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    How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians
    How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians
    How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians
    Ebook61 pages1 hour

    How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians

    By Quintus Tullius Cicero and Philip Freeman

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    About this ebook

    A primer on campaigning in ancient Rome that reads like a strategy memo from a modern political consultant

    How to Win an Election is an ancient Roman guide for campaigning that is as up-to-date as tomorrow's headlines. In 64 BC when idealist Marcus Cicero, Rome's greatest orator, ran for consul (the highest office in the Republic), his practical brother Quintus decided he needed some no-nonsense advice on running a successful campaign. What follows in his short letter are timeless bits of political wisdom, from the importance of promising everything to everybody and reminding voters about the sexual scandals of your opponents to being a chameleon, putting on a good show for the masses, and constantly surrounding yourself with rabid supporters. Presented here in a lively and colorful new translation, with the Latin text on facing pages, this unashamedly pragmatic primer on the humble art of personal politicking is dead-on (Cicero won)—and as relevant today as when it was written.

    A little-known classic in the spirit of Machiavelli's Prince, How to Win an Election is required reading for politicians and everyone who enjoys watching them try to manipulate their way into office.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateFeb 13, 2012
    ISBN9781400841646
    How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians

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    Reviews for How to Win an Election

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Extremely relevant and entertaining, modern day candidates would do well to read this and heed the rules laid out by Quintus Cicero. The book has the original Latin facing the English for anyone who wants to work on their Latin skills.
    • 5/5
      Though ancient, very timely. I thought I was reading about Barack Obama and other purely political people.
    • 1/5
      The date for the Cicero's consulship is incorrect in the intro . That says enough .
    • 5/5
      Still relevant politically and a great insight to political thinking from a fantastic period of history.
    • 5/5
      I LOVE THIS LETTER !!! Read it NOW. It is timeless.

    Book preview

    How to Win an Election - Quintus Tullius Cicero

    HOW TO WIN AN ELECTION

    HOW TO WIN

    AN ELECTION

    An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians

    Quintus Tullius Cicero

    Translated and with an introduction by

    Philip Freeman

    PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

    PRINCETON AND OXFORD

    Copyright © 2012 by Philip Freeman

    Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be

    sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press

    Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

    Princeton, New Jersey 08540

    In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,

    Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

    press.princeton.edu

    All Rights Reserved

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Cicero, Quintus Tullius.

    [Commentariolum petitionis. English]

    How to win an election : an ancient guide for modern politicians /

    Quintus Tullius Cicero ; translated and with an introduction by

    Philip Freeman

    p.   cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-0-691-15408-4 (hardcover : acid-free paper)

    I. Freeman, Philip, 1961- II. Title.

    PA6371.C4A24 2011

    324.7’20937—dc23

    2011034838

    British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

    This book has been composed in Garamond and Futura

    Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

    Printed in the United States of America

    1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

    CONTENTS

    Introduction

    A Note on the Translation

    How to Win an Election

    Commentariolum Petitionis

    The Results of the Election

    Glossary

    Further Reading

    INTRODUCTION

    In the summer of 64 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero, the greatest orator ancient Rome ever produced, was running for consul, the highest office in the Roman Republic. He was forty-two years old, the son of a wealthy businessman from the small town of Arpinum south of Rome. His father had seen that Marcus and his younger brother Quintus received the finest education and had even sent the boys to Greece to study with the most noted philosophers and orators of the day.

    Marcus was a gifted speaker and possessed a brilliant mind equal to his golden tongue. What he lacked was the advantage of noble birth. Ancient Roman society was highly class-conscious and dismissed men such as Marcus Cicero as unfit to preside over the republic. He was determined to prove them wrong.

    As a young man Marcus had completed an undistinguished year in military service under the father of the future Roman general Pompey the Great, who would one day defend the state against Julius Caesar. This younger Pompey became a patron of Marcus and helped him in his subsequent political career. At twenty-five, Marcus won his first case in the Roman courts defending a well-connected man against murder charges. His reputation grew in the years to follow as he successfully represented many prominent men—victories that also helped him rise through the political ranks of the republic. He had already served admirably in the important but lesser offices of quaestor and praetor. However, no man outside the noble families had been elected as a consul for thirty years, making the attainment of this ultimate goal by Marcus unlikely.

    Yet in 64, the other candidates for the consulship—most notably Antonius (known as Hybrida) and Catiline—were such an unsavory lot that some of the nobility held their noses and threw their support behind Marcus Cicero. Still, the thought of an outsider from a small town being one of the two consuls to govern the ancient republic, ruler of millions across the Mediterranean lands, was too much for many of the blue-blooded families to stomach. Marcus was going to have a long and difficult campaign if he was going to win.

    At this point the more practical Quintus decided that his elder brother needed some advice. Quintus was four years younger than Marcus, with a fiery and sometimes cruel temperament. Although overshadowed by his elder sibling, he was fiercely loyal to Marcus and recognized that his brother’s success would pave his own way to fame and fortune. He had even married the headstrong Pomponia, sister of Marcus’s best friend Atticus, and fathered a son with her two years earlier, though the marriage was always rocky.

    As the campaign for consul was beginning, Quintus wrote a short pamphlet to Marcus on electioneering in the form of a letter. The result is a little-known text that has somehow survived the centuries, called in Latin the Commentariolum Petitionis. Some specialists in

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