Cicero was the most prominent orator of his day and a significant political figure in the late Republic. However his success was anything but expected: Cicero did not come from a well-known elite family, and he prided himself on achieving political power by his own talents as a great speaker and law advocate. Paradoxically Cicero backed the conservative forces of the aristocracy in Rome’s power struggles, and was on the losing side in the civil war, but he never quite fitted in and his life and literary works are an important testament to the complex political structures of late republican Rome and how they were being gradually broken down. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.