"Cicero was a prolific writer, his writing covering an astonishingly wide spectrum: oratory, letters, epic and didactic poetry, pamphlets, philosophical and rhetorical treatises. He was also a major political figure at Rome during the Late Republic. The relationship between these two facets of his career is the subject of this book, which argues that our understanding both of Cicero's oeuvre and of the practice and theory of public life in the Late Republic is transformed if Cicero's writings are read as a unified whole in the context of Roman politics." A chapter on genre sites Cicero's writings in their late Republican context, and stresses both his flexibility and his inventiveness. The means by which Cicero's public persona and his relationships with others are articulated in his works are then considered: the book concludes with a consideration of the connections between writing and failure, both personal and political.