Sellers, Mortimer. "The Influence of Marcus Tullius Cicero on Modern Legal and Political Ideas." CICERONIA (2008).

Abstract: Marcus Tullius Cicero is the father of modern law and politics. Cicero's influence was significant throughout subsequent European history, but never so much nor so directly as in the emergence of modernity and in the development of modern law and constitutional government. The early moderns became faithful apostles of Cicero's thought and ideals because their world and political circumstances were in many ways closer to those of Cicero than to those of any intervening centuries. The influence of Cicero's legal and political ideas on the modern world illustrates the decisive importance that the study of history can have on legal innovation and social change. The modern world would not have developed where it did, when it did, nor as it did were it not for the life and writings of Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Download the paper here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1354102.

Cfp: "Cicero Rewriting Plato," Seminar Series, Centre for the Classical Tradition, University of Durham, February 6, February 27, and March 13, 2009.

The Durham Centre for the Study of the Classical Tradition(http://www.dur.ac.uk/classical.tradition/) is in the early stage of developing a research project tentatively entitled 'Ciceroniani Sumus: the Influence of Cicero on the Cultural Imaginary of the West.' A central theme here is Cicero's role in mediating and transforming Greek philosophy, not least through his translations and adaptations of Plato. As a first sounding of this territory, the Centre will sponsor three exploratory seminars in Epiphany term 2009 that will look at Cicero's engagement with Plato in the de Republica:

• Seminar 1: Cicero, de Republica 1.65-67 ~ Plato, Politeia 8. 562c - 563c.
• Seminar 2: Cicero, de Republica 3.27 ~ Plato, Politeia 2.360e - 362b.
• Seminar 3: Cicero, de Republica 6.26-29 ~ Plato, Phaidros 245cff.

The seminars are open to all. Indeed, an analysis of Cicero's reception ofPlato should ideally draw on expertise in an unusually wide range of areas within the field: ancient Greek, Greek philosophy, Latin, Roman history, and political theory, among others. The seminars are designed to bring together experts in all of these areas, in what we hope will be a mutually illuminating conversation. We shall work with the original texts, but also translations, and, even though we shall be discussing points arising from the Greek and the Latin, there is no expectation that participants have these languages.
Dates and times:

• Seminar 1: Friday, 6 February, 1 - 2.30 pm
• Seminar 2: Friday, 27 February, 1 - 2.30 pm
• Seminar 3: Friday, 13 March, 1 - 2.30 pm

Further information may be found here: http://www.dur.ac.uk/classical.tradition/events/.