Abstract
The requisites for developing this statesman, who can be called Socratic and prudent, lead to the examination of Cicero’s thinking on how such statesmen (historical exempla) have been and might be educated. This entails reflection on the role of friendship, including intergenerational friendship, in that education and the maintenance of true statesmanship. To aspire to such statesmanship entails a consideration of the use and abuse of the quest for glory by the greatly talented. The Dream of Scipio and the prospect of immortality are considered, and the path of virtue as that of true glory is explored.
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Notes
- 1.
Plato, Apology of Socrates, 31d–32a.
- 2.
Crassus, compared with Scipio, appears to be Cicero’s yet more practical and, hence, even more Roman Socrates; see De Or. 1. 204, 3.15–16, where he is treated as a model of his type and explicitly compared with Socrates even as he is differentiated. See DiLorenzo’s treatment of Crassus (1978: 247 ff.) as a Ciceronian model in contrast with Socrates. Crassus, then, is not only called upon to describe the perfect orator in De Or., but also, appropriately for Cicero who always prefers the voice of experience and achievement in such discussions, is seen to best approximate this orator. Mitchell (1991: 46) argues that Crassus, even more than Scipio, is the model that Cicero holds up for himself and other Roman leaders. At one point (Off. 2. 47) Cicero compares Crassus favorably with Demosthenes, whom he regards as the closest approximation ever (Orat. 6, 23; Brut. 35) to the perfect orator. Demosthenes, though a Greek, is seen by Cicero as a philosophical statesman; his oratory was informed and enriched by his having sat at the feet of Plato (Orat.15; Brut.121). On the other hand, Cicero prefers Demosthenes over Isocrates and Lysias, the other prominent Greek orators, chiefly, it seems, because he utilized his rhetorical abilities for direct participation in the contentions of public life, in contrast with their exclusive devotion to the writing of speeches (De Optimo Genere Oratorum 17; Brut. 32–35).
- 3.
Off. 2. 43.
- 4.
In dialogues, especially the Rep. and De Or., where the model statesman comes to have a central role, Cicero can be seen, in his choice of personae and of what they are portrayed doing and saying, to exemplify certain qualities before he specifies them directly. The analysis that draws him to exemplify use certain exempla must always interest us more than the exempla themselves in endeavoring to understand Cicero’s thought. T. White’s observation, noted in the previous chapter, that Cicero uses “historical exemplum” for “explanatory efficacy” and for the legitimization of the concept at issue by testifying to its “workability” is applicable to the concept of model statesman, as well as that of model regime. Whatever liberties Cicero may take with history in accord with his rhetorical purpose—such as overlooking flaws of character or the much commented upon harmonizing of relationships between the Cato major and Scipio and his friends—would seem limited by the same rhetorical purpose. Manifestly incredible claims for historical figures may threaten explanatory efficacy and would clearly undermine exempla serving as evidence of the workability of a concept like that of the model statesman.
- 5.
Rep. 2. 51.
- 6.
Rep. See the indications of this in the extant fragments of Book 5 and at 2. 51, 66–67.
- 7.
Rep. 2. 65 ff.
- 8.
Rep. 2. 67.
- 9.
Rep. 2. 45. That Scipio all along has been most interested in the possession by leaders of such political prudence sheds new light on his great interest in Plato as manifested in the first book, in a long direct quotation concerning the degeneration of democracy from The Republic. A Plato describing the courses and changes of regimes is more relevant to the useful political knowledge Scipio and Cicero seek than a Plato detailing the provisions of the city in speech. Scipio has wanted, from the start of the Re Publica’s dialogue, to bring the discussion around to the political leader whose prudence, above all other qualities, is the critical quality in good political practice understood as moving, as best as one can, to attain or preserve the practicable best regime. Again, the reason of the prudent man encompasses the less than reasonable tendencies of political life, in this case, those ever-recurring tendencies to regime-instability.
- 10.
Inv. 1. 2.
- 11.
