Cicero was Rome’s greatest orator, its most published philosopher, and the man who tried to save the Republic through the power of language alone. He failed — Mark Antony had him murdered and nailed his hands and tongue to the speaker’s platform in the Forum. But Cicero’s words survived the empire that killed him, shaped the Renaissance, influenced the American founders, and remain the most widely read Latin prose two thousand years after his death.

This episode traces Cicero from his provincial origins through his rise as Rome’s foremost lawyer and senator, the Catiline conspiracy, the civil wars, and the assassination that proved words can outlast the swords that silence them.

• Cicero’s rise from provincial outsider to Rome’s most celebrated orator and lawyer
• The Catiline conspiracy and the speeches that saved the Republic — temporarily
• His exile, return, and the civil wars between Caesar, Pompey, and the Senate
• The Philippics against Mark Antony, the assassination, and the two-thousand-year afterlife of his words