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STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA ROMANA
THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS --
from the time of Catone the Censor
to the death of Marc'Aurelio.
from the time of Catone the Censor
to the death of Marc'Aurelio.
"Filosofia togata", Greek
philosophy in Roman dress,
is the title of two stimulating collections of essays by
scholars, the fruit of seminars over several years.
The editors define the focus of their enquiry as
“the mutual interaction of philosophy and Roman life”.
is the title of two stimulating collections of essays by
scholars, the fruit of seminars over several years.
The editors define the focus of their enquiry as
“the mutual interaction of philosophy and Roman life”.
The Roman philosophers, indeed, are distinguished by
their interest in ethics and in physics
(in so far as physics concerned the gods,
since theology was a branch of metaphysics).
Unlike the Greeks, Roman philosophers did not
in general make original contributions to logic,
but they excelled in pragmatics and rhetorics.
in general make original contributions to logic,
but they excelled in pragmatics and rhetorics.
In the early empire,Seneca (c.4 BCE to 65 CE)
and Epitteto (c.50 to 130 CE) show,
by their attacks on excessive attachment
to logic, that it was perhaps the most
popular area of philosophical study in their time,
at least amongstudents of Stoicism.
and Epitteto (c.50 to 130 CE) show,
by their attacks on excessive attachment
to logic, that it was perhaps the most
popular area of philosophical study in their time,
at least amongstudents of Stoicism.
Rather than reject logic, they subordinated
it to ethics.
Logic should be studied, they said, as a necessary
aid to the study of ethics, whose goal is the good life.
Focusing on ethics, the Roman philosophers
were constantly concerned with
“the interaction of philosophy and Roman life”,
for philosophy affected their lives as individuals
and as citizens of Roma.
Logic should be studied, they said, as a necessary
aid to the study of ethics, whose goal is the good life.
Focusing on ethics, the Roman philosophers
were constantly concerned with
“the interaction of philosophy and Roman life”,
for philosophy affected their lives as individuals
and as citizens of Roma.
If we are to believe Cicerone, it affected the
attitudes and actions of political and military
leaders — Scipione Emiliano (as portrayed
by Cicerone) is the philosophical ancestor of
Marc'Aurelio.
attitudes and actions of political and military
leaders — Scipione Emiliano (as portrayed
by Cicerone) is the philosophical ancestor of
Marc'Aurelio.
For others, however,the interaction was
negative,
as we can see from the suspicious attitude of
Catone the Censor, who had doubts
about the moral effect of Greek philosophy on young
Romans; or from the intermittent hostility of Nerone,
Vespasian and Domitian towards philosophers
and their doctrines, when these were
considered to be politically dangerous; or
from the dislike of Marc'Aurelio for the sophists,
who in his view were not true philosophers.
as we can see from the suspicious attitude of
Catone the Censor, who had doubts
about the moral effect of Greek philosophy on young
Romans; or from the intermittent hostility of Nerone,
Vespasian and Domitian towards philosophers
and their doctrines, when these were
considered to be politically dangerous; or
from the dislike of Marc'Aurelio for the sophists,
who in his view were not true philosophers.
The earliest stages of Roman philosophy
can be found in the second century BCE,
although some scholars find them
in the poem of Appius Claudius,
Censor in 312 BC.
can be found in the second century BCE,
although some scholars find them
in the poem of Appius Claudius,
Censor in 312 BC.
The poem was perhaps a collection of moral
sententiae (memorable sayings),
and one surviving fragment says that
“each man is the architect of his own fortunes”
-- hardly enough to allow us to call Appius a philosopher.
Cicerone, however,surveying the development of philosophy
in Roma, points out
that Pithagora was living in Italy at the
time of the foundation of theRoman
republic (traditionally
dated to 509 BCE), and he conjecturesthat Pythagorean
doctrines spread through Italy at that time.
Cicerone thought that the poem of Appius was Pythagorean,
and he notes that the
Stoic philosopher Panaetius, late in the
second century BC, praised it.
But Cicerone goes on to say that he cannot name a single Roman philosopher
“before the time of Lelio and Scipione Emiliano”,
that is, the decades after 155 BC.
Cicero also says that the decisive event
for the development of Roman philosophy
was the visit of the three Athenian ambassadors
to Rome in 155 BC.
for the development of Roman philosophy
was the visit of the three Athenian ambassadors
to Rome in 155 BC.
This will be our starting point.
Of course, there had been constant
interaction between
Greeks and Romans for centuries before this,
since Greek cities had been established in
Campania and southern Italy as early as
the eighth century BC.
Virgilio symbolically describes ENEA,
when he had arrived in Italy and was looking for
allies in the coming war, sending an
embassy to the Greek hero,
Diomede.
Also in the time before the founding of Rome,
Evandro, exiled from Arcadia (a region
of the Peloponnese),
was said to have founded his city of
Pallanteo on the site of thefuture city
of Rome.
The second king of Rome, Numa, the
legendary founder of Roman religious rituals,
consulted Pitagora, according to Livio and Cicerone,
again a story
symbolic of the interaction between
Romans and Greeks in the earliest
period of Roman history.
In historical times, more than a
century before the visit of the
Athenian ambassadors, the Romans
increasingly came into contact with
Greek culture in Italia after the capture
of the south Italian Greek city of Tarentum in 272 BC.
when he had arrived in Italy and was looking for
allies in the coming war, sending an
embassy to the Greek hero,
Diomede.
Also in the time before the founding of Rome,
Evandro, exiled from Arcadia (a region
of the Peloponnese),
was said to have founded his city of
Pallanteo on the site of thefuture city
of Rome.
The second king of Rome, Numa, the
legendary founder of Roman religious rituals,
consulted Pitagora, according to Livio and Cicerone,
again a story
symbolic of the interaction between
Romans and Greeks in the earliest
period of Roman history.
In historical times, more than a
century before the visit of the
Athenian ambassadors, the Romans
increasingly came into contact with
Greek culture in Italia after the capture
of the south Italian Greek city of Tarentum in 272 BC.
Outside Italy, early contact
between Greeks and Romans
is again symbolically narrated by
Livio in his story of Roman ambassadors
being sent in 454 BCE to Athens and
other Greek cities in order to study their
laws, especially the laws of Solon.
And, as had happenedin Italia, Roman
military successes led to Roman control
of Greek kingdoms that eventually
became provinces of the Roman empire.
After the first war with Carthage (264–241)
most of Sicily became a Roman province,
and during the second war with
Carthage (218–202) its greatest Greek city,
Siracusa (which had remained independent),
was captured by the Romans in 211.
between Greeks and Romans
is again symbolically narrated by
Livio in his story of Roman ambassadors
being sent in 454 BCE to Athens and
other Greek cities in order to study their
laws, especially the laws of Solon.
And, as had happenedin Italia, Roman
military successes led to Roman control
of Greek kingdoms that eventually
became provinces of the Roman empire.
After the first war with Carthage (264–241)
most of Sicily became a Roman province,
and during the second war with
Carthage (218–202) its greatest Greek city,
Siracusa (which had remained independent),
was captured by the Romans in 211.
Roman victories over the Macedonian king,
Philip V, at Cynoscephalae in 197 BCE,
and over his brother,Perseo, at Pidna in 168,
were followed by the capture of the
citadel of Corinto in 146 and the
incorporation of the Greek mainland
into the Roman empire under the s
upervision of the governor of the
province of Macedonia, which was
established in 147.
Philip V, at Cynoscephalae in 197 BCE,
and over his brother,Perseo, at Pidna in 168,
were followed by the capture of the
citadel of Corinto in 146 and the
incorporation of the Greek mainland
into the Roman empire under the s
upervision of the governor of the
province of Macedonia, which was
established in 147.
Thus, of the four major geographical
areas of Greek culture, three
— southern
Italy, Sicily and the Greek mainland —
were subject to Rome by the time of
Scipione Emiliano.
The subjugation of the fourth, Asia Minor,
was anticipated by the defeat of the Seleucid
king, Antioco, at Magnesia in189, and the
province of Asia was established when
the kingdom of Pergamo was bequeathed to the
Romans by King Attalo III in 133.
The incorporation of much of the rest of
Asia Minor was completed byPompei in the 60s BCE.
It is clear even from this bald recital of military
successes, that the Romans were inextricably
involved with Greek culture long before the embassy
of 155.
was anticipated by the defeat of the Seleucid
king, Antioco, at Magnesia in189, and the
province of Asia was established when
the kingdom of Pergamo was bequeathed to the
Romans by King Attalo III in 133.
The incorporation of much of the rest of
Asia Minor was completed byPompei in the 60s BCE.
It is clear even from this bald recital of military
successes, that the Romans were inextricably
involved with Greek culture long before the embassy
of 155.
The arrival in Roma of Greek prisoners of
war led tothe development of Roman
literature based on Greek models,
especially in the genres of epic and drama.
war led tothe development of Roman
literature based on Greek models,
especially in the genres of epic and drama.
Many Roman senators and intellectuals (for
there were Roman intellectuals even
at this early stage)learned Greek and
admired Greek thought, art and literature.
there were Roman intellectuals even
at this early stage)learned Greek and
admired Greek thought, art and literature.
A senator, Fabio Pictor, the earliest
Roman historian,
wrote in Greek and is known to
have been a
member of an embassy sent to
Delphi in 216.
Livio believed that the return of the
army of Manlio Vulso from Asia Minor
in 188 BC was the crucial stage
in the advance of Greek influence on
Roman society, which
Polybius more accurately dated to thereturn
of the army of Emilio Paullus from Macedonia
twenty yearslater.
Important also is the
attitude of individual leaders towards Greek culture,
an aspect of the Greek influence on
Rome that particularly interested
Plutarch in his Roman lives.
The picture of a sudden revelation
of Greek culture to the Romans in the middle of the
second century BCE is false.
Roman historian,
wrote in Greek and is known to
have been a
member of an embassy sent to
Delphi in 216.
Livio believed that the return of the
army of Manlio Vulso from Asia Minor
in 188 BC was the crucial stage
in the advance of Greek influence on
Roman society, which
Polybius more accurately dated to thereturn
of the army of Emilio Paullus from Macedonia
twenty yearslater.
Important also is the
attitude of individual leaders towards Greek culture,
an aspect of the Greek influence on
Rome that particularly interested
Plutarch in his Roman lives.
The picture of a sudden revelation
of Greek culture to the Romans in the middle of the
second century BCE is false.
Cicero was right to say
that no Roman philosophers could be
named beforethat time, and the significance
of the embassy of the three philosophers in 155
is that it introduced Romans in Rome
to Greek professional philosophers.
that no Roman philosophers could be
named beforethat time, and the significance
of the embassy of the three philosophers in 155
is that it introduced Romans in Rome
to Greek professional philosophers.
The ambassadors, as Catone
the Censor warned, were especially
attractive to
younger Romans, including Scipione Emiliano and his friends
(“il circolo di Scipione”) and
we can date the development of
specifically Roman philosophy from their maturity,
that is, about ten or twenty years afterthe embassy of 155.
the Censor warned, were especially
attractive to
younger Romans, including Scipione Emiliano and his friends
(“il circolo di Scipione”) and
we can date the development of
specifically Roman philosophy from their maturity,
that is, about ten or twenty years afterthe embassy of 155.
This is also the period of the influence of
the
historian Polibio, resident in Rome from
168 to 150 and the companion of Scipione
Emiliano in Africa and Spain after that,
and of the Stoic philosopher, Panaetius,
who was in Rome for substantial periods
between 146 and 129.
-------
Lelio, consul in 140, can perhaps be called the
first Roman philosopher.
-----
The century after the embassy of 155 was
essentially a period of "filosofia togata"
(if you excuse us the metaphor),
for it was Greeks who taught the
Romans at Rome and in Greece, especially in
Athens and Rhodes.
historian Polibio, resident in Rome from
168 to 150 and the companion of Scipione
Emiliano in Africa and Spain after that,
and of the Stoic philosopher, Panaetius,
who was in Rome for substantial periods
between 146 and 129.
-------
Lelio, consul in 140, can perhaps be called the
first Roman philosopher.
-----
The century after the embassy of 155 was
essentially a period of "filosofia togata"
(if you excuse us the metaphor),
for it was Greeks who taught the
Romans at Rome and in Greece, especially in
Athens and Rhodes.
Even discounting the biases
of Cicerone’s idealized picture of Scipione and Lelio,
we can say that in this period the Romans
brought about adaptations in Greek philosophy
that were needed to make itacceptable in
Roman culture.
Here the readiness of Panaetius to adjust
the rigid doctrines of Stoicism is significant,
and from his time there
emerges a distinctively Roman philosophy
with a strong focus on
ethics, particularly the duty of Roman leaders towards the
state and its gods, towards human kind, and towards their
families and dependants.
Thus Greek philosophy in the Roman world was split, for its
ethics had practical effects on Roman life and culture,
while its logic and physics very largely continued to be
studied and discussed, but with fewer practical
consequences.
The leading Greek figures of middle
Stoicism, Panaetius and Posidonio, were
crucial in the development of Roman
philosophy.
Important also were the consequences
of the sack of Athens by Sullain 86 BC.
of Cicerone’s idealized picture of Scipione and Lelio,
we can say that in this period the Romans
brought about adaptations in Greek philosophy
that were needed to make itacceptable in
Roman culture.
Here the readiness of Panaetius to adjust
the rigid doctrines of Stoicism is significant,
and from his time there
emerges a distinctively Roman philosophy
with a strong focus on
ethics, particularly the duty of Roman leaders towards the
state and its gods, towards human kind, and towards their
families and dependants.
Thus Greek philosophy in the Roman world was split, for its
ethics had practical effects on Roman life and culture,
while its logic and physics very largely continued to be
studied and discussed, but with fewer practical
consequences.
The leading Greek figures of middle
Stoicism, Panaetius and Posidonio, were
crucial in the development of Roman
philosophy.
Important also were the consequences
of the sack of Athens by Sullain 86 BC.
Like Emilio Paullus after Pydna,
Sulla brought back to Rome Greek
cultural treasures,
including the library of Apellicon,
which
“included most of the works of Aristotele and
Teofrasto”.
How this library was acquired,
and its relationship to Aristotle’s own
library, is a tangled story involving insoluble problems.
Sulla brought back to Rome Greek
cultural treasures,
including the library of Apellicon,
which
“included most of the works of Aristotele and
Teofrasto”.
How this library was acquired,
and its relationship to Aristotle’s own
library, is a tangled story involving insoluble problems.
Barnes, however,
has shown that the standard picture in
modern literary histories, of a sudden appearance
of Aristotle’s works in Rome after 86, is false
has shown that the standard picture in
modern literary histories, of a sudden appearance
of Aristotle’s works in Rome after 86, is false
While Plutarch (and before him, Strabo)
may have been factually accurate in
saying that Aristotle’s works reached
Rome in this way, it is pressing their
evidence too far to say that Cicerone’s
freedman and friend, Tyrannio, and the
Peripatetic scholar, Andronico of Rhodes, revolutionized
Aristotelian studies.
may have been factually accurate in
saying that Aristotle’s works reached
Rome in this way, it is pressing their
evidence too far to say that Cicerone’s
freedman and friend, Tyrannio, and the
Peripatetic scholar, Andronico of Rhodes, revolutionized
Aristotelian studies.
Barnes has shown that Aristotle
was already known in some form to
Cicerone, and that he had continuously been
known to the Greek Peripatetics in
the period afterhis death (322 BC),
when, according to Strabo, his
texts were unavailable.
was already known in some form to
Cicerone, and that he had continuously been
known to the Greek Peripatetics in
the period afterhis death (322 BC),
when, according to Strabo, his
texts were unavailable.
The famous edition of Aristotle
by Andronico has been shown by Barnes to
be little more than “amateur tinkering”, and
his major contribution to Aristotelian studies
in Rome was a catalogue (Greek, Pinakes)
of Aristotle’s works.
by Andronico has been shown by Barnes to
be little more than “amateur tinkering”, and
his major contribution to Aristotelian studies
in Rome was a catalogue (Greek, Pinakes)
of Aristotle’s works.
As Cicerone showed, the
Peripatetic school continued to be active in
Athens, although the Liceo (where Aristotele had taught)
was destroyed by Sulla in 86.
Peripatetic school continued to be active in
Athens, although the Liceo (where Aristotele had taught)
was destroyed by Sulla in 86.
Cicerone himself makes the Academic Piso say
that
“with the exception of Platone, one
might rightly call Aristotele the
chief of philosophers”,
might rightly call Aristotele the
chief of philosophers”,
which implies
that Aristotle was known and
read in Rome before the edition of
Andronico appeared, probably after the death of
Cicero in 43 BC
and before 30 BC.
that Aristotle was known and
read in Rome before the edition of
Andronico appeared, probably after the death of
Cicero in 43 BC
and before 30 BC.
While there were Romans who fancied
themselves as philosophers in the first
part of the first century BC, Cicerone was
the first to define and systematize
"filosofia togata".
His adaptation of Greek philosophy stabilized
Greek doctrines in ethics, epistemology and
theology for Roman (and hence European) readers.
Greek doctrines in ethics, epistemology and
theology for Roman (and hence European) readers.
GRECO contro LATINO
Even more significantly, CICERONE
transmitted the philosophoical doctrines in
"lingua Latina",
for which he developed a philosophical vocabulary.
transmitted the philosophoical doctrines in
"lingua Latina",
for which he developed a philosophical vocabulary.
Despised by Mommsen and largely
neglected as a philosopher by Oxford philosophers
he has to be rehabilitated both
as a philosopher and transmitter of Greek philosophy.
neglected as a philosopher by Oxford philosophers
he has to be rehabilitated both
as a philosopher and transmitter of Greek philosophy.
It is to CICERONE that we owe
the Stoic emphasis on duty and
control of the passions, event
hough he was himself an Academic.
the Stoic emphasis on duty and
control of the passions, event
hough he was himself an Academic.
His originality as a philosopher is
debatable, and is chiefly to be
found in his works on politics and law,in particular
the "De Republica"
and "De Legibus", both surviving only in fragments.
debatable, and is chiefly to be
found in his works on politics and law,in particular
the "De Republica"
and "De Legibus", both surviving only in fragments.
But after Cicerone we can for the first time
define
a Roman philosopher as a
Roman student of Greek philosophy,
who has ADAPTED Greek doctrines
for the needs of Roman society and politics,
with a prevailing focus on ethics.
a Roman philosopher as a
Roman student of Greek philosophy,
who has ADAPTED Greek doctrines
for the needs of Roman society and politics,
with a prevailing focus on ethics.
While Cicero and (if this picture is
not totally imaginary) the Roman
leaders of the generation of
Scipione Emiliano emphasized the public
duty of the ARISTOCRATIC Roman
philosopher, others, most notably
the Epicureans, sought happiness
(the Greek eudaimonia) through
non-involvement in public life.
not totally imaginary) the Roman
leaders of the generation of
Scipione Emiliano emphasized the public
duty of the ARISTOCRATIC Roman
philosopher, others, most notably
the Epicureans, sought happiness
(the Greek eudaimonia) through
non-involvement in public life.
Epicurean studies flourished
particularly in Campania, in the cities around
the Bay of Naples, whose origins for the most part
were Greek.
particularly in Campania, in the cities around
the Bay of Naples, whose origins for the most part
were Greek.
Many Romans studied philosophy
with Filodemo (110–40 BC) at Herculaneum.
with Filodemo (110–40 BC) at Herculaneum.
Through the patronage of the aristocratic
family of the Pisones, FILODEMO had many
friends in the Roman upper classes, many of
whose members were Epicureans despite
their involvement in political life.
family of the Pisones, FILODEMO had many
friends in the Roman upper classes, many of
whose members were Epicureans despite
their involvement in political life.
The first truly original Roman
philosopher, LUCREZIO, was Epicurean, and he seems to
have succeeded in living as a private individual.
philosopher, LUCREZIO, was Epicurean, and he seems to
have succeeded in living as a private individual.
His epic poem, De Rerum Natura,
composed before 54 BCE, was
inspired by Epicurus, whom
Lucrezio praises consecutively as
man, father and god.
composed before 54 BCE, was
inspired by Epicurus, whom
Lucrezio praises consecutively as
man, father and god.
Derivative as this sounds, the exposition of
Epicurean doctrine in Latin hexameter verse called
for an original genius, who created a new
language, appropriate for the dignity of
epic verse, that expounded Epicuro’s
teaching with power and intensity.
Epicurean doctrine in Latin hexameter verse called
for an original genius, who created a new
language, appropriate for the dignity of
epic verse, that expounded Epicuro’s
teaching with power and intensity.
Yet even Lucrezio was principally concerned
with ethics, for the goal of his
teaching was to enable
Romans to live a life free of the fear of death,
and his exposition of physics, celestial phenomena
and the development of civilization, was
directed towards this goal.
with ethics, for the goal of his
teaching was to enable
Romans to live a life free of the fear of death,
and his exposition of physics, celestial phenomena
and the development of civilization, was
directed towards this goal.
Lucrezio remained outside the mainstream of
Roman philosophy, admired by later
poets (Virgilio, pre-eminently) but apparently not
widely read.
Roman philosophy, admired by later
poets (Virgilio, pre-eminently) but apparently not
widely read.
In part this may have been due to
the political convulsionsin the
twenty-five years after his death, which,
ironically, gave Cicerone the stimulus
to produce a flood of philosophical
works in the last three years of his life.
the political convulsionsin the
twenty-five years after his death, which,
ironically, gave Cicerone the stimulus
to produce a flood of philosophical
works in the last three years of his life.
When the social and political situation had
been stabilized
by Augusto, and the Principate had been formally
established in27 BCE, the contexts for leadership
and patronage had changed permanently.
by Augusto, and the Principate had been formally
established in27 BCE, the contexts for leadership
and patronage had changed permanently.
The philosophical poets of the Augustan age
—
Virgilio, Orazio,Ovidio and Manilio
—
composed their poems against a background of power
and patronage concentrated in the person
of the emperor or (as in the case of Maecenas,
patron of Virgilio and Orazio) his associates.
Whatever the poets’s personal philosophies, the
doctrines of their poems were consistent with
the ideology of the emperor.
—
Virgilio, Orazio,Ovidio and Manilio
—
composed their poems against a background of power
and patronage concentrated in the person
of the emperor or (as in the case of Maecenas,
patron of Virgilio and Orazio) his associates.
Whatever the poets’s personal philosophies, the
doctrines of their poems were consistent with
the ideology of the emperor.
Thus the JOVE of the
Epicurean Virgilio was assimilated to
Stoic Fate, and the hero, ENEA, was driven
by a Stoic sense of duty to the gods, to
his state (present and future) and to human beings
(again, present and future).
Epicurean Virgilio was assimilated to
Stoic Fate, and the hero, ENEA, was driven
by a Stoic sense of duty to the gods, to
his state (present and future) and to human beings
(again, present and future).
So the Epicurean Orazio, most notably in his
six
“Roman”odes (the first six odes of Book 3),
advised young people to beinvolved in public duties.
Ovidio, whose attitude towards Augusto was
equally complex, expounded a form of
Pythagoreanism and a largely
Stoic cosmology without overt
reference to the regime.
The Stoic Manilio was careful to avoid offending
Augustus and Tiberius in hisaccount of astrology, an
exceptionally sensitive topic
under the principate.
Even so, the custom of maintaining a
“house philosopher” continued.
“Roman”odes (the first six odes of Book 3),
advised young people to beinvolved in public duties.
Ovidio, whose attitude towards Augusto was
equally complex, expounded a form of
Pythagoreanism and a largely
Stoic cosmology without overt
reference to the regime.
The Stoic Manilio was careful to avoid offending
Augustus and Tiberius in hisaccount of astrology, an
exceptionally sensitive topic
under the principate.
Even so, the custom of maintaining a
“house philosopher” continued.
Augusto, for example, maintained
the doxographer, Ario Didimo, in his home
as friend and confidant.
The Cynics stayed outside the mainstream
of Roman philosophy and society, as would
be expected from a group whose
doctrines disregarded political and social conventions.
The Cynics never were a philosophical school like
the Stoics, Academics and Epicureans, and their
movement is better described as a way of life.
the doxographer, Ario Didimo, in his home
as friend and confidant.
The Cynics stayed outside the mainstream
of Roman philosophy and society, as would
be expected from a group whose
doctrines disregarded political and social conventions.
The Cynics never were a philosophical school like
the Stoics, Academics and Epicureans, and their
movement is better described as a way of life.
Although the early Cynics wrote copiously,
their texts have disappeared, and
their doctrinessurvive mainly in the form
of epigrammatic statemerits or ripostes (chreiai).
Thus their place in the history of Roman
philosophy is hard to define.
Some features, however, can be clearly distinguished.
The first is the traditional association of
the early hero of Cynicism,
Diogene of Sinope (412–324 BC), with Socrate.
their texts have disappeared, and
their doctrinessurvive mainly in the form
of epigrammatic statemerits or ripostes (chreiai).
Thus their place in the history of Roman
philosophy is hard to define.
Some features, however, can be clearly distinguished.
The first is the traditional association of
the early hero of Cynicism,
Diogene of Sinope (412–324 BC), with Socrate.
Even if Plato criticized Diogenes
as
“Socrates gone mad”,
Diogenes shared with Socrates
the need for an urban context for his
teaching, disregard of physical comfort,
and a capacity for making his
interlocutors uncomfortable
by candour and rigorous interrogation.
Second, there is a close relationship between
Stoic ethics and Cynicism.
“Socrates gone mad”,
Diogenes shared with Socrates
the need for an urban context for his
teaching, disregard of physical comfort,
and a capacity for making his
interlocutors uncomfortable
by candour and rigorous interrogation.
Second, there is a close relationship between
Stoic ethics and Cynicism.
Zeno, the founder of Stoicism,
was a follower of the Cynic, Crates (368–288 BC).
was a follower of the Cynic, Crates (368–288 BC).
His treatise on the ideal republic,
"Politeia", shared with the Cynics a
disregard for conventional political, religious
and social institutions, to such an extent
that later Stoics were embarrassed by it.
More significant for the Roman
Stoics was Cynic asceticism,
that is the practice of
physical hardship
(Greek "askesis", literally“training”)
as a means towards a
ttainingvirtue.
Stoic emphasis on the unimportance of physical
comforts anddiscomforts, relative to
reason and virtue, has its origins in
Cynic practice.
Finally,“living according to nature”
was a fundamental doctrineof both Cynics
and Stoics.
The common ground between Cynicism and
Stoicism, therefore,further blurs the outlines of
Cynic philosophy in the Roman world.
Yet there is evidence for Cynicism in
Roma in the late Republic,
although this seems also to have been
the period of Cynicism’s lowest fortunes at Rome.
"Politeia", shared with the Cynics a
disregard for conventional political, religious
and social institutions, to such an extent
that later Stoics were embarrassed by it.
More significant for the Roman
Stoics was Cynic asceticism,
that is the practice of
physical hardship
(Greek "askesis", literally“training”)
as a means towards a
ttainingvirtue.
Stoic emphasis on the unimportance of physical
comforts anddiscomforts, relative to
reason and virtue, has its origins in
Cynic practice.
Finally,“living according to nature”
was a fundamental doctrineof both Cynics
and Stoics.
The common ground between Cynicism and
Stoicism, therefore,further blurs the outlines of
Cynic philosophy in the Roman world.
Yet there is evidence for Cynicism in
Roma in the late Republic,
although this seems also to have been
the period of Cynicism’s lowest fortunes at Rome.
Varrone (116-37 BCE), as quoted by Augustine,
included Cynicism in his list of 288 philosophical
sects, but he distinguished between
the Cynics and formal
philosophical sects
in that the “manner
and custom of the Cynics”
did not include an
enquiry into the
supreme
good (finis boni).
included Cynicism in his list of 288 philosophical
sects, but he distinguished between
the Cynics and formal
philosophical sects
in that the “manner
and custom of the Cynics”
did not include an
enquiry into the
supreme
good (finis boni).
His interest in Cynicism
is indicated also by thetitle of
his "Saturae Menippeae",
which
derives from the Cynic writer of
the third century BCE, Menippus of
Gadara.
Cicerone was at pains to distinguish Stoic candour
from the plain speaking
of the Cynics,
which often was obscene.
Further, the Roman satiric
tradition owed a greatdeal to
the popularizing Cynic
diatribes of Bion of
Boristene (c.335–245 BC)
and his younger contemporary,
Teles of Megara.
Orazio,indeed,
Orazio,indeed,
refers to
“diatribes in the style of Bion", and the
tradition of forthright moral criticism,
tradition of forthright moral criticism,
spiced with obscenity, is a prominent feature in
the satires of the four great Roman
satirists, Lucilio,
Orazio,
Persio and Juvenal.
Cynicism
seems to Cynicism
have
flourished
in
the
Roman
world during the first two
centuries CE.
The goal of
Cynicism
can be defined as “to live
well in order to be happy".
This is consistent with the Stoic emphasis on
virtue (i.e. "iving well") in a period when
individuals turned to Stoicism for answers to
the problems of
preserving moral and intellectual independence
the problems of
preserving moral and intellectual independence
under a monarchy.
There are
many Cynic expressions
in Seneca’s
letters and dialogues, and
Seneca
himself was a friend and
admirer of the
Cynic philosopher,
Demetrio.
The most explicit exposition of Cynic doctrine for
a Roman audience is
that of Epitteto, and an
important contemporary
source for Cynicism is
the orator,
Dio Chrysostom (40–110 CE), who
before his exile
before his exile
from Rome had been a follower of
the Stoic, Musonio Rufo.
Nevertheless, there
were strong objections to the Cynics in Rome,and Cynicism
was practised mostly in the Greek
east of
the empire.
The basic objection stemmed
from Cynic contempt for social conventions.
A central metaphor of
Cynicism
was
“defacing the
currency”,
that is,
showing the hollowness
of the usual rituals and conventions of civilized life.
While this led to an asceticism
that was admired by many
Romans, especially Stoics, it was displayed in public
behaviour offensive to
Roman ideas
of "decorum"
and "gravitas",
appropriate behaviour and
dignity.
Cynics made people uncomfortable, especially in
the decorous (not to say, prudish)
society described by Cicero, and their extremism in
despising the comforts of life was unacceptable
to those,like
Seneca, who preferred to compromise
between wealth and philosophical principles.
Further, the Cynics' disregard of social and political
conventions inevitably encouraged non-participation in
politics and devaluation of public reputation.
For the Cynics the central Roman aristocratic virtues
of "officium" and "pietas" (i.e. duty in
public and private contexts) were irrelevant.
Finally, the Cynics exclusive focus on ethics was at variance
with Stoic emphasis on
the unity of knowledge,which enjoined
the study of logic and physics in
order to be proficientin ethics.
Seneca deplores the feeble state of philosophy (he is
thinking principally of
Roman philosophers)
in the century between Cicerone's
death and his own time.
-----
CICERONE records the rise and fall of the
only completely Roman school of philosophy,
that of the Sextii (father and son),
which began probably in the 40s BC,
and he says that the established Greek schools
suffered
from absence of leadership.
Yet individual Romans
pursued
philosophical studies in Rome and in
Greece, and the major schools of Greek
philosophy continued to exist.
The Stoics were the
most successful survivors, and in
Seneca (d. 65 CE) they
produced the second great Latin prose author
of Roman philosophy.
Like Cicero,Seneca based his authority
on a new Latin prose
style, at once rhetorical and
dogmatic.
But, unlike Cicero, the
minister of Nero was compelled by circumstances
to distinguish
between his public life and his private doctrines.
The great division between his political actions
(his support of the murder of
Nero’s mother, Agrippina, in 59 CE,
beingperhaps the philosopher’s nadir)
and his doctrine
of morally good involvement in public affairs,
between his wealth and his doctrine of a life
lived according to nature, have made Seneca,
in his own
time andever since, a controversial figure.
But of his importance as a
Roman
philosopher there can be no doubt,
and, for centuries, in Europe of
the
Renaissance and the
Enlightenment, he was the
most influential of Roman philosophers, surpassing even
Plato and Aristotle in northern
Europe towards the end of the
sixteenth and early in the seventeenth centuries.
Seneca's focus was almost
exclusively ethical.
Seneca's "Naturales Quaestiones",
his only surviving work in physics,
has never been widely read or admired.
Seneca and his contemporaries were compelled by
their social and political
contexts to be very different in their philosophical goals
andstrategies from the Roman philosophers of Cicero
’
s time.
They were still indebted to Greek philosophy
and Greek teachers, but their studies were
directed
towards honourable survival
under a regime that was intermittently immoral,
led by a
monarch who had the de facto
arbitrary power of life and death over them.
Roman politicians whose philosophy
led them into politically dangerous utterance
did not survive
—
the fate of Lucan, Thrasea and
Seneca himself under Nero, and of both
the Helvidii under th
e Flavians.
All these men were executed on political grounds,
but their philosophy provided them with the
language of political dissent and
the principles on which to persevere.
Even the satirists were muted.
Whereas Lucilio (a friend of Scipione Emiliano) had openly
criticized his political contemporaries and Orazio had
criticized the morals of Roman society,
Persius (d. 62 CE)adopted a more
private mode of expression and was
saved from be
ingdrawn into political controversy
by his early death.
A generation later,Juvenal, the greatest
of Roman satirists, could not publish
his satiresuntil after Domitian
’
s death in 96 CE, and he explicitly
denied anyphilosophical
allegiance.
His philosophical passages are not
aligned with any one school, and he
never supported imperial policy
in the
waythat
Horace did.
He preferred to continue the moralizing
tradition of Roman satire by means of rhetorical brilliance a
nd sustained indigna-tion
behind a mask of irony.
The period between the death of Seneca in 65
CE and the accessionof
Adriano in 118 brought change
and occasional turbulence to intellectuals
and philosophers in the Roman world.
Like Nerone, the Flavian emperors (Vespasian, Tito
and Domitian, 69-96)
preferred
to silence philosophers if their doctrine and
speech were politically
offensive, for
example, by expelling them from Italy in 74 and 93.
This period also saw the rise of Greek
orators who made some claim to being philosophers.
These are the orators of the Second Sophistic (so
named early in the third century by Filostrato),
few of whom deserved the title
of
“
philosopher”
: among these Favorino of Aries (
c
.85
–
165) is perhaps
unique.
The Second Sophistic was symptomatic
of developments in Roman philosophy.
From the time of Nero onwards, Greek
once more became the language of philosophy almost exclusively, and philosophers lecture
d in centres other than Rome and Athens.
once more became the language of philosophy almost exclusively, and philosophers lecture
d in centres other than Rome and Athens.
In the time of Nero and the Flavians, the
Romans Cornuto and Musonio lectured inGreek,
and among their pupils were Persio and Lucan
(students under Cornutus) and Epitteto (the most famous student of Musonius), all Stoics.
Romans Cornuto and Musonio lectured inGreek,
and among their pupils were Persio and Lucan
(students under Cornutus) and Epitteto (the most famous student of Musonius), all Stoics.
Epitteto may be deemed Roman philosopher
because of his Roman citizenship (he became a citizen on being freed from slavery),
his years of residence in Rome, and the direct relevance of his doctrines to Roman life.
because of his Roman citizenship (he became a citizen on being freed from slavery),
his years of residence in Rome, and the direct relevance of his doctrines to Roman life.
Epitteto taught in Greece after the expulsion
of the philosophers from Italy in 93 CE, and his importance to the Roman tradition
is clear, for example, from the reverence with which the emperor Marcus
Aurelius quotes him.
Epitteto’s focus on the individual will
and his distinction between “things in our control and not in our con-trol” give a firmer tone to the doctrines of Seneca, while his experience as a slave makes his teaching about freedom more authentic than that of
Seneca.
and his distinction between “things in our control and not in our con-trol” give a firmer tone to the doctrines of Seneca, while his experience as a slave makes his teaching about freedom more authentic than that of
Seneca.
Plutarch, more or less contemporary with
Epictetus, is definitely NOT a Roman
philosopher, and he himself boasts of his loyalty to his hometown (Chaeron
ea) and admits that he never cared to learn Latin.
philosopher, and he himself boasts of his loyalty to his hometown (Chaeron
ea) and admits that he never cared to learn Latin.
He was a Roman citizen, highly honoured by
the emperor Adriano and the friend of many prominent Romans.
His enormous output makes itimpossible to
leave him out of any consideration of philosophical developments in the second
century CE.
His views on Roman charac-ter and leadership,
seen in his Roman Lives, and his criticisms of Stoicand Epicurean doctrines in
the Moralia, are important in any assess-ment of Roman philosophy.Other Greek
philosophers have less claim to be considered in a sur-vey of Roman
philosophers. Nothing certain is known of the life of theStoic Hierocles,
beyond that he was writing in the first half of the sec-ond century CE. His
surviving fragments are on the Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis
(
“
affinity
”
or
“
affection
”
) and on duty, in both confirming the
doctrines of Panaetius, Cicero and Seneca.
Especially interesting is his
theory of expanding circles of duty,
anticipated in Cicero’s "De Officiis".
Favorino was a Gaul who wrote exclusively in Greek and was himself a follower of Academic (as opposedto Pyrrhonian) scepticism.
(
“
affinity
”
or
“
affection
”
) and on duty, in both confirming the
doctrines of Panaetius, Cicero and Seneca.
Especially interesting is his
theory of expanding circles of duty,
anticipated in Cicero’s "De Officiis".
Favorino was a Gaul who wrote exclusively in Greek and was himself a follower of Academic (as opposedto Pyrrhonian) scepticism.
The titles of thirty of his essays are
known,several of which were serious philosophical works, yet so little of
hiswork remains that it is not profitable to include him in our survey.
Apuleius, the African orator, novelist and
philosopher (
c
.125
–
180CE), is apparently unique among second-century philosophers, in that he wrote in Latin.
c
.125
–
180CE), is apparently unique among second-century philosophers, in that he wrote in Latin.
Most Oxford philosophers will deny his claim
to be a philosopher, in part because of his colourful character and opulent
prose.
Thiswould be wrong, for he deals with
philosophical subjects and his con-temporaries called him philosophicus
Platonicus.
His treatise De DeoSocratis
, with its discussion of angels (
daimones
), intermediariesbetween gods and mortals, is consistent with his search for the union of the human worshipper with the divine. This becomes explicit in thelast book of his novel,
Metamorphoses
, where the hero is inspired byan epiphany of Isis
—
here a syncretistic goddess
—
whose enthusiasticdevotee he becomes.
