Lore of the Founding: Cicero And The Duty To Serve

A republic doesn’t collapse all at once. It frays in public, and it frays in private, through shortcuts that feel justified, norms that stop being enforced, and citizens who decide it’s safer to sit things out. That’s why we end our Lore of the Founding series with Cicero: Rome’s sharpest talker, a brilliant lawyer, and a painfully human political figure who tried to hold the Roman Republic together while it was coming apart. We talk with Joanna Kenty about why Cicero mattered so much to the...