Barlow (1987: 367) has aptly portrayed Cicero as seeing a need “for a virtually continuous process of refounding.” Regime maintenance ever takes new forms with the continual changes that time brings. Recalling that Cicero (Leg. 1. 18–19) sets the standard of justice as “the mind and reasoning of the prudent man,” that man “who combines the art of ruling with knowledge of nature,” Barlow observes (369) that in practice, “the unchanging standard gives rise to manifestly changeable results.” In a similar vein, Wood (1988) notes that the long-term goal of Cicero’s statesman is the preservation of the “moderation and balance” of the mixed constitution (193), and that the leading men charged with this responsibility are not a law unto themselves but servants of “a supreme law” (189). The “continuous refounding,” which Cicero’s statesman engages in, should not be seen as merely reactionary or checking evil tendencies, as Cumming suggests (1969: I, 274, n. 28). Also, see Ferrary (1995: 55–56, 62–63).
That Cicero is most open and emphatic about the statesman’s protective, preservative function can readily be taken to support the long-standing charge that his own political practice was flawed by a blindness to the Republic’s incapacities to deal adequately with the problems of the time. There is no definitive way to deny this charge and the possibility that Cicero’s political thought was itself infected with his weakness. There is, however, another way to think about his emphasis on the preservative function of the statesman’s prudence. The dramatic date for the De Re Publica is 129 B.C., a time which Cicero and others before and after him regarded as politically healthy and largely, though not entirely, prior to the political troubles that came ever increasingly to unsettle Roman politics and eventually to undo the Republic. It is, then, dramatically consistent with Cicero’s view of the Roman Republic as an exemplary achievement that the perspective of 129 would emphasize regime maintenance in the face of various incipient threats. This is not, however, to forego the possibility and likelihood that Cicero was comfortable emphasizing regime maintenance to his readers of the 50s. This could very well be an important prudential act of Cicero himself, for while he clearly holds to an understanding of philosophy and virtue that admits of progressive possibilities, the requisite setting for such developments is a stable regime where liberties are protected; thus, the fundamental stance of Cicero is one of holding to the Republic as the best available basis for the kind of personal developments critical to Rome’s political health. One might say that preservation of a certain kind of regime, the mixed traditional constitution, implies progressive possibilities.
- 12.
Off. 3. 71, 1.153; Fin. 5. 17–18, 67–68. A reader may be puzzled by Cicero’s seemingly interchangeable use of prudentia and sapientia, which is in evidence in the previous paragraph’s alternate descriptions of the political leader as prudens and sapiens and which is present throughout his writings. The virtually synonymous use of these terms (Mitchell, 16) is especially evident at Off. 1. 15–16, where Cicero uses both terms in discussing the customary virtue concerned with the investigation and discovery of truth (indagatio atque inventio veri), that which is generally rendered as the virtue of wisdom. The basic virtue is exclusively called prudentia and understood with respect to good and evil at Inv. 2. 160, this being the very work in which Cicero has characterized the political founder as sapiens. When he has occasion to define these terms separately, a distinct understanding of each is clear: Prudentia is defined as here in the text; sapientia (as at Tusc. 5. 7) as “the knowledge of things divine and human as well as the beginnings and causes of all things.” At Off. 1.153, Cicero has occasion to directly distinguish and define sapientia and prudentia, citing as he does it the Greek distinction between sophia and phronesis.
Citing Off. 1.153 but seeking to explain the Stoic usage rather than Cicero’s, Striker claims that the Stoics consistently understood phronesis “as knowledge of things to be done and not done, or knowledge of goods and evils, rather than knowledge of truth and falsehood and of the order of the universe” and that they “must have held that sophia includes phronesis” (1991): 42–43, n. 25; also Long and Sedley (1987: vol. 1: 379–80, Stobaeus, 61G). The true Wiseman in the Stoic tradition would of course possess prudence as well as all the other virtues, and this connection between sapientia and prudentia may well account for some of the interchangeable usage of these terms in Cicero’s texts. At Leg. 2. 8, sapientia is used to describe both understanding of the law of the universe and understanding of what is to be sought and what is to be avoided.
