Last Words. Cicero’s Late Works and the Poetics of a Literary Legacy

This contribution focuses on De republica , De oratore , De senectute , and De amicitia – dialogues in which Cicero not only introduces interlocutors who were deceased at the time of writing, but which are set at a time shortly predating the death of their protagonist. It argues that this mise-en-scène stands firmly in the service of authorial self-assertion in times of political and personal crisis. While this is already the case in Cicero’s De republica and De oratore , it is especially pronounced when the structure re-emerges in De senectute and De amicitia . Engaging with contemporary historiography and literary history, Cicero thus invests his authorial voice with the weight and authority of ‘last words’ and presents his philosophica as ‘late works’ complementing and rounding off his literary œuvre