By the middle of the second century CE this trend was irreversible.Stoics like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius directed their search forvirtue to the Stoic god through self-control and reason. Marcus Aure-lius, the last of our Roman philosophers, found solace and hope in con-templating a world beyond the mundane and often depressing circum-stances of his daily responsibilities. He is the unique example of aphilosopher-king, but how far removed from Plato’s ideal!
, with its discussion of angels (
daimones
), intermediariesbetween gods and mortals, is consistent with his search for the union of the human worshipper with the divine. This becomes explicit in thelast book of his novel,
Metamorphoses
, where the hero is inspired byan epiphany of Isis
—
here a syncretistic goddess
—
whose enthusiasticdevotee he becomes.
By the middle of the second century CE this trend was irreversible.Stoics like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius directed their search forvirtue to the Stoic god through self-control and reason. Marcus Aure-lius, the last of our Roman philosophers, found solace and hope in con-templating a world beyond the mundane and often depressing circum-stances of his daily responsibilities. He is the unique example of aphilosopher-king, but how far removed from Plato’s ideal!
Driven bythe Stoic sense of duty, he strove
to maintain Stoic virtue based on rea-son and a life lived according to nature.
But this could not suffice, andhe ended his
Meditations
with the call of the Stoic god to depart fromlife. He was sustained not just by his own sense of self-sufficiency, butby the awareness of his sharing with gods and mortals in the citizen-ship of the universe, and by his knowledge of the divine element in hissoul.Our survey of Roman philosophers ends with Marcus, but this doesnot mean that he
was the last. His contemporary,
Galen, was in histime equally eminent as philosopher and physician, and his survivingphilosophical works contain valuable quotations from, and criticism of,earlier philosophers. Another contemporary, Sextus Empiricus, is analmost unique source for the doctrines of the Pyrrhonian sceptics.These men herald a new age of philosophy in the Roman world, inwhich the search for union with the divine, and for individual comfortin passing through life and death, was taken to new heights by the Neo-platonism of Plotinus (
c
.205
–
270 CE). In contrast,
Diogenes of Oenoanda, late in the second century,
sought to make the consolationsof Epicureanism known to his contemporaries through the enormousinscription that he set up in his home town in the southern part of AsiaMinor. He, too, was motivated by the desire to annul human fear of death, not by union with the divine, but by appeal to the doctrines of Epicurus.Early in the third century Diogenes Laertius (about whose life noth-ing is known) composed his
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
in ten books. The lives, extending from Thales to Epicurus, arevery uneven in reliability and usefulness, but some are quite extensiveand include titles of works now lost, and summaries of their doctrines.These are especially valuable for the Stoics and for Epicurus.
Late in the fourth century CE the Christian bishop and orator, Augus-tine (354
–
430), developed the most extended system of philosophy inLatin prose, which was, despite the influence of Neoplatonism, inde-pendent of Greek models. Nearly a century after Augustine
’
s death, thelast of the Roman philosophers, Boethius, composed his
Consolationof Philosophy
as he lay in prison under sentence of death (carried outin 524 CE). This moving and powerful work, written in Latin prosealternating with poetry, closes nearly seven centuries of Romanphilosophy.Until the rise of Christian philosophy in the third century CE theauthority of the Greek founders of the philosophical schools remainedunquestioned. From Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, Socrates was reverednot only by the Platonists, but by the Stoics.
Meditations
with the call of the Stoic god to depart fromlife. He was sustained not just by his own sense of self-sufficiency, butby the awareness of his sharing with gods and mortals in the citizen-ship of the universe, and by his knowledge of the divine element in hissoul.Our survey of Roman philosophers ends with Marcus, but this doesnot mean that he
was the last. His contemporary,
Galen, was in histime equally eminent as philosopher and physician, and his survivingphilosophical works contain valuable quotations from, and criticism of,earlier philosophers. Another contemporary, Sextus Empiricus, is analmost unique source for the doctrines of the Pyrrhonian sceptics.These men herald a new age of philosophy in the Roman world, inwhich the search for union with the divine, and for individual comfortin passing through life and death, was taken to new heights by the Neo-platonism of Plotinus (
c
.205
–
270 CE). In contrast,
Diogenes of Oenoanda, late in the second century,
sought to make the consolationsof Epicureanism known to his contemporaries through the enormousinscription that he set up in his home town in the southern part of AsiaMinor. He, too, was motivated by the desire to annul human fear of death, not by union with the divine, but by appeal to the doctrines of Epicurus.Early in the third century Diogenes Laertius (about whose life noth-ing is known) composed his
Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
in ten books. The lives, extending from Thales to Epicurus, arevery uneven in reliability and usefulness, but some are quite extensiveand include titles of works now lost, and summaries of their doctrines.These are especially valuable for the Stoics and for Epicurus.
Late in the fourth century CE the Christian bishop and orator, Augus-tine (354
–
430), developed the most extended system of philosophy inLatin prose, which was, despite the influence of Neoplatonism, inde-pendent of Greek models. Nearly a century after Augustine
’
s death, thelast of the Roman philosophers, Boethius, composed his
Consolationof Philosophy
as he lay in prison under sentence of death (carried outin 524 CE). This moving and powerful work, written in Latin prosealternating with poetry, closes nearly seven centuries of Romanphilosophy.Until the rise of Christian philosophy in the third century CE theauthority of the Greek founders of the philosophical schools remainedunquestioned. From Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, Socrates was reverednot only by the Platonists, but by the Stoics.
He is named by Marc'Aurelio more than any
other philosopher, and he is twice quoted by Epitteto at the very end of his ndbook
.
The authority of Plato was
always respected, and in the Neoplatonism
of the third century CE itenjoyed a supremacy that continued long after. The influence of Aristo-tle, as we have seen, is harder to assess, but he, too, commandedrespect second only to his master, Plato.
The great Stoic founders,Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus, never lost their authority, despite themany cogent criticisms of their more rigid doctrines and despite thechanges in Stoicism brought about by Panaetius and Posidonius.
Simi-larly, the founder of Epicureanism was revered by Lucretius and byDiogenes of Oenoanda. Thus, the authority of the Greek philosophersfrom Socrates to Posidonius was maintained in the Roman world, eventhough philosophers quarreled among themselves and attacked theirrivals
’
doctrines. And here, perhaps, lies the distinctive quality of theRoman philosophers, for the Romans accepted the authority of theGreeks and adapted Greek doctrines for their own needs. Those whosit in the seat of the scornful overlook the complexity of Roman atti-tudes to Greek thought and literature.
The Roman philosophers, fromLucretius to Marcus Aurelius, built on Greek foundations their own hilosophy, appropriate to the needs of their Roman world.
They havebeen influential, and today they are still read for themselves, notbecause they imitated the Greeks.
As in so much else in Roman culture, through emulation the Romans created their own philosophy.
We go on with
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME.
--------
.
The authority of Plato was
always respected, and in the Neoplatonism
of the third century CE itenjoyed a supremacy that continued long after. The influence of Aristo-tle, as we have seen, is harder to assess, but he, too, commandedrespect second only to his master, Plato.
The great Stoic founders,Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus, never lost their authority, despite themany cogent criticisms of their more rigid doctrines and despite thechanges in Stoicism brought about by Panaetius and Posidonius.
Simi-larly, the founder of Epicureanism was revered by Lucretius and byDiogenes of Oenoanda. Thus, the authority of the Greek philosophersfrom Socrates to Posidonius was maintained in the Roman world, eventhough philosophers quarreled among themselves and attacked theirrivals
’
doctrines. And here, perhaps, lies the distinctive quality of theRoman philosophers, for the Romans accepted the authority of theGreeks and adapted Greek doctrines for their own needs. Those whosit in the seat of the scornful overlook the complexity of Roman atti-tudes to Greek thought and literature.
The Roman philosophers, fromLucretius to Marcus Aurelius, built on Greek foundations their own hilosophy, appropriate to the needs of their Roman world.
They havebeen influential, and today they are still read for themselves, notbecause they imitated the Greeks.
As in so much else in Roman culture, through emulation the Romans created their own philosophy.
We go on with
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME.
--------
In 155 BCE an embassy
was sent by the Athenians to appeal anunfavourable decision by Greek arbitrators in a dispute with
Oropus.
The ambassadors were the leading
Athenian philosophers of the day,heads of three of the leading Athenian schools of philosophy:Carneades, head of the Academy; Diogenes of Babylon,
head of theStoa; Critolaus, head of the Peripatetics.
The Epicurean school wasnot represented, presumably because of its doctrine of non-involvement in political affairs.
It was the prerogative of the
Senate to deal with foreign embassies, and the ambassadors made their case tothe senators in Greek,
interpreted by a senator, Gaius Acilius, who twelve years later wrote a history of Rome in Greek.
The presidingofficer of the Senate that day was the praetor, Aulus Postumius Albi-nus, also author of a
history written in Greek, who had taken part in thewar against Perseus in Greece and later was to travel to Greece ondiplomatic missions.
The senatorial setting for the embassy wasextraordinary, with the leading roles taken by prominent Roman phil-hellenes and (evidently) a stage-managed favourable reception for theambassadors.
They themselves had also prepared for a friendly reception by giving public speeches
“before a large crowd so as
to advertisethemselves”.
Cicero describes the oratory of the three ambassadors.
He says thatDiogenes claimed to be
able to teach
“the art of good speaking and
distinguishing between the true and t
he false, which the Greeks call
Dialectic”.
Senate to deal with foreign embassies, and the ambassadors made their case tothe senators in Greek,
interpreted by a senator, Gaius Acilius, who twelve years later wrote a history of Rome in Greek.
The presidingofficer of the Senate that day was the praetor, Aulus Postumius Albi-nus, also author of a
history written in Greek, who had taken part in thewar against Perseus in Greece and later was to travel to Greece ondiplomatic missions.
The senatorial setting for the embassy wasextraordinary, with the leading roles taken by prominent Roman phil-hellenes and (evidently) a stage-managed favourable reception for theambassadors.
They themselves had also prepared for a friendly reception by giving public speeches
“before a large crowd so as
to advertisethemselves”.
Cicero describes the oratory of the three ambassadors.
He says thatDiogenes claimed to be
able to teach
“the art of good speaking and
distinguishing between the true and t
he false, which the Greeks call
Dialectic”.
As Cicero goes on to point out, this “
art
”
gave no guidancein finding
out the truth, but plenty for drawing intellectual distinctionsand
raising inso
luble problems.
Diogenes
’
style was “
thin, dry, conciseand
detailed
”
, whereas Roman rhetoric (Cicero seems now to be revert-ing to his own day, a century later) was copious and fluent, one thatgave pleasure to a popular audience and led its hearers to weigh the
arguments
“
not in the goldsmith
’
s balance but in the scales of the people".
art
”
gave no guidancein finding
out the truth, but plenty for drawing intellectual distinctionsand
raising inso
luble problems.
Diogenes
’
style was “
thin, dry, conciseand
detailed
”
, whereas Roman rhetoric (Cicero seems now to be revert-ing to his own day, a century later) was copious and fluent, one thatgave pleasure to a popular audience and led its hearers to weigh the
arguments
“
not in the goldsmith
’
s balance but in the scales of the people".
Critolaus, on the other hand
(in Cicero
’
s opinion), was a more valuable speaker,
because he had studied the
Rhetoric
of Aristotle,who brought to
rhetoric the same intellectual
breadth and mental
acu-men as
he had shown in his research
into the physical world, whereas the
Stoic Diogenes studied only the method of
making a
judgement(
ars iudica
ars iudica
ndi
), without considering how to develop
), without considering how to develop
the substance of an argument (
ars inventionis
).
In fact, Diogenes, despite
ars inventionis
).
In fact, Diogenes, despite
Cicero
’
s criti-cism of his rhetoric,
’
s criti-cism of his rhetoric,
was an influential philosopher,
not least because
he was the teacher
of Panaetius, some of whose modifications in
Stoicethics may
well have been anticipated
by him.
Carneades, however, attracted the most attention.
Carneades, however, attracted the most attention.
His rhetoric waspowerful and varied,
and he was always persuasive, whether he wasde
fending or attacking a proposition.
and he was always persuasive, whether he wasde
fending or attacking a proposition.
Like his fellow-ambassadors, hegave di
splay lectures that drew large audiences
and were distinguishedby their brilliance and novelty. Whereas Critolaus was
elegant and pol-ished, and Diogenes was sober and modest in his style,
Carneadesimpressed his audiences by the violence and power of his speech.
Hespoke in defence of justice on on
Hespoke in defence of justice on on
e day, and on the next spoke agains
tit,
refuting all that he had said the previous day. Cicero incorporatedhis speeches
in the reverse order into the third book of his
De Re Pub-lica
De Re Pub-lica
.
Carneades denied that justice had
any foundation in nature (i.e.that there was no such
thing as
natural justice),
and argued that Romanrule over other nations was based on injustice.The embassy was a decisive event in the Roman experience of Greek philosophers, for it was the first time that their methods werepublicly displayed, both before the august assembly of the Senate andin lectures to large audiences. As the philhellenism of Acilius and Albi-nus shows, there had been plenty of interaction between Greeks andeducated Romans for decades, going back to
the time when theRomans finally achieved control over the Greek cities of Italy in 272BCE. After the end of the second Punic War (202 BCE) Rome becameirreversibly involved with Greece and the Greeks. The Roman histo-rian Livy believed that a crucial stage in the relationship was reachedwith the return of the Roman army from
Asia Minor in 188 after itsvictory the previous year over the Seleucid monarch, Antiochus III.Livy, however, focuses on the huge quantities of booty exhibited in thetriumphal procession of the victorious general, Cn. Manlius Vulso, andon the moral degeneration that followed. Polybius, a contemporary of these events,
more accurately wrote that the victory of AemiliusPaullus at Pydna over the Macedonian monarch,
Perseus, in 168 wasthe crucial stage
—
an indirect consequence of which was his own exile
to Italy as one of 1,000 Achaean hostages, whose internment did notend until 150.
Polibio became a friend and mentor of Scipione Emiliano, the lead-ing Roman political and military figure of the 140s and 130s BCE,whose military successes at Carthage (146) and Numantia (133) – witnessed by Polybius (the former certainly, the latter probably) —
gavehim unparalleled authority at Rome.
Polybius, who was about fifteenyears older than Scipio (born in 185), tells how Scipio intervened tok
eep him in Rome (whereas the other hostages were sent off to varioustowns elsewhere in Italy) and offered him his friendship.
and argued that Romanrule over other nations was based on injustice.The embassy was a decisive event in the Roman experience of Greek philosophers, for it was the first time that their methods werepublicly displayed, both before the august assembly of the Senate andin lectures to large audiences. As the philhellenism of Acilius and Albi-nus shows, there had been plenty of interaction between Greeks andeducated Romans for decades, going back to
the time when theRomans finally achieved control over the Greek cities of Italy in 272BCE. After the end of the second Punic War (202 BCE) Rome becameirreversibly involved with Greece and the Greeks. The Roman histo-rian Livy believed that a crucial stage in the relationship was reachedwith the return of the Roman army from
Asia Minor in 188 after itsvictory the previous year over the Seleucid monarch, Antiochus III.Livy, however, focuses on the huge quantities of booty exhibited in thetriumphal procession of the victorious general, Cn. Manlius Vulso, andon the moral degeneration that followed. Polybius, a contemporary of these events,
more accurately wrote that the victory of AemiliusPaullus at Pydna over the Macedonian monarch,
Perseus, in 168 wasthe crucial stage
—
an indirect consequence of which was his own exile
to Italy as one of 1,000 Achaean hostages, whose internment did notend until 150.
Polibio became a friend and mentor of Scipione Emiliano, the lead-ing Roman political and military figure of the 140s and 130s BCE,whose military successes at Carthage (146) and Numantia (133) – witnessed by Polybius (the former certainly, the latter probably) —
gavehim unparalleled authority at Rome.
Polybius, who was about fifteenyears older than Scipio (born in 185), tells how Scipio intervened tok
eep him in Rome (whereas the other hostages were sent off to varioustowns elsewhere in Italy) and offered him his friendship.
Scipio wasthen“no more than 18 years old”.
Polybius replied that
“since therewas a great crowd of Greeks flowing to Rome
”
who were teachers
(theGreek word for what they taught was
mathemata
“since therewas a great crowd of Greeks flowing to Rome
”
who were teachers
(theGreek word for what they taught was
mathemata
, a general word for
“
studies
”
),
Scipione would not lack for intellectual guidance, yet he(Polybius) could help him most
“
to speak and act so as to be worthy of his ancestors
”
, and that thereafter the two men were close friends.
“
studies
”
),
Scipione would not lack for intellectual guidance, yet he(Polybius) could help him most
“
to speak and act so as to be worthy of his ancestors
”
, and that thereafter the two men were close friends.
Polybius then goes on to give an encomium
of Scipio’s virtuous charac-ter, which he contrasts with that of other young upper-class Romans,whose
moral deterioration he dated to the time immediately after Pydna.
This passage is important for the information it gives us about the intellectual and cultural changes that convulsed Roman society afterthe battle of Pydna.
of Scipio’s virtuous charac-ter, which he contrasts with that of other young upper-class Romans,whose
moral deterioration he dated to the time immediately after Pydna.
This passage is important for the information it gives us about the intellectual and cultural changes that convulsed Roman society afterthe battle of Pydna.
First, it shows that there was an influx of
Greek philosophers into Rome, although
we cannot tell how many of these came asprisoners and slaves and how many were free.
Greek philosophers into Rome, although
we cannot tell how many of these came asprisoners and slaves and how many were free.
Second, it shows thedelicate situation of
Scipio as the descendant of two of the greatestsenatorial families, for he was
the son of the victor at Pydna,
AemiliusPaullus, and the adopted son of Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of thegreat Scipio Africanus.
AemiliusPaullus, and the adopted son of Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of thegreat Scipio Africanus.
The influence of ancestral tradition in
training young Roman nobles was overwhelming, and in offering to help Sci-pio
remain true to that tradition Polybius was meeting the most seriousobjection of
conservative Romans to the influence of Greek intellectu-als.
Scipio himself was familiar with
Greeks and Greek customs.
Scipio himself was familiar with
Greeks and Greek customs.
His adoptive father wrote a history in Greek,
and Aemilius Paullus, hisfather, spoke Greek.
His early education,
so Plutarch tells us, was both
the traditional Roman one and Greek,
which he studied
“
withmore enthusiasm
”
.
“
Not only,
”
says Plutarch,
“
were there [Greek]tutors and scholars and teachers of rhetoric, but also sculptors andpainters and experts with horses and hounds and teachers of hunting
”
.
His early education,
so Plutarch tells us, was both
the traditional Roman one and Greek,
which he studied
“
withmore enthusiasm
”
.
“
Not only,
”
says Plutarch,
“
were there [Greek]tutors and scholars and teachers of rhetoric, but also sculptors andpainters and experts with horses and hounds and teachers of hunting
”
.
Scipio fought at Pydna when he was about
sixteen years old, and hestayed behind in Greece t
o hunt in the Macedonian royal hunting preserves.
Back in Rome, he was allowed to take what books he wanted
from the library of the Macedonian
king, which Aemilius Paullus hadbrought to Rome after Pydna because he was
“
a lover of books
”
.
Thus it is not surprising that he
was amongst the young men (he
then was about thirty years old) who
listened enthusiastically to
Carneades and his fellow-ambassadors in 155.
o hunt in the Macedonian royal hunting preserves.
Back in Rome, he was allowed to take what books he wanted
from the library of the Macedonian
king, which Aemilius Paullus hadbrought to Rome after Pydna because he was
“
a lover of books
”
.
Thus it is not surprising that he
was amongst the young men (he
then was about thirty years old) who
listened enthusiastically to
Carneades and his fellow-ambassadors in 155.
Scipio represented the coming generation, and
later his social, politi-cal and military
prestige (auctoritas
) and rank (
dignitas
) were crucialto the success
of Greek intellectual innovations at Rome.
prestige (auctoritas
) and rank (
dignitas
) were crucialto the success
of Greek intellectual innovations at Rome.
Greek intel-lectuals like Polybius and
Panaetius enjoyed Scipio
’
s patronage, whichgave them the protection and status that allowed their ideas to takehold in a society in thrall to ancestral tradition.
’
s patronage, whichgave them the protection and status that allowed their ideas to takehold in a society in thrall to ancestral tradition.
Others, however, weremore sceptical of Greek
influences, and their most prominent represen-tative was Marcus Porcius Cato,
born in 234 BCE, consul in
195, cen-sor in 184, and active in politics until his death in 149 at the age of 85.
195, cen-sor in 184, and active in politics until his death in 149 at the age of 85.
As Alan Astin has shown, Cato’s
attitude towards Greeks and Greek culture was quite complex,
far from the thoroughgoing
anti-Hellenismwith which he has traditionally been charged.
He could speak andwrite Greek, a
nd in his old age (that is, at about the time of the Athe-nian e
mbassy), he studied Greek and
Latin literature, appropriate pur-suits
in old age for a Roman of his political and social standing.
attitude towards Greeks and Greek culture was quite complex,
far from the thoroughgoing
anti-Hellenismwith which he has traditionally been charged.
He could speak andwrite Greek, a
nd in his old age (that is, at about the time of the Athe-nian e
mbassy), he studied Greek and
Latin literature, appropriate pur-suits
in old age for a Roman of his political and social standing.
Butknowledge does
not imply approval, and Cato was hostile to Greek ideas for
specific reasons.
not imply approval, and Cato was hostile to Greek ideas for
specific reasons.
The main ancient source for Cato’s
attitudes is Plutarch, writing about 250 years after the Athenian embassy
to
Rome, and therefore not necessarily reliable.
Rome, and therefore not necessarily reliable.
Nevertheless, he reveals atradition that
accepted Cato
’
s hostility to the Greeks, which in part derives from Cato
’
s own writings.
’
s hostility to the Greeks, which in part derives from Cato
’
s own writings.
In the first place Cato was hostile to Greek
medicine, believing even that Greek doctors
“
had sworn a mutual oath to kill all barbarians by[their] medicine
”
.
“
had sworn a mutual oath to kill all barbarians by[their] medicine
”
.
This surprising outburst comes in a passage
written
by Catone to his son.
"I will speak about those Greeks
in the appropriate place, telling
you what I found out from my r
esearch at Athens, and I shall
convince you of what is good in
their literature to look at, but
not to learn thoroughly
("inspicere, non perdiscere").
by Catone to his son.
"I will speak about those Greeks
in the appropriate place, telling
you what I found out from my r
esearch at Athens, and I shall
convince you of what is good in
their literature to look at, but
not to learn thoroughly
("inspicere, non perdiscere").
The Greeks are amost wicked and undisciplined
people, and here I will say some-thing that
you can consider to be the words of a prophet: whenthat nation gives us its literature, it will
corrupt everything
—
andall the more if it sends its doctors here.
The book
you can consider to be the words of a prophet: whenthat nation gives us its literature, it will
corrupt everything
—
andall the more if it sends its doctors here.
The book
Ad Filium
(
To My Son
) was probably
written in the 170sBCE,
about twenty years before the Athenian
embassy, and was
“
a
collection
…
of precepts, exhortations, instructions,
“
a
collection
…
of precepts, exhortations, instructions,
andobservations
”
.
It preceded the battle of Pydna by
”
.
It preceded the battle of Pydna by
about seven yearsand it is importan
t
evidence for the scepticism with w
hich intelligentRomans viewed the already
irreversible influence of Greek culture. ForCat
o the greatest danger was the
corruption
of young Romans byGreek
ideas, for he saw that education was the real battlefield
—
hencehis attack on the indiscipline
of young Romans byGreek
ideas, for he saw that education was the real battlefield
—
hencehis attack on the indiscipline
of the Greeks and the power of Gre
ek
literature to weaken traditional Roman values.
H
H
e knew enough of Greek
literature to be convi
nced that it should not be studied toodeeply
.
He thought that the Romans had enough skill to h
He thought that the Romans had enough skill to h
eal the sick with their traditional
remedies,
without recourse to g
reedy and expen-sive
Greek doctors (one of
whom,
Archagathos, not long before hadearned the sobriquet of
“
“
The Terminator
”
,
carnifex
). Cato had manyother grounds for prejudice against the Greeks
—
their political instabil-ity; their insulting attitude to
“
barbarians
”
, especially Romans; theircorruption in political life; their capacity for dishonesty and treachery;and their higher economic standing, which he believed was corruptingRoman morality. Yet it is notable that he admired three Greek leadersof an earlier age, Epaminondas, Pericles and Themistocles.
At thebeginning of his
Origines
he said that the Aborigines of Italy weredescended from Greeks, that the Italian city of Tibur was founded byGreeks, and that some customs of the Sabines were derived fromSparta.
His anti-Hellenism, then, was not total: rather, it was focusedon the Greeks of his time and on their influence on Roman education.In Cato
’
s view the purpose of Roman education, as far as the senato-rial class was concerned, was to prepare leaders in political and mili-tary affairs. Such men were to be active in the service of the state, andthey were to exhibit the traditional Roman virtues
—
courage, honesty,loyalty, incorruptibility, justice. As a corollary they would avoid thevices that Roman conservatives came to associate with Greeks andeastern peoples
—
avarice, dishonesty, luxurious living, extravagance,sexual excess. The young Roman would learn by example from hisancestors, from senior members of his family, and from reading andhearing about great Roman leaders of the past, especially those of hisown family. He would learn from association with older leaders in thesenate at Rome, from living with an older leader on military service(
contubernium
), and from early experience in military campaigns. Thetwo underlying principles were, first, recognition of tradition and expe-rience in inculcating high moral principles, and, second, associationwith older men of experience, achievement and austere morality.Despite such uncompromising moral and practical principles, therewas room in this system for cultivating the intellect, as the education of
Scipio Aemilianus showed, and as Cato himself showed in
his treatisesand
speeches, as well as in his training of his sons. But when non-Roman influences
clashed with traditional Roman virtues, especially intraining for service to
the state, then Cato
’
s hostility was aroused.This, then, was the underlying cause of his hostility to philosophers,which was openly displayed after the appearance of the Athenianembassy.
He moved that all philosophers be escorted out of the cityand that, specifically, an answer be given promptly to the Athenianembassy and a vote taken on their request. Plutarch reports his words:
“
Thus they could go home to their schools and lecture to Greek youths, and Roman youths could listen, as they did before, to thelaws and the magistrates.
”
This he did (says Plutarch), notbecause he was hostile to Carneades (as some people think), butbecause he was generally opposed to philosophy. He attacked allGreek culture and education in a partisan spirit, saying thatSocrates was a violent [speaker], whose goal was tyranny overhis country. Socrates (Cato said) corrupted the morality [of thecity], dragged in views that were opposed to the laws, andchanged the attitudes of the citizens.Cato
’
s concern, then, if we are to believe Plutarch, was the effect of philosophy on the young. The teachers of the future leaders of Romeshould be
“
the laws and the magistrates
”
. The Greek philosophers werediverting the young from their proper focus on the traditions, laws andleaders of the Roman state. Cato feared, in Plutarch
’
s words,
“
that theyoung would rather win a reputation through rhetoric than throughdeeds and military campaigns
”
. That a senior senator such as Aciliuswas so openly a philhellene added to Cato s concern about role-modelsfor the young, and his view of the moral and political destructivenessof Socrates extended to Greek philosophy in general, which he charac-terized as
“
mere winding-sheets
”
.
The Greek philosophers were, in aword, subversive, and to allow the young to study their writings or(worse) to listen to their lectures, would be to invite a weakening of moral, political and military leadership at Rome.
’
s hostility was aroused.This, then, was the underlying cause of his hostility to philosophers,which was openly displayed after the appearance of the Athenianembassy.
He moved that all philosophers be escorted out of the cityand that, specifically, an answer be given promptly to the Athenianembassy and a vote taken on their request. Plutarch reports his words:
“
Thus they could go home to their schools and lecture to Greek youths, and Roman youths could listen, as they did before, to thelaws and the magistrates.
”
This he did (says Plutarch), notbecause he was hostile to Carneades (as some people think), butbecause he was generally opposed to philosophy. He attacked allGreek culture and education in a partisan spirit, saying thatSocrates was a violent [speaker], whose goal was tyranny overhis country. Socrates (Cato said) corrupted the morality [of thecity], dragged in views that were opposed to the laws, andchanged the attitudes of the citizens.Cato
’
s concern, then, if we are to believe Plutarch, was the effect of philosophy on the young. The teachers of the future leaders of Romeshould be
“
the laws and the magistrates
”
. The Greek philosophers werediverting the young from their proper focus on the traditions, laws andleaders of the Roman state. Cato feared, in Plutarch
’
s words,
“
that theyoung would rather win a reputation through rhetoric than throughdeeds and military campaigns
”
. That a senior senator such as Aciliuswas so openly a philhellene added to Cato s concern about role-modelsfor the young, and his view of the moral and political destructivenessof Socrates extended to Greek philosophy in general, which he charac-terized as
“
mere winding-sheets
”
.
The Greek philosophers were, in aword, subversive, and to allow the young to study their writings or(worse) to listen to their lectures, would be to invite a weakening of moral, political and military leadership at Rome.
Cato was not alone in this view.
Six years before the embassy (161BCE) the
praetor M.Pomponius, on instructions from the senate,refused permission for
philosophers and teachers of rhetoric to stay inRome, the first of three such
expulsions recorded by Gellius.
Thereason given by Gellius for the second expulsion was also valid for thefirst.
Thereason given by Gellius for the second expulsion was also valid for thefirst.
The Greek teachers, the senators thought,
were corrupting tradi-tional Roman moral and practical principles in education,
in particular by attracting young men to spend whole days slacking (the Latin
word is desidere) in their schools instead of pursuing the traditional Roman military
and political training.
How the senate responded to Cato
’
smotion to send the embassy back home in 155 is not recorded, but in154 it did vote to expel two Epicurean philosophers, whose principleof pleasure must have been especially offensive to conservativeRomans.
The period after Pydna, then, was one of change and adjustment toforeign influences. But those influences could not be annulled.Plutarch
’
s conclusion on Cato
’
s hostility is accurate:
29
Cato
’
s attacks [on Greek philosophy] were shown in the courseof time to be in vain.
’
smotion to send the embassy back home in 155 is not recorded, but in154 it did vote to expel two Epicurean philosophers, whose principleof pleasure must have been especially offensive to conservativeRomans.
The period after Pydna, then, was one of change and adjustment toforeign influences. But those influences could not be annulled.Plutarch
’
s conclusion on Cato
’
s hostility is accurate:
29
Cato
’
s attacks [on Greek philosophy] were shown in the courseof time to be in vain.
For in that time the city grew to be
verygreat and powerful, and it was hospitable to Greek learning andall Greek
education.
Yet suspicion of Greek philosophers was a
lasting feature of Romanpolitical and cultural life.
Two hundred years later, for example,Seneca
was forbidden to train his pupil, the future emperor Nero, in philosophy,
because “it was contrary to one who was going to be a ruler”.
Cato was successful to this extent, that Roman intellectuals were more interested in the practical applications of philosophy than in arguments about logic and epistemology, which too often seemed esoteric and unproductive.
Cato was successful to this extent, that Roman intellectuals were more interested in the practical applications of philosophy than in arguments about logic and epistemology, which too often seemed esoteric and unproductive.
Thus, the Greek philosophers achieved their
most far-reaching influence in the field of ethics.
Panaetius, a decade after the visit of
Carneades, had greater influenceon the Romans than Carneades, because he
reconciled Stoic ethicaldoctrine to Roman intellectual and practical needs.In a
world where the spoken word was the dominant form of com-munication, the arts
of rhetoric were of the highest importance.
Thelectures of Carneades, Diogenes and
Critolaus alarmed conservativeslike Cato, and their arts of persuasion were
thought to be more danger-ous than their doctrine. Their speeches brought the
Romans face toface with the two aspects of logic in the context of the spoken
word.Logic, along with physics and ethics, was one of the three divisions of
philosophy accepted by the major schools, a system which Ciceroascribes to
Plato:
There was already [i.e. in the early first century BCE] a triplesystem of philosophy originated by Plato. The first category con-cerned morality and how to live; the second concerned natureand [its] secrets; the third concerned speech and judging what is
true and what is false, what is right in discourse and what is cor-rupt, and what is consistent and what is contradictory.The three Platonic categories, then, were ethics, physics and logic (inCicero
’
s order), which Cicero, speaking for the Academics, furtherdefined as
“
consisting of reason and discourse
”
.
The Stoics, however, divided logic into rhetoric and dialectic.
Theformer was
“
the science of speaking well in continuous discourse
”
; thelatter was (as Diogenes Laertius puts it):the science of correct discussion conducted by question andanswer, so that they [the Stoics] also define it as the science of what is true and false and neither true nor false.
There was already [i.e. in the early first century BCE] a triplesystem of philosophy originated by Plato. The first category con-cerned morality and how to live; the second concerned natureand [its] secrets; the third concerned speech and judging what is
true and what is false, what is right in discourse and what is cor-rupt, and what is consistent and what is contradictory.The three Platonic categories, then, were ethics, physics and logic (inCicero
’
s order), which Cicero, speaking for the Academics, furtherdefined as
“
consisting of reason and discourse
”
.
The Stoics, however, divided logic into rhetoric and dialectic.
Theformer was
“
the science of speaking well in continuous discourse
”
; thelatter was (as Diogenes Laertius puts it):the science of correct discussion conducted by question andanswer, so that they [the Stoics] also define it as the science of what is true and false and neither true nor false.
Chrysippus, head of the Stoic school from 232
to 207 BCE, had estab-lished dialectic as a part of logic, that is, of rational
discourse, whichincludes modes of thought and speech. Plato himself, 150 years
beforeChrysippus, had been concerned with dialectic that is based upon whatis
true, as distinct from persuasive discourse that is based on what islikely. The
dialectic of Socrates was acceptable to Plato, because it wasbased on his
knowledge of the truth, and the Stoics followed Plato inbelieving that
“
the wise man alone is a dialectician
”
.
Thus the ethicalaspect of dialectic was established by Plato and developed by the Stoics.In contrast, Plato
’
s student, Aristotle, begins his
Rhetoric
with thesewords:
“
Rhetoric is the answering voice to dialectic.
”
For Aristotle,rhetoric and dialectic together were the means for achieving persuasivediscourse. Thus he defines rhetoric as
“
the power of discovering thepossible means of persuasion on each topic
”
.
The Stoics did not fol-low this non-ethical view of rhetoric and dialectic. Instead, like Plato,they believed that the
“
wise man
”
(i.e. the virtuous person) was theonly true dialectician. In the Academic view, as Aristotle implied andCarneades practised, dialectic could be used to argue both sides of aquestion. This view could, and did, lead to the conclusion that certaintyof knowledge could not be achieved. Thus either one must accept thatknowledge is not possible, or one must suspend judgement.Now Cato also believed in the moral dimension of rhetoric, for hisdefinition of the good citizen was
“
the good man skilled inspeaking
”
.
The purpose of such a man
’
s speech was wise leadershipin service of the state. Carneades, with his intellectual brilliance andhis refusal to favor either side of an argument, represented the antithe-sis of Cato
’
s ideal. It is small wonder, then, that Cato was eager toremove such a philosopher, who not only tempted the young to divert
themselves from the traditional Roman training for leadership, but alsopresented arguments for and against the justice of Roman public poli-cies, to show that
“
the defenders of justice had no firm or certain argu-ments
”
.
Carneades showed the impossibility of consistently identify-ing virtue and self-interest, or, to put it another way, he showed thatthere must be a distinction between justice and prudence. A.A.Longcomments:
Thus his argument is a challenge to any moral philosopher whoseeks to show that justice and self-interest can be combined in acoherent ethical system.
“
the wise man alone is a dialectician
”
.
Thus the ethicalaspect of dialectic was established by Plato and developed by the Stoics.In contrast, Plato
’
s student, Aristotle, begins his
Rhetoric
with thesewords:
“
Rhetoric is the answering voice to dialectic.
”
For Aristotle,rhetoric and dialectic together were the means for achieving persuasivediscourse. Thus he defines rhetoric as
“
the power of discovering thepossible means of persuasion on each topic
”
.
The Stoics did not fol-low this non-ethical view of rhetoric and dialectic. Instead, like Plato,they believed that the
“
wise man
”
(i.e. the virtuous person) was theonly true dialectician. In the Academic view, as Aristotle implied andCarneades practised, dialectic could be used to argue both sides of aquestion. This view could, and did, lead to the conclusion that certaintyof knowledge could not be achieved. Thus either one must accept thatknowledge is not possible, or one must suspend judgement.Now Cato also believed in the moral dimension of rhetoric, for hisdefinition of the good citizen was
“
the good man skilled inspeaking
”
.
The purpose of such a man
’
s speech was wise leadershipin service of the state. Carneades, with his intellectual brilliance andhis refusal to favor either side of an argument, represented the antithe-sis of Cato
’
s ideal. It is small wonder, then, that Cato was eager toremove such a philosopher, who not only tempted the young to divert
themselves from the traditional Roman training for leadership, but alsopresented arguments for and against the justice of Roman public poli-cies, to show that
“
the defenders of justice had no firm or certain argu-ments
”
.
Carneades showed the impossibility of consistently identify-ing virtue and self-interest, or, to put it another way, he showed thatthere must be a distinction between justice and prudence. A.A.Longcomments:
Thus his argument is a challenge to any moral philosopher whoseeks to show that justice and self-interest can be combined in acoherent ethical system.
But the acute logical reasoning of Carneades
was too rigorous for thepractical Roman politicians, represented by Cato.A
century after the embassy we hear an echo of the debate inCicero
’
s
De Re Publica
, the dramatic date of which is 129 BCE.
’
s
De Re Publica
, the dramatic date of which is 129 BCE.
In thethird book, Cicero makes Lucius Furius
Philus defend the argumentsof Carneades. Philus was probably one of the young
men who heardCarneades speak in 155, and himself was consul in 136. He
deploreshis task, but, he says,
“
those who look for gold will endure every hard-ship: we, who are searching for justice, a thing much more valuablethan gold, indeed must not avoid any hardship
”
. So Philus, the friendof Scipio Aemilianus and a Roman consular, is made to represent thearguments of Carneades, which he personally deplored. The actual dateof the composition of the
De Re Publica
was 54
–
51, and Cicero isreflecting on the consequences of the moral relativism of people likeCarneades in the light of the collapse in his own day of the republicanconstitution, which by then was clear for all to see. Like Cato in 155,he answered Greek logical rigour with Roman common sense,affirmed in Laelius
’
appeal to the universal
“
natural law
”
of justice,which Carneades had demolished a century earlier.
