On the Commonwealth

The word republic comes to us from Cicero's res publica, the public thing, the matter held in common. That is the idea under the whole enterprise: that government is not the property of a ruler but a shared possession of the people, owed care like any common inheritance. Cicero defended that idea against the men who ended the Roman Republic, and they killed him for it. The word survived. So did the argument.

The Roman who gave the republic its vocabulary, and finally his life. A lawyer, a consul, and the greatest prose stylist of the Latin language, he wrote about the res publica, the public thing, as something held in common and owed care. He was killed for opposing the men who would end the Republic he defended. The word republic reaches English through his pen, and so does much of what we mean by it.