Cicero’s Lamp: Enslavement and the Light of Roman Authorship

Abstract: In a letter to Atticus from 50 b.c.e. (Cic. Att . 7.7 SB 130), Cicero complained that his lamp was going out. This essay reads this fleeting episode in the author’s life against depictions of lamplight across Roman literature, where a lamp’s flame often stands in for the labor of enslaved workers. Such small moments of dissonance can challenge the pervasive perspective of Roman enslavement, revealing other figures standing in the shadows as Cicero wrote. These scribes, grammarians, and lamp attendants all had a share in the Cicero we find on the page. We then conclude by applying these insights to another lamplit letter (Cic. Att. 8.2 SB 152), which sheds new light on a key passage one of Cicero’s most famous works, the De amicitia .