *Phaedrus* into Latin himself, citing them in his *Orator* - Read Plato first and the plane-tree staging, the leisurely setting, the whole shape of Cicero's rhetorical dialogues stops feeling like decoration and starts reading as homage
• The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. The Works of Cicero built on it. - Cicero is in direct conversation with the *Nicomachean Ethics* — he names it, argues over its authorship, and engages its Peripatetic doctrine head-on - The *Ethics* is clearly reflected in *De Finibus*, especially Book II's treatment of virtue and the good - Read Aristotle first and you'll see Cicero translating Greek ethical theory into a Roman key — right down to framing *De Officiis* as advice to his own son
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. The Works of Cicero shaped it. - Dante's whole map of Hell rests on one Ciceronian distinction - *De Officiis* splits injustice into force and fraud — "fraud the more hateful" — and Dante builds the lower circles of the *Inferno* on exactly that hierarchy (Canto 11) - Cicero is the moral philosopher behind the architecture: Dante read him alongside Boethius after Beatrice's death and quotes him at length in the *Convivio*
• The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. The Works of Cicero shaped it. - *The Prince* is Cicero's *De Officiis* with the moral signs reversed — Cicero is the shadow text Machiavelli writes against - Cicero used the fox and the lion to forbid the very deceit Machiavelli would later prescribe; the famous "be a fox and a lion" is a point-blank reply to *De Officiis* - Machiavelli's chapters on liberality and mercy engage Cicero's directly, then invert them — virtue that gets a prince killed isn't virtue
• The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne. The Works of Cicero shaped it. - Montaigne's chief philosophical quarry — he quotes and reworks Cicero throughout the *Essays* - His essay "That to study philosophy is to learn to die" lifts its title and whole argument straight from the *Tusculan Disputations*: that the philosopher's life is a rehearsal for death - Read Cicero here and you meet the voice Montaigne is forever turning over in his hands a millennium and a half later
• An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume. The Works of Cicero shaped it. - The model for the kind of philosophy Hume set out to write — elegant, addressed to common life, built to last - Hume devoured Cicero at Edinburgh and openly claimed his ancestry: in the *Enquiry*'s closing section he identifies his own mitigated skepticism with Cicero's Academic skepticism - The skeptical tradition that runs through the *Enquiry* has its Roman headwaters here
• The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. The Works of Cicero shaped it. - Boethius knew his Cicero cold — he wrote a full commentary on him, the *In Ciceronis Topica* - That intimacy feeds the *Consolation*: the turning wheel of Fortune and its parade of historical examples descend from Cicero's *De Officiis* and the *Dream of Scipio* - Cicero's *On Fate* is the partner Boethius is arguing with when the *Consolation* takes up divine foreknowledge against free will
• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. The Works of Cicero shaped it. - Seneca names Cicero directly, citing the letters to Atticus in his own *Letters from a Stoic* - Cicero built the Latin vocabulary for Greek philosophy — and Seneca leans on it, borrowing his terms even where he disagrees - The philosophical letter as a form of moral instruction starts here, a century before Seneca
• The Annals of Imperial Rome by Publius Cornelius Tacitus. The Works of Cicero shaped it. - Cicero is the rhetorical bedrock Tacitus was trained on — his Quintilian-led education was avowedly Ciceronian, and his *Dialogus de Oratoribus* is openly modeled on *De Oratore*, *Brutus*, and *Orator* - But the *Annals* is also a swerve away: its clipped, jagged prose defines itself against Cicero's balanced period, reaching instead toward Sallust

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