Cicero: Redner, Staatsmann, Philosoph. By WILFRIED STROH. Wissen. Munich: 
C.H. Beck, 2008. Pp. 128. Cloth, €7.90. ISBN 978–3–406–56240–2.


Previously published CJ Online reviews are at 
http://classicaljournal.org/reviews.php


A CJ Online Exclusive: 2008.09.04

W. Stroh (hereafter S.) ranks among the most renowned Cicero scholars of 
the last few decades. Along with C.J. Classen and M. Fuhrmann, he helped 
propel the research of Ciceronian rhetoric into the limelight of German 
philology. His 1975 Taxis und Taktik remains an invaluable starting point 
for the study of structural design and rhetorical strategy in Cicero’s 
speeches. Stroh’s latest book is a brief introduction to the life and 
works of Cicero. The narrative follows an essentially chronological 
sequence, divided into seven chapters: Der Aufstieg (106–64 BCE), Triumph 
und Sturz (63–57), Cicero rehabilitiert und entmachtet (57–54), Cicero 
wird politischer Philosoph (55–49), Cicero unter Caesar (49–44), 
Rhetorica et Philosophica (46–44), Der letzte Kampf (44–43). All this 
in 122 pages, plus a concise overview of (mostly German and mostly older) 
secondary literature, a timetable of major events and of Cicero’s 
writings, and an index of persons.

S. draws almost exclusively from Cicero’s oeuvre, generally avoiding 
debates found in the secondary literature (though he incorporates opinions 
from his own scholarly labors in true Ciceronian fashion: nec deprehendetur 
manifesto quid a nobis de industria fiat [Orator, 219]). The choice to 
forego references when quoting Cicero is frustrating at times, but usually 
only when S. brings out a lesser known tidbit on which a reader might be 
keen to follow up. The range of quotations itself demonstrates that S. is 
among the few individuals today who have digested all of Cicero’s 
writings—no mean task, considering that the corpus represents nearly 90% 
of extant Republican texts.

Lucid style accompanies a knack for storytelling. S. subtly encourages his 
audience to follow Cicero’s life with the same zeal as he himself has 
throughout his professional career. He gracefully weds the orator’s means 
of persuasion, docere and delectare (on movere see below). The central 
thesis is that Cicero used rhetoric to serve Rome on the model of Plato’s 
ideal politician (pp. 12 and 122). Cicero’s “Lebensplan” cultivated 
this Platonic ideal (essentially the well-known “Philosophenkönig”). 
This thesis provides S. with a lens through which to view Cicero. The 
various political and ethical quagmires he faced, documented in the public 
writings and private(?) letters, represent a broad attempt to reconcile his 
political fortunes with that ever elusive ideal.

Readers may not subscribe to S.’s basic take on Cicero. But they will 
surely benefit from the wealth of details that S. includes along the way 
and that are invaluable to any introduction. He elucidates a broad array of 
rhetorical and cultural terms (homo novus, tirocinium fori, declamatio, in 
utramque partem, iuris peritus, status/staseis, proscriptio, repetundae), 
although beginners will miss an explanation of libertus/patronus when S. 
remarks that a proscribed man’s slaves became Sulla’s personal freedmen 
(p. 19). We get a brief outline of criminal procedure (p. 26) and of the 
traditional handbook divisions of forensic speeches (p. 28). But in order 
to counter overly schematic definitions of oratorical composition, S. also 
analyzes the structure of Cicero’s repetundae defense speeches, which do 
not necessarily follow this hypothetical scheme. S. is at his best (as 
readers of Taxis und Taktik would expect), for example, when examining the 
layout, arguments and staging of the Pro Fronteio (pp. 29–30).

In general, larger issues and themes are ably handled even when they arise 
at distinct points within Cicero’s life. Thus S. introduces the issues 
surrounding the “Atticism” debate when discussing the Pro Plancio of 54 
(p. 52), with a cross-reference to the later discussion of the Orator and 
Brutus of 46 (p. 83—which also contains a cross-reference back to the Pro 
Plancio).

S. also frequently comments on the quality of Cicero’s works and makes 
observations about their reception. Some readers may find the rendering of 
such verdicts unfashionable, but it has the merit of creating interest in 
these texts and of suggesting starting points within the huge corpus. These 
evaluations also admirably fulfill another important obligation: they 
remind us that no introduction or piece of scholarship can serve as a 
substitute for Cicero’s works themselves. S.’s qualitative judgments 
are implicitly a constant yet never overbearing exhortation to read the 
original texts.

The emphasis on Cicero’s philosophically guided “Lebensplan” creates 
some distortions of matter and interpretation. The analysis of the 
“Werktrias” of the late 50’s is fuller than other sections, since S. 
views these dialogues not only as a literary attempt to transpose Platonic 
writings into a Roman context, but as the biographical embodiment of 
Cicero’s most cherished principles (roughly: De Oratore = his rhetorical 
aspirations; De Re Publica = his political aspirations; De Legibus = his 
desire to continue to provide order to the Roman state). In this section, 
as in the later focus on the rhetorical texts of 46 and on the 
philosophical encyclopedia of 45/44, S.’s interpretations tend to be 
conventional, acknowledging but not entirely attuned to the literary and 
epistemological complexities of the dialogue genre. Thus, for example, S. 
emphasizes the fundamental importance of Academic Skepticism, yet says 
little about what we are to make of Cicero’s presence as a literary 
protagonist: should we think of this figure as Cicero (the authorial voice) 
or as “Cicero” (a character with no greater authority than any other)?

All in all, this book can certainly be employed as background reading for a 
German Vorlesung or Proseminar. Should a translation appear—the quality 
and terseness recommend one—the book would appeal to American 
undergraduates in a lecture course covering Cicero or rhetoric, or in a 
more advanced seminar on Cicero. It is stylistically engaging, with 
occasional sal et facetiae, and even some dramatic panache, and no 
comparably informative English introduction of its brevity exists. Unlike 
much recent Anglophone scholarship (Dugan, Fox, Habinek, Steel), S.’s 
biographical approach devotes little space to “Cicero the 
self-fashioner” or the points at which so many different, even 
contradictory, “Ciceros” seem to have been projected. Yet avoiding 
these newer avenues of inquiry may make for a more palatable introduction.

S. concludes by focusing on the period immediately surrounding the 
Philippics, narrating it as a five-part drama (tragedy?) of Cicero’s last 
stand and demise; here S. seeks to engage our sense of pathos (the third 
persuasive technique: movere). The final chapter offers an Ehrenrettung of 
Cicero’s political career (and therefore of his entire life) against a 
long strand of thought which has regarded him as little more than a 
rhetorically brilliant yet unrealistic political hack. S. sees instead a 
tragic hero, representing that other strand of modern interpretation, the 
noble failure to save the Roman Republic from the rise of the Roman Empire. 
Cicero’s life thus serves the reader as a justification of both 
Ciceronian and Republican ideals. This is the ineluctable tug-of-war that 
any modern observer confronts when balancing Cicero’s aspirations against 
the realities of his biography: the conflict between wanting to see in 
Cicero a Philosophenkönig and only being able to make out a broken king.

Christopher S. van den Berg
University of Arizona
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