Cicero
Hellenistic · Europe · 106 to 43 BCE
Roman statesman and speaker who brought Greek philosophy into Latin. He argued for a careful, moderate kind of doubt.
What it is
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 to 43 BCE) was a Roman lawyer, statesman and orator who lived through the last years of the Roman republic. He was also a philosopher, and around a dozen of his philosophical works survive.
He wrote most of them when he was kept from public life, and he put politics above philosophy. His aim was to make Greek schools of thought, among them Stoicism, Epicureanism and Academic scepticism, available to Roman readers in Latin.
The main ideas
- Philosophy for public life. He valued philosophy most as a guide to action and wrote to influence the political leaders of his time.
- A sceptic in the Academy. He followed the Academic sceptics, who held that certainty is hard to reach and that we must be guided by what is probable.
- Law grounded in nature. In works such as On the Laws and On the Republic he argued that there is a law of nature that human laws should follow.
- Duty. In On Duties he set out what a person owes to others, and the book was widely read for centuries.
- Translator of ideas. He wrote Latin summaries and accounts of Greek schools, giving Latin many of its philosophical terms.
What it looks like in practice
Picture someone in a public job who is asked to do something that benefits them but harms others. Cicero's On Duties would ask what is right in itself, not only what is useful, and treat the two as bound together. This is an illustration of the book's approach, not a quotation.
Books and moments
- On Duties, On the Republic and On the Laws are his best-known works on conduct and politics.
- The Tusculan Disputations are a set of conversations on how to live and face death.
- Hortensius is a lost book urging people to take up philosophy. It later turned Augustine towards philosophy.
Questions and criticism
- Is he an original thinker? For a long time he was valued mainly as a source on Greek schools. Newer readers treat him as a thinker in his own right.
- Can a sceptic believe in natural law? He followed a school that doubted certainty, yet argued for a law of nature, and it is asked how the two fit.
- Should politics come before philosophy? He held that politics comes first, which some have taken as a lack of depth and others as a strength.
Close neighbours
He drew on the Stoics and the Academics and argued with the Epicureans. Augustine later praised his Hortensius. The pages on Stoicism, Epicureanism and Augustine show those links.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 9 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Philosophies they belong to or are close to
Who they connect to
Influenced
- Augustine of Hippo · Augustine says that reading Cicero's Hortensius turned him toward philosophy.
- David Hume · Hume admired Cicero and modelled his dialogue on religion on Cicero's dialogue on the gods.
Reacted against
- Epicurus · Cicero criticised Epicurean ethics at length in his book on the ends of good and evil.
Other Hellenistic thinkers
- Antisthenes · 445 to 365 BCE
- Diogenes of Sinope · 412 to 323 BCE
- Crates of Thebes · 365 to 285 BCE
- Pyrrho of Elis · 360 to 270 BCE
- Epicurus · 341 to 270 BCE
- Zeno of Citium · 334 to 262 BCE
- Cleanthes · 331 to 232 BCE
- Chrysippus · 279 to 206 BCE
- Carneades · 214 to 129 BCE
- Lucretius · 99 to 55 BCE