We said at first that the caprice of fate had exaggerated some sides of Cicero's activity, by removing all competitors. In any case, however, his supremacy among Italian orators, and in the ornate discursive school of eloquence generally, could not have been questioned.
Yet more: As a stylist, he lifted a language hitherto poor in vocabulary, and stiff in phrase, to a level it never afterward surpassed. Many words he successfully coined, chiefly either by translation or free imitation of Greek originals. His clear, copious, rhythmical phrase was even more fully his own creation. Indeed, at the present moment, four or five great forms of living speech testify to Cicero's amazing mastery over both word and phrase. The eloquence of Castelar, Crispi, and Gambetta, of Gladstone and of Everett, is shot through and through, in all its warp and woof, with golden Ciceronian threads. The 'Archias' speaks to any appreciative student of Western Europe, as it were, in a mother tongue which dominates his vernacular speech. Human language, then, has become a statelier memorial of Cicero than even his vanity can ever have imagined.
(After writing the substance of this paragraph, I was glad to find myself in close agreement with Mackail's words in his masterly little 'Latin Literature,' page 62.)
Resumé of General Bibliography
The chief encyclopædia of facts and citations for this period is the cumbrous old 'Geschichte Roms, oder Pompeius Cæsar Cicero und ihre Zeitgenossen' of W. Drumann (Königsberg: 1834-44). The plan is ideally bad, being a series of family chronicles, while these three men are more completely isolated from their families and kin than any other great trio in all Roman history! The book is however an exhaustive, inexhaustible, little acknowledged, but still worked quarry of erudition. The best single book in English is Watson's edition of the (selected) letters (or Jeans's translation), until it shall be superseded by the complete annotated edition of the correspondence, by Tyrrell.
Mommsen's severe judgment on Cicero is well known. The other standard historians are less severe. Forsyth's life is not the final word on the subject by any means, but gives a good general view. The stately Ciceronian Lexicon by Merguet, already complete for the orations, will eventually provide a complete concordance and copious elucidation for all the works. The most accessible complete edition of Cicero's writings in Latin is by Baiter and Kayser, in eleven volumes. The Index Nominum alone fills four hundred closely printed pages of Vol. xi. The great critical edition is that of Orelli (Zurich: 1826-38).
On Cicero as an author, and indeed in the whole field of Latin literature, the 'Geschichte der Römischen Literatur' of Martin Schanz (in I. Müller's 'Handbuch') is most helpful, and even readable.
