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    Read more about Cicero, On Pompey’s Command (De Imperio), 27-49. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, Commentary, and Translation

    Cicero, On Pompey’s Command (De Imperio), 27-49. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, Commentary, and Translation

    (2 reviews)

    Ingo Gildenhard, Cambridge University

    Louise Hodgson, Durham University

    Copyright Year:

    ISBN 13: 9781783740796

    Publisher: Open Book Publishers

    Language: English

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    Attribution Attribution
    CC BY

    Reviews

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    Reviewed by Rosina Catalan, Adjunct Professor, Butler University on 12/1/23

    This is an excellent text for students to gain experience and knowledge of Cicero and other important figures in Late Republic Rome. The text is comprehensive in that it fully covers the historical information necessary to read Cicero's treatment... read more

    Reviewed by Christina Franzen, Associate Professor, Marshall University on 11/30/21

    This is an excellent, comprehensive introduction, text, and commentary on "De Imperio." The introduction is extremely thorough and not only will familiarize undergraduate students with historical context, but it provide students with deep... read more

    Table of Contents

    1. Preface and acknowledgements

    2. Introduction: why does the set text matter?

    3. Latin text with study questions and vocabulary aid

    • The Only Way is Pompey (§27)
    • The Perfect General, Pompey the Kid, and Mr. Experience (§28)
    • His Excellence (and Excellences) (§29)
    • Witnesses to the Truth! (§30)
    • Pacifying the Pond, or: Pompey and the Pirates (§31)
    • The Pirates of the Mediterranean (§32)
    • Pirates ante portas! (§33)
    • Pompey's Cruise Control (I): ‘I Have a Fleet – and Need for Speed' (§34)
    • Pompey's Cruise Control (II): ‘I Have a Fleet – and Need for Speed' (§35)
    • ‘Thou Art More Lovely and More Temperate': Pompey's Soft Sides (§36)
    • SPQR Confidential (§37)
    • Of Locusts and Leeches (§38)
    • Pompey the Peaceful, or: Imperialism with Gloves (§39)
    • No Sight-Seeing or Souvenirs for the Perfect General (§40)
    • Saint Pompey (§41)
    • Peace for our Time (§42)
    • Rumour and Renown: Pompey's auctoritas (§43)
    • Case Study I: The Socio-Economics of Pompey's auctoritas (§44)
    • Case Study II: Pompey's auctoritas and psychological warfare (§45)
    • Auctoritas Supreme (§46)
    • Felicitas, or how not to ‘Sull(a)y' Pompey (§47)
    • The Darling of the Gods (§48)
    • Summing Up (§49)

    4. Com mentary

    5. Further resources

    • Chronological table: the parallel lives of Pompey and Cicero
    • The speech in summary, or: what a Roman citizen may have heard in the forum
    • Translation of §§ 27-49
    • The protagonists: Cicero – Pompey – Manilius
    • The historical context (the contio, imperial expansion, civil wars, the shadow of Sulla, extraordinary commands)
    • List of rhetorical terms

    6. Bibliography

    Ancillary Material

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    About the Book

    In republican times, one of Rome's deadliest enemies was King Mithridates of Pontus. In 66 BCE, after decades of inconclusive struggle, the tribune Manilius proposed a bill that would give supreme command in the war against Mithridates to Pompey the Great, who had just swept the Mediterranean clean of another menace: the pirates. While powerful aristocrats objected to the proposal, which would endow Pompey with unprecedented powers, the bill proved hugely popular among the people, and one of the praetors, Marcus Tullius Cicero, also hastened to lend it his support. In his first ever political speech, variously entitled pro lege Manilia or de imperio Gnaei Pompei, Cicero argues that the war against Mithridates requires the appointment of a perfect general and that the only man to live up to such lofty standards is Pompey. In the section under consideration here, Cicero defines the most important hallmarks of the ideal military commander and tries to demonstrate that Pompey is his living embodiment.

    This course book offers a portion of the original Latin text, study aids with vocabulary, and a commentary. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, the incisive commentary will be of particular interest to students of Latin at both AS and undergraduate level. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis and historical background to encourage critical engagement with Cicero's prose and discussion of the most recent scholarly thought.

    About the Contributors

    Authors

    Ingo Gildenhard is Reader in Classics and the Classical Tradition at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of King’s College Cambridge. His previous publications include the monographs Paideia Romana: Cicero's Tusculan Disputations (Cambridge, 2007) and Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero's Speeches (Oxford, 2011). He has also published three textbooks with Open Book Publishers: Cicero, Against Verres, 2.1.53-86. Latin Text with Introduction, Study Questions, Commentary and English Translation, Virgil, Aeneid, 4.1-299: Latin Text, Study Questions, Commentary and Interpretative Essays, and (with Mathew Owen) Tacitus, Annals, 15.20-23, 33-45. Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary, and Commentary.

    Louise Hodgson gained a first class degree in Classics and an MA (with distinction) in Ancient History from Durham University and is currently revising her doctoral dissertation Without Body or Form: Res Publica and the Roman Republic (Durham, 2013) for publication.

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