There is a suggestion, in the phrasing of Off. 1.153, that Cicero regards the distinction as more Greek than Roman. That Cicero knows the distinction between these terms and can employ it but does not consistently do so (for instance in Inv. and Off., the first and last of his philosophical writings) may well reflect the elevation of prudence in his thought, which reflects the role of the practical perspective, his Socratic way into all philosophy. For Cicero, prudence is wisdom in its most useful mode (philosophy must teach duties), and it is to be the basis for judgements about the truth of the ultimate and divine things. Yet Cicero does seem to understand knowledge of self, on which prudence rests, as capable of development insofar as one comes to understand the whole of which the self is a part (Leg. 1. 60). For Cicero, prudence is not merely derivative from some more comprehensive wisdom; rather, there is mutual dependence and dialectical relationship between prudence and wisdom, and if one may speak of a core or foundation to wisdom, it is, as Socrates exemplified, prudence.
Insofar as there is a distinction in Cicero between sapientia and prudentia, it bears a close correspondence between the two tasks of philosophy evident in his work and treated above at the beginning of the second chapter. That wisdom not only begins in prudence but also ends in it seems to be entailed in his teaching on perfecta philosophia. Recall that the elder Cato, without formal philosophy, was called sapiens Cato and was spoken of both as unexcelled in prudence (nemo prudentior) and one marked by complete or mature wisdom (perfecta sapientia).
- 13.
Div. 1.111; also Leg.1. 60 and the fragment from Nonius placed at Rep. 6.1. Since prudence does not result from comprehensive and assured knowledge, it seems inappropriate to describe the providence of the divine mind as prudence: Nat. D. 2.58; 3.38.
- 14.
Internal evidence in these three works as well as Cicero’s direct statement support the conclusion that these are his major rhetorical writings; Cicero’s statement occurs at Div. 2. 4, where, as he is listing his philosophical works, he remarks that, following Aristotle and Theophrastus, he believes his “oratorical books” should be included and enumerates them as “the three books of the De Oratore, a fourth, the Brutus, and a fifth, the Orator.” Div. was written when, it appears, all of the seven works traditionally known as the rhetorical works had already been completed. Evidence internal to the texts of these three major works suggests that Cicero sought to link them together so that the three taken as a whole represent a five-book statement by him on the art of rhetoric and the perfect orator.
- 15.
The main conversation in the De Or. seems to be one in which young potential statesmen learn from old accomplished statesmen that more is necessary for true eloquence than what the teachers of rhetoric say, and for that matter, what most people believe. Philosophy comes to be defended in a conversation among public leaders with no philosophers present. In the discussion of the art of rhetoric by the more Roman and practical speaker of the major participants in the dialogue, namely, Antonius, recommendations emerge that point beyond the common art of rhetoric as such: The orator who is virtuous, who knows human nature so as to know his audience better, who knows well the material he is likely to be called to discuss, and who possesses sense enough to judge rightly what is befitting a given context is one most able to use successfully art of rhetoric. Crassus, the other major speaker, in his treatment of the art emphasizes the importance of knowing the material to which one is applying the art of rhetoric and being able to follow the befitting or appropriate in all matters. Crassus explicitly draws the conclusion to which the analysis of Antonius appears to point, that is, that the orator will be best equipped with both knowledge and prudence when he has studied the most important questions about all things, when he becomes, in other words, the philosopher.
The Brutus, a history of orators revealing more failures than successes, supports the thesis of De Or., namely that it is a difficult and great accomplishment to be a perfect or true orator. This work, dedicated to that potential statesman, the prominent Brutus of Cicero’s own lifetime, concludes (330–33) with Cicero admonishing him to set himself off from common pleaders and to seek the distinction in oratory that so very few in the entire history of Greece and Rome have achieved. The Orator begins with Cicero indicating that he is responding to a request of Brutus for a portrayal of the perfect orator.
