# Who is Cicero?
**URL:** https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908
**Category:** Philosophy
**Created:** [February 6, 2006, 5:23pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908 "2006-02-06T17:23:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dan020350](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dan020350)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 5:23pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/1 "2006-02-06T17:23:46Z")
Is Cioran and Cicero the same person?
I checked Cioran out in the greatest philosphers post, and when I read a little about him I felt a sleep and I felt he was corny. However, by accident one day I saw the name Cicero, when I read a few sentences around the book I wa impressed. And thought he was another Heraclitus.
So tell me if you know, why is Cicero great?
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### Author:  [@TheAdlerian](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/TheAdlerian)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 5:26pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/2 "2006-02-06T17:26:06Z")
Cicero was a stoic and is famous for a series of letters that he exchanged with an unknown persons about the ethics of stoic behavior.
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### Author:  [@dan020350](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dan020350)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 5:34pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/3 "2006-02-06T17:34:09Z")
I don’t know about your answer. Because it is easy for someone to say he is famous because he wrote a few letters. Or because he wrote something about ethics of stoic behavior.
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### Author:  [@TheAdlerian](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/TheAdlerian)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 5:35pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/4 "2006-02-06T17:35:38Z")
What do you mean? The letters were about stoic behavior.
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### Author:  [@W.J\_Wilczek](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/W.J_Wilczek)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 5:44pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/5 "2006-02-06T17:44:04Z")
edited
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### Author:  [@TheAdlerian](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/TheAdlerian)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 5:48pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/6 "2006-02-06T17:48:19Z")
Opps!
I just checked my books out and I am indeed talking about Seneca!
Hey fuck Cicero!
 Sorry!
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### Author:  [@dan020350](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dan020350)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 5:54pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/7 "2006-02-06T17:54:19Z")
hehe 😃
you guys crack me up sometimes.
first it seems you know what you are talking about and hold on to your beliefs …then I dunno wat 2 say.
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### Author:  [@TheAdlerian](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/TheAdlerian)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 5:55pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/8 "2006-02-06T17:55:54Z")
Yes, but I was in the state of talking about Seneca, so I was sticking to my defense of his importance.
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### Author:  [@dan020350](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dan020350)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 6:00pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/9 "2006-02-06T18:00:59Z")
> [@W.J. Wilczek](#):
>
> Dear Alderian:
>
> I think that you are thinking of Seneca; who was likely the wisest man who ever lived.
Now, why would you say something like that, having you learned from ThheAdlerian 's mistake. You should have said, " To me Seneca is the wisest man who ever lived"
I think once we declared someone the wisest, the goal is to surpass him.
Do we agree?
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### Author:  [@TheAdlerian](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/TheAdlerian)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 6:02pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/10 "2006-02-06T18:02:46Z")
Perhaps WW was being generous to me in my mistaken state.
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### Author:  [@dan020350](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dan020350)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/11 "2006-02-06T18:13:06Z")
😒 nice response, but that would make me think that I am a devil.
 and depraises your intelligence.
If this is true then I would clearly apologize.
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### Author:  [@W.J\_Wilczek](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/W.J_Wilczek)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 6:14pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/12 "2006-02-06T18:14:45Z")
edited
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### Author:  [@TheAdlerian](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/TheAdlerian)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 6:16pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/13 "2006-02-06T18:16:19Z")
Nope it’s just a nod to my fallibility.
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### Author:  [@TheAdlerian](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/TheAdlerian)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 6:18pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/14 "2006-02-06T18:18:33Z")
Tacitus:
It’s worth reading his stuff.
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### Author:  [@Mucius\_Scevola](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Mucius_Scevola)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 8:50pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/15 "2006-02-06T20:50:07Z")
Ah, let not the wind of confusion lead our minds astray. For that matter, let’s shed some light on the matter, shall we ?
Cicero was a Roman who played a significant role in the literary, as well as the politics area of the late Roman Repulica. He was quite the universal man for his time, and is credited as a very prolific author, above Seneca and even Augustine of Hippo. He wrote letters, some fifty something speeches and, towards the twilight of his life, philosophy. He was a good man.
Seneca is a different story. I have a friend who calls himself Seneca. Seneca the Great, he says.
Some two thousand years later, in the Carpatho-Danubiano-Ponthic area, today’s Romania, the descendants of the same people amongst which Cicero emerged gave birth to Emil Cioran, modern writer, philosopher and essayist, dubbed ‘doctor in death matters’. He lived in a penthouse in Paris for most of his life and ate at the students’ canteen. He rode a bike. He gives account that once he rode his bike along the alleys of a cemetery, until stopping besides a funerary stone to smoke a cigar and have a rest. Later he told that that was the most active period of his life. As a matter of fact, the ‘doctor in death matters’ was something that he had come up with, in his twenties or something. By all means, he was no optimist. Actually, he was quite the opposite: he was an insomniac. Meaning he slept less, and naturally, had more time to read and write. In fact, here are some of his aphorisms, which I have carefully picked out with my own delicate fingers and translated with my piercing intellect:
[i]‘To be alive’ - suddenly, I am smitten by the oddness of this expression, as if it didn’t apply to anyone in particular.
When refusing your own lyrism, the blotting of a page becomes a challenge: what good is it to write exactly what you had in mind ?..
What a disappointment that the wiseman that I am mostly in need of right now, Epicurus, wrote more than three hundred treaties ! Oh, and what a relief that they’re lost.
Religion, as any of the other ideologies that have inherited its viciousness, is nothing but a crusade against humor.
It’s easier to follow Jupiter than Lao Tzu.
Asking man to love anoher man is absurd. It’s like asking a virus to love another virus.[/i]
Ok, that’s enough said, you get the idea. The essence - if there is such a thing - is that Cicero was a philosophy canner, while Cioran was a caviller, albeit a very talented one.
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### Author:  [@someemofag](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/someemofag)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/16 "2006-02-06T23:58:20Z")
Marcus Tullius Cicero made his mark on history by being one of the most malevolent and envious historians of all the time. He was a self-enriching slaveholder, slumlord, and senator deploring all of the slightest moves toward democracy and egalitarian progress. Rulers, he insisted, should always be persons of the affluent class. “When you appoint a judge, it is perfectly proper to be guided by considerations of property and rank.” An example of his callousness towards the “mob” is summed up in a quote regarding a plebeian movement for land reform which was being lawfully sought for in the Tribunus Plebis, “I prefer the most unjust peace to the most righteous war.” The war he is referring to is a threat the Praetor made towards the Plebes. However you would never know this from reading how far up his ass historians down through the ages have been. His ideological class bias makes him a favorite among all those great gentlemen historians.
If you don’t believe me then check out this book, [The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565847970/104-3906768-8614353?v=glance&n=283155)
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### Author:  [@dan020350](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/dan020350)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2006, 3:42am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/17 "2006-02-07T03:42:36Z")
=D\> You guyz sure know your philosophies , I hope that does not make you guys uncool.
I’m in the mist of reading cicero, " The nature of the gods", fabulous, more fabulous then reading essays and posts in the forum. 😆
almost.
=D\> end of discussion
there is nothing else to say because there is nothing else to say
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### Author:  [@someemofag](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/someemofag)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2006, 9:18pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/who-is-cicero/8908/18 "2006-02-07T21:18:42Z")
Well we could discuss my post regarding Cicero. I would like to get peoples opinions on him. I hate him with a passion. : ) I would like to know if anyone else feels the same.