THE HISTORICAL CICERO

On 4 November 1582 Marc–Antoine Muret, Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Rome, inaugurated the academic year, as was customary, with a lecture introducing a central text. After three years' focus on Tacitus, which have been seen as an important turning point in the history of the later Renaissance, Muret chose to lecture on Cicero's Letters to Atticus. There was no clear break between a Ciceronian and Tacitean culture separating a republican Renaissance from a princely Baroque. While Tacitus surely gained in importance, and certainly took on a specific role in contemporary political and social thought, Cicero, far from disappearing, was correspondingly revaluated. Those who turned to Tacitus as a teacher of political prudence and guide through the labyrinthine deception of princely posturing were equally disposed to use Cicero as an authority for the extreme measures that national– and self-preservation often demanded. Moreover, even when used for such purposes, Cicero remained ‘respectable’ because of the impression generated over the long centuries of European engagement with his rhetorical and philosophical works. Thus, whereas one invariably speaks of the new emphasis on Tacitus, which quickly became Tacitism, with Cicero one must, instead, think in terms of different emphases at different times. As the most famous, and best documented, politician of antiquity, Cicero's maxims about the conduct of affairs carried the weight of experience.