How come nobody reads Cicero anymore? He left thousands and

No one reads anymore.
I read Cicero though. Now that I know Latin I read a lot of Cicero actually.

>>9902854

He's damn fun in Latin. I've read about half of his corpus at this point. Wasn't there some Renaissance epigram about someone spending "three years on Cicero" with some pithy reply? I'd love to find it again but I can't remember it now.

My favorite speech is the Pro Cluentio for how intricate and devious his argumentation is.

In Verrem doesn't get much attention because it's relatively prosaic but as a record of just how shitty a Roman governor could be, it can't be beaten, and it has big "outrage/tragedy porn" value.

De Legibus is really helpful for understanding the Roman state in an idealized form.

It makes me very sad that so much of De Re Publica was lost but the Dream of Scipio is amazing.

I still need to read the Phillippicae. In fact that should really be the next thing I read.

What sort of stuff of his do you like?

Or the other really notable thing about De Leg is the beauty of the prologues, some of the best stuff he wrote.

>>9902876
I just got to the point of being able to read Latin mostly "fluently" about a year ago.

Oratio in Catilinam prima in sentatu habita was the first thing I read so it's special to me for that. I used to think politics were boring, but the speech was awesome. I'll probably have to go back to re-read it now that my Latin has improved.

I've read a few of his epistulae ad familiares. They vary in quality but I don't regret any of them. Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit.

I've mostly read his more philosophical works like Cato maior de senectute and my personal favorite laelius de amicitia. He truly does deserve the praise he gets (got) as one of the finest orators ever.

I'll have to check out some of the ones you mentioned, they sound interesting.

>>9902945

How is poetry for you? I have this horrible "hobby-horse" reading of Latin verse, in my head and out loud, which I can't shake for anything. Taking some of the greatest works of lit in the world and hearing them as AE-ne-a-DUM-ge-ne-TRIX-ho-mi-NUM-DI-VOM-que-vo-LUP-TAS

>>9902986
It still takes me quite a bit of work to figure out what they are saying sometimes, with the non-standard word order and grammar. It doesn't help that they lengthen or shorten some vowels for the meter. I usually try to listen to a recording of someone else reading it and copy them because I have the same problem you describe -- it sounds to forced.

>>9903000

Well don't feel too bad, Latin poetry is rather absurd. If you haven't made the jump into Greek yet I highly encourage you. I'm not very good at it yet myself but you'll appreciate pretty quickly how much more logical the language is.

>The other day I was reading—not for the first time—the fourth ode of Horace's fourth book of Odes, and I was forcibly struck—also not for the first time—with the extreme difficulty of its first sixteen lines, and the extraordinary involution and confusion of the words which compose that thorny passage. In these formidable lines, from "Qualem ministrum fulminis alitem" down to "Dente novo peritura vidit," the words are so hopelessly jumbled together that it is a marvel that the meaning was ever made out at all by anybody, let alone by a schoolboy.

A blog you'd almost certainly like is "laudator temporis acti".

Cicero was a total faggoot I am glad they chopped his head off.

>>9903037
No I haven't looked into Greek at all yet, although I do plan on it once my Latin is a little better.
From what I've heard Horace is notoriously difficult so I haven't even considered him yet. I've mostly read catullus when it comes to verse. And Martial if you consider his metered epigrams to be verse.

I will definitely check out that blog, thanks!

>>9903050
Let me guess, you're the "stoicism is for cucks" guy.

>>9903050

He was certainly defending a profoundly corrupt system.

Late Roman Republican politics has more in common with Haiti than America or the UK.

But he was still a human being and, as I said in the OP, more of a human being than any other ancients, because he left such a complete and honest record of himself.

He was afraid of his enemies, he mourned the death of his daughter, his little brother was a dick. He was a real person like any of us.

>>9903274
In all likelihood, he didn't exist. He was just a propaganda tool invented by Augustus Caesar to flaunt the perceived "intelligence" of the Roman citizen in order to spread nationalism.

>>9903316
Never heard that before, anon.

Funny how a Cicero thread pops up and I ordered On the Commonwealth and On Laws along with the Oxford Classics On Life and Death. Already have On Obligations and Selected Speeches so should be fun.

>>9903354
I think he is being facetious