Title: The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero translated into English with Notes, Historical and Critical and arguments to each by the translator. Two volumes bound as one.
Author: Marcus Tullius Cicero, William Guthrie (trans)
Publisher: George Ewing, Dublin, 1741. Impossibly rare.
Condition: Hardcover, full leather. Worn and aged, detached front board has been re-attached. Endpapers absent, small bit cut out from title page. Interior is clean and in excellent condition for its age. About 500 pages total.
An enlightenment-era translation of Cicero’s Orations, which permanently changed the character of European thought. All text is in English.
From wikipedia:
Marcus Tullius Cicero (3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC); was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists.
His influence on the Latin language was so immense that the subsequent history of prose in not only Latin but European languages up to the 19th century was said to be either a reaction against or a return to his style. According to Michael Grant, “the influence of Cicero upon the history of European literature and ideas greatly exceeds that of any other prose writer in any language”. Cicero introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary (with neologisms such as humanitas, qualitas, quantitas, and essentia) distinguishing himself as a linguist, translator, and philosopher.
Petrarch’s rediscovery of Cicero’s letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance. According to Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, “Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity.” The peak of Cicero’s authority and prestige came during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and his impact on leading Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, David Hume, and Montesquieu was substantial. His works rank among the most influential in European culture, and today still constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for the writing and revision of Roman history, especially the last days of the Roman Republic.