Speaker: Patrick Baker, Humboldt University of Berlin

Cicero is not one of the first names associated with historiography. It was one of the few prose genres in which he failed to distinguish himself, nor is his contribution to the theory of history particularly profound. Nevertheless, on this as on so many other subjects, he was considered a guiding authority by Renaissance humanists. This lecture addresses the ways humanists engaged with his thought, especially how they grappled with its inadequacy and attempted to supplement it with ideas from other ancient authors. Moreover, it explains how this process of transformative reception laid the foundation for the modern discipline of history.

Patrick Baker received his PhD in History from Harvard University (2009) and is currently a Senior Research Associate at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In 2012-2013 he held the Rome Prize in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. He is the author of Italian Renaissance Humanism in the Mirror (Cambridge, 2015) and various articles on historiography and the reception of the classical tradition.