- 16.
Books 2 and 3 of De Or. are said, by Cicero himself (Att. 89), to be a technical discussion; technical aspects are clearly present especially in the second book where Antonius treats three of the five traditional parts of the art of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, and memory; Crassus in the third book is called upon to discuss ornamentation and delivery. Inv. 1. 9 and 2. 178 indicate that this work of Cicero’s early years was to be part of a larger treatise on rhetoric. See also Part. Or., Top. and parts of Orator for Cicero’s involvement with the technical aspects of the art.
- 17.
De Or. 1.113–34, 137, 146; 2. 30, 84–87, 147, 150; 3. 209; Brut. 320.
- 18.
De Or. 1.48, 60, 63; 2. 37, 337; 3. 54; Orat.15, 118; Brut.143–44; Part. Or.140; Inv. 2. 25.
- 19.
De Or.1.159, 165 ff. 201; 2.1–9, 60, 66–68, 333–37, 342–49, 363; 3. 54, 75–76, 122, 125, 145; Orat. 47, 70, 118–20, 141; Brut.150, 155, 161, 167, 322; Part. Or. 62–67, 71–100, 129–31, 140.
- 20.
Orat.12.
- 21.
This is the quality, Crassus is made to say (De Or. 3. 91), that brings a speech to the peak of excellence. See also De Or. 1.132; Orat. 71, 73–74, 123; Off. 1.128–29.
- 22.
De Or. 2. 86, 333; 3. 204, 210–12, 221; Orat. 24–32, 47, 71–74, 100, 119, 123, 226; Brut. 202 (The orator may even distort to speak overall in an appropriate fashion, 42, 62); Part. Or. 30, 129.
- 23.
As the speaker determines appropriateness by attention, above all, to his objective, that being persuasion in most instances, so does the human being determine appropriateness in all actions by attention to the ultimate end, that being the proper understanding of happiness.
- 24.
De Or. 1. 5 in Cicero’s prooemium; see also De Or. 1.132; 2.131, 307; 3. 95, 212; Orat. 44, 70, 101; Brut. 93.
- 25.
Fin. 4. 76.
- 26.
Orat. 44; also Brut. 23 where Brutus is portrayed as recognizing that prudence is necessary for the orator just as it is for the general.
- 27.
Verr. 2. 4. 98; Rep. 1. 27–28; 2. 36; De Or. 3. 21; Gwynn (1926: 5); Marrou (1956: 98–99) on humanitas as the fullness of culture and its pursuit being a continuing lifetime task; also. Nicgorski, (2013a: 18 ff).
- 28.
We have reached a point at which it is possible to understand better the nature of my disagreement with those who claim that rhetoric provides the unifying perspective in Cicero’s thought. Both rhetoric and philosophy are for Cicero justified and unified within the need for statesmanship; one might say that, rather than a “rhetorical culture,” it is a “political culture” that informs all of Cicero’s thinking including that on the art of rhetoric.
- 29.
De Or. 1. 47, 63; 3. 60, 72, 122, 129; Crassus is the spokesman in all the preceding passages, save the last in which a minor figure in the dialogue makes the point in the form of recapitulating what Crassus has said. Though Cicero seems to implicate Plato as part of the object of his criticism (Orat. 12–13), his statement at this point is a mixed one that also acknowledges that Plato has done much for the enrichment of rhetoric. Overall, on the relationship of rhetoric and philosophy, and specifically in De Or., Crassus seems to look primarily to Plato for direction. In this respect, the central teaching of the Phaedrus seems to be a model for Cicero, for the art of rhetoric in the service of the good and the true is also what Cicero ultimately commends. De Or. is explicitly given a dramatic setting like that of the Phaedrus (De Or. 1. 28). Appreciative acknowledgements of Plato also mark the beginnings of the Brutus (24) and the Orator (3–10). Cicero is, then, quite aware of a fuller and more positive teaching of Plato about rhetoric than that which he and many have seen in the Gorgias. Perhaps the excessive criticism of the art of rhetoric and the contemptuous tone toward it that Crassus finds in the Gorgias reflect a then prevalent way of reading Plato’s teaching in that work—an interpretation which Cicero wants to check in a fashion similar to his apparent concern to correct a general view of what Plato is teaching in The Republic. This is not to say that he does not hold Socrates/Plato somewhat responsible for the way their teaching is being understood.
