Tea with Cicero

I will write and translate more. Honest. Just tired.

Doing my AS level in Latin (and having pretty much finished off the Cicero! YAY! Though I am admittedly nervous as fuck about my exams), one of my set texts is part of In Verrem. This being an AS level, me having very little if any guidance on just how much studying I need to do at AS level, and me being a geek, I've been reading up on all things Cicero for background. And though I'm only really looking at translations of his work and people commenting on various sources, a picture of the man starts to emerge - a picture of the man pieced together from fragments of fragments, that's true, but a picture nonetheless.

Sometimes when reading about Cicero, or when reading his speeches, and most especially his letters (they are by far the best guide we have to the man), I feel like I'm in his presence. I don't really understand him - it's difficult enough to understand the people around one, let alone understand someone who died thousands of years ago - but I can try my best. There are times when I feel like he's there with me - with us. He would have slotted perfectly into our society; he'd have probably been a Tory and a bit of a self-righteous fuck (perhaps quite a lot of a self-righteous fuck, come to think of that) who might just be perfectly fine with ignoring due process if he thought there were threats to the government from not doing so. Given that right now the dangers to freedom in political systems seem to be a lack of due process, he might not have been very much help; all the same, it would be nice to have someone who could actually speak, as opposed to the crap that passes for rhetoric these days. To be fair, I'd probably despise the man, but he'd at least have some substance to him.