39
Carneades had the finest mind of the three ambassadors, yet hismethods were incompatible with Roman modes of thought. Ciceroseems to be saying (in the
De Republica
) that his methods were destruc-tive in the context of Roman society and politics, just as Cato had con-tended in 155. Of the other ambassadors, Critolaus seems to have madevery little lasting impression, but Diogenes perhaps had a lasting influ-ence, for he was the teacher of Panaetius, and he impressed Laelius,the friend of Scipio Aemilianus. Laelius (
c
.190
–
125) was praetor in145 and consul in 140. He was perhaps the first Roman noble who canbe called a philosopher, for he was known as
Sapiens
(the Wise), a titlegiven him by the satirist Lucilius.
40
Cicero makes him the principal
speaker in his dialogue
De Amicitia
(
“
On Friendship
”
, also known as
Laelius
), and he responds to the arguments of Carneades in Book 3 of the
De Republica.
Indeed, Cicero elsewhere says that he cannot name asingle Roman
“
student of wisdom
”
earlier than the time of Laelius andScipio Aemilianus.
41
He implies that Laelius was encouraged by thelectures of Diogenes to study with Panaetius, whose influence in Romewas profound and lasting.
42
Indeed, in
Pro Murena
66 (a speech deliv-ered during Cicero
’
s consulship in 63) Cicero contrasts the easy man-ner of Laelius, which (says Cicero) he had learned from Panaetius,with the harsh manner of Cato Uticensis, the paragon of Stoicism inCicero
’
s time.Panaetius of Rhodes (
c
.185
–
109) came to Rome some time after146, and stayed there, evidently for substantial (but separate) periodsof time, until he returned to Athens in 129 as head of the Stoic school.Cicero says that he lived in the house of Scipio Aemilianus, and heaccompanied Scipio on his embassy to Egypt and the eastern parts of the Roman empire that began in 140 and lasted, probably, for at least ayear. Cicero also says that Panaetius was Scipio
’
s only companion onthe embassy, but Alan Astin has shown that we should not infer fromthis that Panaetius had any direct influence on the political activities of Scipio.
43
Neither did his doctrine of
humanitas
(i.e. the qualities andbehaviour proper to a civilized person) necessarily influence Scipio
’
spublic actions, which were notorious for their frequent cruelty and vin-dictiveness.
44
Panaetius was significant at Rome because of the modifi-cations that he made in Stoic theories, some of which were transmittedby Cicero.In
Pro Murena
60
–
66 Cicero mocks the austerity of the youngerCato
’
s doctrinaire Stoicism. We should not, of course, take the banterof a brilliant defence lawyer (who was also consul at the time) at facevalue. Nevertheless, we can see from the climactic reference toPanaetius
’
living in Scipio
’
s house (
§
66), that in Cicero
’
s timePanaetius was revered for having made Stoicism less rigorous anddogmatic, and therefore more accessible to ordinary people. Cicero iscareful to say, however, that for Panaetius
’
influence on Scipio
’
s char-acter he relies on the testimony of
senes
, i.e. men who in 63 BCE hadtalked with those who knew Scipio (who had died in 129 BCE) or evenhad as children themselves seen him. Scipio
’
s
humanitas
was limited,and his cruelty was well attested. Cicero, however, could be more dog-matic about the
comitas
(humane manners) of Laelius, who, he says,was more pleasant (
iucundior
), serious (
gravior
), and wise (
sapien-tior
), because of his studies with Panaetius. In contrast, Cato theYounger remained true to the paradoxical doctrines of Zeno
—
that the
22THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
wise man is unmoved by others; that only the fool shows pity; thatonly the wise man is a king; that the wise man never changes his con-sidered opinion; that all moral delicts are equal, so that
“
he who wringsa chicken
’
s neck
…
is equal to the man who strangles his father
”
.
45
Cicero appeals to Plato and Aristotle as authorities for flexibility inmaking moral and political judgements, which are the mark of moder-ate and restrained human beings. These qualities
—
moderation andrestraint
—
are prominent in the humanism of Panaetius and of Cicerohimself. Cicero the lawyer ridiculed Cato because he was out of stepwith the ethics of his contemporaries, both Stoics and Academics.Panaetius had returned to Plato and Aristotle, the ultimate sources of Stoic doctrine, in modifying the Stoic ethics of Zeno and Chrysippus.A.A.Long has rightly said that
“
human nature rather than universalnature was Panaetius
’
primary interest
”
, and because of this, his ethicsfocused on human beings as they are, including (but not limited to) thewise man.
46
Panaetius
’
most influential work was on appropriate behaviour (
PeriKathekonton
), the source for the first two books of Cicero
’
s work onduties (
De Officiis
). The distinction between actual human beings andthe Stoic ideal of the wise man is made clear in this passage fromCicero.
47
Since we live not among human beings who are perfect and fullywise, but among those whose actions are exceptional if theyachieve the likeness of virtue, I conclude that no one should beoverlooked in whom some evidence of virtue appears. Indeed,we should cultivate most of all that human being who is most of all endowed with these gentler virtues
—
moderation, restraintand
…
justice itself. For often the spirit of courage and nobility istoo fervent in a man who is not perfect nor wise, [while] thesevirtues seem rather to belong to the good person.Panaetius, therefore, made Stoic ethics less rigorous and more practi-cal, and thus more attractive to Roman leaders such as Scipio Aemil-ianus, Laelius, and Cicero himself. Elsewhere Cicero (speaking in hisown voice in answer to the Stoic orthodoxy of Cato) says of Panaetius:
48
he fled from the gloom and harshness [of the rigorous Stoics]and did not approve of their thorny arguments. In one branch of philosophy [i.e. ethics] he was more gentle, in the other [i.e.physics and logic] clearer. He was always quoting Plato, Aristo-
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME23
tle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, Dicaearchus, as his writingsclearly show.Panaetius, however, did not reject the Stoic ideal of the wise man, forCicero says (
Pro Murena
66) that the discourses and precepts of Panaetius were pleasing to Cato
—
which would not be the case if Panaetius had totally rejected the rigorous ideals of orthodox Stoicism.Rather, Panaetius included the morally imperfect human being in hisdoctrine, showing how such a person could aspire to the virtue of theideal wise man. So Cicero emphasizes that Panaetius used popularvocabulary in discussing popular views and that his political discoursereflected the everyday usage of ordinary citizens.
49
Panaetius
’
practicalfocus on ordinary people found a sympathetic response among hisRoman contemporaries.
50
It is the basis of Cicero
’
s moderate doctrinein the
De Officiis
, and it finds an echo in Seneca
’
s 75th and 116th let-ters. In the latter Seneca quotes Panaetius to show how the perfectionof the wise man is separate from the efforts of ordinary people to dealwith the passions.
51
In other areas of Stoic philosophy Panaetius
’
modifications seem tohave been less influential, if only because they did not affect the actualday-to-day life of his Roman followers. As Cicero says, he was clearerthan his predecessors, and so inclined to be more sceptical of Stoicdoctrine that could not be clearly justified.
52
In cosmology he believedthe universe to be eternal and indestructible, and therefore he rejectedthe Stoic doctrine of periodic dissolution of the universe by fire (
ekpy-rosis
), followed by reconstitution of its material elements.
53
He wassceptical about divination (an important feature of Roman religiouspractice) and, unlike many Stoics, he rejected astrology.
54
On the otherhand, he did not reject the Stoic doctrine of divine providence and fate,which he reconciled with individual moral responsibility.
55
Cicero,without naming Panaetius, explains this by reference to the dual natureof the human soul:
56
For souls have a dual power and nature. One part resides inimpulse (
appetitus,
Greek
horme
), which drives a human beingin different directions, and the other in reason (
ratio
), whichteaches and explains what should be done and what should beavoided. Thus it comes about that reason leads, impulse obeys.This is similar to Aristotle
’
s theory of the soul, according to which thesoul consists of two parts, one without reason and the other having rea-son.
57
It appears to modify the doctrine of Chrysippus, who taught that
24THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
impulse was the result of
“
reason commanding action
”
.
58
WhetherPanaetius was responsible for the modification is debatable: what issignificant is that he focused on the responsibility of human beings fortheir moral choices, a doctrine in keeping with the traditional emphasison individual initiative among the Roman senatorial class.
59
Finally, Panaetius was considered by Cicero to be an expert on polit-ical theory. In the
De Re Publica
he makes Laelius say to Scipio:
60
I remember that you very often used to discuss [political theory]with Panaetius in the presence of Polybius (the two Greeks per-haps the most expert on political matters), and that you wouldcollect much material and argue that by far the best constitutionis that which our ancestors have left us.Scipio replies that he is like a craftsman in the practice of his profes-sion, and that, despite his respect for the authority of his Greek sources(which certainly included the
Republic
of Plato and perhaps the
Repub-lic
of Zeno, as well as the doctrines of Panaetius and Polybius), he willcontribute to his exposition what he has learned from his own experi-ence and from his education at Rome, which included family tradition:
61
I am not content with these works on the subject (i.e. politics)that the most distinguished and wisest of the Greeks have left us,yet I would not dare to prefer my opinions to them. Therefore Iask you to hear me as one who is not entirely unfamiliar withGreek doctrine and as one who is not ready to prefer Greek works, in this field especially, to Roman [doctrine]. I ask you tohear me as a Roman (
unum ex togatis
), educated (thanks to myfather
’
s diligence) liberally and from my childhood on fire witheagerness for learning, yet also trained much more by experienceand by the precepts that I learned at home than by books.Thus Cicero, writing in the late 50s BCE, introduces his
Republic
, stak-ing a claim through the persona of Scipio Aemilianus for the practicalpolitical ideas of the Romans, derived from experience, without deny-ing the authority of the Greek philosophers. The deliberate mention of Panaetius indicates that he was one who, in Cicero
’
s view, understoodthe Roman claim and joined it appropriately to Greek theory. At thesame time, the Stoic emphasis on the duty of the virtuous person totake part in the political life of the city was compatible with Romanideas of public service, which find their most eloquent expression inthe
Dream of Scipio
, the final episode of Cicero
’
s
Republic
. We may
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME25
also see the doctrine of Panaetius behind Cicero
’
s doctrine of the idealRoman leader:
62
It is therefore the proper duty of the magistrate to understand thathe wears the mask of the state (
personam civitatis
); that his dutyis to uphold the dignity and honour of the state, to preserve itslaws and define its rights, and to remember that these things havebeen entrusted to his good faith.We should especially note the precision of Cicero
’
s metaphor of themask, which is usually translated by some form of the word
“
represent
”
. The ideal leader is recognized (as we recognize a personby his face) as
being
the state
—
his own appearance and personality aremerged with those of the state which he leads and serves. Cicero wasperhaps referring to the famous description of a Roman aristocrat
’
sfuneral in Polybius, in which the dead man
’
s mask is prominent alongwith those of his ancestors, as an inspiration to his descendants to winglory in the service of the state.
63
A.A.Long has said that
“
it is difficult to see anything specificallyRoman in the philosophy of Panaetius
”
.
64
This is true only in the nar-row sense (as Long points out) that the modifications of Panaetiusstemmed from
“
philosophical dissatisfaction with certain aspects of Stoicism
”
. The importance of Panaetius in the development of Romanphilosophy lay in his perception of specific Roman needs, which hesatisfied by the modification of Greek theory, especially in the fields of ethics and politics. Thus he answered, in a way, the criticism of Catothe Censor that Greek philosophers were corrupting the young. For byintroducing flexibility into the rigorous ethical doctrine of Chrysippushe made Stoicism acceptable to the Roman senatorial class; by develop-ing a theory of public duty he made it possible for Roman leaders toaccept Greek political theories compatible with their own experienceand responsibilities. In the period leading up to the formation of thefirst triumvirate Cicero criticized the political inflexibility of Cato theYounger.
“
Cato
”
, he said,
“
gives his political views as if he were inPlato
’
s
Republic
, not among the
‘
dregs
’
of Romulus (i.e. the commonpeople of Rome)
”
.
65
The criticism reminds us of the achievement of Panaetius in reconciling Greek theory and the realities of Roman poli-tics and society.Posidonius, the greatest of the middle Stoic philosophers and the lastoriginal thinker of the school, studied at Athens under Panaetius. Hewas a Greek, born in about 135 BCE in the Syrian city of Apamea.After his education at Athens he settled in Rhodes, where he became
26THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
an honoured and prominent citizen, serving in public office and as anambassador to Rome in 87 and, probably, 51, the year of his death.Like Herodotus, he travelled to further his research, and he journeyedas far as Gadeira (Cadiz, on the Atlantic coast of Spain), where heobserved the Atlantic tides and the constellations visible from thecoast. He mentioned visits to the islands off North Africa, to the Lipariislands (in the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north of Sicily), to Gaul, and toItaly. In Rhodes he headed a Stoic school, which attracted studentsfrom Rome, including Cicero (during the years 79
–
77), and was visitedby Roman politicians and generals during their journeys to the east.Thus Cicero refers to him three times as
“
my close friend
”
and as
“
ourPosidonius
”
.
66
In 60 Cicero sent Posidonius a copy of his
commentarii
(memoirs), in the hope that he would elaborate them into a formal his-tory, a request that Posidonius declined with admirable tact.
67
He wastwice visited by Pompey, in 66, before his campaigns against Mithra-dates, and in 62, on his way back from Syria to Rome, on each occa-sion being treated with the utmost respect. Of the older generation of Roman political leaders, he knew P. Rutilius Rufus (consul in 105),who had served under Scipio Aemilianus and had been a student of Panaetius. Rutilius is important as an example of the principled manwho was ruined by his political enemies, being exiled in 92 BCE(when he was nearly seventy years old) to Smyrna, where he wrote inGreek a history of his own times, which was widely read and used byhis contemporaries and later historians. Rutilius was a political enemyof Marius, the most powerful of Roman leaders in the years from 106to 86. Posidonius visited Marius in Rome shortly before his death (13January, 86), and he is mentioned by Plutarch as one of the sources forhis description of the final days of Marius, when he was ill and alco-holic, obsessed with fears and memories.
68
Thus Posidonius was a significant figure in Roman political andintellectual circles. His importance rests on the extraordinary range of his intellectual activities. Since none of his works survive complete,his philosophy must be reconstructed from the approximately 300extant fragments, of which some are quite substantial. Cicero, Strabo,Seneca, Galen and many other ancient writers testify to his originalityand importance. This has led many scholars to attribute to him moreinfluence than can be proved.
69
More sober assessments of theachievement of Posidonius have been made from the evidence of securely attested fragments.
70
Posidonius accepted the traditional division of philosophy intophysics (i.e. study of the natural world), ethics and logic. He acceptedthe authority of the founders of Stoicism (most notably Chrysippus),
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME27
but he believed in the progress of philosophy, which implies changeand, where necessary, correction. Like Panaetius, he taught thatphysics was the area of philosophy from which others proceeded,whereas Chrysippus had put logic first.
71
Consequently he wrote onnatural phenomena, with works on astronomy, mathematics and meteo-rology, among others, including a major work
On Ocean
, which
“
isone of the lost books of antiquity one would most like to recover
”
.
72
From this comprehensive view of the world in which human beingsexist he developed his simile for philosophy:
73
The Stoics plausibly liken philosophy to a garden with all sortsof fruit, in which physics is like the height of the plants, ethics islike the productivity of the fruit, and logic is like the strength of the walls. Other [Stoics] say it is like an egg: they liken ethics tothe yolk
…
, physics to the white
…
, and logic to the outer shell.But Posidonius, since the parts of philosophy are indivisible
…
,thought it right to liken philosophy to a living creature, [inwhich] physics is like the blood and flesh, logic is like the bonesand sinews, ethics is like the soul.The change from Chrysippus
’
simile is fundamental for Posidonius
’
method and views. Plants, fruit and walls are separate from each other,entailing the separation of the branches of philosophy.
74
Thus logicwas made the tool (
organon
) of philosophy, and therefore subordinateto the other parts. The simile of Posidonius makes logic an organic partof philosophy, to which it gives structure and movement. The tools of physics (natural philosophy) are particular sciences (geography, seis-mology, oceanography, etc.), which serve natural philosophy byexplaining the causes of phenomena. Thus the philosopher observesnatural phenomena (as Posidonius himself did on the Atlantic coast of Spain) and deduces their causes from his observations. By means of philosophy (especially logic), he will determine the right causes, distin-guishing between various pieces of evidence, and he will relate hisconclusions to the cosmos, which Posidonius saw as a living, organicand finite whole surrounded by an infinite void.
75
The importance of Posidonius
’
method is well expressed by Arthur Darby Nock:
76
Posidonius did perhaps communicate to others a sense for thewonders of nature
…
and let us note that whereas others shrank from rising to contemplate all things, philosophy did not fearthis
…
[T]his is a desire for knowledge of the secrets of the uni-
28THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
verse on the basis of human penetration and not of supernaturalrevelation.To this extent, Reinhardt
’
s notion of
Kosmos und Sympathie
has somevalidity, so long as it is realized that Posidonius came to his conclu-sions on the basis of rigorous observation and logical deduction of causes from the evidence. Indeed, he was criticized by the geographerand Stoic Strabo (
c
.64 BCE to 25 CE) for being too much concernedwith causes, in this, said Strabo, being an Aristotelian rather than aStoic.
77
Strabo
’
s facts are correct, as the Posidonian fragments show,except for the charge that the search for causes was not typical of theStoics. For Chrysippus had looked for causes, but denied that thehuman mind could discover all causes.
78
Posidonius argued (in the con-text of deducing causes for the weakening of emotions with time) thatfrom study of actual human behaviour its causes could be deduced, justas evidence from observed natural phenomena led to the deduction of underlying causes.
79
Posidonius used the methods of the scientist
—
philosopher to find the causes of human behaviour or historical events.Observation of physical and emotional behaviour or the evidence of history were the tools for the discovery of causes and therefore foracquiring knowledge of ethics, leading to correct moral choices.Posidonius developed his theory of ethics in
On the Emotions
(
PeriPathon
), which can be partly reconstructed from quotations in Galen
’
s
On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato
.
80
He saw that examinationof the emotions was the essential beginning of ethical enquiry (thewriter is Galen):
81
Posidonius says something like this (I quote his words) in thefirst book, near the beginning of his work
On Emotions
:
“
for Ithink that the enquiry about good and evil and about ends andabout virtues starts from the correct enquiry about emotions.
”
Posidonius accepted the traditional Stoic definition
of pathos
as
“
exces-sive impulse
”
.
82
He disagreed with Chrysippus about causes of theemotions, for Chrysippus had taught that they were caused by errors in judgement, which entails the possibility of reason itself being theircause.
83
Posidonius differed from both Zeno and Chrysippus. He praises andaccepts Plato
’
s doctrine and disagrees with the followers of Chrysip-pus. He shows that the emotions are neither judgements nor the conse-quences of judgements, but that they are motions of separate irrationalpowers, which Plato called
“
desiring
”
and
“
spirited
”
. In his work
On
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME29
Emotions
he asks Chrysippus and his followers what is the cause of excessive impulse. For reason could not exceed its own functions andlimits. So it is clear that some other irrational power causes the impulseto exceed the limits of reason.Since reason cannot be subject to excess, and the evidence fromobserved human and animal behaviour contradicts Chrysippus, Posido-nius renewed Plato
’
s theory of the soul, according to which reason isthe highest faculty, while the two other irrational faculties account forthe emotions of anger and desire.
84
He then showed how
in fact
humanbeings and animals are naturally affected by the emotions, which canbe controlled by reason. Thus his method relied on the observed facts,from which a consistent explanation of their causes could be deduced,leading to an understanding of correct moral choices. Chrysippus took the wise man as his starting point in arguing that reason led to correctmoral choices, and errors in judgement to incorrect choices ruled bythe emotions. Posidonius took human beings and animals
as they are
as his starting point, and his observations corresponded with the factsof human experience
—
that human beings and animals do show anger,fear and desire. From the observed evidence, he deduced his proof of the causes of the emotions, which is the basis for his ethical theory.Finally, his definition of the end (
telos
) of human life modifiesZeno
’
s definition,
“
to live in accordance with nature
”
.
85
It is quoted byClement of Alexandria (
c
.150
–
216 CE) in a catalogue of Stoic defini-tions of the
telos
:
86
to live contemplating the truth and order of the whole [i.e. allthings together], and organizing it [namely, the truth] coherentlyas far as possible, not being led in any respect by the irrationalpart of the soul.Thus Posidonius combined observation of nature, conclusions fromevidence deduced by reason, and the achievement of the good life
—
corresponding, respectively, to the philosophical disciplines of physics,logic and ethics
—
into a coherent system.Perhaps the most influential of Posidonius
’
works was his
History
,written in fifty-two books.
87
In time it began where the
History
of Polybius ended, 146 BCE, and in scope it ranged over the whole of theMediterranean world, from Spain to Asia Minor, and from northernGaul to Egypt. It may have been unfinished, and it certainly continueddown to the mid-80s BCE, since it contains the narrative of Posido-nius
’
interview with Marius shortly before the latter
’
s death in Januaryof 86.
88
Posidonius
’
usual method is apparent in the extant fragments:
30THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
careful observation of human and natural phenomena, from which his-torical causes are deduced. He was especially concerned with thecauses of human behaviour, both in individuals and groups, crowdsand communities. This is clearly seen in the best known of the frag-ments, the account of the tyranny of Athenion in Athens in 88.
89
Theepisode itself was not particularly significant, and Athenion quicklydisappeared from the scene to be succeeded by a more formidabletyrant, Aristion, who was executed in the sack of Athens by Sulla in86. The story of Athenion demonstrated Posidonius
’
interest in causes,and specifically in the psychological causes of morally bad behaviour,both in the individual (Athenion) and the Athenian people. The sameconcern with the causes of human behaviour is apparent in the narra-tive of the interview with Marius.Many fragments show Posidonius
’
precise observation of the cus-toms of tribes and nations, for example of the Celts, from which againhe deduced the causes of human behaviour.
90
Finally, Posidonius isquoted at length by Seneca in his 90th letter, which concerns the rolein philosophy in human political, social and cultural development.
91
Posidonius, as quoted by Seneca, believed that philosophers were therulers in the Golden Age and that they were responsible for political,social and cultural developments. Seneca, however, while agreeingwith the first two of these categories, disagreed with Posidonius aboutthe role of philosophers in developing the arts and sciences.In another passage, Posidonius shows peoples of the Black Sea coastvoluntarily submitting to others who were
“
more intelligent
”
.
92
In his
History
, as in his other works, he deduced from the observed evidencethat the greatest good is achieved by submitting to reason. People inthe golden age submitted to wise men because they used reason andwould provide the things that were necessary for a better life. The Mar-iandyni of the Black Sea coast submitted to the Heraclians because thelatter, with their superior use of reason, could provide the necessities of life for them. In both cases the submission of one group to another wasvoluntary: as Seneca says of the golden age philosopher
—
rulers,
“
itwas a duty to give commands, not a tyranny (
officium erat imperare,non regnum
)
”
.In the intellectual history of Rome, Posidonius
’
importance in theshort term lay in his influence on Cicero (who was about thirty yearsyounger). In the long term, however, the extraordinary range of hisenquiries encouraged Romans to share in the Greek tradition of univer-sal enquiry. Most important, however, was his method of enquiry, withits rigorous focus on deduction of causes from observation. He lookedupon the universe as an organic whole, in which human beings had
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME31
their place. In keeping with his simile of the body, he taught that justas the components of the universe are interdependent, so all knowledgeis subsumed into one coherent system. He changed the intellectual lifeof all Roman students of philosophy and history.
32THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
3CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106
–
43 BCE) was the most influential of theRoman philosophers. He most extensively interpreted Greek philoso-phy in Latin, and to do so he developed a Latin prose vocabulary thatcontinued to be influential throughout the Middle Ages and the Renais-sance. Only Seneca and Augustine matched his prolific output of Latinphilosophical works, and they too each developed a new Latin style asthe vehicle for their doctrines. All three were skilled orators, experi-enced in the arts of persuasion. It is usual to refer to
“
Cicero thePhilosopher
”
(the title, for example, of a recent collection of papers onCicero), but Cicero had as one of his ideals
“
the proper combination of philosophy and rhetoric
”
, which he saw (rightly) as a particularlyRoman development in the history of philosophy.
1
The canonical defi-nition of the orator was that of Cato the Elder:
“
a good man skilled inspeaking
”
(
vir bonus
,
dicendi peritus
), implying that the orator whosought to be a political leader must be morally good as well as skilledin rhetorical techniques.
2
Cicero announced this theme in his earliest rhetorical work,
De Inventione
, and elaborated it thirty years later in
De Oratore
. Ciceroexpanded the implications of Cato
’
s
“
good man
”
, and to do so invokedPlato. Like Panaetius and Posidonius he revered Plato as the fountain-head of philosophy, while he understood the importance of Plato
’
s
elo-quentia
(style) in making philosophy attractive to his readers and hear-ers. In his
Orator
(whose subject is the perfect orator), Cicero says thathe seeks to find not an eloquent individual, but
“
eloquence itself,which can only be seen with the
“
eyes of the mind
”
(
§
101). He is allud-ing to Plato
’
s theory of forms, which he had endorsed earlier in the
Orator
(
§§
7
–
10). There he says that the orator to be described in thetreatise is so perfect that he has perhaps never existed. But, Cicerosays, he will search for the most excellent eloquence, whose beauty
33
can be likened only to the ideal of oratory, which only the mind cancomprehend. Even so, Phidias, in creating his statues of Zeus andAthena, copied a mental image of ideal beauty, not the beauty of anindividual model. Cicero concludes (
§§
9
–
10):So just as there is something perfect and superior in statues andworks of art, to whose appearance in the mind they are related(but itself it cannot be seen), so with our mind we see the appear-ance of perfect eloquence, we aim at its likeness with our ears.These forms of things Plato called
ideai
, Plato who is the mostweighty authority and teacher not only of understanding but alsoof speaking. He says that the Forms do not come into being andare eternal, and that they always are comprehended by reasonand intelligence. Other things come into being, die, dissolve anddisintegrate, and they do not exist any longer in one and thesame state. Therefore whatever exists and is the subject of methodical reasoning, must be referred to the Form and Idea of its class.Thus Cicero combines rhetoric and philosophy: the former comes intobeing through reason, the servant and interpreter of philosophy; thelatter needs rhetoric if its conclusions are to be communicated to andunderstood by a wide audience. Before he came on the scene (heimplies) philosophy had been the special field of disputatious Greeks,criticism of whom in Rome goes back at least to Plautus in the earlysecond century BCE.
3
Through his rhetoric, founded on philosophy, hewill make the doctrines of the Greeks intelligible to Roman audiences.His claim has proved to be justified.Cicero tells us a great deal about his rhetorical and philosophicaltraining. In the last part of his
Brutus
(
§
305 onwards) he recalls hisyears in Rome during the troubles of the 80s BCE that culminated inthe capture of the city by Sulla in 82 and the subsequent proscriptions.He says that he listened to the most prominent orators, some of whomhe describes as
“
living on the speaker
’
s platform
”
(
§
305). At this time(88) Philo of Larissa, the head of the Academy at Athens, fled to Romefrom the imminent sack of Athens by Sulla. His arrival was importantfor Cicero (
§
306):Then, when the tribune P.Sulpicius was making speeches to thepeople every day, I gained a deep knowledge of the whole fieldof rhetoric. And at the same time, when Philo, head of theAcademy, fled from his home with the leading men of Athens in
34THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
the [first] Mithradatic War and came to Rome, I gave myself over to him completely. For I was stimulated by an amazingenthusiasm for philosophy. While the variety and importance of the subjects of philosophy kept me involved in it, one reasonespecially made me more attentive
—
that the administration of justice through the courts seemed to have been permanentlyremoved.Cicero goes on to tell how he did not make any speeches in thoseyears. Instead, he says (
§§
308
–
09):during that period I spent all my days and nights in the study of every [philosophical] doctrine. I consorted with the StoicDiodotus, who recently died at my house, where he had made hishome and had lived with me.
4
He made me practise dialecticmost vigorously.Cicero is recalling 40 years later (46 BCE, but with a dramatic date of 49) the turbulent days of Marius and Sulla and explaining how heavoided the troubles in which many politicians and orators lost theirlives. While his recollection is artfully narrated, he reveals four signifi-cant facts about his intellectual and professional development.First, this account anticipates and confirms the close union of philos-ophy and rhetoric. His diligence in those years enabled him to transmitGreek philosophy to Roman audiences later in his life. He notes thatDiodotus taught him dialectic, an essential rhetorical and logical toolfor philosophical argument. He says also (
§
310) that under Diodotushe declaimed rhetorical exercises every day, more often in Greek thanin Latin, partly because he could then be taught and criticized by Greek teachers, partly because Greek oratory provided him with style andmodes of expression (his word is
ornamenta
) that could be transferredto Latin
—
significant evidence for the development of his Latin philo-sophical vocabulary.Second, Cicero shows that he turned to philosophy when free speechwas suppressed and he could not continue with his political and legalactivity. When he was in political eclipse after the renewal of the firsttriumvirate in 56, he turned to the writing of political philosophy in his
De Re Publica
and
De Legibus
. In the last years of his life, during thedomination of Caesar (and especially after the death of his daughterTullia in February, 45), he devoted himself to philosophical writing,and it is in these few years that the great bulk of his philosophical work was written. Writing late in 45 he said:
5
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES35
when I was [politically] inactive in retirement and the conditionof the state was such that it was necessary for one man to governit with his responsibilities and policies, I thought that I shouldexpound philosophy to my fellow-Romans principally for thesake of the state. And I thought that it would increase the honourand glory of the state if I should include subjects so weighty andimportant in Latin literature.Cicero goes on to say that other Roman students of Greek philosophyhad been unable to translate Greek doctrine into Latin, whereas
“
now
”
(by which Cicero means after the publication of his Latin philosophicalworks) the Romans have a Latin style and vocabulary equal to those of the Greek philosophers.In the
Brutus
Cicero claimed that he had been consistently active onbehalf of the state: when it was impossible to speak freely in the forumor the courts or the senate, then he withdrew from public activity intophilosophical study and writing, an activity that was equally beneficialto the state and its citizens. This is Stoic doctrine: the wise man willparticipate in politics as far as he can. But if he is hindered
—
by dis-ease or disability or by the suppression of free speech
—
then he willpursue his activity (
negotium
) in retirement (
otium
).Third (to return to the passage from the
Brutus
), Cicero says that theteaching of the Academic sceptic, Philo, deeply influenced him. Hebecame a follower of the Academic school, whose scepticism, how-ever, led him to deduce the most probable conclusion from the evi-dence, even if it was one put forward by a rival school.
6
Finally, Cicero says that the Stoic Diodotus became a lifelongfriend. He taught Cicero dialectic (the importance of this for an under-standing of logic has been discussed inChapter 2) and supervised hisdaily rhetorical exercises. The association with Diodotus meant that,despite being an Academic, Cicero was sympathetic to Stoic ethics,with their emphasis on virtue and reason. He was always opposed toStoic inflexibility and lack of human sympathy.
7
In
De Natura Deorum
6
–
7 Cicero reviewed his long involvementwith philosophy (40 years at the time of writing):I did not suddenly become involved with philosophy, and frommy youth I gave considerable effort and trouble to it. When Iseemed least to be involved, then was I most being a philoso-pher. You can see this from my speeches, which are stuffed withthe maxims of philosophers. You can see it from my close friend-ships with the most learned men, who have always lent distinc-
36THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
tion to my home. Chief among these were Diodotus, Philo, Anti-ochus, Posidonius, who were my teachers. If all the teachings of philosophy are relevant to life, then I think that in my private lifeand my public career I have followed the precepts of reason andphilosophy.Two of the four philosophers named by Cicero in this passage wereStoics
—
Diodotus and Posidonius. The others, Philo and Antiochus,were Academics, and their influence on Cicero was, by his ownaccount, the most significant in his philosophical development. In
Bru-tus
306, quoted above, Cicero describes the effect of Philo
’
s arrival inRome in 88 BCE:
“
I gave myself over to him totally
”
. Before this timeCicero had flirted with Epicureanism: writing in 51 BCE he tellsMemmius that
“
when we were boys
”
he and his friend Patron hadadmired the Epicurean philosopher, Phaedrus,
“
before I met Philo
”
.
8
So Philo was the catalyst for Cicero
’
s mature philosophy, and from thetime of their meeting in Rome in 88 Cicero was a follower of the Aca-demic school.In 80 Cicero achieved fame as an orator through his defence of Sex-tus Roscius, having previously improved his rhetoric by studying withthe distinguished Greek orator, Molo of Rhodes, who had come toRome in 81 as an envoy of the Rhodians. The speech
Pro Rosrio
attacked the partisans of Sulla, and Cicero prudently left Rome for twoyears, 79
–
77, although he also withdrew (as he says in
Brutus
313
–
14)for reasons of health. He went first to Athens and there spent sixmonths studying with the Academic philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon, who may have visited Rome with Philo in 88:When I reached Athens I spent six months with Antiochus, thenoblest and wisest philosopher of the Old Academy. With hisencouragement I renewed philosophical studies once more,which I had never interrupted and had pursued and augmentedever since my first years as a young man, with him as mysupreme teacher.After the time in Athens, Cicero toured Asia Minor to study with theleading Greek orators. Finally, he visited Rhodes, where once more hestudied under Molo. Cicero returned to Rome in 77 as a complete ora-tor,
“
not only better practised but almost changed
”
.
9
Essential to hisimprovement was his renewed commitment to philosophy. His autobi-ography is fashioned to show how the two fields of endeavour wereinseparable.
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES37
Philo taught rhetoric as well as philosophy, and this perhaps was onereason why he made such a deep impression on Cicero.
10
When he fledto Rome he had been head of the Academy for over twenty years, andapparently he continued to act as head even in Rome, where he proba-bly spent the rest of his life (perhaps as much as a decade). Neither henor his most important pupil, Antiochus of Ascalon (a native of Syria,like Posidonius), was a philosopher of the stature of Carneades or Posi-donius, but their debate virtually put an end to the Academy as a func-tional school of philosophy.
11
Nevertheless, there were still Academicsceptics, such as C.Aurelius Cotta, consul in 75 and one of the partici-pants in the dialogue
De Natura Deorum
, and Cicero himself. Hisolder contemporary, Marcus Terentius Varro (116
–
27), followed theOld Academy of Antiochus. Other sceptics adopted Pyrrhonism (notmentioned by Cicero), which was revived by Aenesidemus some timein the first half of the first century. Although Cicero was a follower of Philo, he was sympathetic with much of Stoic doctrine. A.A.Longrightly has said:
12
the humane Stoicism of
De Officiis
, his most influential work,represents views of which he himself approved. It is the bearingof philosophy on human conduct which matters most to Cicero.It is not surprising, therefore, that Cicero was more interested in ethicsthan in epistemology. Nevertheless, he would, as a lawyer, have foundscepticism attractive, with its method of examining both sides of aquestion. Psychologically (as we can see from many of his letters toAtticus), he was slow to come to a firm decision, and the built-indilemmas of scepticism suited him better than the dogmatism of theother schools.Scepticism had been the principal mode of Socrates
’
teaching, thatis, critical examination of both sides of a question, which would provethe fallibility of his interlocutor
’
s views. Socrates himself laid no claimto knowledge beyond knowing that he knew nothing.
13
Plato savedSocrates
’
sceptical approach from total negativity through his magicalmastery of Greek prose, and by developing the theory of Forms (Ideas)as his answer to the problem of knowledge.
14
But, as Aristotle, Plato
’
spupil, pointed out, Plato separated the forms from the world in whichwe actually live, and the more realistic doctrines of other schools (mostnotably the Stoics) proved more attractive, so that the Academy lost itsvitality.
15
The school was reinvigorated as the New Academy by Arce-silaus, its head from about 268
–
242 BCE, who made the scepticalapproach of Socrates (rather than the Platonic forms) its philosophical
38THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
foundation. He taught that there could be no objective certainty aboutanything, and that the philosopher should, in the search for truth, sus-pend judgement. He argued particularly against the Stoic doctrine thata
“
cognitive impression
”
could be the basis of knowledge.
16
Neverthe-less, he allowed that even without assenting to anything (i.e. withoutcertain knowledge) one could make decisions by following what wasreasonable.
17
Arcesilaus
’
doctrine was presented more systematically byCarneades, whose speeches for and against justice had so alarmed Catothe Elder. In particular he preferred what was persuasive as the crite-rion of truth, which must be convincing and thoroughly examined byphilosophers before they give their assent.
18
Philo, who had been a student of Clitomachus, at first agreed withCarneades, but at about the time that he went to Rome he publishedtwo books in which he said that the Academy had always been one andthe same from Plato to his own time.
19
Without reviving Plato
’
s theoryof forms, he seems to have agreed with Plato that we can comprehenduniversals intellectually, even if we cannot know particular thingsbecause of the fallibility of our impressions. His effort to combine scep-ticism with dogmatism angered Antiochus so much that he wrote abook titled
Sosus
(not extant) against Philo. In it he rejected scepticismand adopted the Stoic theory of knowledge, going back not merely toZeno, the founder of Stoicism, but to the founder of the Peripateticschool, Aristotle, for his authority.
20
Antiochus also adopted much of Stoic ethics and, it seems, physics.
21
He said that the Stoics agreedwith the Peripatetics in substance but differed in terminology.
22
It ishardly surprising, then, that Cicero described him as
“
one who wascalled an Academic, and was in fact (with only a few changes) an abso-lutely genuine Stoic
”
.
23
The conflict between Philo and Antiochus put an end to the unity of the Academy and to such vitality as it still had. It so upset the Aca-demic Aenesidemus that he dismissed it as
“
Stoics fighting with Sto-ics
”
,
24
and left the Academy to revive the sceptical doctrines of Pyrrho(
c
.365
–
275 BCE). Cicero does not mention Aenesidemus, whose exactdates are unknown. His chief work on Pyrrhonism was dedicated to L.Aelius Tubero (a younger contemporary and friend of Cicero), and isdated by Barnes as not earlier than the 70s BCE. In any case, he is notsignificant for our understanding of Cicero
’
s scepticism, which is thatof Philo before the publication of the two books that had so upsetAntiochus.These Academic squabbles could be seen, as
“
esoteric bickering,unintelligible to the layman and unprofitable to the discipline
”
.