Though the fragmentation of knowledge and excessive specialization is seen as the primary harmful effect of the criticism of rhetoric in the Gorgias, Crassus himself holds Plato up (De Or. 3. 20–22, also 1.193–94) as a teacher of the unity and interrelatedness of all knowledge; Socrates’s practice as a teacher (De Or. 1. 139) also tends to hold learning and eloquence together. One might say that Plato develops the best elements in Socrates: At Ac. 1. 7–19, Varro—the student of Antiochus, a professed restorer of the Old Academy, and the learned friend of Cicero to whom this work is dedicated—speaks of Plato as developing philosophy in its wholeness and taking a part in the development of a system, characteristics that are said to differentiate him from Socrates.
- 30.
Inv. 1. 1; De Or. 1. 31–34.
- 31.
Rep. 2. 69; also Leg. 3. 21–32; Tusc. 5. 47.
- 32.
Benardete (1987: 308) sees self-knowledge as the hallmark of the Socratic philosopher to whom Cicero is attracted.
- 33.
Cumming (1969: 263, 279 n.72, 285) sees Cicero as identifying the ideal statesman with certain real statesmen of Roman history. Cicero’s more practicable model is not, however, wholly captured by any specific historical instantiation (Orat. 7–10), though it is best exemplified by Roman historical examples. My argument in this section seems, then, to provide a plausible resolution to the difficulty encountered by How (1930), when he finds (41) Cicero, at times, writing of the statesman as “a purely ideal figure” and at other times treating his concept with “plain references” to specific historical personages. At this same point, How makes the interesting observation that
Cicero’s princeps is an unofficial leader, swaying the state by his wisdom and the prestige of his past services, as did Scipio in his last years, or Cicero himself in the struggle with Antony, not a magistrate however exalted. It is, I think, significant that there is not a word of any such magistracy in the constitution laid down in the Laws. Cicero’s statesman need not, it seems, be a magistrate, that is an actual holder of political office, but it would be going too far and in the face of other textual evidence to conclude that he cannot, by definition, be a magistrate.
- 34.
The perfecta philosophia or perfecta sapientia of a Cato or a Scipio or a Crassus would presumably be characterized by prudence, by a “perfection” befitting human—not simply divine—excellence.
- 35.
Off. 2. 15; Rep. 5. 6; Leg. 3. 4–5. Without such support, the seeds or sparks of virtue have been known to be extinguished; see Leg. 1. 28 ff. and Tusc. 3.1 ff. Also, Ferrary (1995: 64).
- 36.
Rep. 5. 7.
- 37.
Rep. 5. 1–2.
- 38.
Rep. 2. 2.
- 39.
Barlow (1987: 367).
- 40.
Called here a “quasi-dialogue” because so much of it consists in two long discourses by Laelius, the content of which came largely from what he recollected Scipio had said about friendship before his very recent death. Scipio is present only through his ideas and some of his actual words now being remembered. A close analysis of the entire Amic. is found in Nicgorski (2008), to which certain parts of this section of the book are indebted.
- 41.
The only other use of the personae of Scipio and Laelius by Cicero is in De Senectute, where they have a minor role as facilitators of the opening of a discourse by Cato Major.
- 42.
Off. 1. 55–56; 2. 30–31.
- 43.
The depth of this attachment and how it parallels features of friendship in Amic. can be sampled in Att. 18, 164; at times Cicero and Atticus exchanged letters on a daily basis.
- 44.
Amic. 20.
- 45.
Rep. 1. 39.
- 46.
Amic. 83.
