A Republic in Letters
A Republic in Letters
Epistolary Communities in Cicero’s Correspondence, 49–44 BCE
The corpus of letters from and to Cicero that survives from the five-year period after Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BCE and his assassination on the Ides of March 44 BCE demands attention as a special medium of political commentary, intervention, and reflection—as well as community-building. The chapter shows how in a commonwealth shattered by civil war and in the process of being transformed in an autocratic key through Caesar’s victory and dictatorship, the letter offers Cicero a medium for various forms of political activism: in and through his correspondence, he tries to come to terms with Caesar, stake out a position for himself in Caesar’s world, and mediate between the centre of power and high-profile Republicans still languishing in exile in various places across the Mediterranean. These efforts are all designed to sustain a community of peers committed to a Republican commonwealth.
Keywords: Cicero, Caesar, civil war, dictatorship, exile, centre and periphery, political culture
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