25
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES39
Cicero himself says that to many people Academic scepticism
“
appeared to be taking away light and veiling the world in night-likedarkness
”
.
26
Indeed, in Cicero
’
s world, philosophy was a guide to life:the conclusions that you reached intellectually had practical conse-quences. Philo, in going back to Plato, seems to have understood this,while Antiochus, in rejecting scepticism, most certainly did, for hesaid:
27
The two greatest things in philosophy are discernment of thetruth and the goal (
finem
) of things that are good. A man couldnot be wise who did not know that there was a beginning of com-ing to know and an end of searching, so as to be ignorant of hisstarting point and his goal.Thus Antiochus linked epistemology and ethics, the process of knowl-edge and the goal of the good life. Long has justly said that
“
he suc-ceeded in turning the Academy back towards a positivist philosophy
”
.
28
Epistemology is the most barren branch of philosophy if it is pur-sued as an intellectual chess game. Plato, Aristotle and Zeno hadshown that the answers to the questions of
“
What do we know?
”
and
“
How do we know it?
”
must affect our moral and practical decisions.Plato
’
s theory of forms is one such example, and his belief in its practi-cal importance is eloquently and memorably expressed in Socrates
’
closing words of the
Republic
:
29
In this way, Glaucon, the myth [of Er] was saved and did notperish. It would save us, too, if we obey it, and we shall cross theRiver of Forgetfulness [Lethe] safely and our souls will not bedefiled. But if we follow my words
—
that the soul is immortaland able to endure all things good and evil
—
then we shallalways stay on the upward path and practise justice with intelli-gence in every way. Our goal is to be dear to ourselves and to thegods, both while we remain here and when we receive her [Jus-tice
’
s] prizes, being rewarded like victors in the games. And hereand in the one-thousand-year journey which we have passedthrough we shall do well.Plato
’
s poetic eloquence makes us forget that this is the conclusion toan epistemological enquiry, that is, into a definition of the universal,Justice. He expanded the logical problem of defining universals to itsethical and practical consequences for the individual and society. Anti-ochus, as Barnes has said,
“
was prepared to publish a plain and conser-
40THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
vative system of philosophy
—
and to commend his system to the rulersof the world
”
.
30
This explains why Cicero, the Philonian sceptic, foundeven in the dogmatism of Antiochus features to guide him in his searchfor the good life.Cicero
’
s discussion of the Academic theory of knowledge is in the
Academica
, of which only part of one book (out of four) survives of the revised version and one complete book (out of two) of the first ver-sion.
31
The composition of the work was exceptionally tortuous, as canbe seen from Cicero
’
s letters to Atticus in the period between Marchand July of 45 BCE.
32
Cicero originally composed the work in twobooks, respectively titled
Catulus
and
Lucullus
. In the
Catulus
, nowlost, the consul of 78, Q.Lutatius Catulus, expounded the scepticalviews of Carneades, which were those held by his father, consul in 102and a victim in the Marian proscriptions of 87.
33
He was answered byHortensius (son-in-law of the elder Catulus), who defended the dogma-tism of Antiochus. The second book,
Lucullus
, is extant. In it Lucullusexpounded Antiochus
’
views (
§§
11
–
42), to which Cicero replied witha defence of Philo
’
s scepticism (
§§
64
–
147).The choice of Lucullus to expound the views of Antiochus seemedat first logical, for he was a friend of Antiochus. M.Licinius Luculluswas consul in 74 and commander in the third war against Mithradates(which was brought to a successful conclusion by his successor, Pom-pey, in 66). He was beginning his political career at the time whenPhilo (and probably Antiochus) fled to Rome. In 87 Antiochus accom-panied him on a visit to Alexandria and there read the two books of Philo that upset him so much. He went with Lucullus on his campaignsin Armenia and was present at the battle of Tigranocerta in 69, of which he said
“
the sun had never seen such a battle
”
. He died not longafter. The
Catulus
and the
Lucullus
were completed in mid-May of 45,some 11 years after the death of Lucullus, with a dramatic datebetween 63 and 60.Cicero realized, however, that it was stretching the facts to make themilitary and political leader Lucullus into a philosopher discoursing onepistemology. In June he rewrote both books, so as to give Brutus andCato (Uticensis) the principal parts.
34
He had already, however, beenthinking of transferring these parts to Varro, and within two days of completing the second version he had done this. The third and finalversion of the work was in four books, with Varro and Cicero as inter-locutors (Atticus was a third, but took a very small part), Varro speak-ing for Antiochus and Cicero for the scepticism of Philo. Only part of the first book is extant: in it Varro
’
s speech occupies
§§
15
–
42 (with afew interruptions from the interlocutors) and Cicero
’
s begins at
§
44:
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES41
the extant part breaks off at
§
46. Cicero refers to the four books of thefinal version as
Academic Libri
, and the two books of the first versionas
Catulus
and
Lucullus
. Modern editors, however, usually refer to thetwo surviving books as
Academica
, even though they come from dif-ferent versions.
35
These books are the principal source for the views of Antiochus, together with Book 5 of the
De Finibus
, in which M.Pupius Piso (consul in 61) is the speaker for his ethical doctrines, withCicero as respondent.
36
The choice of M.Terentius Varro (116
–
27 BCE) for the revised
Aca-demici Libri
was appropriate, for he was the greatest of Roman schol-ars, although he also had a public career, rising to the praetorship in the70s and serving as propraetor in the east in 67 and in Spain in 50
–
49.His range of scholarship was vast, but, of the fifty-five works whosetitles are known, only two are extant to any great extent (
De Lingua Latina
and
De Re Rustica
). He did write a work
De Philosophia
,known from Augustine
’
s description, and, as the second part of hismonumental
Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum et Divinarum
, he wrotesixteen books (dedicated to Julius Caesar) on the gods and their wor-ship.
37
In a letter written towards the end of June, 46, Cicero expresseshis admiration of Varro for his immersion in study (which includedphilosophy) at such a time of political instability:
38
I have always considered you to be a great man, especiallybecause in these stormy times you are almost the only one to beenjoying in harbour the fruits of learning.Varro had studied under Antiochus in Athens, and Cicero says of him,
“
no one is more fitting for the doctrines of Antiochus
”
.
39
Cicero agonized over the choice of Varro, as we know from a seriesof letters to Atticus.
40
He was never on close terms with him andVarro
’
s hot temper made him nervous.
41
He was embarrassed by Varros failure (after nine years) to publish the work that he had promised todedicate to Cicero.
42
In the dedicatory letter of the
Academid Libri
toVarro, Cicero remarks that in fact the discussion between himself andVarro in the work had never taken place, striking evidence for the abil-ity of Rome
’
s two most distinguished intellectuals to work on parallellines.
43
At any rate, the revised
Academid Libri
were sent by Atticus toVarro before mid-July of 45.
44
Cicero was anxious to know whatVarro thought of the work, but Varro
’
s letter (if he ever wrote one) isnot extant. Cicero himself was proud of the revised work, as he writesin several letters to Atticus. For example, writing in May of 45, hesays:
45
42THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The books have turned out (unless human self-love deceives me)such that not even the Greeks have anything in this genre likethem
…
They are far more brilliant, more concise, better (
splen-didiora, breviora, meliora
).In his mention of the
Academid Libri
in
De Divtnattone
(2. 1), Cicerofocuses on the approachability of the work, for he knew how intimidat-ing Greek epistemology would be for his Roman audience. He says:I set forth in the four books of the
Academid Libri
the kind of philosophy that I thought would be least arrogant and most con-sistent and elegant.How seriously he took his task can be seen from the series of letters toAtticus, written during the revision of the first publication, to which wehave referred earlier.
46
He took particular pride in making Greek phi-losophy intelligible to young Roman readers in Latin whose style, heclaimed, outdid that of the Greeks.Cicero dedicated the intermediate version of the
Academica
to Bru-tus, and it is appropriate to say more here about this younger friend of Cicero.
47
M.Junius Brutus (as he is usually called, although after hisadoption into the family of the Servilii Caepiones he actually took hisadoptive father
’
s name) was born (probably) in 85 BCE and studiedphilosophy at Athens under Aristus, the brother of Antiochus and hissuccessor as head of the Old Academy. (Although Cicero calls Brutus
Antiochius,
he almost certainly never heard Antiochus.) Brutus, there-fore, was an Academic, despite the fact that he married (as his secondwife) Porcia, daughter of M. Porcius Cato (Uticensis). In his publiccareer, which began in 58 with a controversial mission to Cyprus onCato
’
s staff, he was efficient and (in Cyprus at least) rapacious, and hecould be high-handed. After the battle of Pharsalus (48), in which hehad fought on Pompey s side, he was pardoned by Caesar, no doubt inpart because his mother, Servilia, had been Caesar
’
s mistress. In 46 hewas sent by Caesar to Cisalpine Gaul (i.e. northern Italy) as proconsul,and governed so well that he was elected Praetor for 44 and designatedconsul for 41. But when Caesar was made Dictator for life in Februaryof 44, Brutus could not ignore the demands of family tradition (for hisancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus, had ended the tyranny of TarquiniusSuperbus nearly five centuries earlier) and he became the leader of theconspiracy against Caesar which culminated in the murder on the Idesof March, 44. It is doubtful if solely philosophical principles led him torid Rome of a tyrant (as has often been said), so much as the realiza-
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES43
tion that with Caesar as Dictator free competition among Roman sena-tors for political power would be ended. Brutus at first disapproved of the suicide of Cato, but he changed his mind before the battles of Philippi and said to Cassius:
48
I used to blame Cato for his suicide, because it was not virtuous(
hosion
) nor manly to yield to the god rather than to acceptevents without fear, and instead to run away. But now beset byfortune I have changed. If the god does not decide these eventsin my favour, I do not ask to make trial of other hopes
…
but Ishall leave with praise for Fortune, that I gave my life to mycountry on the Ides of March and have lived another life becauseof her with liberty and glory.And so, after his defeat in the second battle of Philippi, Brutus killedhimself.
49
We may doubt if his decision was entirely a philosophicalone, although Plutarch makes him seem to act as a Stoic. Rather, realiz-ing how hopeless his political position was after the victories of Antony and Octavian, he followed Cato in refusing to live under thosewho had destroyed the Republic. Plutarch also reports that the enemiessaid that he alone of the conspirators made it his goal to restore
“
thetraditional Roman constitution
”—
that is, they said that his motiveswere political.
50
Brutus did not invite Cicero to join in the conspiracy against Caesar,but they corresponded after the murder until July of 43, by which timeBrutus had left Italy for Greece and the east. It is a sad correspondenceto read, for it cannot conceal their deep political differences, especiallyover Octavian (the future emperor Augustus), whom Cicero underesti-mated and Brutus rightly distrusted. One hint of their common philoso-phy remains in the consolatory letter that Cicero wrote after the deathof Porcia, Brutus
’
wife, in June of 43.
51
Brutus had been critical of Cicero
’
s grief in his letter consoling Cicero after the death of his daugh-ter, Tullia, in February of 45. Referring to this in his consolatory letter,Cicero reminds Brutus that his public position does not allow him togive way to his emotions. Though he has lost
“
one who had no equalon earth
”
, he cannot allow himself to appear weak in the eyes of
“
almost the whole world
”
.Brutus first wrote to Cicero from Asia, where he had gone afterPharsalus. Cicero says that this letter (which is not extant) first revivedhim from the depression that the defeat of Pompey had caused and hadbrought him back to the study of philosophy.
52
It was a letter, saysCicero, full of prudent advice and friendly consolation, and it led to a
44THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
period of intellectual closeness between Brutus and Cicero at the timewhen Cicero was most productive as a philosophical writer. Brutushimself wrote treatises (all lost) on Virtue (which was dedicated toCicero), on Patience and on Duty. According to Quintilian he was abetter philosophical writer than orator:
“
you would know that he feltwhat he said
”
, says Quintilian.
53
Cicero naturally was sympathetic toan orator who was also a philosopher.The first work that he dedicated to Brutus, the
Brutus
, was a surveyof Roman oratory which included, as we have seen, an autobiographi-cal account of Cicero
’
s own development in the 80s as an orator andphilosopher. Cicero speaks warmly of Brutus
’
friendship in the
Brutus
:Brutus and Atticus together as friends who were
“
so dear and pleasingto me, that at the sight of them all my anxieties about the state wereallayed
”
.
54
This did not stop Brutus from criticizing Cicero
’
s oratorywhich, so Tacitus tells us, quoting Brutus
’
own words, he said was
“
broken and dislocated
”
, with reference, however, more to the rhythmsthan to the content of his rhetoric.
55
At the end of the
Brutus
(
§
330),Cicero laments the road-block (Cicero is using the metaphor of a char-iot) that the misfortunes of the state have thrown in the way of Brutus
’
career. Therefore, he urges him to devote himself to his continuingstudies, that is, to philosophy. So, for a short time, Cicero saw in Bru-tus a serious philosopher, and, despite occasional irritation with him,he dedicated a series of works to him. After the
Brutus
, another work on oratory, the
Orator
, was dedicated in 46 at Brutus
’
request, to befollowed in 45 by the
De Finibus
, the
Tusculan Disputations
and the
De Natura Deorum
. Cicero also (in 46) dedicated to him a muchslighter work, the
Paradoxa Stoicorum
, which was really a rhetoricalexercise rather than a serious philosophical examination of the Stoicparadoxes.Of these dedications, those to Books 1, 3 and 5 of the
De Finibus
areespecially interesting. Book 5 begins with the words,
“
When, Brutus, Ihad listened to Antiochus, as was my custom
”
, a direct reference totheir common allegiance to the Academy and a reminder of Cicero
’
saccount in the
Brutus
of his time in Athens in 79. Cicero begins thework with a defence of the writing of Greek philosophy in Latin andreminds Brutus of the supreme importance of an enquiry into thenature of good and evil for the living of the virtuous life.
56
The settingof Book 3 is the library in the Tusculan villa of the younger Lucullus(son of the Lucullus of the
Academica
), in which Cicero finds CatoUticensis, the guardian of the young Lucullus, whose mother wasrelated to Cato. Cato is the speaker in defence of Stoic ethics, and Bru-tus, as Cicero remarks, is already proficient
“
in philosophy and in its
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES45
best field
”
(i.e. ethics).
57
While the dramatic date of Book 3 is the late50s, the date of writing was a year after the death of Cato. There ispoignancy in the dramatic presentation of Cato in a work written afterhis death and dedicated to Brutus, his son-in-law and nephew, himself destined to die in the same cause.M.Porcius Cato (95
–
46 BCE) is the major figure in the backgroundof Cicero
’
s relations with Brutus. To Cicero he was
Stoicus perfectus
,who introduced weighty philosophical discourse into his speeches inthe senate.
58
Cato did not travel to Athens to hear the philosophers
’
lectures, and Plutarch says that
“
he did not study with others and noone heard him speak
”
, that is, that he did not take part in the exercisesthat were part of the usual training in philosophy.
59
On the other hand,he was a friend of the Stoic philosopher Antipater of Tyre, whoaroused his interest in Stoicism:
60
He made friends with Antipater of Tyre, a Stoic philosopher, andattached himself particularly to [Stoic] ethical and political doc-trines. He was especially possessed, as if inspired, by everyaspect of virtue. He was an enthusiastic lover of that part of thegood that concerns inflexible justice, which never bends to allowleniency or special pleading. He trained himself also in rhetoricappropriate for addressing crowds, thinking that in a great citythere would be controversy along with political philosophy.In 67 Cato went to Macedonia as military tribune, and during this ser-vice he travelled to Asia Minor, in order to meet Athenodorus(Kordylion) of Tarsus, who was then head of the Library at Pergamum.Athenodorus was a Stoic, and Plutarch tells how Cato cajoled him intoleaving Pergamum and returning with him to the camp in Macedonia.He eventually went to Rome, where he lived in Cato
’
s house until hisdeath. Plutarch comments that Cato was especially impressed by hisrefusal to make friends with rulers and military leaders.
61
Cato
’
s philosophy was, as it were, home-grown. He chose the styleof Stoicism that suited his austere, craggy character, and he practised itin his own fashion, regardless of the cost to his political career. It madehim a redoubtable political competitor, feared and hated by his oppo-nents. Yet even Cato could not always put philosophical principleahead of political expediency, as, for example, when he secured theelection to the consulship for 59 of Bibulus, his son-in-law, throughbribery.
62
In his public career Cato infuriated Cicero by his inflexibility. Hisrigid adherence to principle led him to block Cicero
’
s request for a
46THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
supplicatto
(a public thanksgiving, ranking below a triumph) in honorof his military achievements in Cilicia.
63
This caused Cicero to remark to Atticus that Cato
“
has been disgracefully malevolent towards me
”
.
64
His rigidity led most disastrously to his refusal of any compromisewith Caesar in the months leading up to the outbreak of the Civil Warin January of 49. But Cicero admired and respected his devotion to theStoic principle of service to the state, which led to an extraordinarilyselfless patriotism. Indeed, in the
Pro Murena
he saluted Cato (whowas then thirty-two years old) as
“
born not for yourself, but for yourcountry
”
, words that the epic poet Lucan adapted and expanded,
“
believing that he was born not for himself but for the whole world
”
.
65
After the victory of Caesar at Thapsus in April, 46, Cato did what hecould to protect the people of Utica from harm, but for himself heresolved to die. He would not accept clemency from Caesar, and hedecided that he could not live under the rule of one man. Better to die,he believed, than to compromise with a tyrant. Therefore he committedsuicide, a scene vividly described by Plutarch.
66
Plutarch says that hehad with him two philosophers, Apollonides (Stoic) and Demetrius(Peripatetic), with whom he discussed philosophical matters on theevening before his death, until the discussion reached the Stoic para-dox that
“
Only the good man is free
”
.
67
Demetrius argued against this,and Cato argued so violently for it, that those present realized that hehad determined to die. Later, only the philosophers were left with him,and to them he reaffirmed his decision. They then left, and early in themorning he killed himself.Cato
’
s death was a public act based on Stoic principle. The virtuousman could not compromise with evil, neither could the man who wastruly free live under a tyranny, nor could the Roman patriot live in arepublic where the constitution had been rendered meaningless. WhileStoic doctrine was ambiguous about suicide, it did allow for the wiseman to withdraw
—
whether from political activity or from life itself
—
when circumstances made it impossible to live a virtuous life.
68
ThusCato reasoned that he should die, and by that act he more effectivelyopposed Caesar than by any of his political acts, as Caesar himself saw.
69
In a later age (as we shall see in the discussion of Seneca andLucan) his suicide was a beacon of encouragement for Stoics whofaced similar political and moral dilemmas.After Cato
’
s death Cicero wrote a pamphlet praising him, at therequest of Brutus, who followed with one of his own. These stimulatedCaesar to publish as his response an
Anticato
. Thus Cato achievedmore by his death on philosophical principles than he had been able toachieve in life by his politics. About ten years after his death Sallust
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES47
wrote a comparison of Caesar and Cato as part of his narrative of thesenatorial debate that preceded the execution of the Catilinarian con-spirators in 63.
70
In his speech Cato refers to his many earlier speechesin the senate
“
lamenting the luxury and avarice of Roman citizens
”
,and a little later, consistent with Stoic doctrine, he refuses to showmercy or pity towards the accused, whose execution he called for.These sentiments he supported with appeals to patriotism and to histor-ical examples of harsh punishments in support of the best interests of Rome. In the comparison that follows, Sallust (himself a former Caesar-ian) says that in his time only two men were endowed with great virtue
—
Caesar and Cato. In the present context we may leave his estimate of Caesar on one side, while recognizing that for Sallust, as for many oth-ers, Cato had become the unique example in his time of the Romanwho effectively transferred his philosophical principles into public life.We have reviewed Cicero
’
s early training in philosophy, and thishas led us to review several of his friends who appear as philosophersin successive versions of the
Academica
. It is time now to turn toCicero
’
s own review of his philosophical works, which he gave in
De Divinatione
, 2. 1
–
7. This work was written in early 44 BCE, largelybefore the Ides of March (but completed later), so that it does notinclude the later works on Friendship, on Fate, on Topics and on Duty.Cicero
’
s list is part of his defence of his philosophical activity as ser-vice to the state. He particularly justifies his making Greek worksavailable in Latin on the grounds of educating the young (
§
4):What greater or better duty could I perform for the state than inteaching and training the young, especially in these times of lowmoral standards, for the young have so far deteriorated thateveryone should do what they can to discipline them and put thebrakes on [their moral decline]?Thus Cicero answers the chief objection of Cato the Elder to the influ-ence of Greek philosophy. He says also (
§
6) that he became so activein philosophy because it was the activity most worthy of him, as asenior statesman, in a time when free political activity had been sup-pressed under the rule of one man. At this stage he is beginning toresume his public career, and so he expects that he will not have timeto devote his full attention to philosophy.Cicero
’
s survey begins with a lost work, the
Hortensius
, which hedescribes as an exhortation to study philosophy, written early in 45BCE. More than 100 fragments survive, from which it has beendeduced that the work consisted of a debate between Hortensius (speak-
48THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
ing against philosophy) and Catulus (defending its study), thus intro-ducing Cicero
’
s preferred style of presenting arguments for and againsta thesis.
71
It has also been suggested that the work is largely based onAristotle
’
s
Protrepticus
, a lost work defending the study of philoso-phy.
72
The
Hortensius
is best known for its influence on Augustine,who has preserved many of its fragments. In his
Confessions
he tellshow he was affected as he read the work as part of the regular curricu-lum in his rhetorical education:
73
That book contains Cicero
’
s own exhortation to philosophy andit is called
Hortensius
. It was that book that changed my feelingsand changed my prayers to you, Lord, and made my vows anddesires different.Augustine elsewhere quotes the
Hortensius
on living virtuously aspreparation for life after death. If, says Cicero, we go from this life tothe Islands of the Blessed, there will be no need there for the four car-dinal virtues, courage, justice, temperance and prudence. But in thislife they are necessary.
74
Again, Augustine quotes the end of the
Hort-ensius
, where Cicero ecstatically urges devotion to philosophy as themeans to
“
an easier ascent and return to the heavens
”
.
75
The passageshares with Cicero
’
s
Dream of Scipio
a poetic vision of the rewards of virtue achieved through philosophy.Cicero next lists the
Academica
, which we have already discussed inreviewing Academic skepticism and its background. After this he men-tions the five books
De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum
, which he wrotebetween March and June of 45 BCE, concurrently with the revised
Academici Libri
. Their subject is ethics, literally
On the Ends of Good and Evil
. The Latin word
finis
translates the Greek term
telos
, whichdenotes both
“
end
”
(i.e. the extreme limit) and
“
target
”
or
“
goal
”
, butCicero preferred to use the plural
fines
. The title implies that the personwho hits the target of what is good also reaches its ultimate limit (inLatin
summum bonum
), and so achieves the good life or, more specifi-cally,
“
happiness
”
, which the Greeks defined as
eudaimonia
andCicero translated as
vita beata
. Conversely, the person who reaches thefurthest limit of evil is afflicted with the worst life and the greatestunhappiness.The
De Finibus
is really an introduction to ethics, or, as Cicero says,it is the
“
foundation of philosophy
”
. Like university
“
basic
”
or
“
founda-tion
”
courses, it deals with a huge topic attractively and comprehen-sively, with the obvious drawbacks of such a presentation. Because of its approachability it has been highly praised and, especially since the
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES49
Danish scholar, J.N.Madvig, published his monumental commentary in1876, it has been more widely read than many of Cicero
’
s philosophi-cal works. Yet it does not reach the religious and emotional intensity of the
De Natura Deorum
or the intellectual precision of the
Academica
,or the Platonic enthusiasm of the
Hortensius
.
76
Nevertheless, it is stillamong the most readable of Cicero
’
s philosophical works and it isespecially valuable for its exposition of the ethical doctrines of thethree major schools of philosophy. Cicero claims that he dealt with thetopic completely (his word is
expurgatus est
, literally
“
completelyflushed through
”
), which he himself admitted was not so, for in hisnext work, the
Tusculan Disputations
, he says:
77
we ought to realize that when we have come to know (as far as ahuman being can know) the ends of good and evil, we can prayfor nothing greater or more useful from philosophy than thesethings which we have been discussing in these four days.The
Tusculan Disputations
, then, complemented the
De Finibus.
Cicero makes especially clear the importance of his Latin terminol-ogy in the
De Finibus
. In the dedication to Brutus (
§
1) he says that heknows that critics object to his presenting Greek philosophy in Latin,on the grounds that it is wasted effort, that it is beneath the dignity of aman of Cicero
’
s standing in public life, and that anyway they wouldprefer to read the original Greek. Cicero answers each criticism mostpassionately in
§§
10
–
11, where he defends the dignity of the Latinlanguage and the patriotism that his translations display:I have often discoursed on the Latin language, that it is not poor(as is commonly thought), but that it is even richer than Greek
…
.As for myself, since I have never (in my view) deserted my postin my work in the forum, in my labours [for the public good], inmy dangers, I certainly owe it now [to the Roman people] tolabour to make my fellow-citizens better informed through mydiligence, my research and my labour
…
For what in our lives
—
both in all of philosophy and in the discussions in these books
—
should we prefer in our enquiries to finding out the end, thelimit, the ultimate goal, to which every precept for the good lifeand morally right action has to be related? Or what should weprefer in our enquiries into what nature should follow, as themost desirable object to look for, and what it should avoid, as theworst of evils?
50THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The search for Latin terminology was especially important in the expo-sition of Stoic doctrine in Book 3. Cicero says that the Stoics were thegreatest innovators in philosophy, and that Zeno (their founder) was
“
not so much a discoverer of new things as he was of new words
”
.
78
Therefore Cicero is justified, he says, in developing a new terminol-ogy. He admits that some Greek words (for example,
philosophia
) areestablished in Latin usage, but he argues that Latin has a rich vocabu-lary of its own for the translation of Greek terms. Thus the importantStoic concepts of
proegmena
(things preferred) and
apoproegmena
(things to be rejected) he translates by
praeposita
and
reiecta
.
79
Heuses
laetitia
(pleasure of body and mind), as opposed to
voluptas
(sen-sual pleasure), where the Greek uses the same word,
hedone
, for both,and the emotions (
pathe
) become in Latin
perturbationes.
80
Cicerocompliments Cato (the Stoic speaker) on his use of Latin:
81
Indeed, Cato, you are using lucid vocabulary, whose words sayexactly what you mean! And, in my opinion, you are teachingphilosophy in Latin and, so to speak, making it a Roman citizen.Cicero certainly enjoyed the irony of giving Roman citizenship to aGreek term!The
De Finibus
consists of three separate dialogues, each with itsown dramatic date, and each devoted to the ethical doctrines of one of the major schools. The first dialogue (Books 1 and 2), whose dramaticdate is 50 BCE, focuses on Epicurean ethics. The setting is Cicero
’
svilla at Cumae
—
an appropriate choice, since there were many Epicure-ans living in the area round Naples. In Book 1, Epicurean doctrine isdefended by L.Manlius Torquatus, to whom Cicero responds in Book 2. Torquatus (90
–
46) was a friend of Cicero
’
s, although in 62 he wasthe prosecutor of P.Sulla, whom Cicero defended. Torquatus was alsoa poet, and his marriage to Junia Aurunculeia was celebrated by Catul-lus with an epithalamium.
82
He became Praetor in 49 (the year after thedramatic date of the dialogue) and fought on Pompey
’
s side in theCivil War. After the defeat at Thapsus he committed suicide, as didCato, the principal speaker in Book 3. Thus Cicero, by his choice of speakers, creates a memorial to those who perished in the Civil War.Torquatus
’
exposition focuses on pleasure (
voluptas
) and pain (
dolor
),which Epicurus had posited as the greatest good and the greatest evil.
83
Cicero mentions that he himself had heard the Epicurean philosophersPhaedrus and Zeno (who preceded Phaedrus as head of the Epicureanschool at Athens), and he names two other Epicurean philosophers,Siro and Philodemus, as his close friends and sources for a further
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES51
defence of Epicureanism.
84
These four philosophers, rather than thewritings of Epicurus himself, are likely to be the sources for Torqua-tus
’
exposition of contemporary Epicurean doctrine.
85
Cicero
’
sresponse in Book 2 probably derives from Antiochus.
86
His mainargument is that pleasure is not by itself sufficient for the good life, forwhich only virtue is sufficient, while there are morally good objects of desire (courage, justice, etc.) which have nothing to do with pleasure.Similarly, the desire to avoid pain is not rational but natural, if unattainable. Cicero
’
s arguments, despite their Academic origin, arecloser to Stoic ethics, which is understandable, given Antiochus
’
ownacceptance of much of Stoic doctrine. Cicero seems to have respectedhis Epicurean teachers and friends, even though he was consistentlyoutspoken in his hostility to Epicureanism, and he admits that in Book 2 he is speaking rhetorically, rather than dialectically.
87
This wouldexplain a number of distortions of Epicurean doctrine that appear in hisspeech.Books 3 and 4 of the
De Finibus
consist of the second dialogue, anexposition of Stoicism by Cato and, in Book 4, a response by Cicero,again probably largely derived from Antiochus.
88
The setting is thelibrary of the villa of Lucullus near Tusculum, where Cicero comesupon Cato, who is
“
surrounded by many Stoic books
”
(
§
7), and thedramatic date is 52 BCE. Book 3 is among the most important of allCicero
’
s philosophical writings, for it contains the only continuousexposition of early Stoic ethical doctrine that is extant.
89
In it Cicerotakes great care with Latin terminology, and he is far more engagedwith the topic than he was in the dialogue on Epicureanism.Cato begins with the primal human instinct for self-preservation,developing the Stoic doctrine of
oikeiosts
, which Cicero translates byvarious forms of the verb
conciliare
, in English
“
affinity
”
or
“
affec-tion
”
. From this derives the desire for what is good (
honestum
), whichis found to be the only good, for other things that people think are goodare in fact
indifferentia,
that is, they are not necessary to the goodlife).
90
Some of them, to be sure, are to be preferred (
praeposita
) andsome to be rejected, but it is virtue alone, gained through reason, that isnecessary and sufficient for the good life. Cato defines the
summumbonum
:
91
the highest good is to live using the knowledge of the things thathappen naturally, selecting those which are in accordance withnature and rejecting those which are against nature. This is tolive a life that is in harmony with and consistent with nature.
52THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
This definition is significant. It became the standard for the RomanStoics
’
idea of the good life, and it happens that we can see exactlyhow Cicero developed it from the definitions of Chrysippus, Diogenesof Babylon (one of the ambassadors to Rome in 155), and Antipater of Tyre, Cato
’
s friend and teacher.
92
Cato touches on many other topics, and he ends with praise of thewise man, in terms that recall the Stoic paradoxes (
“
only the wise manis a king, is beautiful, is free, is unconquered
”
). The wise man and hisphilosophy become divine:
93
If it is true that only the good man is happy and all good men arehappy, then what should we revere more than philosophy orwhat is more god-like than virtue?Cicero
’
s response in Book 4 criticizes each of Cato
’
s arguments,mainly to show that the Stoics agree with the Peripatetics in much, butthat their arguments are poorly expressed and their ethical ideals areimpracticable. He agrees with the Stoic end as defined in 3. 31 (quotedabove), but he objects to their arguments in support of it. Elsewhere hesupported the Stoic view, justifying his inconsistency by saying thatZeno
’
s doctrines derived from Plato, the source also for the views of the Peripatetics and Academics.
94
Book 5 of the
De Finibus
consists of the third dialogue. It is set inAthens in 79 BCE, where Cicero is walking with his friends, M.Pupius Piso (consul in 61, active in the Pompeian cause in 49, but deadby 47), T.Pomponius Atticus, his brother Quintus, and his cousinLucius Cicero.
95
They start from the Gymnasium of Ptolemy, wherethey had heard Antiochus lecture, for it continued to function as aneducational centre even after it had been sacked by Sulla in 86.
96
Theypass by the Stoa Poikile, where Zeno taught, to the Dipylon Gate(about 500 metres) and thence to Plato
’
s Academy (six stades, saysCicero, or about 1,100 metres), passing by Epicurus
’
garden.
97
It is awonderfully evocative scene, recalling the setting of some of Plato
’
sdialogues (for example, the
Phaedrus
) or of Cicero
’
s earlier work (forexample, Book 2 of the
De Legibus
). It enables Cicero to recall thehappy times of his youth and to remind us of his philosophical trainingin Athens. It also allows him to link himself with the great philoso-phers of the past
—
Plato and the Academy, Epicurus and the Garden,Zeno and the Stoa
—
along with their successors, of whom Aristotle,Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Carneades, Phaedrus and Antiochusare named. Cicero reminds Piso of a similarly evocative visit they hadmade to Metapontum (in southern Italy), where Pythagoras had lived
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES53
and died. The great Athenian orators, Demosthenes and Aeschines, arementioned, thus linking philosophy and rhetoric. In every part of Athens, says Cicero (
§
4), one is reminded of the great men of the past,but nowhere so much as in the Academy, where Carneades had lectured.The continuing presence of great men of the past was a prominentfeature of Roman upper-class culture of the last two centuries of theRepublic. So Cicero makes Piso say (
§
2) that looking at the Academyreminds him of being in the senate house at Rome (he had entered thesenate as Quaestor in 83), where he could
“
see
”
Scipio (Aemilianus),Cato (the Censor), Laelius, and his own grandfather (L.Calpurnius PisoFrugi, consul in 133). Thus the introduction to Book 5 links Greek phi-losophy with Roman intellectuals and with rhetoric. It links Cicero andhis friends to the great philosophical schools of the past, and it remindshis audience in 45 of the very different world of his youth. It is one of Cicero
’
s finest pieces of writing, for it supports his principal claims asa writer of philosophical works
—
that he is interpreting Greek philoso-phy in Roman terms, and that in so doing he is acting as a patriot andpublic servant no less than the great leaders of the past, such as Scipioand Cato the Censor.The main part of Book 5 is the speech of Piso (
§§
9
–
74), skilfullylinked to Brutus (to whom the work is dedicated) at the end of
§
8:pay close attention to Piso
’
s speech, Brutus, and see if he hassatisfactorily expounded the doctrines of Antiochus, which Ithink you approve of most of all, since you frequently attendedthe lectures of his brother, Aristus.Thus the doctrine of Book 5 is that of Antiochus (as Piso says in
§
76),defining
the fines bonorum
of the so-called Old Academy. Piso essen-tially accepts the Stoic definition of 3. 31, but he examines closelywhat is meant by
“
good
”
and by
“
nature
”
, and hence proves that thevirtuous life is the life lived according to nature (
§
58), but that
“
virtue
”
includes many specific good things in life besides the abstract qualityof virtue, which the Stoics said was the
only
thing necessary for thegood life. Cicero, more Stoic than Academic here, criticizes Piso in thedialogue of
§§
75
–
96, and so the work ends.The
De Finibus
is amongst Cicero
’
s finest works. This certainly canbe said of the opening of Book 5, and the importance of Book 3 cannotbe denied, whatever shortcomings it may have in its philosophicalargumentation.Next, in the
De Divinatione
survey, Cicero mentions the five booksof the
Tusculan Disputations
, probably his most approachable work
54THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
and therefore amongst the most popular of his philosophical writings.
98
Cicero calls them
“
an old man
’
s declamations
”
, and both in form andstyle they are indeed more rhetorical than the earlier dialogues.
99
Instead of the dialogue form in which one speaker develops a point of view and is then criticized by another, Cicero
’
s unnamed interlocutorproposes a thesis, which he then opposes in a virtually uninterruptedspeech. The setting is his villa at Tusculum, and from his letters andthe information given in the dedication to Brutus in 1. 7, it seems thatthe date of the five dialogues (one to each day) was an actual one, June16
–
20, 45. Cicero summarizes the work as follows:
100
The same number of books [i.e. as for the
De Finibus
] of
Tuscu-lan Disputations
followed. They explained the things most neces-sary for achieving the happy life. For the subject of the first isdespising death; of the second, enduring pain (
dolor
); of thethird, allaying mental distress (
aegritudo animi
); of the fourth,the other psychological disturbances (
perturbationes animi
). Thefifth contains the subject that throws the most light on the wholefield of philosophy, for it teaches that virtue by itself is sufficientfor achieving the happy life.The subject of Book 1 is the same as one of the central themes of Lucretius
’
Epicurean poem, and its goal is the same, that is, to rid thereader of the fear of death. It is remarkable that Cicero pays very littleattention (
§§
18
–
25) to Lucretius
’
principal argument, that is, that thesoul, being corporeal, disintegrates at death, so that there is nothing tofear thereafter, and instead he argues for the immortality of the soulalong Platonic and Stoic lines. Again, it is striking that Virgil (in
Aeneid
6) devoted some of his finest poetry to an account of theUnderworld in its relationship to present and future lives and to pastand future history. But Cicero, only two decades earlier, has very littleto say about the Underworld and its traditional function as a place of judgement and punishment (
§§
48
–
50).In Books 2
–
5 Cicero deals with matters that were particularly promi-nent in Stoic ethics, pain, grief and other emotions. In 2. 14 the inter-locutor proposes the thesis that
“
Pain (
dolor
) is the greatest of allevils
”
. Cicero responds that those (like the Epicureans) who say thatpain is the ultimate evil are as wrong as those who (like the Stoics) saythat it is not an evil at all (
§§
15
–
32). Instead Cicero shows that theantidote to pain, which is an undeniably bad human experience, is rea-son exercised through philosophy (
§§
42
–
67).As the length of Book 2 shows (little more than half that of Book 1)
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES55
Cicero was not as deeply engaged with its subject as with that of deathin Book 1. Again, he is quite brief and not very profound with the sub- jects of Books 3 and 4. In 3. 12 the interlocutor proposes the thesis that
“
the wise man will suffer from mental distress
”
. Cicero replies thatsuch distress (of which grief is the most difficult manifestation) isincompatible with the virtues of the wise man, and that again, reason isits antidote. Therefore the wise man, being ruled by reason, will notsuffer from it.
