Commentary

• “Epicurean and Stoic political thought.”

  - Malcolm Schofield, “Epicurean and Stoic political thought,” in C. Rowe and M. Schofield, 435-56., 2000.

• Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders

  - Harvey Mansfield, Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders. Ithaca, N.Y., 2001.
  Overview: –  Machiavelli’s New Modes and Orders is the only full-length interpretive study on Machiavelli’s controversial and ambiguous work, Discourses on Livy. These discourses, considered by some to be Machiavelli’s most… More

• Reading Cicero: Genre and Performance in Late Republican Rome.

  - Catherine E. W. Steel, Reading Cicero: Genre and Performance in Late Republican Rome. London, 2005.
  Overview: –  M. Tullius Cicero was a prolific writer, his writing covering an astonishingly wide spectrum: oratory, letters, epic and didactic poetry, pamphlets, philosophical and rhetorical treatises. He was also a major political figure at Rome… More

• Thinking about Property: From Antiquity to the Age of Revolution.

  - Peter Garnsey, Thinking about Property: From Antiquity to the Age of Revolution. Cambridge, 2007.
  Overview: –  Explores ancient ‘foundational’ texts relating to property and their reception by later thinkers in their various contexts up to the early nineteenth century. The texts include Plato’s vision of an ideal polity in the… More

• The End of Dialogue in Antiquity

  - Simon Goldhill, The End of Dialogue in Antiquity. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
  Overview: –  Dialogue’ was invented as a written form in democratic Athens and made a celebrated and popular literary and philosophical style by Plato. Yet it almost completely disappeared in the Christian empire of late antiquity. This book, the… More

• “Ciceronian dialogue.”

  - Malcolm Schofield “Ciceronian dialogue,” in S. Goldhill (2008), 63-84., 2008.

• “Cicero on natural law and the laws of the state.”

  - Elisabeth Asmis, “Cicero on natural law and the laws of the state,” Classical Antiquity, 27.1: 1-33., 2008.

• “How Machiavellian is Cicero?”

  - David Samuel Fott, “How Machiavellian is Cicero?,” in The Arts of Rule: Essays in Honor of Harvey C. Mansfield, eds. S. R. Krause and M. A. McGrail. Lanham, Md.: 149-65., 2009.
  Overview: –  Two generations of students inspired by Harvey Mansfield come together here to demonstrate how their diverse approaches illuminate the topic of the arts of rule and speak to the wide scope of Mansfield’s contributions. The essays… More

• Recovering the Ancient View of Founding: A Commentary on Cicero’s De Legibus

  - Timothy W.  Caspar, Recovering the Ancient View of Founding: A Commentary on Cicero’s De Legibus. Lanham, Md., 2011.
  Review: A discursive yet exclusively philosophical commentary on the arguments of the dialogue itself…. Overall Caspar offers a very successful challenge to the conventional view that Cicero’s Laws is a derivative or misconceived work of political… More

• “Cicero and the stability of states.”

  - Xavier Marquez, “Cicero and the stability of states,” History of Political Thought 32.3: 397-423., 2011.

• “Cicero and the rebirth of political philosophy.”

  - Walter Nicgorski, “Cicero and the rebirth of political philosophy,” in Cicero’s Practical Philosophy, ed. W. Nicgorski. Notre Dame, Ind.: 242-82., 2012.

• A Written Republic: Cicero’s Philosophical Politics.

  - Yelena Baraz, A Written Republic: Cicero’s Philosophical Politics. Princeton, New Jersey, 2012.
  Overview: –  In the 40s BCE, during his forced retirement from politics under Caesar’s dictatorship, Cicero turned to philosophy, producing a massive and important body of work. As he was acutely aware, this was an unusual undertaking for a Roman… More