Cicero, in full Marcus Tullius Cicero, (born 106 BCE, Arpinum, Latium [now Arpino, Italy]—died December 7, 43 BCE, Formiae, Latium [now Formia]), Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, and writer who tried to uphold republican principles in the final civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic.

 

Cicero’s impact, both direct and indirect, on important post-Renaissance thinkers such as Locke, Hume, and Montesquieu was substantial, and through such writers, and often directly, his thought and very phrases reached to America’s founding generations. Thomas Jefferson explicitly names Cicero as one of a handful of major figures who contributed to a tradition “of public right” that informed his draft of the Declaration of Independence and shaped American understandings of “the common sense” basis for the right of revolution.

 

John Adams and James Wilson were notable in the founding period for recalling Cicero and his teaching on “the principles of nature and eternal reason.” Wilson had contributed in important ways to the success of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the subsequent ratification of the Constitution. His important lectures on law in 1790–91, which saw President Washington, Vice President Adams, and Secretary of State Jefferson in attendance at times, gave prominent attention to Cicero on natural law.

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To Cicero, natural law was not merely a theory of individual moral conduct; instead, it provided a blueprint for society.

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