101
In Book 4. 8 the interlocutor suggests that
“
the wise man cannotavoid all psychological disturbances
”
, inviting a discussion of the emo-tions. Again, Cicero takes a Stoic point of view and shows that reasonis the antidote, so that the wise man will not be subject to the
pathe
(
§§
9
–
84). Book 4 is remarkable for the focus on terminology in
§§
23
–
26, for precision is necessary where medical terms are being used asmetaphors for emotional disturbances. Cicero
’
s discussion of the
pathos
of love is thin, but he does consider the question of the Greek attitude towards homosexual love (
§§
70
–
72), once again proposingreason as an alternative.With Book 5 the
Tusculan Disputations
take on new energy. In itthe interlocutor proposes (
§
12) that
“
virtue cannot be sufficient forliving a happy life
”
. In the preface (
§§
1
–
11) Cicero rises to heights of passionate eloquence in praise of philosophy, whose historical devel-opment he surveys. It corrects all human faults and vices (
§
5), it is theharbour of refuge from the storms of life. Then Cicero utters a paean of praise, composed in the form of a Greek hymn, in which the formaladdress to the god is followed by a narrative of the god
’
s deeds, aprayer and expressions of hope for future favour:O Philosophy, guide of life! O tracker (
indagatrix
) of virtue andexpeller of vice! What could not only I, but all living humanbeings have done without you? You have brought cities intobeing, you have brought separated human beings together into alife of community, you have linked them first by means of homes, then by marriage, then by the common sharing of lan-guage and writing, you have been the discoverer (
inventrix
) of laws, you have been the teacher of morality and orderly living.In you we take refuge, from you we pray for help, to you I givemyself, as I did formerly in large part, so now completely andthoroughly. Indeed, one day spent in accordance with your pre-cepts is better than eternity spent in doing wrong.The punctuation of the narrative element (
“
You have brought
…”
)
56THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
shows the flood of emotion with which Cicero recalls the good deedsof philosophy, expressed in a flow of paratactic clauses quite unusualin the complex syntactic structure of Cicero
’
s prose. Cicero invents themajestic titles ending in
-trix
(a suffix denoting activity), and
indaga-trix
is a hunting metaphor.
102
Finally, the compressed account of human progress contrasts both with the myths of degeneration (bestknown from Hesiod
’
s five ages) and with Lucretius
’
extended accountin Book 5 of the
De Rerum Natura
.The rest of Book 5 (
§§
12
–
121) is devoted to proof that virtue aloneis sufficient for happiness. As Cicero admits (
§§
82
–
84), this is Stoicdoctrine. He therefore argues also for the Academic view, that thereare good things in addition to virtue that add to happiness, and in thissection (
§§
83
–
120) he argues along the lines of Antiochus. Cicero doesnot resolve the dilemma between the doctrine of the Stoics (that virtuealone is sufficient) and that of the Academics.
103
And this is significantfor our understanding of his philosophy, for in this, as in so much of his political career, he was able to see all sides of a question andunable to make a firm decision.The
Tusculan Disputations
are a completion of the
De Finibus.
Theyalso complete the list of Cicero
’
s major philosophical works given inthe
De Divinatione
, and it seems that Cicero looked upon these twoworks and the
Academica
at the time of writing as a complete pro-gramme for epistemology and ethics. Separately he mentions the
DeSenectute
(
On Old Age
) and the
Cato
, written after Cato
’
s suicide,which is not extant. Still to be written were the works on friendship(
De Amicitia
) and duty (
De Officiis
).Cicero also mentions his
Consolatio
, a lost work which should bediscussed here, since it is relevant to several parts (mostly in Books 1and 3) of the
Tusculan Disputations
. Cicero
’
s daughter, Tullia, died inFebruary of 45 BCE, and he addressed a
Consolation
to himself, being,so he said, the first to do so.
104
The Consolation was a well-known lit-erary form, going back at least to the Academic philosopher Crantor(335
–
275 BCE), whose own
Consolation
(not extant) was Cicero
’
smodel.
105
Unlike the Cynics and Epicureans, Crantor and his succes-sors did not deny that the grief of bereavement was natural.
106
Insteadthey sought to use arguments to make it tolerable and so to
“
heal
”
themourner and enable him or her to resume a normal life. Their purpose,then, as Cicero says of his own
Consolatio
, was to lessen grief ratherthan to deny it.
107
Cicero refers to his
Consolatio
so many times that itsmain outlines are known. He brought in arguments other than those of Crantor, such as those later used in the
Tusculan Disputations
on thenature of the soul.
108
Since, as he argued, the soul was divine and the
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES57
souls of the virtuous ascended after death to join the gods (or rather, inStoic doctrine, god) in heaven, Tullia
’
s soul had joined the gods andshe herself had become divine.
109
Lactantius observes that this was not
“
the ravings of one stricken with grief, but rather a conclusion reachedby reason.Cicero
’
s
Consolatio
was widely admired, and the consolatory genrecontinued to be practised. Among surviving consolations, the introduc-tion to Book 3 of Cicero
’
s
De Oratore
(especially
§§
12
–
16), written in 55, is a consolation for the death of L.Licinius Crassus and other distin-guished men. The letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero about Tullia’s death is one of the shortest and most remarkable.
Seneca wrote sev-eral Consolations; Juvenal satirized the genre in his thirteenth satire,and, centuries later (524 CE), Boethius had Philosophy herself consolehim in prison with the
Consolation of Philosophy
, the greatest and lastrepresentative of the genre.In
De Div
. 2.3, Cicero next (after the
Tusculan Disputations)
liststhree theological works,
De Natura Deorum
,
De Divinatione
, and
DeFato
. The first of these he describes as completed by the time of writ-ing the
De Divinatione
, that is, March 44 BCE, and we know from sev-eral letters to Atticus that he was working on it during the summer of 45. It may have been published before the end of 45, while the othertwo works followed in the spring of 44 (
De Divinatione
) and beforeNovember of 44 (
De Fato
). He says that the
De Natura Deorum
was acomplete examination of its subject, while the other two works wouldextend and complete his enquiry into the whole field of religion.
Wilhelm Suss confesses that for him the De Natura Deorum is “thecrown of all Cicero’s philosophical work ”, and there are many whowould agree with him, as against the
communis opinio
that this titleshould be awarded to the
De Finibus
or the
De Officiis
.
Cicero wasdeeply engaged with its subject (he had been a member of the Collegeof Augurs
—
high officials in Roman state religion
—
since 53) and here,as much as anywhere in his philosophical writings, he was most suc-cessful in transmitting his Greek sources to a Roman audience. In the
Dream of Scipio
in Book 6 of the
De Republica
, published six or sevenyears earlier, he had already shown how contemplation of the divinesphere, to which human souls would ascend after death, inspired himto write prose of poetic intensity as the vehicle for philosophical doc-trine, religious exaltation and patriotic fervour. These are attributesalso of the
De Natura Deorum
, particularly in the second book.The work is in three books. Cicero sets the dramatic dialogue at thehouse of C.Aurelius Cotta, a senator who had been exiled in the politi-cal troubles of 91
–
90 and who returned in 82 to resume a career that
58THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
brought him to the consulship in 75, the year in which Cicero himself entered the senate as a quaestor. The occasion was the religious festi-val of the
feriae Latinae
(the annual festival that celebrated the unionof Rome with Latin tribes) in 76, the year before Cotta
’
s consulshipand after Cicero
’
s return from his study-tour in the east. Cicero takesvirtually no part in the dialogue, as befits a young man in the presenceof an elder statesman. The main speakers are C.Velleius, a member of the senate and a leading Epicurean, and Q.Lucilius Balbus, who, saysCicero, was so expert a Stoic that he could compete with Greek Stoicphilosophers. Little else is known of these two men. The dialogueseems to take place within one day, although it is likely (from internalevidence) that Cicero originally planned it for three days, one for eachbook.In the first book Velleius sets forth the Epicurean doctrine on thegods, devoting only
§§
43
–
56 to the topic itself. He does not discuss thegods
’
immortality or where they are located. His speech is easilyrefuted by Cotta in
§§
57
–
124. As he says (
§
115), why should humanbeings worship gods who (according to Epicurean doctrine) have noconcern with human affairs? He quotes Posidonius, who said that infact Epicurus did not really believe in the gods.
113
The second book is devoted to Balbus
’
exposition of Stoic doctrineabout the gods. Here Cicero devotes four times as much space as hehad allotted to Velleius, and the exposition is carefully structured. Bal-bus divides his speech into four sections:
114
[The Stoics] divide the enquiry about the immortal gods into fourparts. First, they demonstrate that the gods exist; second, theydiscuss their nature; third, they show that the universe is regu-lated by them; finally, they prove that the gods are concernedwith human affairs.In each section Balbus adduces detailed arguments, advancing cumula-tively to the climax, which is the proof of the interaction between godsand human beings. This is especially appropriate for a Roman audi-ence, for the successful conduct of public affairs depended on theproper relationship of gods and human beings. Proof, then, of the indis-soluble bonds between the divine and the human, would have a specialresonance for Cicero
’
s readers. Here we may quote the first section of the fourth set of proofs as an example of the union of Stoic, religiousand political fervour:
115
First, the world itself was created for the sake of gods and human
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES59
beings, and the things in it were produced and discovered for theadvantage of humankind. For the world is, so to speak, the com-mon home of gods and human beings, or it is the city-state of both, for they alone live making use of reason, justice and law.So just as we must suppose that Athens and Sparta were foundedfor the advantage of the Athenians and the Spartans
—
and every-thing that is in these cities is rightly said to belong to their citi-zens
—
so everything that is in the whole world must be supposedto belong to the gods and human beings.Balbus continues with various aspects of the created world
—
the heav-ens, the earth and its products, the animal realm
—
to support this com-prehensive statement. The doctrine of the two worlds
—
the ideal worldof the Forms and the physical world of particular objects
—
is Platonic,and, as Aristotle pointed out, it is flawed because of Plato
’
s separationof the two. The Stoics to some extent succeeded in uniting themthrough the doctrine quoted here, which proved to be so powerful inRoman thought. It is brilliantly presented in the
Dream of Scipio
, and itwill find new expression in the works of Seneca, not least in his trea-tises on Tranquillity (
De Tranquillitate
) and Retirement (
De Otio
).Cicero, then, is showing that the divine is not, as the Epicureans said,separate from the human. On the contrary, it is intertwined with humanexperience, and the Stoic god (as Cleanthes had said in his
Hymn to Zeus
) was both the origin and the ultimate home of the human soul. InRoman life this had the practical consequence that the gods were verymuch a part of public activities, whose success they would further bytheir goodwill.In Book 3, Cotta, the Academic, criticizes the Stoic view, using thefour-part division of Balbus. Unfortunately nearly all of his third set of arguments (against the government of the world by the gods) is lost,and with it some of the validity of his counter-arguments. Neverthe-less, he quotes the proofs of human mortality from Carneades, whichno Stoic was ever able to refute.
116
Like Balbus, he stresses the impor-tance of the gods to him as a Roman, as
pontifex
(priest, the title of high officials in the state religion) and as a senator. So he prefaces hisspeech with an appeal to Roman tradition:
117
As a Cotta and
pontifex
I should defend both the views about theimmortal gods that I have inherited from my ancestors and thesacrifices, ceremonies and religious rituals. I will defend themalways, and I have always defended them, nor will any speech of anyone
—
whether scholar or amateur
—
move me from the views
60THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
about the worship of the immortal gods that I have inheritedfrom my ancestors. I follow Coruncanius, Scipio and Scaevola,all chief priests (
Pontifices Maximi
), not Zeno or Cleanthes orChrysippus
…
. I am convinced that Romulus, by taking the aus-pices, and Numa, by establishing religious rituals, laid the foun-dations of our state, which never could have grown so great with-out the gaining the complete favour of the immortal gods.This is a truly
Roman
statement and Cicero deserves credit for original-ity in casting his discussion of the gods in such a light. It is true thatGreek sources can be identified for most of the
De Natura Deorum
(inparticular Carneades, Panaetius and Posidonius), but the politicalgrounds for the pious observance of Roman religion are Cicero
’
s owncontribution. Not surprisingly, he is less than whole-hearted in his sup-port of the Academic doctrine. Cotta himself at the end of his speechexpresses scepticism:
118
This is more or less what I have had to say about the nature of the gods. My purpose is not to deny its existence, but to haveyou understand how obscure it is and how difficult to explain.In the last sentence of the work Cicero says that the Epicurean,Velleius, was inclined to support Cotta
’
s view, but that he himself believed that the views of the Stoic, Balbus,
“
seemed to be closer tothe likeness of truth
”
. As an Academic sceptic, Cicero could onlycommit himself to probability.Theology was part of the philosophical category of physics, and soCicero gives considerable attention to natural phenomena both on earthand in the heavens. Since he did not write a treatise on the physicalaspects of the world it is worth mentioning here that he did, as a youngman, translate into Latin hexameters the poem of the Stoic Aratus(
c
.315
–
240). Entitled
Phaenomena
(literally,
“
Appearances
”
), Aratus
’
poem gave an account of the constellations (lines 1
–
732) and of weather-signs (lines 733
–
1154), usually given a separate title,
Diose-meiai
. As part of the Stoic proof of divine governance of the world,Cicero quotes about eighty-five lines (out of about 575 extant) from hispoem which was published perhaps six years before the dramatic date(76) of the dialogue.
119
By quoting the lines here Cicero is not showingany deep interest in astronomy or physics, and he is probably accuratewhen he makes Balbus say:
“
I will quote your
Aratea
, which so delightme, because they are Latin.
”
120
Cicero elsewhere makes Quintus quotetwenty-three lines from the poem, which concern weather-signs.
121
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES61
Another Latin poet, Varro of Atax (born in 82 BCE), at about the timewhen Cicero was writing the
De Natura Deorum
, may have been com-posing his
Ephemeris
(
“
Almanac
”
), in which he adapted many linesfrom Aratus. Only two fragments are extant, and it is not knownwhether Cicero had any knowledge of the poem.
122
In
De Natura Deorum
3. 19 Balbus complains that Cotta is passingover important topics
—
specifically divination and fate
—
in silence, notgiving him a chance to discuss them. Cicero had reserved them for sep-arate works,
De Divinatione
and
De Fato
, both written in the first half of 44. In the preface to Book 2 of the
De Divinatione
, Cicero refers tothe resumption of free political activity, that is, to the situation after themurder of Caesar on 15 March, while in
De Fato
2 he makes anenquiry into the causes of the troubles after Caesar
’
s death
—
the start-ing point for the work
’
s discussion of causation. The extraordinaryevents of the time of composition made these works especially timely,for the custom of Roman state religion demanded that the will of thegods be discovered in times of crisis, not least by means of divination.And knowledge of the divine will inevitably involved considerations of human free will, destiny and fate.
De Divinatione
is in two books. In the first, Quintus Cicero(Cicero
’
s brother) expounds the case for divination, which MarcusCicero demolishes in the second. Quintus argues the Stoic case, whichCicero includes in his historical survey of divination that serves as thepreface to Book 1.
123
Introducing his response, Cicero says to Quintus(2. 8):
124
You have defended Stoic doctrine in the Stoic manner and (athing which gives me the greatest pleasure) you have used manyRoman examples
…
So I must reply to your discourse but in sucha way that I should affirm nothing and question everything.This is a neat summary of the problems that Cicero solved in compos-ing the
De Divinatione
. For divination was indeed prominent in theRoman religious and political landscape.
125
Romulus himself hadfounded Rome with the aid of augury, and the Romans had early intheir history adopted Etruscan methods of divination, to say nothing of the Sibylline Books, which had been consulted in Cicero
’
s own life-time.
126
There was considerable contemporary interest in divinationand augury. For example, Cicero
’
s friend, Aulus Caecina (from an Etr-uscan family), had written a work on the
Disciplina Etrusca
, whichwas used extensively by Seneca in his discussion of thunder and light-ning.
127
In his correspondence with Caecina, Cicero shows great
62THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
respect for him as a scholar but bases his political predictions on othergrounds than divination, since Caesar had exiled Caecina from Italyand appeared to be implacable.
128
Divination was approved by the Stoics.
129
Zeno approved of it, andboth Chrysippus and Posidonius (as well as other Stoics) had writtenworks on it, although Panaetius had had doubts. There was, then, abasis in philosophy, as well as in Roman religious and political cus-tom, for arguments in support of divination. As a Roman statesmanand augur Cicero could not dismiss them outright, but he could expressdoubt, that is, he could (and did) approach the topic from the point of view of Academic scepticism, relying particularly on Carneades forarguments against the Stoics.
130
Cicero skilfully varied his methods, to produce
“
a multilayered work of surprising obliqueness and complexity
”
.
131
In Book 1 Quintusindulges in what Schofleld calls
“
the rhetoric of anecdote
”
, that is, hesupports his case with a multitude of examples, largely chosen fromRoman history.
132
In Book 2, however, Cicero uses
“
the rhetoric of cross-examination
”
, for example, the sharp questioning of 2. 85:
“
should we wait for animals to speak?
”
, he asks, as opposed to actingon the best judgement of human reason. Or in 2. 56, where he cites theTheban seers who foretold the victory of Leuctra from the crowing of cocks:
“
that [i.e. the crowing] was the miracle
”
, you say.
“
Well, what asurprise! As if fishes were crowing, not cocks!
”
Yet Cicero mustrespect the established place of divination and augury in Roman publiclife. Like the sceptical Cotta in
De Natura Deorum
, he defends them asan augur and a patriotic Roman:
133
In accordance with the opinion of the people and because thesethings are of great advantage to the state, we still maintain thecustomary ritual [of augury], its religious rites and discipline, theaugural laws and the college of augurs.Near the end of the work Cicero expands this by distinguishingbetween religion and superstition:
134
It will be greatly to our advantage and that of our fellowRomansto root out superstition. But in removing superstition
…
we mustnot remove religion. A wise man will preserve the traditionalinstitutions by maintaining their rituals and ceremonies.And having thus spoken as a Roman he ends as a sceptic:
135
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES63
The particular method of the Academy is not to interpose its ownopinion but to approve those things which seem to be most likethe truth. It will compare causes and expound the supportingarguments for each side. It will not bring its own authority tobear, but it will leave enquirers free to make their own judge-ment without prejudice.Cicero calls this the Socratic method, and so the dialogue ends with anappeal to the iconic source of Academic scepticism.In the third and final treatise on religion,
De Fato
, Cicero adoptsquite a different method, described by Schofield:
136
[It] is technical, dense, intense, full of subtle dialectical twistsand turns
…
and devoted to an abstruse metaphysical topic. It con-veys the interplay of ingenious minds arguing and putting freshand unexpected lines of thought to each other better than any of Cicero
’
s other philosophical writings
…
It is the Ciceronian trea-tise philosophers most enjoy reading.Schofield admits that works like the
De Divinatione
take
“
a lot of get-ting through for philosophers: it is too popular a read for them
”
, whichis testimony to Cicero
’
s success in transmitting Greek philosophy to aRoman upper-class public which, by definition, was not made up of professional philosophers. The text of
De Fato
is fragmentary (perhapsone quarter of the whole is extant). Ostensibly a dialogue with AulusHirtius (consul designate for 43, the year in which he died) held atCicero
’
s villa at Puteoli shortly after Caesar
’
s murder, it was written inMay and June of 44, when the usual topics of discussion betweenCicero and his friends were peace and withdrawal from public life (
paxet otium
). But the stunning events of 15 March inevitably led to consid-eration of their causes, and so to a discussion of fate. In
De Div
. 1. 127Quintus says that
“
I will demonstrate in another place [that] everythinghappens by fate
”
, a promise fulfilled by the
De Fato
(with Marcus asthe speaker). In
De Fato
4 Hirtius asks Cicero to propose a thesis anddiscuss it in the fashion of the
Tusculan Disputations
. The thesis(which is not given in the surviving part of the manuscript) must havebeen that contained in Quintus
’
words in
De Div
. 1. 127:
“
everythinghappens by fate
”
(
fato omnia fiunt
), and Cicero is the sole speaker dis-cussing it.Fate, providence and free will were prominent topics for the Stoics,Epicureans and Academics.
137
The Stoics believed in the supremacy of fate, and Chrysippus (whom Cicero quotes here extensively) had writ-
64THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
ten a work
On Fate
. Likewise, Panaetius wrote a work on Providence,and Posidonius one on Divination and one on Fate.
138
Closely con-nected was the question of free will, which the Stoics allowed, for,they said, human beings still had moral choices which allowed them tochoose to follow fate willingly. While (a century after Cicero) Senecamade this the principal topic of his dialogue
De Providentia
and of his107th letter (in which he quotes lines from the
Hymn to Zeus
of Clean-thes expressing the doctrine), Cicero was more interested in the ques-tion of causation, which lies at the heart of the problems of fate andfree will.
139
Cicero first denies the validity of the Stoic doctrine of
“
sympathy
”
, that is that external factors (such as climate) determinehuman action (
§§
7
–
11). Later he turns to the so-called
“
lazyargument
”
, which Chrysippus had criticized.
140
Cicero here relies onthe syllogistic argument of Carneades. Finally, Cicero himself attacksthe Epicurean grounds for positing free will, most notoriously by thedoctrine of the
“
swerve
”
(Latin,
clinamen
) of atoms.
141
Cicero had long been concerned with the question of free will. In aletter to Varro written in May, 46, he says that he has written a work on things possible (
Peri Dunaton
) which, he says, he had discussedwith Diodotus, who did not agree with him.
142
Since Diodotus died in59, Cicero had been thinking about the problem for at least fifteenyears when he came to write the
De Fato
. As in the other theologicalworks he takes the Academic approach, relying most particularly onCarneades
’
proof. This states that if we extend the chain of causalityback infinitely, nothing can be left to free will: but, since we do makechoices (and therefore exert free will), it cannot be said that all thingshappen through fate. Cicero argues the sceptical point of view withskill and exemplary logic, in a fashion quite different from the othertheological works.Cicero says in
De Div
. 2. 4 that he was eager to finish his pro-gramme of philosophical works but was interrupted by the events of the Ides of March. If he had done so, he says,
“
I would not have leftany philosophical subject that was not open to all and illuminated bythe Latin language
”
. He believed then (shortly after the murder of Cae-sar) that he would immediately resume political activity and be unableto devote so much time to philosophy.
143
Since his effective politicalactivity did not begin until September, 44, he still had time to write theshort treatises on old age (which he does mention in the
De Divina-tione
list), on glory (now lost), and on friendship, and his final majorphilosophical work,
De Officiis
, on duties, which was completed byDecember, 44, a year before his death. During this period he also wrote
Topica
, which, like the
Paradoxa Stoicorum
(written in 46), is more
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES65
rhetorical than philosophical. We will postpone discussion of theseworks and turn now to other works that he names in the
De Divina-tione
list.First is the
De Republica
, published in 51 and written
“
when I stillwas steering the ship of state
”
. This is accurate only in so far as Cicerowas active in the senate and the courts, which continued to functionaccording to the republican constitution. But in fact the constitutionwas inexorably and violently disintegrating and, since 60, politicalpower rested with those who had money and military backing, that is,the members of the extra-constitutional alliance called the first triumvi-rate. These men (Pompey, Crassus and Caesar) renewed their alliancein 56, and soon after silenced Cicero, who had already been exiled in58
–
57 with their tacit approval. For the next twelve years he was moreor less impotent politically, although his oratory was occasionally use-ful when called for by the triumvirate, and he was proconsul of Ciliciafor the year 51
–
50. Therefore he turned to philosophy as the way inwhich to continue his service to the state. Between 55 and 51 he wrotethree works that linked philosophy to political leadership, perhaps hismost original idea and certainly one foreshadowed in his early rhetori-cal work,
De Inventione
. The first of the three works was the
De Ora-tore
, published in 55. Since Cicero lists it after the
De Republica
asone of the
oratorii libri
, we will discuss it after the two political works,
De Republica
and
De Legibus
.The
De Republica
is one of the fragmentary works of the ancientworld whose missing parts are an inestimable loss. It was widely readin Cicero
’
s time and into late antiquity, but by the seventh century itwas so little valued that at the monastery of Bobbio a vellummanuscript, written in the fourth or early fifth century in a beautifuluncial hand (i.e. in large letters), was washed off and a manuscript of Augustine
’
s
Commentary on the Psalms
was written over it. Thus the
De Republica
disappeared from sight, beyond fragmentary quotationsin various Latin authors (including Augustine) and the
Dream of Scipio
(
Somnium Scipionis
) of Book 6, which survived intact in a separatetradition. In 1819 the Prefect of the Vatican Library, Cardinal AngeloMai, discovered much of Cicero
’
s text beneath that of Augustine, andhe published it in 1822. Apart from the
Somnium
we have about two-thirds of Book 1, about half of Book 2, perhaps one-sixth of Book 3,and very little of the other three books. As for the
Somnium,
it survivedwith a Neoplatonist commentary by the fifth-century Christian author,Macrobius Theodosius.
144
Macrobius saw in Cicero
’
s main speaker,Scipio Aemilianus, the union of all the virtues, and in the
Somnium
theunion of all branches of philosophy.
66THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Cicero did not have such an ambitious goal. The title of the work immediately draws attention to the model that he was emulating,Plato
’
s
Republic
, although in the
De Divinatione
passage he mentionsseveral other Utopias by Peripatetic authors, while omitting the mostnotorious one, the
Republic
of the founder of Stoicism, Zeno.
145
Tohim the subject was
“
important and appropriate for philosophy
”
,
146
precisely because it united politics and ethics, a traditional Roman atti-tude, implicit in Cato the Censor
’
s definition of the orator,
“
the goodman skilled in speaking
”
. Now Plato had begun his
Republic
with asearch for justice in the individual, which he expanded (by analogy) to justice in the state, returning finally to justice in the individual. Cicerofound the unreality of Plato
’
s ideal world unsatisfactory. In the intro-duction to his work he points out the contrast between the philoso-phers
’
teaching and the practical
“
school
”
of experience:
147
It is not enough to have virtue as if it were some sort of an art,unless you use it. It is true, I
’
ll grant, that you can keep an artthrough knowledge, even if you do not use it. But virtue existstotally through its use. And its greatest use is the government of the state and the performance in real life, not in words, of thosethings that the philosophers lecture on in their corners. For thereis nothing that the philosophers have said
—
at least nothing rightand honourable
—
that has not been evolved and confirmed bythose who have been lawgivers for states.Thus Cicero
’
s Republic will not be a Utopia: his search will be for theideal government and the ideal leadership for an actual state, Rome.His Republic is the reality of which Plato
’
s is but the idea
—
an ironicreversal!
148
Cicero
’
s first problem was to choose the dramatic time and the par-ticipants. He decided against setting the dialogue in his own time, for itwould have been politically dangerous to have living statesmen as thespeakers.
149
As we have already seen, he looked back to the third quar-ter of the second century as the period when the Roman republic beganto decay politically and morally, and he saw Scipio Aemilianus as thebest Roman leader, whatever flaws there actually were in his characterand policies. We have seen also how external events of the mid-secondcentury (the defeat of Perseus of Macedon, the destruction of Carthage,Corinth and Numantia), and in Rome the influx of Greek intellectualsand the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, caused cultural, social and polit-ical upheavals. Gicero was shrewd to set the dialogue in Rome of 129,a time, like the late 50s, of political instability and shortly before the
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES67
death of Scipio himself, whom he made the principal speaker.
150
Thedialogue is set in the grounds of the leader
’
s suburban villa at the timeof the
feriae Latinae
. Scipio is joined by eight friends, four seniorpoliticians and four younger men. Of the former group, Laelius
“
thewise
”
had been consul in 140; Furius Philus had been consul in 136,and Manilius (an expert on the law), had been consul in 149, when Sci-pio served under him as military tribune.
151
The fourth senior, SpuriusMummius, was the brother of the Mummius who destroyed Corinthand was one of the two senators, along with Scipio (who was accompa-nied by Panaetius), sent by the senate on the embassy to Egypt and theeast in 140
–
139. Of the four younger men, only Rutilius Rufusdeserves mention here. He would have been 25 years old in 129, andCicero visited him when he was in exile in Smyrna fifty years later.Cicero claims that Rutilius was the source for the conversations in Sci-pio
’
s garden.
152
The introduction to Book 1 is elaborate. Its apparent purpose is struc-tural, to bring together the nine participants in the dialogue. But itsmain function is to establish the proper subjects for philosophicalenquiry in Rome. The conversation is directed towards celestial events,in which, Scipio says,
“
our friend Panaetius used to be such a carefulobserver
”
.
153
But, he adds, Socrates was wiser for turning away fromsuch subjects. Eventually, after some discussion of astronomy, Laeliusleads the conversation to affairs at Rome.
154
Those
“
Greek studies
”
, hesays, are valuable for sharpening the minds of the young, but they arepreparatory for more important studies:those arts that make us useful to the state. For I think that that isthe most excellent function of wisdom, and that it is the best evi-dence of virtue and its highest duty
…
Therefore, let us ask Scipioto explain to us what he thinks is the best form of government(
optimum statum civitatis
).Thus Cicero establishes his topic. Perhaps we can be critical of thelength of the introduction, but it is intrinsically important for the con-trast it draws between Greek enquiries into the physical world (it isconvenient here for Cicero to overlook Greek ethical and political phi-losophy!), and the record of the Romans in political administration. Itwas a commonplace among Romans that the Greeks, for all their intel-lectual brilliance, never achieved political unity, and evidence for thatwas the conquest of Greece by Rome, only seventeen years before thedramatic date of the dialogue. Now, says Laelius, at a time whenRoman political unity is threatened, no topic could be more important
68THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
than
“
those arts that make us useful to the state
”
. Further, the abortivediscussion of astronomy is structurally connected with the dream withwhich the work ends. The work begins with the heavens as an object of study, and it ends with them as the proper home of the souls of the vir-tuous. It begins with the heavens separated from human beings, and itends with the undivided universe, which human and divine beingsshare in timeless unity.There are two subjects in the main discussion, as Cicero hadexplained in the letter to his brother Quintus.
155
First,
“
What is the bestconstitution of the state?
”
, and, second,
“
Who is the best citizen?
”
Thefirst question occupies the first two books and the second the last two.Book 5 began with a quotation of Ennius
’
famous line,
“
the Romanstate stands firm by means of old-fashioned customs and men of old-fashioned character
”
.
156
Book 6 ended with the description of the idealleader and his place in the universe and in eternity, as opposed to theparticular place and time of Rome in 129 BCE. Books 3 and 4 con-tained a discussion of the education and laws that would produce theideal citizen. The dialogue took three days, two books for each day.Scipio
’
s accepts Laelius
’
invitation, once again drawing the contrastbetween Greek theory and his own training in traditional Roman pre-cepts and his practical experience in public service. He will speak as
“
one of those who wear the [Roman] toga
”
.
157
His main expositionbegins with the brief definition of a republic:
“
a republic belongs to thepeople
”
.
158
Then he considers the development of societies and sur-veys three types of government (monarchy, aristocracy anddemocracy), concluding that the best form is the
“
mixed
”
constitution,with elements of all three. When pressed by Laelius, Scipio admits thatmonarchy is the best of the three, because the sole ruler is the strongestexecutive.
159
In this Scipio seems to be anticipating arguments for asingle
“
governor of state
”
(
rector reipublicae
) in Books 5 and 6,which, however, have been shown by Jonathan Powell to apply tomore than one
rector
at the same time.
160
Here, as James Zetzel pointsout,
“
the argument in favour of monarchy
…
emphasizes the problemsof administration rather than the problem of rights
”
.
161
Thus the discus-sion of the mixed constitution, which draws so much from Book 6 of Polybius
’
Histories
and Book 8 of Plato
’
s
Republic
, is given a Romancolouring appropriate to the problems of political rights and politicalpower that (in Cicero
’
s view) began with the tribunate of TiberiusGracchus and led to the imminent collapse of the republic in the 50sBCE.In Book 2 Scipio surveys the historical development of the Romanstate. While Cicero owes much here to Polybius, the key statement is
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES69
at the beginning, where Scipio acknowledges his debt to Cato theElder:
162
he used to say that the reason for the superiority of our constitu-tion was that in other states a single man had established the con-stitution by his laws and institutions. The Roman state had beenestablished, not by the genius of one man, but of many. It hadevolved not in the lifetime of one man, but over a period of manycenturies and ages.Whatever this passage says about Cato
’
s theory of history,
163
it givesScipio
’
s basis for his view of Roman history, summed up in the linefrom Ennius quoted above. Scipio shows that the Roman constitutionhas evolved through the labours and virtues of individuals, but, asTubero objects (2. 64), he has not discussed the education (
disciplina
),customs (
mores
) and laws (
leges
) which establish and maintain thestate. These are the topics of Books 3 and 4.Book 3 is concerned with the laws and therefore with justice in thestate. As we have seen in the second chapter, Philus unwillingly under-takes to argue Carneades
’
view that a state cannot be successful with-out injustice.
164
Less is extant of Laelius
’
reply defending justice,which he bases on natural law.
165
His definition is eloquent:True law is right reason in accordance with nature. It applies toall human beings, it is unchanging and eternal. It calls one toduty by its command, and it deters one from wrongdoing by itsprohibition. It never commands good people in vain, and neveraffects the bad by its commands or prohibitions. This law cannotbe superseded, amended or repealed. Indeed, neither the senatenor the people can release us from this law, which needs neithercommentary nor interpretation. Nor will there be one law inRome, another in Athens; one now, another in the future, for oneeternal and unchangeable law will apply to all peoples at alltimes. There will be one master and commander for all
—
the god,who proposed, arbitrated and carried this law. He who disobeysthis law is running away from himself and despising humannature.The basis of this noble ideal is Stoic, for the Stoics taught that moralprinciples were laws of nature applicable to all human beings, of what-ever time or place.
166
Whereas Plato had separated his world of ideasfrom the world of particulars, the Stoics emphasized the unity of the
70THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
whole universe. Cicero goes further in applying the ideal of natural lawto the Roman state, which, as Laelius says (3. 34),
“
ought to be so con-stituted as to be eternal
”
. Thus a particular Roman statesman, Laelius,at a particular time, enunciates to an audience of Roman leaders anideal that will be attainable in the
Roman
state. To underline this,Cicero uses Roman legal terms throughout the passage
—
the words forthe processes of proposing and legislating, emending and annulling,are all common in the Latin technical and legal vocabulary. We maydeplore the irony that the ideals of Laelius in 129, and of Cicero in 54
–
51, were little heeded and quite disconnected from the harsh realitiesof political power, but we must admire Cicero
’
s vision of a betterRoman political life.Very little remains of Book 4, but enough to show that the discus-sion now turned to the training of the good citizen. Thus, Cicero pre-pared the way for consideration of the good citizen, the second of hismajor subjects, which is the topic of the third day
’
s discussion, con-tained in Books 5 and 6. Book 5 (which survives only in a few frag-ments) begins with the oracular line from Ennius, immediately estab-lishing a Roman context for the ideal citizen. Scipio evidentlydescribed the virtues of the ancient Roman leaders, which he applied tothe ideal of the virtuous leader. This leader is called by the terms
“
gov-ernor
”
,
“
steersman
”
,
“
driver
”
(in Latin, respectively,
rector
,
guberna-tor
,
moderator
), all significant metaphors. As
rector
, the leader keepsthe state and its citizens on a straight path with upright morality; as
gubernator
, he steers the ship of state (a metaphor that goes back to thepoems of Alcaeus in the seventh century BCE); as
moderator
he drivesthe team of the chariot of state, reining in the citizens or relaxing hiscontrol in accordance with what is right. Cicero is not describing a sin-gle
rector rei publicae
, but the qualities and attributes of an ideal
rec-tor
, who might be one of several existing at the same time or, excep-tionally, a single
rector
if the times demand such a statesman.
167
It ismost unlikely that Cicero had any particular contemporary leader inmind, and it is a waste of time to try to see in his
rector
a model formodern leaders, as has been attempted, most unfortunately, by toomany commentators and politicians.
168
What is important is, first, thatCicero linked morality to political life; second, that he described his
rector
in a Roman context and in Roman terms.None of Book 6 survives in the Vatican manuscript, but a few quota-tions by ancient authors survive, along with the
Dream of Scipio
andthe commentary of Macrobius, which were combined only in fivemedieval manuscripts. Scipio introduces the subject of the rewards of the virtuous leader, which, in contrast to the metal statues and fading
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES71
triumphal laurels of Roman leaders, are lasting and for ever fresh (6.8). Laelius invites him then to describe them. The dream is Scipio
’
sreply. It takes his hearers back to the heavens, where the discussionhad begun on the first day. But now the heavens are in the same uni-verse as that of the participants: the union of ideal and particular thatunderlies Laelius
’
definition of natural law (in 3. 33) finds its climax inthe cosmos, the home of the divine human soul and the place to whichit returns, the more quickly if its corporeal life on earth has been virtu-ous. And Cicero has already shown that the most virtuous person is theone who serves his country well. Such a person was Scipio (at least forthe purposes of the
De Republica
).In the introduction to Book 6 Cicero mentions the myth of Er, withwhich Plato
’
s
Republic
ends, and this undoubtedly was his model.Here again he successfully transferred his myth from the realm of theimpossible to the Roman world. As Zetzel has remarked,
“
the
Som-nium
requires no suspension of disbelief
’
.
