Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC). Bust of the Roman statesman, lawyer, orator and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero is best known for his philosophical writings, though his essays are a source of information on the end of the Roman Republic and Julius Caesar's rise to power. Cicero witnessed the murder of Caesar and, in the power struggles that followed, he himself was murdered. His writings tell of his Greek friend Poseidonius, who had made a globe showing the movements of the Sun, stars and planets. In 1900, fragments of such a device were recovered from a shipwreck. In 1970 they were dated to around 65 BC as the earliest known clockwork model of the heavens. Vatican museum.