The greatest orator of the late Roman Republic -- his speeches against Catiline and Verres set the template for Western political rhetoric for two thousand years.
Cicero was a lawyer, statesman, and philosopher, but it was as an orator that he made his lasting reputation -- his speeches, delivered in the Senate and the law courts of the late Roman Republic, were studied, memorized, and imitated by students of rhetoric for the next two thousand years. His four orations against Catiline, delivered during an attempted coup in 63 BCE, remain some of the most famous political speeches ever recorded; his prosecution of the corrupt governor Verres established the template for the courtroom takedown. Cicero was executed in 43 BCE on the orders of Mark Antony, his hands and head displayed in the Roman Forum as a warning to other orators -- a brutal end for a man whose actual influence on how educated people speak and argue arguably outlasted the Republic he died defending.