169
A real Roman leaderrelates his dream, and he sets it in a real place, the palace of the Numid-ian king, Masinissa, in north Africa, at an actual time, 149 BCE(whether or not Scipio did visit Masinissa that year, rather than twoyears earlier, is irrelevant). At the dramatic date of the dreamMasinissa was about ninety years old, and he provides the historicallink with the Roman heroes of the second Punic war (which ended in202 BCE), when he was the staunch ally of Scipio Africanus Maior,the grandfather (by adoption) of Scipio Aemilianus. The elder Scipio,together with the younger Scipio
’
s natural father (Aemilius Paullus,another Roman military hero), are the principal speakers in the
Somnium
—
another way in which Cicero unites the ideal world with Roman real-ity. Thus the divine cosmos and the actual Roman world are joined, forthe virtuous leader ascends to the divine realm, to rejoin god, who isthe
rector
of the universe. Raised to the heavens, Scipio (the dreamer)looks down on the earth and sees the universe in its true perspective.The earth is central, but its scale
—
and therefore the glory of its virtu-ous leaders
—
is insignificant in comparison with the heavens and theeternal glory which the virtuous soul will attain.At the beginning of the dream Africanus foretells Scipio s career anddeath (
§§
11
–
12): he enunciates the reward for Scipio
’
s virtuous actions(
§
13):For all who have saved, defended or increased their fatherland, aspecial place in the heaven has been assigned, where they mayenjoy an eternal life of happiness. For nothing that is done onearth is more pleasing to that supreme god, who governs the
72THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
whole universe, than the councils and assemblies of men whohave joined in just communities, which are called states (
civi-tates
). Those who govern and defend them come from this place,and to this place they return.Thus the relationship between the virtuous leader and the eternal cos-mic reward is established. Scipio
’
s natural father, Aemilius Paullus,then appears (
§§
14
–
16) and urges Scipio to recognize the high serious-ness of his duty in life, when his immortal soul is imprisoned in a mor-tal body, to act virtuously and not to leave the body (Aemilius is refer-ring to suicide) until god releases it. He has been assigned a duty in lifeas if it were a military assignment: to leave it would be the equivalentof desertion. Paullus then succinctly describes this duty (
§
16):Imitate your grandfather, imitate me, your father, and love jus-tice and duty (
pietas
), which is owed to parents and family, andmost of all to one
’
s fatherland. This is your way to heaven.And then (
§§
16
–
26) Paullus and Africanus show Scipio the cosmos asit is in its true proportions, and they explain its astronomical organiza-tion: in this Cicero is to some extent imitating Plato (in the myth of Erand in the
Timaeus
), but his purpose is different, which is to show theproper relationship of the earth and its temporal events to the cosmosand eternity. Scipio on earth is encouraged to fix his gaze on the heav-ens and be drawn to the true and eternal rewards of virtue. Speaking of the soul, Africanus says,
“
Know, then, that you are a god
”
(
§
26): likegod the soul is self-moving and eternal (
§
27) and therefore should beemployed in the highest calling (
§
29):Use this [soul], then, in the noblest activity, which is the serviceof your country. And if the soul is trained and engaged in suchdeeds, it will fly more quickly to this, its dwelling-place andhome.So ends the
De Republica
(at least, as we now have it: perhaps therewas a closing passage in which the participants left Scipio in his gar-den). More than any other of Cicero
’
s philosophical works it shows theextent of his originality. It makes no pretence of complete originality,for Roman authors preferred to practise emulation (
aemulatio
) ratherthan imitation or innovation, not that the latter modes were ignored.Cicero, then, acknowledges his debt to Plato (which is clearly shown tobe to the
Phaedrus
as well as to the
Republic
and the
Timaeus
), but he
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES73
recasts the Platonic material
—
and, no doubt, much else from theGreek philosophers
—
in the context of Roman history, politics andsociety. Cicero
’
s doctrine that there is a practical connection betweenthe morality of citizens and their leaders and the success of the state, isquite different from Plato
’
s analogy of the just state to the just individ-ual. Finally, Cicero presents his republic in Latin of remarkable flexibil-ity and range of style, which rises in Laelius
’
speech and Scipio
’
sdream to a sublime level.
170
The third of Cicero
’
s political/philosophical treatises from the 50sBCE was the
De Legibus
, which he does not mention in the list in the
De Divinatione
.
171
He seems to have begun it in 52 and left it unfin-ished when he went to Cilicia in 51. There is no firm evidence that hereturned to it, and it was not published during his lifetime. Survivingare most of the first three books, but we do not know how many bookswere planned or written, beyond a single reference by Macrobius toBook 5. In this work Cicero himself is the main speaker, and the partic-ipants are his brother Quintus and his friend Atticus. The setting is asummer day at his family property at Arpinum, lovingly described atthe beginning of each of the first two books, where the dialogue is seton the banks of the River Liris and on an island in the river. In theintroduction to Book 2 (2. 6) Cicero compares the setting to the famousopening of Plato
’
s
Phaedrus
, another example of his emulation of Plato. His attention to the setting is purposeful, for it establishes hispersonal involvement with Italy and with Rome and its historicalvirtues, not least among which is the rule of law. In Book 1 he showsthat the
De Legibus
is essentially a continuation of the
De Republica
,for, he says (
§
20):since we must maintain and preserve that constitution which Sci-pio showed to be the best in those six books, and since all lawsmust be fitted to that sort of state, and since we must sow theseed of morality (and must not prescribe everything in writing)
—
since this is so, I will review the origin of law in Nature. She willbe our guide for the whole of our discussion.Cicero, then, repeats the theory of natural law expounded by Laelius inBook 3 of the
De Republica
and once again links ethical values to polit-ical institutions.In Book 1 Cicero discusses natural law, which is the basis of justice,and therefore of relations between human beings (1. 28). Justice mustbe pursued for its own sake, and this principle will apply to all thevirtues (1. 48). Quintus makes the objection that the discussion of ethi-
74THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
cal principles has little to do with the main subject, that is the laws (1.57), but, as Marcus replies, the law must reform vice and commendvirtue (1. 58). Therefore wisdom
—
the result of the search for virtue
—
is indeed relevant to a discussion of the law, and Cicero ends the book with a speech in praise of wisdom (1. 62). The discussion, then, reaf-firms the conclusion of the
De Republica
, that moral excellence mustbe the foundation of the successful state.In Book 2 Cicero discusses religious laws. Like a lawgiver (or, asQuintus points out, 2. 23, like Numa, the founder of Roman religiouslaws), Cicero pronounces the text of his laws and then gives a commen-tary.
172
Next, in Book 3, he discusses the offices, powers and functionsof the magistrates, giving the text of his laws, followed by his commen-tary.
173
Both books are remarkable for Cicero
’
s use of Latin legal lan-guage and for the adaptation of Greek ideas to a Roman context. Heacknowledges his debt to Plato
’
s
Laws
, but he adds:
174
Who could ever imitate Plato? It is, to be sure, very easy to trans-late his opinions, and this I would do, if I did not clearly want tobe my own person. For how much effort is it to say the samethings in translation in the same words?This is crucial to our estimate of Cicero
’
s originality here and in the
De Republica
. He names his Greek models in 3. 13
–
14, includingTheophrastus and others who had written on the laws. Most of theGreek works, he says, were theoretical, but he praises Demetrius of Phalerum (a student of Theophrastus and governor of Athens in thelate fourth century) as the first to bring the discussion of law
“
out of the shadows of scholarship into the sunlight and dust
”
of practical poli-tics. Cicero emphasizes that he too is one who has excelled in theoreti-cal studies and in political leadership. Thus, he claims that he hasexpanded legal theory from its basis in Greek philosophy by adaptingit to Roman law and custom and creating a Roman legal terminology.He claims further that his political career and his experience as an ora-tor and jurist qualify him uniquely to propose a Roman legal code. Asin the
De Republica
, Cicero seeks to construct an ideal
Roman
system,and he appeals to his knowledge of Greek philosophy and theory, onthe one hand, and to his practical experience in Roman life, on theother, to support his goal of
“
being his own person
”
. It has been sug-gested above that there is considerable originality in the
De Republica
,and we can confidently say the same of the
De Legibus
.At the end of the
De Divinatione
list (
De Div
. 2. 4), Cicero says thathe followed the example of Aristotle and Theophrastus in composing
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES75
rhetorical works which united the precepts of rhetoric with philosophy.Here he names three works:
De Oratore
,
Brutus
,
Orator
. The first of these was written in 55, and therefore belongs to the period of Cicero
’
spolitical impotence, during which he wrote the
De Republica
and someof the
De Legibus
. It is the most important of the three for an under-standing of Cicero
’
s philosophy. The
Brutus
(written in 46) is valuablefor Cicero
’
s account of his own philosophical development and for hiscriticism of the Stoic, Academic and Peripatetic schools in so far asthey concern the orator.
175
The work is chiefly important as a criticalreview of Roman orators, while the
Orator
, also from 46), is princi-pally a rhetorical work, although it, too, stresses the link between phi-losophy and rhetoric.
176
Cicero had focused on this link in his earliest rhetorical work,
Rhetorici Libri
(
“
Books on Rhetoric
”
, usually referred to as
De Inven-tione
), which he does not name in the
De Divinatione
list. It was writ-ten in the late 80s, that is, before Cicero made his journey to Athensand the east (probably before 84). Cicero dismisses it as being theunpolished product of a very young man,
“
not worthy of this age [i.e.Cicero
’
s maturity] and of the experience that I have gained in so manyimportant cases
”
.
177
Yet the
De Inventione
announces Cicero
’
s convic-tion that philosophy and rhetoric are interdependent.
178
He says that
“
wisdom is the guide (
moderatrix
) in everything
”
, and he shows in theintroduction to the work how political leaders who have eloquencewithout wisdom are demagogues who ruin the state.
179
These are fun-damental themes in the
De Oratore
and the
De Republica
, and it is inorder to boost the mature works that Cicero depreciates his early work.The
De Oratore
is one of Cicero
’
s most original works, although itslength (three long books) has limited its popularity in modern times. Itis a dialogue taking place over two days, set in the grounds of the Tus-culan villa of M.Antonius (consul in 99) during the
Ludi Romani
of September 91. Five of the seven participants are Roman senior states-men, and two are younger politicians of great promise. Except for C.Aurelius Cotta (exiled in 90 but recalled in 82: consul in 75) all diedwithin a short time of the dramatic date of the dialogue, four of themmurdered or driven to suicide by the supporters of Marius in the early80s. The principal speakers are L.Licinius Crassus (consul in 95), thegreatest orator of his day and revered by Cicero, whose opinions areclosest to those of Cicero. He died ten days after the dramatic date of the dialogue, which honours his memory. The introduction to Book 3is a deeply felt tribute to him and a lament for the fate of the other par-ticipants who died violently shortly afterwards. The second principalspeaker is M.Antonius, consul in 99, and the closest rival to Crassus as
76THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
an orator. He was murdered by the Marians in 87. In the dialogue hetakes a pragmatic view of oratory and defines the ideal orator in nar-rower terms than Crassus.
180
The older generation is represented by Q.Mucius Scaevola, consul in 117 and known as
“
the Augur
”
, who partic-ipates only in Book 1, the first day
’
s conversation.
181
Two other seniorstatesmen participate in the second day
’
s conversations (Books 2 and3), Q.Lutatius Catulus (consul in 102 and father-in-law of Cicero
’
sfriend and rival, Hortensius), and C.Julius Caesar Strabo, aedile in 90,the year following the dialogue. Both of these men died in the Mariantroubles
—
Catulus driven to suicide and Strabo murdered.
182
Closer inage to Cicero were P. Sulpicius (tribune in 88), who was murdered bythe Marians, and Cotta (the only one of the seven participants to sur-vive for any length of time), whom Cicero made the principal speakerin the
De Natura Deorum
. He is represented as the source for the con-versations of the
De Oratore
.
183
Cicero
’
s choice of participants is significant. Writing in 55 andobserving the collapse of constitutional processes, he looks back toanother year, 91, when the principled statesmanship of leaders such asCrassus and Antonius was about to give way to the violence of the fol-lowing decade, in which so many of the participants perished. The mes-sage is clear: only if political leaders (who are, by definition, orators)are men of principle and versed in philosophy, can constitutional gov-ernment survive. On a personal level, Cicero pays homage to the lead-ing orators of his early days, several of whom had been associates of Scipio Aemilianus and his friends.In the introduction to Book 1, Cicero calls philosophy
“
the motherof all the praiseworthy arts
”
(
§
9). Later, Crassus repeats that leaderswho were both philosophers and orators unified scattered communitiesand organized them into states with stable constitutions.
184
Crassusrecalls his visit to Athens twenty years earlier, where he had associatedwith philosophers who had themselves been students of Panaetius orCritolaus or Carneades, all of whom segregated philosophy from pub-lic life.
185
As Crassus goes on to say, Plato himself, in pouring scornon orators, showed himself to be a supreme orator.Antonius replies to Crassus
’
description of the orator and his train-ing. He defines the political leader
“
as the man who maintains and usesthose things which result in the advantage and growth of the state
”
.
186
He then gives his definition of the philosopher:
187
he who studies to know the power, the nature and the causes of all things divine and human, and to obtain and pursue everyrational precept for the good life.
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES77
In amplifying his definitions (which extend also to the jurist and theorator) Antonius is forthright on the limits of the orator
’
s training: heneeds to be clever in discerning the expectations and psychology of thepeople he seeks to persuade.
188
As for philosophy:
189
let him reserve the philosophers
’
books for himself for a holidaylike the one we are enjoying to-day at Tusculum, when we arenot being active in politics, so that if he does ever have to make aspeech about justice and good faith, he will not need to borrowfrom Plato.And, as Antonius continues to point out, Plato
’
s republic had little todo with the politics and ethics of real cities.Cicero resolves the debate between Crassus and Antonius in Book 3,where Crassus introduces a long digression on philosophy into his dis-cussion of style.
190
He shows that the greatest leaders in Greece andRome were also
sapientes
(
§
56), and he shows that even in the heroicage those who were tutors in living well were also teachers of oratory
—
Homer
’
s Phoenix taught Achilles how to speak and how to act (
§
57).So philosophy was not segregated from rhetoric, for
“
she was the mis-tress both of right actions and right words
”
: once again the allusion isto Cato
’
s definition of the orator. Crassus ends his argument for theunion of philosophy and rhetoric by modifying and uniting the defini-tions of Antonius:
191
Now if anyone wishes to define the philosopher who provides uswith a supply of subject-matter and words, as far as I am con-cerned he can call him an orator. And if he prefers to call theorator, who (I say) combines wisdom and eloquence, a philoso-pher, I won
’
t stop him
…
If I do have to choose [between a knowl-edgeable but incompetent speaker and one who is ignorant butloquacious], I would prefer tongue-tied wisdom to eloquentfoolishness.Crassus speaks here for Cicero. In good Academic fashion, he hasexamined all sides of the question (a type of argument that he refers toat 3. 107), and he has reached the most probable conclusion. It is onethat is best for the state, and, for Cicero writing in 55 BCE, one thatbest prepares him for writing
De Republica
and
De Legibus
.In the
De Divinatione
list Cicero mentions his work
De Senectute
(
“
On Old Age
”
). It is one of three shorter treatises that he wrote in 44BCE and the only one that preceded the
De Divinatione
. The others
78THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
were the
De Gloria
and the
De Amicitia
, both completed before the
DeOfficiis
. The
De Gloria
is lost, but from Cicero
’
s letters and the
DeOfficiis
we know that it was in two books, and that Cicero was pleasedwith it.
192
From the introduction to Valerius Maximus
’
chapter
De Glo-ria
we can guess that Cicero dealt with the origins and definition of glory, and its relationship to virtue.
193
The
De Senetute,
also known as
Cato Maior
from the name of itsprincipal speaker, is perhaps the most attractive of Cicero
’
s philosophi-cal works, and it is one of very few that has kept a regular place inschool and undergraduate curricula. It appeals to the young, who havefound in its atmosphere of friendship and self-fulfilment an attractiveinvitation to consider the inevitable experience of old age. This may bea distant prospect to the young, but to Cicero (and to Atticus, to whomthe work is dedicated) it was more immediate (Cicero was sixty-twoyears old at the time of writing, and Atticus was sixty-six). Thus thework is not only a review of the life of the elder Cato, but also of Cicero
’
s own life and career. He found in it comfort for his own situa-tion in 44 BCE (
§
2), and he rightly chose to make a historical Romanfigure (Cato) the speaker, rather than to set the discussion in a mythicalcontext, as Ariston had done.
194
Cato
’
s listeners are Laelius and Scipio Aemilianus, and the setting isCato
’
s house in 150 BCE, a few months before his death. Cicero takesus to the world of the
De Republica
and its ideals. Just as he (in 44BCE) is reviewing his life for the benefit of the young, so Cato is por-trayed with two prominent leaders of the next generation. His speech,then, is a legacy for them. Cicero himself admits that Cato is made toargue more eruditely than he ever did in reality, but he also points outthat in his old age Cato was a serious student of Greek books (
§
3).Cicero does not address the problem that strikes modern readers, thatis, how to reconcile Cato
’
s mellow persona in this work with his well-known austerity and frequent inhumanity.
195
Rather than try to defendCato, it is better to admit that Cicero overlooked this unattractive sideof him in the interests of portraying him as a patriot and defender of the republic.Laelius proposes the topic (
§
4):
“
old age is a hateful burden to mostold men
”
. Cato, after some preliminary dialogue, replies with anunbroken speech (
§§
8
–
85). He identifies four reasons to supportLaelius
’
thesis: that old age compels one to retire from activity; that itresults in physical weakness; that it removes physical pleasures; that itis close to death. Each of these he refutes in turn, often with referenceto his own life and with a wealth of examples from Roman history.One remarkable passage is his praise of the pleasures of farming
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES79
(
§§
51
–
60), Cicero
’
s special tribute to the author of the
De Agri Cul-tura
, but also a statement of the traditional prejudice of the Roman sen-atorial class for income from landowning rather than business activi-ties. Cato cites as an example of the political leader who serves hiscountry selflessly L.Quinctius Cincinnatus, the historical icon of theleader
—
farmer.
196
He was called from the plough to serve as Dictatorin the crisis of 458 BCE and laid down his office within sixteen dayson completion of his task. At the end of his speech Cato puts his owncareer in a perspective that we have already met in the
De Repub-lica
.
197
The reward of a virtuous life spent in service of the state is thefame of posterity and reunion with the souls of the virtuous after death:No one will ever persuade me, Scipio, that your father, Paullus,or your grandfathers, Paullus and Africanus,
…
would haveattempted such great deeds
…
if they did not think that posterityhad a direct connection with them. Or
…
do you think that Iwould have undertaken such huge tasks night and day, in peaceand in war, if I had thought my glory was to be limited to theterm of my life? Would it not have been much better for me tohave lived a peaceful and retired life, without any labour andcompetition? Yet somehow my soul was alert and always hadposterity in view, as if it would then finally be alive once it hadleft this life. And if it were not the case that the soul is immortal,the souls of the best men would not strive most of all to winimmortal glory.The line from the
De Republica
through the
De Senectute
to the
DeOfficiis
is unbroken. Virtue in the service of the state is for Cicero thehighest calling and brings the greatest reward.The third of the shorter treatises is the
De Amicitia
(
“
OnFriendship
”
). Here Cicero makes Q.Mucius Scaevola (the Augur) thefirst speaker. He had taken part in the first book of the
De Oratore
andCicero brings him on stage here as the son-in-law of Laelius, who isthe principal speaker: the dialogue is often referred to as
Laelius
.Laelius himself, as the friend of Scipio Aemilianus, was a paragon of friendship. The dramatic date of the conversation that Scaevola reportsto his student, the young Cicero, is 129 BCE, a few days after the deathof Scipio Aemilianus. Cicero returns, then, to the contemporaries of Scipio for his evocation of virtuous relationships in public life.Laelius
’
main speech extends from
§
16 to
§
104, with interruptionsfrom Fannius (consul in 122), the third participant, at
§
25 and
§
32.Fannius defines the subject at
§
16:
“
Tell us, Laelius, your views on the
80THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
nature of friendship and give us precepts for it.
”
Laelius gives afamous definition (
§
20):The great power of friendship can be realised from this, thatfrom the unbounded community of the human race (ties thatnature herself has established) friendship has been so concen-trated that all affection is between two, or a few, persons.Friendship was of great importance in Greek life, as Aristotle
’
s treat-ment of it in Books 8 and 9 of the
Nicomachean Ethics
shows, and forthe Romans it was important not only in personal relationships but alsoin public life. The stresses caused in friendships by political differ-ences are vividly displayed in Cicero
’
s exchange of letters with hisfriend, Matius, in August of 44.
198
Matius had been an intimate friend,confidant and adviser of Caesar. He had been loyal to Caesar
’
s mem-ory after the Ides of March, and Cicero had been critical of this and of Matius
’
closeness to Caesar when he was alive. Cicero
’
s criticisms hadreached Matius, who asked their mutual friend, Trebatius, to complainto Cicero. Cicero then wrote to Matius to answer his complaint andreassure him of his unshaken friendship, and Matius, in his turn,accepted Cicero
’
s defence but still held to his own views of his friend-ship with Caesar. These letters illuminate some of the arguments madein the
De Amicitia
, notably the precepts on candour in
§§
44 and 65,and they show the practical side of the theoretical discussion in thedialogue.Friendship was problematic for all the chief philosophical schools.For the Stoics it was inconsistent with the ideal of self-sufficiency, andthey based their theory of friendship on virtue, saying that friendshipcould exist only between virtuous people.
199
Laelius, indeed, says(
§
18) that
“
friendship can only exist between good people
”
, but hepoints out also that the Stoic ideal of friendship between wise men isimpractical, because the Stoic
sapiens
is an impossible ideal. Thereforehe gives his precepts in practical terms: his examples are drawn fromRoman history, and his precepts are attainable. He ends with a glowingtestimony to Scipio
’
s friendship (
§§
102
–
04): it was the greatest of allblessings in his life, and his memory of Scipio will never perish,because their friendship was founded on virtue. So Laelius concludeswith this advice for his younger hearers:I encourage you so to value virtue (without which friendship isnot possible) that you think that nothing, except virtue, can bepreferred to friendship.
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES81
The Stoics, then, were closer to the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle.Plato saw friendship as an effort, based on reason, to achieve an idealrelationship in this temporal life, while Aristotle saw friendship in thecontext of the life of the community
—
a doctrine consistent with theStoic ideal of public service. Epicurus took quite a different approach,for he based his theory on the usefulness of friendship as a meanstowards a tranquil life of pleasure. Cicero expounds the Epicurean the-ory in Torquatus
’
speech in Book 1 of
De Finibus,
refuting it himself in the next book.
200
The difference between the Stoic and Ciceronianviews and that of the Epicureans has some bearing on the
De Amicitia
,in that the work was dedicated to Atticus, who was an Epicurean.
201
Itseems that Atticus enjoyed friendship for its own sake, whatever thetheory behind it, and he would have approved of Laelius
’
statement at
De Amicitia
27 BCE:friendship seems to me to spring from nature, not from need;from the attachment of the soul together with a feeling of love,more than from calculation of how useful it will be.Before we turn to the
De Officiis
, we should briefly mention two otherphilosophical works. The first is the
Topica
, which Cicero says hewrote for his friend, Trebatius, during the sea voyage between Veliaand Rhegium (towns on the south-western coast of Italy about 225kilometers apart by sea), on his abortive journey to Athens in July of 44. He wrote it without access to books, and his purpose was to helpTrebatius study Aristotle
’
s
Topica
, which he had begun to read inCicero
’
s library.
202
Cicero
’
s
Topica
, however, is nothing likeAristotle
’
s
Topica
, which he probably had not read.
203
The work isboth rhetorical and philosophical. Cicero divides rhetorical theory(
ratio disserendi
) into two parts,
inventio
(devising of arguments) and
iudtcandum
(evaluating their validity), and he says that Aristotle wasthe major figure in discussing them. The Stoics, he says, elaborated thelatter in their dialectic, but they ignored the former (
inventio
, Greek
topike
), which is to be his primary subject.
204
The work, then, derivesultimately from Aristotle, although there can be no certainty about theextent and depth of Cicero
’
s reading of Aristotle. In the discussion of consequences and antecedents (
§§
53
–
57), which Cicero describes as
“
atopic appropriate to dialectic
”
, and the following discussion of causes(
§§
58
–
67), Cicero shows that he is master of logical argument, forexample, in his use of the syllogism in
§§
53
–
55.
205
Boethius (
c
.520CE) certainly took the
Topica
seriously as a philosophical work and
82THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
wrote a commentary in seven books, of which five and a part of thesixth survive, covering seventy-six of the 100 chapters.
206
The second work still to be mentioned is Cicero
’
s translation of partof Plato
’
s
Timaeus,
of which only part of the preface and the transla-tion of
Timaeus
5
–
16 are extant. Cicero made the translation after thedeath in 45 of his friend Nigidius Figulus, said to be the most learnedof Romans after Varro. Nigidius was a Pythagorean (as Cicero says inthe first chapter of the
Timaeus
), who wrote works on the natural worldand the cosmos, as well as on grammar. He was especially interested indivination and astrology, which we will discuss later in connectionwith Manilius. He was a senator (Praetor in 58) and a supporter of Pompey, and he went into exile after Caesar
’
s victory at Pharsalus. InAugust of 46 Cicero wrote a moving consolation to him to comforthim in exile.
207
To Cicero he was
“
the most learned and the purest of men
”
, whose friendship had been shown in his support when Cicerohad been in despair.
208
The
Timaeus
is a memorial to Nigidius. In itspreface Cicero describes how Nigidius had met him at Ephesus, incompany with the Peripatetic philosopher, Cratippus, when he wastravelling to take up his post as governor of Cilicia in 51. Nigidiuswould have been Cicero
’
s interlocutor in the missing parts of the intro-duction to the translation. It was appropriate for Cicero to associatePlato
’
s dialogue on cosmology with the scholar who, of all his contem-poraries, was most interested in the stars and the cosmos.Cicero
’
s last philosophical work has also proved to be the mostinfluential. The
De Officiis
(usually translated as
On Duties
) was writ-ten in the later part of 44, the period when Cicero had resumed politi-cal activity as the most outspoken opponent of Mark Antony. He firstmentions the work in a letter to Atticus of 25 October, and less thantwo weeks later (5 November) he reports that he has finished the firsttwo books.
209
The third book seems to have been completed before 9December. Thus the work was written in a very short time indeed(even supposing that Cicero had been reflecting on it as early as July of 44), and it is both more personal and less carefully written than thedialogues. We do not know when it was published: Horace
’
s poem onRegulus probably echoes Cicero
’
s discussion of Regulus.
210
The poemwas published in 23 BCE, giving a possible
terminus ante quem
forpublication.The work is addressed to Cicero
’
s son, Marcus, at the time a studentin Athens under the Peripatetic philosopher, Cratippus. Cicero hadknown Cratippus since at least 51, when he joined Nigidius Figulus atEphesus, and Cicero had used his influence with Caesar to obtainRoman citizenship for him. Marcus (the son) was neither diligent nor
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES83
disciplined, and Cicero was sufficiently anxious about him to contem-plate (and begin) a voyage to Athens in July, 44. The political newsfrom Rome, however, made him turn back, and the
De Officiis
took theplace of his visit.
211
Thus the work is in the form of a letter, and eachof the three books has a preface addressed to Marcus. It is more thanlikely that Cicero had in mind Cato the Elder, who in his old ageaddressed a hortatory work,
Ad Marcum
, to his son.
212
Ciceroaddresses Marcus 32 times directly: when he uses the formal addressof
“
Marcus, my son
”
(
Marce fili
), he is speaking with full paternalauthority, a powerful concept in Roman society. Thus at 1. 78, he says:I have the right, Marcus, my son, to boast to you, for yours is thelegacy of my glory and the [duty of] imitating my deeds.We are inescapably reminded of the Roman funeral in Polybius (6. 53
–
54), with its focus on the dead man
’
s moral legacy to the next genera-tion. Thus, the work is both an exhortation to Marcus and Cicero
’
s tes-tament. In tone it is personal and urgent, yet in style discursive. Cicerohimself was proud of the work. Writing to Atticus, while the work wasin progress, he says,
“
my exposition is splendid
”
,
213
and in the finalparagraph of the work, addressing Marcus, he says:
214
Marcus, my son, here is my gift
—
in my view a great one, but itsvalue will depend on your reception of it
…
Since my voice hastravelled to you in these books, give them as much time as youcan
…
Farewell, my Cicero, and be assured that you are indeedmost dear to me
—
much more dear, however, if you take plea-sure in such advice and rules [as these].The work is in three books: Book 1 concerns moral goodness (
hones-tum
); Book 2, expediency (
utile,
translated by Atkins as
“
beneficial
”
);Book 3, cases where
honestum
and
utile
are in conflict.
215
For the firsttwo books Cicero
’
s principal source was Panaetius, who wrote a trea-tise in three books
Peri tou Kathekontos
, which Cicero translated as
DeOfficiis
. The word
officium
is troublesome, and Atticus criticizedCicero
’
s use of it to translate the Greek
kathekon
, which literallymeans
“
coming down
”
and then, in the philosophical sense,
“
fitting orproper
”
. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, used the word in an ethicalsense, evidently in the sense of
“
an action in accordance with reason
”
,and this seems to have been the basic sense of the term in Panaetius
’
title.
216
But
officium
in Latin meant (in Cicero
’
s time)
“
that whichought to be done
”
, with the specifically Roman connotation of one
’
s
84THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
duty towards others in a particular social context. As Atticus pointedout, it would be difficult to speak of a citizen
’
s
officium
towards thestate, as opposed to his
officium
towards an individual or a socialgroup.
217
Cicero clearly wanted to extend the term to the political con-text, particularly the preservation of the established order, and he didnot accept Atticus
’
criticism.
“
Give me a better word
”
(
da melius
) washis reply, and so the title remained
De Officiis
. Although Andrew Dyck persuasively argues for
“
appropriate action
”
as the closest Englishequivalent for
officium
, I have kept the translation,
“
duty
”
, which isboth more familiar and less cumbersome.
218
Cicero compressed the three books of Panaetius
’
work into two.
219
But his work was not just a translation of Panaetius: we remember hisinsistence in the
De Legibus
that he intends to be
“
his own person
”
,and he says here of Panaetius,
“
I have followed him to a great extentbut have not translated him
”
.
220
He gives a Roman cast to Panaetius
’
philosophy, and the
officia
are actions appropriate for a member of theRoman senatorial class. He uses Roman examples, most notably that of Regulus in Book 3.
221
Panaetius, however, only went so far. He didnot, as Cicero complains, fulfil his promise of dealing with caseswhere the good (
kalon
, Latin
honestum
) and the expedient (
sympheron
,Latin,
utile
) were in conflict. Cicero did consult a version of the
PeriKathekontos
of Posidonius, but he found its usefulness very limited.Therefore he was left largely on his own for Book 3, although he mayhave had some help from the Stoic Athenodorus (Sandon), who hadprocured at least a summary of Posidonius
’
work for him.
222
Ciceroshould be believed when he says:
223
I shall fill out this gap [i.e. in Panaetius
’
work] without any sup-port, but, as they say, under my own auspices (
Marte nostro
).The first book is the most varied and the most interesting. After theintroduction, Cicero starts with a definition of
officia
, which he classi-fies as those which concern the
“
end of the good
”
and those which
“
consist of rules to which every part of our experience of life couldconform
”
.
224
Thus the first class is theoretical, the second practical,and it is this that is the subject of the work. Cicero then subdivides histopic into the good, the expedient, and cases where the two are in con-flict. To these categories he adds two of his own, comparisons, respec-tively, between good actions and expedient actions.
225
Then he turns todiscuss
honestum,
which he bases on four cardinal virtues: justice, wis-dom, greatness of spirit (
magnitudo animi
, Greek
megalopsychia
), andmoderation.
226
These are then analysed and discussed: wisdom very
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES85
briefly, justice more fully, as we would expect from the social and civilcontext of Cicero
’
s
officia
227
The second part of the discussion of jus-tice extends to liberality, an appropriate attribute for aristocrats.Cicero
’
s treatment of one of the most prominent of Roman social rela-tionships, that between patron and client, is at best superficial.
228
Whenhe turns to greatness of spirit he argues for the superiority of civilcourage (
domesticae fortitudines
) over military courage, putting at thecentre his own career and achievements.
229
In general, however, thissection develops themes familiar from the
De Republica
and politicalspeeches, arguing for patriotic loyalty and subordination of the ambi-tions of the individual to the needs of the state. Finally, Cicero dis-cusses moderation.
230
Here the notion of what is
“
seemly
”
(decorum)
predominates, allowing Cicero to expand on behaviour appropriate to aperson of his son
’
s rank.Cicero ends the first book with a comparison of virtues, answeringthe first of the two questions that he had added to Panaetius
’
topics.
231
He gives the first place to wisdom, which he defines as
“
knowledge of things divine and human
”
. But since
officium
is exercised in a socialcontext, the virtue that is based on community (i.e. justice) must be thegreatest. Therefore justice must be ranked ahead of
“
mere knowledge
”
,so that wisdom, the
“
foremost virtue
”
, is wisdom exercised for thegood of the community. (Cicero
’
s argument here is confusing andapparently inconsistent.) The best
officium
, then, is that which is basedon life in a community. Cicero adds his own definition of the hierarchyof
officia
, a variation of Panaetius
’
definition which he had quoted ear-lier:
232
In our life as members of a community there are priorities induties, so that it is easy to understand which duty takes prece-dence in each case. Thus our primary duties are owed to theimmortal gods; secondly, to our country; thirdly, to our parents,and then the rest in descending order of priority.Thus Cicero ends the book with a reaffirmation of the moral, socialand political perspectives that had inspired the
Dream of Scipio
.In Book 2 Cicero turns to
utile
, that is, what is expedient or benefi-cial. Here his subject is
“
the things that concern a civilized way of lifeand the means of getting those things that are useful, and that concerninfluence and wealth
”
.
233
In the first book he had followed Stoic doc-trine mostly,
“
using my own judgement
”
, and here also he announcesthat he will follow the conclusions that he finds most probable.
234
Hedeplores the general custom of separating the good (
honestum
) from
86THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
the useful, and he will show that the good (part of which is the just)and the expedient cannot be separated.
235
Cicero
’
s focus, however, in this book is exclusively on the thingsthat are useful for pursuing a political career. Since the
officia
are exer-cised in a community, the support of other human beings is the firstexpedient thing, and the first goal of the
utile
is to persuade otherhuman beings to support our own interests, which some people in pub-lic life do through immoral methods such as bribery.
236
The personwho seeks support by virtuous methods will be loved rather thanfeared: he will acquire glory through good will and friendship, exercis-ing the virtues of good faith and honour.
237
In the pursuit of glory, jus-tice will be an essential virtue, and the young man ambitious for glorywill always act with integrity.
238
Cicero refers to his previous works onglory (
De Gloria
) and on friendship (
De Amicitia
) to excuse thebrevity of his discussion of these subjects: he does have plenty to sayabout friendship, however, in Book 3.
239
Cicero then turns to liberality and beneficence, that is, doing good toothers, whether by giving them money or doing good deeds on theirbehalf. In discussing the former he criticizes extravagance in courtingpublic favour, for example in the games given by aediles.
240
He ismore interested, however, in liberality shown through service to indi-viduals and to the state. Here, as mentioned above, he deals very gin-gerly with the client
—
patron relationship, and Miriam Griffin rightlydraws attention to
“
his lack of interest in relations with socialinferiors
”
.
241
The importance of the subject is shown by its extensivetreatment in the
Satires
and
Epistles
of Horace, in the
Satires
of Juve-nal, and in Seneca and Pliny the Younger.
242
Since legal representationwas a common duty of the patron towards his client, Cicero could havespoken with authority, beyond the jejune remarks that he makes here.He is more interested in service to the state.
243
The first principle, hesays, that public officials must observe is the inviolability of propertyrights, and, after discussing the moral integrity needed for public ser-vice, he returns to this subject at the end:Guardians of the republic will avoid the type of gift-giving bywhich things are taken away from one group and given toanother. Above all they will work to see that each person keepswhat is his by means of the fairness of justice and the lawcourts.Cicero develops this economic conservatism as a justification forincreasing the Roman empire, for such imperialism will increase thewealth of the state, and the military leaders who benefit the state in this
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES87
way will win great glory for themselves. The book ends with a perfunc-tory comparison of things that are useful and expedient and an anec-dote about Cato the Elder, which Cicero tells to indicate his preferencefor income gained from farming rather than from money-lending.
244
Book 2, although it is founded ostensibly on Panaetius, clearly hasCicero
’
s stamp upon it. The examples are mostly Roman, and thesocial and economic values are those that Cicero himself proclaimedthroughout his career, those of a conservative politician concernedwith the stability of a social and economic order in which his affluenceis assured. Those who have seen the
De Officiis
as the work of an
anima naturaliter Christiana
will have a hard time reconciling theirview with those expressed by Cicero.In Book 3 Cicero is left without Panaetius to fight his own battle.The subject of the book is both necessary and interesting: what pre-cepts are to be followed when the good and the expedient are in appar-ent conflict? Here again Cicero
’
s focus is largely political: the contextsof his dilemmas are mostly Roman, as are the examples.
245
His viewsare conditioned by the pessimism that he felt at his own political impo-tence, and his disgust at the corruption of political life under the mili-tary leaders who had destroyed the republic.
246
In the most politicalpassage of the book he attacks Marius, Pompey and Caesar.
247
Although these examples are brought in to support the conclusion that
“
nothing can be expedient that is not good
”
, the intensity of Cicero
’
shatred is the most striking feature of the passage.The major ethical principle in Book 3 is that where there is apparentconflict, the good must prevail over the expedient. To act otherwise iscontrary to nature and destroys the bonds of society and of humanityitself.
248
Cicero illustrates this from a series of historical and hypotheti-cal examples, in which he makes it clear that the interests of the stateoutweigh those of the individual. Thus, as Andrew Dyck observes,
“
the
utilttas reipublicae
tends to become
…
a criterion of conduct almost
…
equal to the
honestum
itself
’
.
249
At 3. 96 Cicero reveals that he has been discussing moral conflictswithin the framework of the four virtues established in Book 1. In fact,from 3. 40 onwards, he has been using wisdom and justice as his crite-ria, and now he turns to the other two virtues
—
greatness of spirit andtemperance. For the former he cites the Stoic mythical example of Ulysses, just as he had used another favourite Stoic exemplar, Her-cules, as an example of virtuous labour for the good of humankind.The mythical Ulysses soon yields to an example of virtue (not merelygreatness of spirit) drawn from Roman history
—
M.Atilius Regulus,consul in 267 and 256, who was captured by the Carthaginians in
88THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
255.
250
In Cicero
’
s narrative Regulus was sent back to Rome underoath to negotiate for the return of high-ranking Carthaginian prisonersin exchange for his freedom. At Rome he argued against the exchangeand returned to Carthage, where he was executed slowly and horribly.The story fits the context
—
Regulus knew what was
utile
but chosewhat was
honestum
. But Cicero goes much further: it is a perversion of nature to choose expediency over the good (
§
101); Regulus exempli-fied justice in keeping his oath (
§
102), a topic that Cicero develops forthe rest of the episode, with other supporting examples from Romanhistory. The conflict between
uttle
and
honestum
is resolved in termsof the virtues analysed in Book 1, but Cicero adds a wholly Romanperspective to the discussion. Thus the virtue of justice is identifiedwith the supremely Roman virtue of
fides
(good faith, including specif-ically the observance of one
’
s oath); Regulus
’
actions at Rome were inaccordance with the Roman law and constitution; his personal bearingwas dignified, worthy of a Roman, a senator and an exconsul. To haveacted otherwise would have been shameful (the Latin word is
turpe
,with wider moral connotations than
“
shameful
”
). Cicero sums up Regu-lus
’
dilemma elegantly:
251
he was in better condition when he was being executed by beingkept awake, than if he had stayed at home as an old man
—
but aprisoner of war, and as an ex-consul
—
but one who had brokenhis oath.Finally Cicero turns to the fourth virtue, temperance.
