Recent Scholarship on the Imperial Reception of Cicero

Abstract

This article reviews two monographs recently published on the subject of Cicero’s reception in the imperial period: Keeline’s 2018 The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire and La Bua’s 2019 Cicero and Roman Education. As Cicero’s Nachleben is assuming a position of increasing salience in classical studies, this review contextualizes these two volumes within over a century of scholarship on the subject. Keeline’s book demonstrates the critical importance of the schoolroom in shaping almost every aspect of Cicero’s posthumous reception, while La Bua’s methodically elucidates how Cicero’s speeches were taught and read in the classrooms of the empire. The article concludes with an argument for a new approach to studying the reception of Cicero in this period.