- 47.
Amic. 22, 26–27, 31, 47, 87–88.
- 48.
Amic. 7, 10, 13.
- 49.
A much fuller exploration of these conditions is found in Nicgorski (2008).
- 50.
Amic. 100 ff.
- 51.
Note how Cicero himself, so deeply respectful of past thinkers and leaders and of the Roman tradition, regards his own independence from such precedents. See Orat. 169–70 where Cicero, after professing his deference to the authority of age and antiquity’s precedents, says that he does not demand of antiquity what it lacks but praises what it has (Nec ego id quod deest antiquitati flagito potius quam laudo quod est….) and seeks to be free to criticize antiquity. Note Arch. 15–16, where Scipio is among those natural geniuses who are capable of a certain critical independence from the learning and formative power of their communities.
- 52.
Fin. 2. 49–50; Orat. 237–38; Tusc. 3. 3; 5. 104–05.
- 53.
Off. 1. 26, 65.
- 54.
Plutarch (1960: 118 [3]).
- 55.
Att. 17.
- 56.
Tusc. 1. 4. In Arch. 26, Cicero emphasizes how desire of praise extends to all by wondering why philosophers write their names on the very books in which they condemn the love of glory (also see, Tusc. 1. 34–35).
- 57.
Off. 1. 26.
- 58.
Rep. 5. 9.
- 59.
Off. 1. 64–65; 26.
- 60.
Sest. 37, 134.
- 61.
Off. 1. 65.
- 62.
Rep. 1. 60; Tusc. 4. 37–48.
- 63.
Rep. 1. 27.
- 64.
Rep. 6. 13–29.
- 65.
Rep. 6. 25–26. Regarding the prior use of gloria in the text, the only exception appears to be at 3. 6–7, where derivatives of laus (praise) and ornare (to honor) are used; Laelius is the speaker at this point in the dialogue. Leeman (1949: 186), writing about the concept of glory in Roman society, spoke of aspects of it being designated
by various terms (fama, laus, honor, claritas) as in Greek. Glory and its aspects are only parts of a wide range of notions characteristic of the relations between citizen and society in Rome, like gratia, potentia, potestas, auctoritas, dignitas, honor. In this group the specific importance of gloria is that of designating the (subjective) splendour and the (objective) acknowledgement as a consequence and a reward of extraordinary virtue…
Shortly prior to this, Leeman noted, “[T]he transition from ‘splendour’ to ‘fame’ is essentially a change of subject and object, a well-known phenomenon in language.” Leeman did not note decus as a possible substitute for or aspect of gloria. He has suggested in the comments above that there is a residual notion of gloria in Roman usage that distinguished it from fama and associated it with virtus. In the face of a looser popular usage of gloria, it seems that Cicero may have sought to bring this residual notion to the forefront with the term decus and with the phrase vera gloria.
- 66.
Sabine and Smith (1929) and Keyes (1959). The recent translations by Powell (1990) and by Rudd (1998) follow this convention in its rendering of verum decus in the first of the two usages of decus in Rep. 6. 25–26, while those of Zetzel (1999) and Fott (2014) translate the phrase as “true honor.”
- 67.
See, for example, Off. 2. 43; Sest. 139. Cicero does not invariably do this. Sometimes he makes the same point in another way, as in Tusc. 3. 3 (also to a degree at 5. 104–05) where he distinguishes popularis gloria and solida gloria. At Fin. 3. 56–57, Cicero has Cato expounding Stoic views and claiming that bona fama is a better Latin rendering of the Stoic school’s eudoxia than gloria.
- 68.
De Or. 1. 132, 3. 212.
- 69.
Leeman (1949:185, also 188) observes, “Moreover contradictions exist between the attitude towards glory in the Somnium and the rest of the De Republica, where it is judged of in a positive sense.” It appears that Leeman did not notice certain statements of Scipio (Rep. 1. 27, 60) considered above, which indicate the same or a very similar attitudes toward glory in the Dream and early in the Rep.
