Caesar, Cicero, and Anthony Trollope’s Public Men

Abstract

This chapter charts an increasing, if conflicted, desire in British political discourse generally, and the writings of Anthony Trollope specifically, to re-engage with Caesar, Cicero, and the history of the late republic after a generation of avoiding the more incendiary associations of the Roman past outlined in Chapter 3. Through examination of Anthony Trollope’s deeply political Palliser novels, it maps some of the associations of Liberal, reformist energy and enduring respect for political tradition which Trollope associates with Caesar and Cicero respectively in an age where the rise of Napoleon III threatened to reignite some of the more dynastic French associations of the Roman parallel.