252
Here he doesnot use historical examples, taking pleasure as the antithesis of temper-ance and using it as the basis for attacking the Epicureans. He repeatsin summary form many of the arguments of Book 2 of the
De Finibus
,and concludes by emphasizing his basic principle, that nothing can be
utile
that is in conflict with
honestum
. Therefore, since pleasure is con-trary to the good, and nothing that is truly
utile
conflicts with the good,pleasure can never be
utile
. And so the work ends (3. 121) with thepersonal farewell to young Marcus quoted above.The
De Officiis
is in the view of many scholars the most influentialof Cicero
’
s philosophical works. In late antiquity it was read andadmired by Christians and pagans: Ambrose, for example, used andadapted Cicero for his work (written
c
.390 CE),
De Officiis Ministro-rum
. In the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance it was widely readand admired. Over 700 manuscripts were copied in the period from thetwelfth to the fifteenth centuries, and it was the first work printed inItaly, at Subiaco in 1465, and the first classical book ever printed (at
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES89
Mainz, also in 1465).
253
The high point of its popularity was in theeighteenth century, most notably in England and France, whereVoltaire was moved to call it
“
the best work of moral philosophy thatever has been, or ever will be, written
”
. Yet there have been othervoices. Wilhelm Suss confesses that he has
“
the greatest difficulty inestablishing a lively relationship with the
De Officiis
”
, and he quotesMontaigne:
254
Cicero
’
s discussions are good for the school, the court-room andthe pulpit, where we have the leisure to snooze and, a quarter of an hour later, enough time to pick up the thread.The fact is that Cicero
’
s work is rhetorical, and therefore political aswell as ethical. It presents unambiguous political and social prejudicesthat will appeal to those who are conservative, comfortable and com-placent, like the eighteenth-century snob, Lord Chesterfield. ButCicero, although conservative, was neither comfortable nor compla-cent. His work was overshadowed by the collapse of the Roman repub-lic, and his views were coloured by the disappointment of seeing the
“
tyrant
”
(Caesar) replaced by something worse. This gives his ethicalprinciples dignity and often nobility: each reader must decide whetherthese attributes outweigh the limitations of his political and socialviews.This chapter began with the dogmatic statement that
“
Cicero is themost influential of Roman philosophers
”
. Each reader of Cicero mustdecide whether this is justified. The statement was accepted as trueuntil the middle of the nineteenth century, when Theodor Mommsen(following W. Drumann) with gleeful ferocity demolished Cicero as apolitician, philosopher, orator and human being.
255
Mommsen
’
s author-ity guaranteed that Cicero
’
s philosophical writings would be underval-ued for more than a century, as they were in Germany, the UK andNorth America (at least) until less than 20 years ago. Except for the
DeOratore
and
Topica
, the standard English series of classical texts, the
Oxford Classical Texts
, did not include a single philosophical work of Cicero until 1994, and only the works on Old Age and Friendship wereregularly included in school and undergraduate reading.
256
Even as lateas 1982, the authoritative
Cambridge History of Classical Literature
isat best patronizing, although the author does admit that
“
the
De Officiis
laid the foundations of liberal humanism for Europe and the world
”
.
257
Writing in 1995, J.C.A.Gaskin sadly remarks that
“
Cicero is over-annotated by classicists and underestimated by recent philosophers
”
.
258
Not all of this can be laid at the door of Mommsen. We have seen
90THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
that Cicero
’
s political and social views were conservative and
laissez- faire
, and that the
De Officiis
appealed especially to readers whoshared these views
—
hence Cicero
’
s popularity in the eighteenth cen-tury. In times when strong leaders are admired or perceived to be desir-able, milder politicians such as Cicero are out of fashion. Mommsenpreferred
“
men of iron
”
, and the most influential of twentieth-centuryancient historians, Ronald Syme, had little use for Cicero
’
s philosophi-cal writing in the face of autocrats such as Caesar (in Cicero
’
s time)and Hitler (in Syme
’
s time
—
his
Roman Revolution
was published in1939). In times when political, social and economic change is needed,there will be little sympathy for Cicero
’
s conservatism: such timeshave existed in the Western world ever since the end of World War I.Cicero himself is also to blame. Not only have his political andsocial views been found to be unacceptable to opinion-makers, but hisstyle
—
rich, rhetorical and orotund
—
has fallen out of favour, when thesententious angularity of Sallust and Tacitus has been more popular.His efforts to make philosophy intelligible to non-philosophers natu-rally have degraded his value to professional philosophers, who findthe
De Fato
and the
Academica
more enjoyable than the
“
easy
”
works.For a long time the school of
Quellenforschung
(the search for sources)dominated among scholars, so that Cicero tended to be diminished as amere reporter or compiler of the works of Greek philosophers.So much for the negatives. The fact remains that from his own dayuntil the nineteenth century the philosophical works of Cicero weregenerally admired and at least respected. The record is clear in lateantiquity, including the Church Fathers. Boethius thought him worth acommentary, and many of his works were read and copied in the Car-olingian age. From the twelfth century his popularity and influenceincreased, as the huge number of manuscripts of several of his worksattest. His readers were not concerned whether or not he was an origi-nal thinker, but rather with the worth of what he actually had to say. Ina world where few could read (and fewer understand) Greek, Cicero
’
sLatin was priceless, and continued to be so even after the Renaissancerediscovery in the West of Greek works. Even in our day, he still is animportant source for our knowledge of many Hellenistic philosophers.The antithesis between the Greeks as philosophers and the Romansas practical men of action is especially false where Cicero is con-cerned. He interpreted Greek philosophy for his contemporaries in alanguage that he himself developed and enlarged. He did this throughthe filter of Roman society and politics, in effect creating new works.He developed a new Latin literary form in his dialogues (based on themodel of Aristotle rather than Plato), which was appropriate for his
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES91
Academic scepticism, while being less negative in its methods andresults than the Socratic dialogue. His philosophical doctrines were tosome extent original in the political dialogues and in the Roman colour-ing of the
De Officiis
. The names of authors and thinkers influenced byhim are impressive.
259
Other Roman philosophers
—
Seneca, Augus-tine, Boethius
—
may dispute the title of
“
most influential
”
, butCicero
’
s achievement simply in terms of language and range of thought is indisputable. As for originality, the author of the
De Repub-lica
(especially Laelius
’
speech in Book 3 and the
Somnium
) and the
De Oratore
, and even the more obviously derivative third book of the
De Finibus
, needs no apology. Finally
—
and most importantly
—
Ciceroexpressed the loftiest ideals of human moral attainment. To define thenature and express the meaning of
humanity
is a supreme achievement.
92THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
4LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS
The poem of Lucretius (
De Rerum Natura
:
“
On the Nature of Things
”
)is the most powerful work in all of Roman philosophy. Yet hardly any-thing is known of its author beyond his name, Titus Lucretius Carus,and the approximate dates of his life, c.95
–
54 BCE. Only one of hiscontemporaries, Cicero, mentions him:
1
The poetry of Lucretius (as you say in your letter) is illuminatedby many flashes of genius (
ingenium
), yet it also shows muchcraftsmanship (
ars
). But when you come, I shall think you a heroif you have read the
Empedoclea
of Sallustius, but hardly ahuman being.Cicero, then, had read the poem
—
indeed, Jerome, writing about 400CE, says that Cicero edited it (
emendavit
), which may mean no morethan that he corrected it for copying before publication. Given Cicero
’
shostility to Epicurean doctrine and his own pretensions as a poet, hisrecognition of Lucretius
’
excellence in the two essential areas of poetry (inspiration and technique) is significant. Nothing is known of Sallustius, but the title of his work suggests that his
Empedoclea
was atranslation of the poem (or poems) of Empedocles, just as Cicero hadcalled his translation of Aratus
Aratea
. Evidently Sallustius
’
poemrequired superhuman endurance of its readers.Lucretius worked alone, and no other contemporary mentions him.He seems to have had little or no contact with other Epicureans andtheir schools in Italy. Cicero tells us that two authors, Amafinius andRabirius, had written popular works explaining Epicurean philosophyin non-technical terms.
2
The speaker in this passage, Varro, says thatRomans cannot study philosophy without knowledge of Greek lan-guage and doctrines. Amafinius, he says, had written on all three
93
branches of Epicurean philosophy (logic, physics, ethics) withoutusing any Greek methods of argument, while in his ethics he equatedhuman good with the good of cattle. But, as Cicero complains,Amafinius
’
works found a large audience: they were the best of a badbunch, for they were easy reading, and their focus on the Epicureanideal of pleasure was attractive. After him, says Cicero, many otherauthors wrote Epicurean works, so that
“
they filled the whole of Italy
”
.These works (now all lost), according to Cicero, made no intellec-tual demands, misleading their readers into thinking that they provideda firm foundation for the student of Epicureanism. It is clear that theEpicureans shared in the vigorous revival of philosophy in Rome andItaly which Cicero describes in the
Brutus
. Alone of the four majorphilosophical schools the Epicureans did not join in the Athenianembassy of 155, in accordance with the Epicurean doctrine of
lathebiosas
(
“
live unobtrusively
”
), which involved non-participation in poli-tics, unless there were an overriding reason to participate.
3
Neverthe-less, Cicero shows that Epicureanism did take root in Italy. The idealof pleasure and the superficial intelligibility of the school
’
s doctrineswere attractive just because they were not austere and impossible toachieve (as were the ideals of the Stoics), or full of intellectual sub-tleties (as were those of the Academics and Peripatetics). Yet Cicero
’
sEpicurean speaker, Torquatus, with more truth describes the school as
“
serious, disciplined, austere
”
, epithets that apply to Lucretius, if not toAmafinius and his imitators.
4
Cicero himself was at first attracted to the Epicureans by Phaedrus,but he turned to the Academic doctrines of Philo and Antiochus. Hisclose friend and confidant, Atticus, was an Epicurean, and he kept upfriendship with Caesar
’
s murderer, Cassius, who was converted to Epi-cureanism in 46.
5
Writing to Cassius in January 45, Cicero jokes aboutthe Latin terminology of Cassius
’
“
new friends
”
. In his reply Cassiuspoints out that Epicurean pleasure and freedom from mental distur-bance cannot be achieved without justice and virtue, but he agrees thatpeople like Amafinius have misinterpreted the words of Epicurus him-self.
6
Cicero had only contempt for the bad Latin of popularizers suchas Amafinius, but with serious Epicureans like Atticus and Cassius hediscussed Epicurean doctrine, for differences in philosophy did notstand in the way of friendship. Cicero is, nevertheless, almost uni-formly critical of the school. He devoted the first dialogue of the
DeFinibus
to an exposition and demolition of its ethics, and he did thesame with its theology in the first book of the
De Natura Deorum
. Thechief target of his criticism in the former was the Epicurean doctrine of pleasure, and in the latter the doctrine that the gods do not concern
94THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
themselves with human affairs. He spent less effort in criticizing Epi-curean epistemology and physics, both prominent in Lucretius
’
work.Epicureanism flourished particularly in Campania (i.e. the areaaround Naples), where Philodemus (
c
.110
–
40) headed a school at Her-culaneum.
7
Cicero says that Philodemus and Siro (another leading Epi-curean in Campania) were his personal friends (
familiares
). Philode-mus was a Syrian, born at Gadara (near the Sea of Galilee), and hecame to Rome probably in the 70s, under the patronage of L.Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, consul in 58 and censor in 50. Piso wasthe father of Caesar
’
s wife, Calpurnia and in 55 the target of Cicero
’
sspeech
In Pisonem
.
8
He owned a splendid villa at Herculaneum,known best to the modern world through its replica, which used tohouse the Getty Museum at Malibu in California. Since 1754 a largenumber of Epicurean papyri have been discovered and unrolled in thevilla at Herculaneum.
9
It is very likely that they were part of the libraryof the school of Philodemus. Philodemus himself was best known as apoet: Virgil was his friend and a pupil of Siro, although he was not anEpicurean. As a student in Athens Philodemus had studied under theEpicurean, Zeno of Sidon, whom Cicero had heard
“
as a very sharp oldman
”
and whose teaching on Epicurean pleasure he reports with disap-proval.
10
Zeno was Philodemus
’
guiding light, justly so in that he wasthe most creative Epicurean philosopher of his time. Philodemus wroteon music, rhetoric and poetry, and the Herculaneum papyri containfragments of many of his prose philosophical works, among them ahistory of philosophy (including the lists of philosophers and theirworks in the
Index Stoicorum
and the
Index Academicorum
), andworks on Epicurean logic, physics and ethics, and on the gods. Someof these probably post-date Lucretius
’
death, and they show that therewere differences between Philodemus and Lucretius on topics commonto both. For example, in his work on
Phenomena and Inferences
(usu-ally known by its Latin title,
De Signis
), Philodemus reports Zeno
’
steaching on induction and inferences from phenomena, which differsfrom the deductive method of Lucretius. Again, Philodemus wrote awork on Death, part of the fourth book of which survives in the Hercu-laneum papyri, which is
“
gentle and sympathetic, free of the abrasive-ness of Lucretius
’
account
”
.
11
He shows sympathy and understandingfor those who die young, since those who die old have been able toreach harbour after a life well lived; for the bereaved; for those whodie in a foreign country.
12
He thinks it madness (
apoplexia
) to want todie a heroic death in war, since heroes and ordinary people are in thesame predicament,
“
for we all live in a city that has no walls againstdeath
”
.
13
The teaching of Philodemus is, like that of Lucretius, full of
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS95
poetic colour and energized by personal feeling, but he shows greatersympathy for human weakness than Lucretius.Indeed, there is no evidence that Lucretius read the work of Philodemus or knew him, and there is strong evidence that he was notinfluenced by him.
14
The four heroes of early Epicureanism wereknown as
“
The Men
”
(
Hoi Andres
): these were Epicurus, Metrodorus,Hermarchus and Polyaenus. They were revered by Philodemus andEpicureans of his time
—
except for Lucretius. He alone revered Epicu-rus exclusively, as man, father and god.Lucretius, then, stood apart from contemporary Epicureans. He doesnot seem to have been concerned with the philosophical debates of histime.
15
When he does attack other schools, his targets are the Aca-demics and Sceptics, but in terms of debates that predated Epicurus.David Sedley (1998) has called him a
“
fundamentalist
”
, that is, onewho revered the texts of the founder of the school.
16
The principal sources for Lucretius
’
Epicurean philosophy, there-fore, are to be found in Epicurus
’
sayings and writings. Until veryrecently it has been assumed that these are the works reproduced byDiogenes Laertius in Book 10 of his
Lives of the Philosophers
. Sedley,however, has argued convincingly for the work
On Nature
(
Peri Phy-seos
) as Lucretius
’
only Epicurean source.
17
This work survives onlyin fragments in the Herculaneum papyri, and Sedley has brilliantlyreconstructed the contents and their relationship to Lucretius
’
poem,which he believes was closely based on the first fifteen of the thirty-seven books of Epicurus
’
work. His second chart (p. 136), shows howLucretius incorporated the doctrines of Epicurus, where he changedtheir order, and where he brought in arguments that do not appear in
On Nature
. The advantages of Sedley
’
s thesis are that Lucretius
’
work appears to be more coherent and consistent, and that the obvious differ-ences between
De Rerum Natura
and the texts given by Diogenes Laer-tius are no longer problematic.Nevertheless, these texts are complete and available to readers of this book, and a review of them will be the most efficient procedure forunderstanding the relationship of Lucretius
’
philosophy to that of Epi-curus. Epicurean doctrine was organized into three categories:
kanon-ike
(logic and epistemology),
physike
(observation of the world andnature), and
ethike
(morality). Diogenes Laertius transcribes three let-ters of Epicurus to his disciples. The
Letter to Herodotus
deals withphysics, and therefore is closest in its material to Lucretius.
18
It con-tains doctrine on atoms and void, the subjects of the first two books of Lucretius and Books 1
–
2 and 5 of
On Nature
;
19
on images and sense-perception, treated in Book 4 of Lucretius and Books 3
–
4 of
On
96THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Nature
;
20
on the nature and mortality of the soul, dealt with in Book 3of Lucretius and Books 6
–
9 of
On Nature
.
21
Lucretius does not dealwith time, the subject of
§§
72
–
73a of the
Letter to Herodotus
andtreated in Book 10 of
On Nature
. (Time does not seem to have been aproblem for Roman philosophers except in so far as they were con-cerned with the immortality of the soul and its relationship to the mor-tal body. The first extended discussion in Latin appears to be in Book 11 of Augustine
’
s
Confessions
.) Epicurus
’
doctrine on properties(colour, etc.) appears in Book 4 of Lucretius and in Book 10 of
On Nature
.
22
The doctrine on other worlds does not appear in Book 5 of Lucretius with the other teachings of Book 12 of
On Nature
, but inBook 2 (corresponding to the
Letter to Herodotus
, 45) as part of thediscussion of atoms and their properties.
23
The doctrine on the originsof civilization takes up the last half of Book 5 of Lucretius andappeared in Book 12 of
On Nature
.
24
The
Letter to Herodotus
focuseson the origins of language, whereas Lucretius
’
discussion is farbroader. Finally, the
Letter to Herodotus
discusses the correct attitudeto the heavenly bodies, showing that inner peace (
ataraxia
) will beachieved if one has knowledge of their physical nature and does notthink or fear that they can affect one
’
s life.
25
The
Letter to Herodotus
closes (
§
83) with an exhortation to Herodotus to learn its doctrines byheart so as to attain calm of mind. This attitude underlies Lucretius
’
discussion of celestial phenomena in Book 6, corresponding to Book 13 of
On Nature
.The
Letter to Herodotus
, then, contains many of the doctrines of Lucretius in summary form, and often in a different order (e.g. the dis-cussions of other worlds in
§§
45 and 73
–
74).
26
Sedley has demon-strated (pp. 138
–
44) why Lucretius went back to the full text of
On Nature
rather than the summary in the
Letter to Herodotus
, which, asEpicurus himself said (
§
83), was to be learned by heart, an impossibil-ity (at least for ordinary human beings) for the reader of the 37 booksof
On Nature
.
27
The second document recorded by Diogenes Laertius is Epicurus
’
Letter to Pythocles
, which deals with celestial phenomena (in Greek,
tameteora
)
28
This material appears in the first half of Book 5 and inBook 6 of Lucretius, corresponding to material in Books 11
–
13 of
On Nature
. Notable is the doctrine on the size of the sun, that it is
“
as greatas it appears to us
”
. This was also the view of Democritus, and it wasridiculed by Cicero.
29
More important is Epicurus
’
reason for studyingcelestial phenomena.
30
Like Herodotus, Pythocles is urged to memo-rize Epicurus
’
doctrine, so as to achieve calm of mind. Here (
§
85) Epi-curus refers to the
Letter to Herodotus
as
“
the short summary
”
(which
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS97
Pythocles is commanded also to learn by heart), a clear indication thatthe full text of
On Nature
was the source of the letters
’
doctrines andtherefore more likely to be the source for Lucretius.The physical doctrines of the first two letters (including elements of the Epicurean theory of knowledge, which belongs properly in the cat-egory of
kanonike
) are means to the ethical goal of happiness achievedthrough peace of mind. This goal is implicit throughout Lucretius
’
poem and it is made explicit in many passages. Thus the ideal of free-dom from anxiety, gained through knowledge of the physical world, iswoven into the texture of the poem. It is not surprising, then, that Epi-curus
’
Letter to Menoeceus
, which deals with ethics, has fewer exactcorrespondences with
De Rerum Natura
than the first two letters, forthere was no need for Lucretius to include a specific segment corre-sponding with the Epicurean category of ethics.
31
The letter beginswith an urgent invitation to study philosophy:Let no one who is young put off studying philosophy, nor let onewho is old be weary of it. For no one is too young or too old forthe health of the soul
…
Therefore both the young and the oldshould study philosophy
…
So it is necessary to give our attentionto the things that bring happiness, since when it is present wehave everything, and when it is absent the goal of all our actionsis to attain it.The spirit of this statement drives Lucretius
’
poem.Epicurus continues with doctrine about the gods, that they exist butthat the common beliefs about them are false. This doctrine isexpanded by Lucretius (perhaps from Book 13 of
On Nature
) in a beau-tiful passage in the introduction to Book 6. Here the gods are happyand good, and the pious human being will perceive the
“
likenesses
”
(
simulacra
) of atoms that flow from them, and so be able to share intheir tranquillity. But if human beings ascribe anger and other humanemotional disturbances to the gods, they will increase their own fearand hinder the attainment of peace of mind.
32
Next, the
Letter to Menoeceus
turns to Epicurean doctrine on death,that it is nothing to us, and that fear of death diminishes the quality of life and the attainment of happiness.
33
Lucretius expands this in thelast part of Book 3, starting with this resounding declaration:Death therefore is nothing to us and concerns us not at all, sincethe nature of the soul is held to be mortal.
98THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The logic of the arguments of Epicurus and Lucretius is consistent withtheir ethical doctrine, for fear of death will lessen pleasure and there-fore be an obstacle to happiness. Yet some Epicureans found this doc-trine too austere, and Philodemus is more sensitive in his recognitionof the human emotions involved in death and bereavement.The
Letter to Menoeceus
then discusses the Epicurean doctrine of desire and pleasure.
34
Epicurus says bluntly:We recognize pleasure as our primary and innate good, and it isthe beginning of every choice and aversion that we make. To itwe return, judging every good with feeling as our criterion.But Epicurus goes on to set limits to pleasure, which is truly the bal-ance between extremes of pain and excess of pleasure, achievedthrough reason (
phronesis
), which he calls
“
more valuable even thanphilosophy
”
(
§
132). Thus the truly pleasurable life is one of modera-tion and virtue. And so the letter concludes with the picture of the vir-tuous man, who honours the gods, does not fear death, and achieveshappiness through reason and virtue, while avoiding pain and mentaldisturbance.
35
If Menoeceus learns these precepts and practises them,he too will be such a man, for, Epicurus concludes:you will live as a god among men. For the man who lives amongimmortal good things is nothing like a mortal being.Lucretius expresses this doctrine in his praises of Epicurus, whoascends from man in Book 1 to god in Book 5.The three Epicurean letters were summaries of Epicurus
’
doctrine,for Epicurus wanted his students to learn his precepts by heart. Moresummary yet are the 40 principles, known as the
Principal Doctrines
(in Greek,
Kyriai Doxai
and abbreviated here as
KD
), which DiogenesLaertius quotes as the
“
colophon
”
(literally,
“
the finishing touch
”
) of his book on Epicurus.
36
The first four of the
KD
are:1that which is blessed and eternal has no troubles and brings notrouble upon others: it is free from anger and favour;2death is nothing to us;3pleasure reaches its full limit in the removal of pain;4pain in the flesh does not last long, and the time when it exceedspleasure is limited.
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS99
These four doctrines were summarized in the famous
“
fourfold rem-edy
”
(
tetrapharmakos
), quoted by Philodemus:
37
God is not to be feared, death is free from anxiety. The good iseasy to attain, the terrible is easy to endure.The
tetrapharmakos
is the basic formula for Epicurean ethics. WhileLucretius does not quote it explicitly, the first pair of maxims is thebasis of his poem: he explains
“
the nature of things
”
in order to provethat the gods should not be feared and that death is nothing to us.Knowledge of the physical world will make attainable the good life,that is, a life free from mental disturbance. Lucretius does not developan argument based on the fourth maxim, but Book 6, which is incom-plete, ends with the terrors of the plague at Athens. He could well haveended by showing that even such a great evil could have been enduredby those who knew Epicurean doctrine, whereas in fact the people of Athens, not being Epicureans, were subject to the fear, terror, panicand divisiveness that he describes.
38
Epicurus next focuses on the individual
’
s relations with society: hesays that one cannot live a pleasant life without being just and virtu-ous.
39
Yet justice is part of the social compact, not an absolute princi-ple.
40
Again, if one can achieve personal security, then the best life isone that is peaceful and withdrawn from the multitude.
41
The mostimportant means to individual security is friendship.
42
These principles are based on the doctrine of
“
living unobtrusively
”
(in Greek,
lathe biosas
, a phrase known from the title of an anti-Epicurean treatise of Plutarch), which obviously conflicts with theStoic ideal of participation in public life and with the Roman ideal of duty to the state (as expressed in Cicero
’
s
Dream of Scipio
and
DeSenectute
). In his account of the development of civilization Lucretiussays:
43
But [i.e. in contrast to the simple life] men wished to be famousand powerful, so that their good fortune might rest on a firmfoundation and that they might be wealthy and lead a peacefullife. In vain! For in the competition to reach the heights of suc-cess they made their journey dangerous, and envy cast themdown from the top
…
So that it is much better to live in peace andobey orders than to wish to control affairs by giving orders andholding supreme power.Lucretius looks more unsparingly at Roman politics of his own time:
44
100THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
How sweet it is, when the winds stir up the sea, to look from theland upon another
’
s struggles! Not because it is a pleasure thatanother should be in distress, but because it is pleasant toobserve from what evils you are free. Sweet it is also to watchthe mighty battles of war, armies drawn up on the battlefields,without yourself sharing in the danger. But nothing is sweeterthan to live in calm and lofty precincts protected by the teachingsof wise men. From them you can look down on others and seehow they wander here and there, aimlessly trying to find a paththrough life. They compete with their abilities, they contend innoble birth, and night and day they struggle to climb to theheights of wealth and power. O unhappy minds of men! O blindhearts! How great the darkness of life and how great the dangerin which you spend your span of life, whatever it is! Do you notsee how nature proclaims that she demands no more than this
—
that pain be kept separate from the body, and that the mind, freefrom fear and anxiety, enjoy the sensation of pleasure?This attitude is not irresponsible hedonism, but rather a reasoned reac-tion to the inhumanities of political life, both at Rome and (in Epicu-rus
’
case) in the Greek city-state. Even the Stoic Zeno, in his
Republic
,had proposed the abolition of the basic institutions of the Greek cityand the establishment of a community of virtuous men and women,who alone were capable of friendship, political association and free-dom.
45
Epicurus suggested that instead of political competition and theenvy, resentment and failure that it involves, society should adopt dif-ferent customs
—
friendship, justice and mutual support. Lucretius rec-ognizes that the Romans of the senatorial class will not withdraw fromexisting political institutions (such as elections, magistracies and otherpublic offices), and so he falls back on the ethical doctrines of Epicu-rus, particularly the principle of pleasure (and its corollary, the avoid-ance of pain). To participate in political life is to invite disturbance of the mind: power is an illusory goal, for it is followed by envy and(often) failure. Much better, then, to seek to attain calm of mindthrough the avoidance of pain, and to seek a place in society throughfriendship.
46
The doctrine of
lathe biosas
undercuts the very foundations of theGreek city-state and of Roman political life. Yet, in Rome, Epicureanssuch as Cicero
’
s friend, Atticus, took a prominent and productive partin the life of the community without seeking political office. Some,like Cassius, reasoned that it was necessary to participate in the politi-cal struggle, because refusal to participate would be a greater evil for
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS101
the community and would bring greater mental pain to the individualthan involvement.
47
L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus was obligated byfamily tradition and noble ancestry to take a prominent part in publiclife, without abandoning Epicurean principles.
48
Moreover, friendship,in both the Greek and Roman worlds, had political connotations. Here,for example, is part of the introduction to Aristotle
’
s discussion of friendship.
49
Friendship seems also to keep cities together, and lawgivers aremore concerned about it than about justice. For harmony(
homonoia
) appears to be like friendship in some way, and thelawgivers make it their chief goal and most of all they drive outdiscord, as bringing enmity. And those who are friends do notneed justice, while those who are just need friendship.Friendship (
amicitia
) was a feature of Roman political life and,through the institution of clientship, it was an important element inameliorating the inequalities of class distinctions. Lucretius, then, forall the potency of his satire, is following Epicurus (who himself mighthave known Aristotle
’
s
Nicomachean Ethics
) in suggesting not merelyindividual quietism, but rather an alternative way of interacting withsociety.The
Kyriai Doxai
focus also on celestial phenomena (Greek,
mete-ora
, the subject of the
Letter to Pythocles
). These are listed as objectsof fear (along with death and pain), which can be removed by the studyof the physical world.
50
If one knows the nature of the universe, thenone can be rid of fear and enjoy pleasure; similarly, individual securityis unattainable if one is afraid because of
“
things that exist above ourheads and under the earth and in the whole infinite [universe]
”
.
51
These doctrines are especially prominent in Books 3 and 6 of Lucretius, and the principle of
“
knowing the nature of the universe
”
isthe foundation of his poem.Epicurus lays down criteria for pleasure and desire and their oppo-sites, pain and aversion.
52
These principles were expressed more fullyin the
Letter to Menoeceus
(127b
–
32), where
phronesis
(reason) isgiven a higher place than philosophy in establishing the equilibriumbetween pleasure and pain. Epicurus shows in both the
Kyriai Doxai
and the
Letter to Menoeceus
that the greatest pleasure is achievedthrough reason and by living a simple life. In technical terms, suchpleasure is
“
static
”
, whereas physical experiences that stimulate plea-sure (eating, sexual activity and other sensual experiences) involvemovement.
53
Epicurus says that some desires are physical and neces-
102THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
sary (for example, for food and clothing); some are physical and unnec-essary (for example, for luxury or sexual pleasure); some neither physi-cal nor necessary.
54
The third category should be suppressed; the first,being necessary, must be satisfied, but simply, and the second requiresthe exercise of reason. Epicurus clearly subordinates
“
kinetic
”
to
“
static
”
pleasure, following the lead of Plato
’
s satirical discussion of pleasure in the
Gorgias
. There Socrates likens a life in which pleasureshave to be continuously renewed to filling a jar that is full of holes.
55
So Lucretius uses the myth of the Danaids as a parable for those
“
whocan never be filled with the joys of life
”
.
56
Elsewhere he says that Epi-curus
“
understood that the container [i.e. the human body] was leakyand full of holes, so that it never could be filled
”
, and so
“
he set a limitto desire
”
.
57
Lucretius expounds this doctrine in several other passages,for example:
58
But if anyone would guide his life by true reason, [he wouldlearn that] it is great riches for a man to live sparingly and withmind untroubled, for never can one be poor for lack of a little.Thus the principle of pleasure (the most controversial element of Epi-curean philosophy) is found rather to involve reason and moderation,the same qualities as those taught by other philosophies.Our survey of Epicurean doctrines has been a long but necessarypreparation for discussion of the text of Lucretius
’
poem. The poem isa little over 7,400 lines long and its six books are arranged in threepairs. The first two books deal with atoms and void; the next pair dealwith the soul and death (Book 3) and thought and sense-perception,ending with a diatribe on sexual passion (Book 4). Books 5 and 6 dealwith the universe, first the mortality of the world, then the origins of the world and celestial bodies, followed by the origins of civilizationand its progress (Book 5). Book 6 is concerned with celestial and mete-orological phenomena and ends with a description of the plague of 431
–
429 BCE in Athens, which is based on Thucydides.
59
The poemmay be complete as it stands, but it is probable that Lucretius wouldhave drawn the moral from the human despair caused by the plague.
60
He would have needed to add a few lines saying that if the Athenianshad been able to follow the doctrines of Epicurus (praised at the begin-ning of Book 6 as the greatest gift of Athens to human beings), theywould not have been troubled and would not have behaved as they did.But the plague struck nearly a century before the birth of Epicurus, andso the Athenians then were trapped in the moral and mental darknessthat Epicurus dispelled by his philosophy.
61
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS103
If we suppose that the poem as we have it is complete, it ends withfunerals, just as the
Iliad
had ended with the funeral of Hector. In addi-tion, the abrupt ending, with disease, death and cremation, is a power-ful contrast with the opening hymn to Venus. These arguments are,however, literary, and the thesis that the poem is incomplete is moreconsistent with the focus on Epicurus and his doctrine.There are two other places where there is evidence of lack of revi-sion or incompleteness. The proem to Book 4 contains two versions of the programmatic introduction to the discussion of
“
images of things
”
(
rerum simulacra
), that is the effluences of atoms that stream off thesurface of objects and are perceived by us. In the first version (4. 45
–
53) Lucretius is trying to find the right Latin term for the Greek word
eidola
: he uses
simulacra
(likenesses),
membranae
and
cortex
(bark).In the second passage (4. 26
–
44) he keeps
simulacra
, and the efflu-ences are now
“
like membranes
”
, which then are developed into a sim-ile. He no longer uses
“
bark
”
as an equivalent of
eidolon
, instead keep-ing it as the outer surface of an object from which the effluencesflow.
62
Thus we can see him refining his language from the first ver-sion, which would have been removed in the final revision.The second piece of evidence for incompleteness is at 5. 155, whereLucretius promises that he will discuss the homes and bodies of thegods
“
at great length
”
, a promise that he did not fulfil. Here, as in theproem to Book 4, the inconsistency is hardly important in consideringthe poem as a whole.The structure of the poem proceeds from the microcosm, through thehuman experience, to the macrocosm, although the ending returns tothe human experience, appropriately, given the underlying purpose of the poem, which is to remove the fear of death. Within each pair of books there is a movement from the general (atoms and void in Book 1; the soul and mortality in Book 3; the world in Book 5) to particularphenomena (properties of atoms in Book 2; perception and sensation inBook 4; celestial phenomena and the plague in Book 6). If we dividethe poem into two halves of three books each, then death is the climac-tic subject of each half: a resounding denial of its power over the fol-lowers of Epicurus in Book 3, and in Book 6 a dramatic portrayal of citizens rendered divided and dysfunctional by death in the absence of the doctrines of Epicurus.To have organized the teachings of Epicurus into a coherent epicpoem (for the epithet
“
didactic
”
totally fails to do justice to the lofti-ness and power of the poem) was in itself a great achievement.Lucretius, however, changed the traditional Epicurean method simplyby returning to poetry, the medium of several of the pre-Socratic Greek
104THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
philosophers. This meant that he had to take material written in Greek prose (that was more often than not difficult) and present it in the hex-ameter, a medium more appropriate for the Greek epic language of Homer and Apollonius or the philosophical poems of Empedocles andParmenides, than for the less flexible Latin language. This he had to dowith a vocabulary that was at best limited and more often non-existent.We have just seen how he set about finding the right word for theGreek
eidola
, and he is as inventive as Cicero in developing a vocabu-lary, as he does, for example, with the Greek
atoma
(
“
things whichcannot be cut
”
). Five Latin equivalents occur in an early passage.
63
I shall begin to teach you about the highest system of the heav-ens and the gods, and I shall explain beginnings of things (
rerun primordia
)
…
which in giving our account we call matter (
mater-ies
) and creative bodies for things (
genitalia corpora
), and weusually call them the seeds of things (
semina rerum
), and we usethe term
“
first bodies
”
(
corpora prima
), because from them asthe first things all things are constituted.Lucretius did not underestimate the problem of vocabulary. In theintroduction to the first book he says:
64
I know full well how hard it is to bring into light in Latin poetrythe dark discoveries of the Greeks, especially when I mustexplain many things in new words, because of the poverty of thelanguage and the novelty of the subject.But by the beginning of the second half of the poem he exults in hispioneering achievement:
65
I journey through the trackless regions of the Muses, neverbefore trodden by human feet. I delight in approachinguntouched springs and drinking from them. I delight in pickingnew flowers and gathering for my head a glorious wreath fromflowers that the Muses have never before used to garland [apoet
’
s] head. First, because I teach about great matters and my journey
’
s goal is to untie the tight knots of superstition. Second,because my poem, bathed in light, illuminates so dark a theme,and I touch everything with the Muses
’
charm.The joy and confidence of the passage is largely expressed through itspoetic metaphors (eight in nine lines), and it leads to an extended sim-
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS105
ile (lines 11
–
25) likening his poetry to the honey that parents smear onthe cup to help their children drink nasty-tasting medicine, while it isimplied that Memmius will be healed (another metaphor) once helearns the nature of things.Vocabulary and metaphor were not simply literary matters. In the
Letter to Herodotus
38, Epicurus says that Herodotus must primarily
“
understand the underlying meaning of words
”
, so as to have a crite-rion by which to test opinions and impressions. For, he says, he mustconsider the first meaning (Greek,
ennoema
) of each word, which mustbe clear and need no proof. This doctrine is closely connected with thedoctrine of sense-perceptions (explained in the next lines of
§
38),which for the Epicureans are true.
66
Lucretius says,
67
“
therefore whatis perceived by the senses at any time is true
”
. Just as we perceive theeffluences of atoms flowing from the surface of an object, so the efflu-ences of atoms of words (spoken or written) give the reader or hearerthe true meaning.
68
Therefore precise vocabulary and accuratemetaphorical writing are essential for the teacher. If we apply this doc-trine to Lucretius, we can see that his vocabulary, and, still more, hismarvellously vivid metaphors and similes, are essential elements bothin his poetry and in his philosophy. Don Fowler has explained the mat-ter admirably.
69
Poet and philosopher must make the reader
see
…
The effect is arecontextualization of both the traditional devices of poetry andthe basic elements of Epicurean epistemology, particularly the
“
first image
”
(
prolepsis
) associated with each word, the basis forlive metaphor. The complexity and precision of Lucretius
’
imagery
…
is thus also an aspect of his role as philosopher andscientist.Sedley points out that
“
[Lucretius] floods his poem with Greek words,but avoids them in the course of doctrinal exposition
”
.
70
This, too, isanother facet of the importance of the first impression of a word. If thedoctrines of Epicurus are to be rightly understood by a Roman audi-ence, then the vocabulary must be precise and Roman. Lucretius usesGreek words to refer to Greek ideas that he rejects. Thus at 1. 884 (asingularly unpoetic line) he says:
“
now let us examine the
homoeome-ria
of Anaxagoras
”
. Anaxagoras
’
theory that
“
parts are similar to thewhole
”
is left with its Greek term, because it and the theory that itdenotes are inconsistent with both Latin language and Epicurean doc-trine. Often Lucretius deliberately uses a Greek word precisely becauseof its difference from Latin. In the description of the Trojan War there
106THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
are five Greek names, one non-Latin portmanteau-word for
“
sons of the Greeks
”
(
Graiugenarum
), and one Greek epithet for the woodenhorse,
durateus
. Although there is a Latin word for
“
wooden
”
(
ligneus
), Lucretius chose to transliterate the Greek word, preciselybecause it was Greek and was part of a Greek myth.
