Stefan Zweig facing Cicero, or biography as a mirror of self

Inspired by the ancient books of Plutarch and Titus Livius, Stefan Zweig writes in September 1939 a short biography of Marcus Tulllius Cicero. He tells us how Cicero lived the last years of his life, and he relates how the Roman Republic came to an end with Cicero's death. However, the events that occur during those years are very similar to those that Zweig himself is witnessing in 1939. Writing about Cicero thus becomes for Stefan Zweig a way of depicting his own situation of exile as well as an opportunity to meditate on the decline of his own era with the beginning of the Second World War, and on the apparent collapse of the moral values in which he sincerely believes.