How to run a country with Cicero

Part XII of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series

[Based on How to Run a Country: An Ancient Guide for Modern Leaders, by Cicero, translated by Philip Freeman. Full book series here.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero knew how to run a country. He did it, very successfully, during the year of his Consulship of the Roman Republic, in 63 BCE. In fact, not only did he carry out the normal functions of a Consul, the highest office in what we would today call the executive branch of the Roman government, he also managed to uncover and successfully defeat a conspiracy against the State orchestrated by the disgruntled nobleman Lucius Sergius Catilina.

But Cicero wasn’t just a statesman (and very successful orator and public advocate), he was also a philosopher. Which means that he took time to reflect and write about crucial issues concerning government. How should a good society be structured? Indeed, what do we mean by a “good” society? What is the source of just laws? What sort of balance of powers should we aim for?

These are questions that still concern us today, and to which we are still struggling to find good answers. Philip Freeman, the translator of various excerpts of Ciceronian works that Princeton Press collected under How to Run a Country: An Ancient Guide for Modern…