- 70.
Our major source for the extant Rep., the Vatican manuscript discovered in 1820, does not contain the Dream, which comes through a separate manuscript tradition; see Powell (1990: 119, 133).
- 71.
Rep. 1. 1.
- 72.
Leg. Man. 7.
- 73.
Leg. Man. 6; Sest. 143.
- 74.
Sest. 138; Rep. 4. 6–7; Fin. 5. 69.
- 75.
Off. 2. 31 ff.
- 76.
Marcell. 25–26.
- 77.
Tusc. 1. 109–110; also Arch. 14–15; Sest. 143.
- 78.
Verr. 2. 4. 81..
- 79.
Off. 2. 32 ff.; see also Amic. 28–29.
- 80.
Off. 2. 24–26; Phil. 1. 33.
- 81.
Off. 2. 43.
- 82.
Off. 2. 44 ff.; Leg. Man. 47.
- 83.
Tusc. 3. 3 ff.; Att. 17; Sest. 137–39. In Ac. 2. 4–7, the goodness and glory of philosophical discussions is noted in contrast with a public opinion that is generally hostile to them.
- 84.
See Tusc. 5. 70–71 for a similar perspective on virtue and as evidence that the Dream of Scipio is essentially a metaphor for philosophy’s discernment of virtue as the true good, out of a process of knowing the self in the context of the whole. The passage that follows at Tusc. 5. 105, where the troubles that come from any kind of involvement with the people and public opinion are contrasted with the sweet joy of scholarly leisure (otium litteratum) that entails contemplation of infinity and the heavens, should not be read as a Stoic-like rejection of political responsibility but rather as an effort to guard against the allure of false glory and to draw to thinking that contributes to virtuous ways and true glory. At Brut. 59, Cicero observes that a human being’s glory (homini decus) is said to be in her mind or intellect (ingenium). This is wholly consistent with finding human glory in virtue, for reason is the human key to following nature and thus to the life of virtue.
- 85.
The Dream affirms humankind’s social and political nature and the consequent human responsibilities. Particularly at Rep. 6. 13, Africanus indicates that it is the will of the supreme deity for humans to be joined together according to right (jure) in polities and that the leaders of these communities are to have the special protection and encouragement of that god.
- 86.
Lig. 37. On Regulus, see Off. 1. 39; 3. 99 ff.
- 87.
For example, Sest. 47, 131; Arch. 30; Rab. Perd. 29–30; Tusc. 1. 32–36.
- 88.
See Powell (1990: 163–65) for a summary of the case for Cicero’s dependence on Plato on the topic of immortality. Sen. 78; Tusc. 1. 35; 5. 70; Hortensius (Grilli 1962 frs. 110, 112, 114–15, pp. 51–54). “Consular philosophers” have come to be defined by some, largely on the basis of Hortensius, fr. 114, as those inclined to accept the prospect of personal immortality (Hagendahl, 1967: II, 584). Rawson (1975: 237, 240) notes Cicero’s argument and hope regarding immortality yet observes earlier (227), when discussing his reaction to his daughter Tullia’s death, that he “was not even a firm believer in a future life, and certainly he never mentions its possibility in the letters of this time.” At Tusc. 1. 79–81, it is reported that Panaetius made arguments against immortality, which Cicero seems to think could be refuted. Given the range of positions represented in Cicero, Gibbon (1900–01: Chap. 15, 55, n. 51) remarks, “[T]he writings of Cicero represent in the most lively colours the ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty of the ancient philosophers with regard to the immortality of the soul.” To this he properly adds, in a note, that in Tusc. 1, Sen. and the Dream of Scipio, Cicero provided “in the most beautiful language, everything that Grecian philosophy or Roman good sense could possibly suggest on this dark but important subject.”
- 89.
Rep. 6. 8.
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Nicgorski, W. (2016). Chapter 5 The Socratic Statesman. In: Cicero’s Skepticism and His Recovery of Political Philosophy. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58413-7_6
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