Low roads lead to Rome: the most exalted of all Roman politicians was a master of dirty politics.

• Author: Greenfield, Jeff
• Position: 'Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician'

CICERO: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt Random House, $25.95

ON MARCH 4, 1841, ABOUT AN HOUR and a half into the longest inaugural address in American history, President William Henry Harrison turned from his clause-by-clause celebration of the Constitution to warn of the lessons posed to the American republic from ancient Rome: "[T]he senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the Commonwealth and the people assembled in the forum, not as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast their free votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the senate, but to receive from the hands of the leaders of the respective parties their share of the spoils."

If the Roman history seems a bit much, consider that President Harrison's speech was about an hour shorter than intended, thanks to Daniel Webster, who dissuaded the new Chief Executive from submitting the citizenry to a legion-by-legion account of the Roman armies. What Harrison's inaugural nevertheless reveals is how intensely earlier generations of American politicians took to heart the lessons of the Roman Republic.

You can get a taste of what this fascination must have been like if you follow the oratory of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), for whom any amendment, procedural vote, appropriations debate, or quorum call is a dandy excuse to expound on ancient history. For example, during a 1999 House-Senate conference, Byrd instructed dazed listeners on the triumph of Scipio Africanus over Hannibal in 202 B.C., bolstering his case for loan guarantees for the steel industry with highlights from the life of Emperor Majorian. Sadly, neither the majority of today's politicians, nor the bulk of its journalists, has anything like the knowledge of Roman history that any educated citizen would have possessed a century ago. (My own knowledge comes in more or less equal measure from Gladiator, Spartacus, Ben-Hur, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.)

So it is that in our time, the name Cicero is more likely to evoke an Illinois community noted for its laid-back approach to matters of public probity than one of the most influential voices of the last 2,000 years. It is the goal of first-time author Anthony Everitt to rescue Marcus Tullius Cicero from his recent descent into obscurity, and to celebrate the great Roman politician and orator who has become "an unknowing architect of constitutions that...