71
Again, in argu-ing for the universality of innate powers in animals, he uses the phrase
catuli pantherarum scymnique leonum
(
“
panther kittens and lioncubs
”
).
72
The word
catuli
is Latin, but the Greek word
pantherarum
refers to animals from distant parts of the world, strange to Italy. Hecould have used the regular word for lion-cubs (
catuli
) but instead hedeliberately uses the Greek word
skymnoi
(Latinized as
scymni
). Thebilingual vocabulary confirms his point, that the phenomenon of innatepowers is universal. Finally, in comparing himself to Epicurus, hesays:
73
Why should the swallow (
hirundo
) compete with swans (
cycnis
),or what power would kids (
haedi
) have with their tremblinglimbs in running compared with the mighty strength of the horse(
fortis equi vis
)?He himself in these similes is signified by Latin words (
hirundo
,
haedi
), but Epicurus by a Greek word (
cycnus
: the Latin word for aswan is
olor
) and a Greek epic expression (
“
strength of a horse
”
for
“
horse
”
). So the point is made, that Lucretius, the Latin poet, is bring-ing Greek doctrine into Latin poetry.We return now to the structure of the poem. Each book is precededby an introductory passage. The first proem is both the longest and themost complex. It begins with an epic invocation, addressing Venus as
Aeneadum genetrix hominum divumque voluptas
(
“
Mother of the sonsof Aeneas, the pleasure of men and gods
”
). The vocabulary is Greek (
Aeneadum
) and Latin; the content is political (Venus, through her sonAeneas, as origin of the Roman race) and philosophical (
voluptas
, anallusion to Epicurean
hedone
) and allusive (invocation of a divine fig-ure, as in the first lines of the Homeric epics and the
Annales
of Ennius). This leads to a hymn and prayer to Venus as the origin of lifeand of the variety of the universe and its powers of procreation; Venus,too, as the bringer of peace, the lover and tamer of Mars, god of war.Venus, therefore, is the appropriate source for Lucretius
’
poem on
“
thebeginnings of things, from which nature creates all things
”
.
74
Theproem then continues with praise of Epicurus; an attack on the evils of religion and superstition; and warnings to Memmius (Lucretius
’
patron
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS107
and dedicatee) against trusting in religious stories; finally, the poet
’
scomplaint about the difficulty of expressing himself in Latin poetry.
75
This splendid introduction is problematic. Why should a poet whowill demolish traditional myths and beliefs about the gods begin with ahymn to one of those very gods? How can he ask for the interventionof a god in human affairs, when Epicurean theology expressly deniedthis possibility? The most persuasive answer is that of Sedley, that
“
theproem
…
is, and is meant to be recognized as, an imitation of the proemto Empedocles
’
physical poem
”
.
76
Just as Empedocles had been thegreat Greek poet
—
philosopher of Nature (his major
—
or only
—
poemwas titled
On Nature
), so Lucretius will be the Roman philosopher
—
poet of Nature. Just as Empedocles had appealed to Aphrodite (compa-rable to the Roman Venus), so Lucretius will appeal to Venus. Empe-docles had based his theory of cosmic cycles on the conflict betweenLove and Strife, so Lucretius will bring about a resolution of the con-flicts caused by mental and psychological distress through the philoso-phy of Epicurus. Not that Lucretius follows Empedocles uncritically.He says that Sicily produced no one more distinguished, and that hispoetry came from a
“
god-like heart
”
and made him seem to be
“
hardlyborn of human stock
”
, yet Lucretius attacks him for his pluralism.
77
Whatever solutions scholars have proposed for the problems raisedby the proem, the power of this opening has struck its readers in allages.
78
As the proem to an epic poem on philosophy, it announcesLucretius
’
philosophical and literary allegiances: Epicurus is thesource of his philosophy; Empedocles is his guide for a poem on thenature of things.Four of Lucretius
’
six proems sing the praises of Epicurus, and thosefor Books 1, 3 and 5 each preface a two-book segment. In the first (1.62
–
79) Epicurus is
“
a Man of Greece
”
, whose intellect passed beyondthe bounds of the universe and, through knowledge, gave men thepower to crush religion and make them equal to the gods. Poetry andphilosophy are wonderfully interwoven in this passage:
79
When human life lay on the ground in full view, a nasty sight,crushed by the weight of Religion, which showed her face fromheaven, fearsome to see, threatening mortals
—
then first a Manof Greece dared to raise mortal eyes in defiance and to resist her.Him neither tales of the gods nor lightning nor the sky withthreatening thunder could keep down. Instead, all the more didthey stimulate the keen courage of his spirit to be eager to burstthrough the confining bars of the gates of nature. Therefore thelively power of his mind triumphed, and he passed far beyond
108THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
the fiery walls of the universe (
flammantia moenia mundi
) andtravelled through the whole of boundless space in mind and intel-lect. Thence as victor he brings us report of what can come intobeing and what cannot, what are the limits to the power of eachthing and where is its deep-fixed boundary marker. Thus Reli-gion in its turn is crushed beneath our feet, and his victory makesus equal to heaven.Lucretius later shows how the tranquillity of the gods can be shared bythe human being who correctly perceives their nature.
80
Epicurus wassaid to have been exceptionally pious and not at all an atheist, andLucretius directs his criticism at false impressions of the gods, spreadby the traditional tales of mythology and perpetuated by human fearand superstition. As an example of this he tells the story of Iphigenia, acentral myth of the human dilemma between personal obligations andambitions, between personal preferences and the demands of societyand religion. The daughter,
“
sinfully butchered by her father
—
all forthe happy and auspicious departure of the fleet
”
, is the tragic exampleof the evils of religion. Lucretius concludes (1. 101):
“
such were theevils which religion had the power to suggest
”
.
81
Lucretius then turns to address Memmius, for he, too, may feel
“
ter-ror and darkness of the mind
”
, which Lucretius will dispel by
“
a sur-vey and reasoned discussion of nature
”
.
82
And this leads into his epic(a suitable term for
this
didactic poem), which he places in the traditionof the great epic teachers of Greece and Rome, Homer and Ennius.
83
The poet
’
s first lesson will be about the first beginnings, and the firstprinciple is
“
nothing can ever come into being from nothing by thegods
’
agency
”
. Second, that nothing can dissipate into nothing, andnothing can be destroyed. Third, the nature of things consists of atomsand void.
84
These three lessons are basic to Lucretius
’
doctrine, which derivesfrom Epicurus and ultimately from the fifth-century BCE Greek atom-ists, Leucippus and Democritus. He presents each lesson briefly anddogmatically, and then supports the argument with examples, fromwhich he deduces the inevitability of his conclusions. An understand-ing of the structure of the physical world will lead to an understandingof the true nature of the fears, superstitions and psychological distur-bances that make life unnecessarily difficult for those who are ignorantof the teachings of Epicurus. Lucretius punctuates his discussion withthe proem to Book 2 (quoted above). Acting on the principle of
“
smear-ing honey on the cup
”
(4. 10
–
13), he keeps before Memmius the ethi-cal purpose of his teaching, which he relates to the political and social
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS109
world of Memmius. He then returns to atomic doctrine. First heteaches about the forming of material objects from atoms and their dis-solution, about their motion, their shapes and compounds, their lack of colour and other secondary qualities.
85
A famous variation from Epicu-rus
’
extant teaching on the movements of atoms is the passage on the
“
swerve
”
(
clinamen
) of atoms in their downward progress, which mayhave been part (now lost) of Epicurus
’
On Nature
. It is a third causefor the movement of atoms, the first two being
“
blows
”
(i.e. impact of other atoms) and the second
“
weight
”
(i.e. gravity). The
“
swerve
”
isneeded to account for the conjunction of atoms to form objects:for if they did not usually swerve, all things would fall down-wards through the deep void, like drops of rain. No collisionwould be brought into being and no blow would come into beingfor atoms. Thus Nature would never have created anything.Lucretius extends this to the freedom of the human will. If there wereno
“
swerve
”
, then the chain of causation would extend inexorablywithout variation. But the
clinamen
allows the human will to go wherepleasure leads it, and allows human beings to proceed
“
where our mindcarries us
”
. This is possible in Epicurean doctrine, because of the mate-rialist explanation of all things, including motions of the mind.Lucretius concludes:But that the mind in itself may not have some interior compul-sion in all actions, that it may not be compelled, like somethingthat has been conquered, to bear and to suffer
—
this is achievedby the tiny swerve of first things in no pre-ordained place at nopre-ordained time.After the discussion of motion and properties of atoms, Lucretius com-pletes Book 2 by considering the infinite possibilities of unions of atoms when their present formations are dissipated, since matter can-not be destroyed.
86
For there is no limit to the void, and therefore thereneed be no limit to the creation of worlds other than our own.Lucretius ends his two books on physics with the old farmer, worn outby a lifetime
’
s labour, facing death and grumbling,
“
for he does notremember that all things gradually waste away and go to the grave (
ad capulum
) wearied by old ages long extent of life
”
. Thus the way is pre-pared for Book 3 and its climactic discussion of death.Noticeable also is the way in which Lucretius introduces the discus-sion on the infinity of worlds by returning to the ideas of creative
110THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Nature that so brightly coloured the Hymn to Venus at the beginningof the poem.
87
The component atoms in nature go through their cycleof creation and decay: so, too, human beings, and the world of natureand other worlds, must expect that the constitution of their materialatoms must in time be dissipated to form new individuals and newworlds.The proem to Book 3 begins with praise of Epicurus, expressed withgratitude, reverence and awe, in sublime poetry.
88
The theme of thebook is darkness and light
—
the darkness of ignorance and superstition,the light of knowledge and freedom from fear. So Epicurus is the firstto bring such light: he is
“
the glory of the Greek race
”
, and Lucretiuswill follow him, being as a swallow to a swan, or a kid to a horse. Epi-curus, who in Book 1 was
“
a Man of Greece
”
, is now
“
father, the dis-coverer of things, the giver of a father
’
s precepts
”
, and Lucretius willfeed on his
“
golden sayings
”
as bees feed on flowers. Lucretius
’
lineson the effect of Epicurus
’
teaching are central to an understanding of the nature of his poem and his own inspiration:For as soon as your philosophy, springing from your godlikemind, began to proclaim the nature of things, the terrors of themind disperse, the walls of the universe are parted, I see theworkings of the world throughout the void. I see the majesty of the gods in their tranquil homes
…
Nature, indeed, supplies[them] with everything, nor does anything diminish their peaceof mind at any time. On the other hand, the regions of Acheron[the Underworld] cannot be seen
…
At these things [i.e. the teach-ings of Epicurus] a godlike pleasure and a shudder of awe takeshold of me, because through your power nature is revealed soclearly and unveiled in every part.This is the heart of the matter. Not only does Lucretius revere Epicurusas a father, but he experiences a religious transformation, whichreveals to him the truth about the nature of the universe and of humanlife and death, and leads him to follow with an enthusiasm that is likethe
“
holy rapture
”
(the phrase is E.J.Kenney
’
s) of a devotee of thegods. But the Epicurean gods are tranquil and their peace of mind iscomplete. Lucretius
’
readers, too, will experience such tranquillity if they understand his teachings.The primary purpose of the poet
’
s teaching is to remove the fear of death from the minds of human beings. Such fear is the opposite of theinner and outer peace that the doctrines of Epicurus have revealed. Therest of the proem (31
–
93), therefore, turns directly to the fear of death.
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS111
Lucretius shows how this fear motivates men
’
s attitudes to life, in par-ticular their superstitions, their ambitions, crimes and envy, which leadthem to disregard morality in their relations with other human beings.They are like children in the dark (87
–
88), and Lucretius concludeswith a return to the opening theme of darkness and light (91
–
93):Therefore this terror of the mind and darkness must be dispelled,not by the rays of the sun nor by the bright shafts of daylight, butby observing nature and by reason.This elaborate proem encompasses and anticipates the themes of Book 3. Lucretius will show why death should not be feared. He has alreadyexplained the atomic composition of the exterior world; now he willexplain the composition of the human mind (
animus
) and soul, or moreaccurately
“
spirit
”
(
amnia
), which are material, consisting of atoms.
89
The distinction between
animus
and
anima
(Greek
nous
and
psyche
respectively), which is clear in Greek, was blurred by Democritus andEpicurus. Democritus, according to Aristotle, said that
“
they are thesame
”
, referring (so later authors show) to their atomic composition.Both he and Epicurus said that the soul consisted of two parts, respec-tively reasoning and unreasoning, which were structurally identical. Atany rate, it is the union of mind and spirit with the body that makeshuman life possible. Since they came into being with the body, theywill dissipate when the body dies: they, therefore, are mortal.
90
If theydie, then our existence comes to an end with their dissolution. Death,therefore, is nothing to fear; the myths of the Underworld and its tor-ments hold no terrors for us, and we can achieve happiness by accept-ing our mortality.
91
This bald summary does not do justice to the impassioned rhetoricof the poet. After giving twenty-nine proofs of the mortality of thesoul, he begins his conclusion, that death is not to be feared, by quot-ing Epicurus:
“
Death therefore is nothing to us.
”
He continues:
92
[Death] does not concern us at all, since the nature of the mind(
animus
) is considered to be mortal. And just as in times past weperceived no ill when the Carthaginians came from all sides tofight, when all things, shuddering in the trembling tumult of war,shook beneath the lofty realms of the upper air, and it was doubt-ful under which of the two [namely, Carthaginians or Romans]all things would be subjected on land and sea
—
so, when we nolonger exist, when the dissolution of body and soul (from whoseunion we are brought into existence), nothing, I say, will be able
112THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
to happen to us at all, for we will not then exist, nothing will beable to affect our senses
—
not even if earth were mixed with seaand sea with sky.I quote this splendid passage without changing Lucretius
’
punctuation,remembering how the
“
first impression
”
of the spoken or written wordis important in Epicurean theory. The enormous period builds up tooverwhelm the hearer with the certainty that no mass of historical orcosmic calamities can affect us after our death. The recall of the crisisof the second Punic war
—
the most traumatic historical event in theRoman people
’
s collective psyche in Lucretius
’
time
—
gives the pas-sage an immediacy for Roman hearers that would have been lackinghad Lucretius followed Epicurus in every word. The rest of the book ishardly necessary after this ringing affirmation. Nevertheless, in theremaining lines Lucretius proves the foolishness of clinging to life outof fear of death, and the folly of believing the myths of the Underworldand its punishments.Yet we must ask if his rigorously logical demonstration is adequateto parry the reality of untimely death and bereavement. We rememberthe humane sympathy of Philodemus, which we contrast withLucretius
’
satirical mockery of those who mourn the dead:
93
No more, no more will your happy home welcome you, nor yourexcellent wife, nor your lovely children running to get your kissfirst and touching your heart with silent pleasure. You will not beable to prosper by your deeds and protect your family.
“
Miser-able man
”
, they say,
“
one hateful day has taken from you miser-ably all the rewards of life
”
.Lucretius drily points out that none of this matters to the dead man,who can feel nothing. Yet even Epicurus said that
“
the wise man willgrieve
”
.
94
We all must die: Epicurus himself died. How then can wehesitate to face death?In a way Lucretius has completed his task by proving that knowl-edge of the
“
nature of things
”
will rid people of the fear of death. Nev-ertheless, he still has not expounded Epicurean doctrine on sensationand thought, or on cosmic and meteorological matters. While they arenot now essential for dispelling the fear of death
—
for Lucretius hasalready completed this task
—
they are a necessary part of a completeexposition of the nature of things. So in Book 4 Lucretius turns fromthe universal human experience of death to the particular experiencesof sensation: vision (26
–
521), the other senses (522
–
721), thought and
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS113
dreams (722
–
822). Before starting on this part of the book he pauses toproclaim his poetic mission in the service of philosophy.
95
The poetleads his hearers through trackless places and his poetry will grip theirminds, enabling them
“
to perceive the whole nature of things and beaware of its usefulness
”
.With this reminder he returns to the human mind
(animus),
whosecomposition and mortality had been such a large part of the doctrine of the third book. In the later preface (4. 26
–
44), which replaced the origi-nal one, he says:
96
now I will begin to discuss for you a subject that strongly con-cerns these matters [i.e. the nature of the
animus
], that there existthings that we call the
“
likenesses
”
of things (
rerum simulacra
).The
simulacra
are the underlying concept of the first part of thebook.
97
We have seen how in the original preface Lucretius tried differ-ent equivalents for the Greek word
eidola
, finally settling on
simulacra
(likenesses) as the best Latin equivalent. The discussion is in partabout physics, that is, the physical nature of the atoms that form
simu-lacra
, but it even more concerns the processes of knowledge, belong-ing to the Epicurean category of
kanonike
. The
simulacra
are films oreffluences of very fine atoms flowing from the surface of objects andresulting in the perceiver
’
s sense-perception. Although Lucretiusdevotes most space to the sense of sight (26
–
521), the doctrine isequally valid for the other senses (522
–
721). Thus the atomic physicsof the first two books are proved to be valid also for individual humanexperience, and sense-perception is shown to have a material basis.Lucretius then turns to processes of thought (722
–
822), for which hegives the same materialist explanation. Like Gilbert Ryle in the twenti-eth century, he dismisses the notion of
“
the mind in the machine
”
.Thought is caused by exceedingly fine
simulacra
, whether of thingsperceived that become the objects of thought, or of things imagined(for example, centaurs). Even dreams can be explained in this way, apassage where Lucretius
’
doctrine of the
“
latent image
”
uncannilyanticipates Freud
’
s theories of the unconscious.
98
Lucretius next turns to the effect of the
simulacra
on the perceiver,thinker or dreamer. First, he refutes teleological explanations of func-tions of parts of the human body (i.e. that they were created for a pur-pose), since to suppose, for example, that the eyes were created for thepurpose of seeing, is to suppose an intelligent creator (823
–
57). Thenhe shows how desire and will are motivated by sense-impressions,including those perceived in sleep (877
–
1036). The final example,
114THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
erotic dreams (1030
–
36), leads into the last topic of the book, the stimu-lation of love and sexual desire by
simulacra
(1037
–
1287). In thisextraordinary diatribe Lucretius moves beyond his primary task of expounding Epicurean doctrine, for his descriptions of lust, love andthe physical aspect of sexual activity are as satirical as they are philo-sophical. Nevertheless, their purpose is consistent with Epicurus
’
doc-trine that pleasure is best experienced in moderation.
99
Lucretiusreturns to this theme in Book 5 and in his praise of Epicurus at 6. 25,where Epicurus
“
set a limit to desire
”
.
100
It is left now for Lucretius to turn to the world, the origins anddevelopment of life and human civilization, and cosmic phenomena,which occupy the rest of the poem as far as 6. 1089. Like Books 1 and3, Book 5 opens with praise of Epicurus, now honoured as a god:
101
For if we must speak as the majesty of the subject
…
requires, hewas a god, Memmius, a god, who first discovered the philosophyof life, which now we call wisdom, and who through his skillraised life from such great waves and such deep darkness, andset it in so tranquil and so bright a light.Epicurus is a greater benefactor of human beings than the gods whotaught them skills of agriculture, greater then Hercules, who rid theworld of so many terrifying monsters. Monsters, says Lucretius, stillare numerous in the forests and mountains, and we are able to avoidthem. But how can we avoid the equally terrifying monsters of ourinner disturbances? Only the doctrines of Epicurus can conquerdesires, anxieties, fears and the other things that prevent a tranquil life.That is why he should be numbered with the gods.This extraordinary proem looks back to the mental disturbances of lust and love exposed in Book 4, and forward to discussion of the Epi-curean gods, promised (but not realized) at 5. 155. Lucretius, however,now will turn to the world and prove its mortality, for that which isborn must perish (5. 64
–
66). He shows that it is composed of atomsand not created by the gods (91
–
508), and then he turns to the heav-enly bodies, the motions of the stars and the planets and their relation-ship to the earth (509
–
770). As Bailey observes,
“
the astronomical sec-tion is difficult to understand and to follow
”
, and it interrupts thesequence of discussion of the world and of life on earth. Sedley hasplausibly suggested that Lucretius was following the order of topics inEpicurus
’
On Nature
and that he would in a final revision have trans-ferred this section to the end of Book 5, where it would lead naturallyto the discussion of celestial phenomena in Book 6. Certainly the gods
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS115
are more prominent in the programmatic lines of Book 5, and Sedleyagain is plausible in suggesting that
“
the final pair [of books] was des-tined to have
…
the function of dispelling the fear of god
”
.
102
At any rate, the astronomical section is followed by the history of life on earth: first, the origin of life and evolution and survival orextinction of species of animals.
103
The doctrine of the survival of species (855
–
77) is again a remarkable anticipation of modern theo-ries, and the joyously poetical account of the origin of life (783
–
820)recalls the hymn to Venus in the proem to Book 1. Lucretius, even if he says that Earth is rightly called
“
Mother Earth
”
(821
–
22), is stillfollowing Epicurean doctrine in denying any role to a creator or to thefigures of traditional mythology.The rest of the book is taken up with a history of human society,which Kenney has called
“
Lucretius
’
greatest intellectual and imagina-tive achievement
”
.
104
Epicurus spends very little time on this subject inthe
Letter to Herodotus
(
§§
75
–
76), and it is likely that Lucretius
’
source was book 12 of
On Nature
. He proceeds methodically from thelife of primitive human beings (925
–
1010), to the development of civi-lization (the origins of family and community life and law, 1011
–
27;of language, 1028
–
90; of fire, 1091
–
1104; the rise of kings and thedesire for wealth, 1105
–
60; the rise of religion and superstition, 1161
–
1240; warfare, 1241
–
1349; the arts of peace
—
clothing, agriculture,music, 1350
–
1411; finally, the progress of civilization, 1412
–
57).This is an extraordinary passage. Its broad yet detailed treatment of history recalls Posidonius, but in its poetic intensity it is unique.Lucretius keeps before us the purpose of his poem, to bring tranquillityof mind through knowledge. Thus he comments on the futility of politi-cal ambition;
105
and he attacks wrong religion and superstition:
106
O unhappy race of human beings! To assign such deeds to thegods and add to them their bitter anger! What groans did those[early mortals] bring to birth for themselves then, what woundsfor us, what tears for our descendants! It is not piety at all to beseen often turning with veiled head to a stone, or to approachevery altar, or to lie prostrate on the ground and stretch out one
’
shands before the shrines of the gods, or to shower the altars withthe blood of four-footed animals, or to make a linked chain of prayers. No! [Piety is] rather to be able to look on everythingwith a mind at peace.Or again, on the death of primitive human beings, Lucretius shows that
116THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
the pain and horror were real enough for beings who were ignorant of the consolations of philosophy:
107
For one by one they would be caught and become living food forwild beasts to chew. Each [victim] would fill the forests andmountains and woods with his groans, as he saw his livingentrails buried in a living tomb [i.e. the wild beast]. But thosewho escaped with mutilated body would later hold their trem-bling hands over the cruel wounds and call on Death with fright-ening shrieks, until the savage agony robbed them of life, help-less and not knowing what their wounds needed.The horrifying description of primitive death has its counterpart in thedeaths by plague that end the sixth book.Book 6 begins with praise of Athens and its greatest gift tohumankind, Epicurus.
108
The proem is linked to the history of the riseof civilization at the end of Book 5, for Lucretius says that Epicurussaw that, even after civilization had advanced to its highest level inAthens, human beings were still afflicted with anxiety. And so his doc-trine purified their minds, put an end to their mental disturbances, andshowed the way to the highest good.Lucretius then turns to the first main theme of the book, celestial andmeteorological phenomena, followed by the second theme, terrestrialphenomena.
109
In the preliminary sketch of his subject (43
–
95) heespecially warns his readers against attributing celestial phenomena tothe gods. Thunder, lightning and storms can be explained rationally,without recourse to the gods. Here the poet takes aim not only at super-stition in general but specifically at Roman religious practice, in whichthe rituals for divining or exorcizing violent meteorological eventswere precisely prescribed:
110
I must come to grips with the system in the heavens and on earth,and I must tell in my poetry of storms and bright lightning. Imust tell how they act and what cause brings them into being,lest you hurry in fear mindlessly to quarter the sky and ask fromwhich quarter flying came the lightning flash, or to which quar-ter it turned as it left, or how it passed through walled enclosuresand how it passed from them after taking possession.Lucretius uses the technical vocabulary of augury. The Roman ritualwas inherited from the Etruscans, who divided the sky into sixteenparts (a number obtained by twice doubling the four original quarters)
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS117
so as to have a factual basis on which to make their divination.Lucretius develops his argument later in the book.
111
It is similar toCicero
’
s attack on the Stoics
’
support for divination from lightning,where Cicero explicitly approves of Epicurean doctrine.
112
The matterwas not just theoretical, for it had practical political consequences:political processes (e.g. elections or legislation) could be postponed orcancelled if lightning was observed. In a celebrated abuse of religiousritual, Bibulus, Julius Caesar
’
s opponent and colleague in the consul-ship of 59, perpetually
“
observed the heavens
”
to obstruct Caesar
’
slegislation. Lucretius exploits the ironies: experts on divination areconsidered to be knowledgeable, but their knowledge is based on thefalse premises that the gods exist and that the lightning is an expres-sion of their will, which must be divined by the experts. Of course,only Epicurus had true knowledge, which Lucretius expounds so as torid his Roman hearers of their fear of the power of the gods:
113
This is how to understand the real nature of fiery lightning and tosee with what energy it acts, and not, by reading in vain the rollsof Etruscan formulae, [attempt to] learn the will of the gods.The second major section of Book 6, on terrestrial phenomena, con-sists of a series of disconnected subjects (including earthquakes, theNile
’
s annual flood, magnets, epidemics), linked solely by Lucretius
’
goal of proclaiming true knowledge. The subject of epidemics does notoccur in the extant Epicurean letters or fragments, and even Sedley ishesitant in assigning it to Book 13 of
On Nature.
114
Others have sug-gested that Lucretius may be drawing on Hippocratic writings, forexample, the treatise
On Airs
,
Waters and Places
, which was written inthe later part of the fifth century BCE.
115
Lucretius teaches that thereare healthful atoms in the air, and others that cause disease and death(6. 1093
–
97).
116
The latter fly about so that
“
the air becomes full of disease
”
. The air, then, is the source of disease, and it was the sourceof the great plague at Athens, an account of which forms the last partof the book.
117
Lucretius is following the famous description of the plague inThucydides, which he emulates in descriptive horror. Most important,however, is the effect of the disease on the minds and emotions of thesurvivors, for no longer did religious beliefs count for anything (1276
–
77), neither were the traditional funeral customs observed (1278
–
79).And so
De Rerum Natura
ends with the distressed Athenians cremat-ing their dead in a disorderly fashion and fighting among themselves toclaim the corpses of their relatives (1283
–
86).
118THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The ending is abrupt. We have suggested earlier that the poem isalmost complete, except for lines drawing the lesson that if the Atheni-ans had known the doctrines of Epicurus they would have been able tounderstand the cause of the disaster and treat it with equanimity. Cer-tainly, the focus on death at the end contrasts with that on life in theproem to Book 1. The mental and physical distress of the Athenianscontrasts with the calm doctrines of Epicurus praised in the proem toBook 6. The wildly emotional funeral scenes recall the ending of the
Iliad
, with Hector
’
s funeral and the passionate utterances of his widow,his mother, and his sister-in-law. Finally, the focus on death at the endof the poem reinforces the focus on death at the end of its first half.There, Lucretius proclaimed the triumph of Epicurean doctrine overdeath; here, the victory of death over the Athenians who lived and diedmany years before the coming of Epicurus. Lucretius is true to his over-riding principle: those who have knowledge of
“
the nature of things
”
can achieve calm of mind and freedom from fear of death.Lucretius
’
poem does not seem to have had the influence that itdeserved. Within a decade of its composition the Roman republic hadcollapsed, Julius Caesar was dead, and fresh violence overwhelmed thequiet practice of philosophy. Cicero
’
s murder in December of 43 BCEwas symptomatic. Yet some Epicureans survived the civil wars suc-cessfully, for example, Cicero
’
s friend, Atticus, at the price of friend-ship with people whose political acts were the opposite of Epicurean.
118
More significant is the fact that Lucretius was read and admired bythe leading Augustan poets, Horace and Virgil, both of whom began topublish about fifteen years after his death. Horace (an Epicurean)quotes him at
Satires
1. 5. 101, and alludes to the opening of Book 2 of the
De Rerum Natura
in
Epistles
1. 11. 10. The last part of the sameletter (lines 22
–
30) is Lucretian in tone. Virgil explicitly admiredLucretius, whom he does not name. In the second
Georgic
, completedbefore 29 BCE, he contrasts his pastoral poetry with that of Lucretius:
119
Happy is he who could discover the causes of things and trampleunderfoot all fears and inexorable fate and the sound of greedyAcheron. Blessed also is he who knows the gods of thecountryside
…
This passage follows lines in which Virgil was clearly alluding to themeteorological and cosmological themes of Lucretius. A few yearsearlier he had echoed Lucretius in his sixth
Eclogue
, where the song of Silenus alludes to the cosmogony of Lucretius. Later, in the
Aeneid
(written in the 20s BCE), the song of the Punic bard, lopas, at the ban-
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS119
quet of Dido echoes the meteorological themes both of the sixth
Eclogue
and of Book 6 of Lucretius
’
poem.
120
Yet one of the most orig-inal and powerful parts of the
Aeneid
is the sixth book, where Aeneasvisits the Underworld and sees for himself Acheron and the fate of thedead
—
things that Lucretius says Epicurus had
“
trampled underfoot
”
.In the first and second centuries CE, several authors show thatLucretius was still being read. Statius, in a poem celebrating the birth-day of the dead poetic genius, Lucan (d. 65 CE), refers to
“
the austeremadness of learned Lucretius
”
, and his contemporary, Quintilian,includes Lucretius rather grudgingly in his reading list for students of oratory.
121
The Stoic satirist Persius (d. 62 CE), agrees with Quintilian that
De Rerum Natura
was too difficult for the ordinary reader, but he is moresympathetic. He imagines a
“
hairy centurion
”
poking fun at philoso-phers, with their mannerisms and their doctrines that are intelligibleonly to other philosophers. He paraphrases Lucretius:
“
nothing cancome from nothing, nothing can return to nothing
”
.
122
The target of this witty passage is the self-satisfied and ignorant
“
common man
”
, notthe philosophical poet.Seneca
’
s attitude is more complex. Although a Stoic, he oftenquotes Epicurus (particularly in the first thirty of his letters), and occa-sionally Lucretius. In letter 95, in which he debates the ability of phi-losophy to bring about the good life, he quotes Lucretius to illustratethe scope of philosophical enquiry, extending to cosmology and thecreation of the world.
123
He quotes Lucretius again in letter 106 toshow that the study of philosophical doctrine is
“
mere child
’
s play
”
,for it will make a student learned, but will not help live the good life:
“
our learning is for school, not for life
”
.
124
In letter 110 he quotesLucretius on groundless fears and improves on him: Lucretius said thatwe are afraid in daylight, but, says Seneca,
“
we make everything dark-ness
”
.
125
Finally, in
De Tranquillitate
Seneca quotes Lucretius in sup-port of the commonplace doctrine that
“
a human being cannot run fromhimself
”
, which is found in writers from Aristotle to Juvenal.
126
About a century after Seneca, Aulus Gellius (b. 125 CE) quotesLucretius on a literary, rather than philosophical, matter.
127
The poem,then, was still being read two centuries after Lucretius
’
death, but, itseems, only by a few readers and apparently without any widespreadinfluence. While this is regrettable, it is hardly surprising. Lucretiuswas too austere and his Latin too difficult for the kind of reader forwhom Cicero or Seneca was writing. He was read by the Christianfathers, and Lactantius (
c
.240
–
320 CE) quotes him frequently, both tocriticize him and to use him to support his own arguments. Augustine
120THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
also alludes to him in several passages, although he prefers Cicero as asource for attacks on Epicureanism.Epicureanism continued to have a vigorous existence in the 150years after the death of Lucretius, for which the criticisms of Plutarch(
c.
50
–
120 CE), who was himself a Platonist, are good evidence.
128
Thetitles are known of nine works by Plutarch in which he criticizes Epicu-rus and his followers. Three of these are extant:
That Epicurus Makes aPleasant Life Impossible
(usually referred to by the first two words of its Latin title,
Non Posse
);
Against Colotes
;
Whether Lathe Biosas Is Rightly Said
(Latin,
An Recte Dictum
). The second of these is paradoxi-cal, since it attacks a book (no longer extant) written by Colotes, a dis-ciple of Epicurus at Lampsacus, where Epicurus taught from 310 to306 BCE. Colotes had criticized other philosophers (including Dem-ocritus and Plato), and perhaps Plutarch attacks him because of hishostility to Plato. On the other hand
An Recte Dictum
attacks Epi-curean quietism, which, as we have seen, directly opposed the Romanethos of public service and desire for fame. Plutarch says (
An Recte Dictum
6):
129
I think that to be alive and generally to be born and become ahuman being are a gift from god to make a person known
…
Buthe who hurls himself into obscurity is cloaked in darkness andburies his life in an empty tomb.In
Non Posse
Plutarch (through participants in the dialogue, Theon andAristodemus) attacks Epicurean doctrines, first, on pleasure and
“
liv-ing unobtrusively
”
, and then on the gods and the absence of an after-life. Plutarch was a pious man, and for the last decades of his life heheld a priesthood at Delphi (which was comparatively close to hishome town of Chaeronea), an honour which he prized. His attack onEpicurean theology is therefore coloured by his own experience.Towards the end of the second century Epicureanism continued tobe strong, in part because of its opposition to superstition and falseprophets, as Lucian (born
c
.120) shows in his essay on
Alexander or the False Prophet
. There he says (
§
61) that people turned to Epicurusbecause he was:truly a holy man with a divine nature, who alone knew trulywhat was good. He passed his knowledge on and was a liberatorof those who associated with him.But during the third century CE Epicureanism declined noticeably,
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS121
although it was still vigorous enough to attract the hostility of Chris-tian authors. By the middle of the next century it was dying, and it wasdead by the time that Justinian closed the schools of philosophy atAthens in 529.
130
Early in the third century Diogenes Laertius compiled (in Greek) his
Lives of Eminent Philosophers
. Book 10 of this work is devoted solelyto Epicurus, and it is exceptionally valuable for its preservation of theprincipal texts of Epicurean doctrine (which have been summarizedabove, pp. 101
–
105, as well as a catalogue of Epicurus
’
works.
131
The last extensive evidence for vigorous devotion to Epicureanismcomes from the city of Oenoanda, high on a mountain in northernLycia (modern south-western Turkey). There, some time probably latein the second century CE, Diogenes, a prominent citizen, in his old ageset up a huge inscription on a wall of a stoa (a colonnade for publicuse) recording his own Epicureanism and various Epicurean texts. Theheight of the inscription is 2.37 metres, and its length was more than50m, perhaps even close to 100m. It was discovered in 1884 byGeorges Cousin, who published sixty-four fragments in 1892. Sincethen more fragments have been published, most notably by MartinSmith, in a series of articles beginning in 1969, bringing the total num-ber discovered to 212 as of 1990, perhaps a quarter of the whole.
132
We have seen how greatly our knowledge of Hellenistic philosophydepends on fragmentary texts, and in the inscription of Diogenes weare sadly reminded of the vagaries of destruction and survival in aremote place, subject to the damage wrought by earthquakes andbuilders (who used stones from the inscription) and to the ravages of neglect.Diogenes published his inscription because he was moved, likeLucretius, by the miserable spiritual state of his fellow human beings,whose inner disturbances he likened to a plague (frag. 1.2 and 2.4). In
“
the sunset of life
”
he wished to help humankind by telling them thetrue nature of things and healing their pains by
“
cutting them down tosomething small and making their intensity very small indeed
”
(frag.2.6). Thirteen (or more) of the
Kyriai Doxai
were inscribed along thelowest course of the wall; above them, in a parallel course, Diogenesinscribed a treatise on ethics; above that was a treatise on physics. Inthe top course was a treatise on old age. To the right of the treatise onethics were three letters of Diogenes to his friends, and various philo-sophical maxims. To the right of the treatise on old age was a letter of Epicurus to his mother, on the subject of dreams, and two other lettersof Epicurus.Diogenes is the author of the three treatises. Most interesting is the
122THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
part of the treatise on physics, which (like Epicurus
’
letter to hismother) dealt with dreams and has many parallels in Lucretius.
133
Thetreatise on ethics was given additional authority by the
Kyriai Doxai
of Epicurus, inscribed immediately below. Diogenes focused on the ques-tion,
“
How can our life give us pleasure?
”
, which he answered by thedoctrine that if the passions are removed then pleasure will replacethem. The passions he categorized as fear of the gods, of death, and of pain: these he discussed before dealing with desires, pleasures andactions. The treatise on old age is addressed to young readers. Fromwhat little remains, it appears to have been a defence of old age againstthe jibes and comments of the young. Probably this, too, goes back totexts of Epicurus, whose views on old age were harshly criticized byPlutarch.
134
Diskin Clay has shown the extent to which Diogenes follows, imi-tates and emulates Epicurus.
135
The Epicurean community in southernAsia Minor, late in Roman imperial times, still followed the custom of the early Epicureans, revering the founder and learning his doctrinesby heart. Like Epicurus, Diogenes wished to help human beings,whether those who read his inscription, or those in the wider world,including posterity. In his treatise on old age he says that he will leavelife with a joyful hymn (Greek,
paean
), having enjoyed a good life. Heis referring to words of Epicurus
’
close friend Metrodorus, or possiblyeven of Epicurus himself, and they are a fitting ending to this chapter:
136
I have beaten you first, O Fortune, and I have blocked every oneof your approaches. Never will we give ourselves up to you or toany other circumstance. But when necessity drives us out, we,greatly despising life and those who vainly cling to it, will departfrom it with a beautiful hymn of victory, singing that our life hasbeen well lived.
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS123
5PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THEAUGUSTAN AGE
Lucretius and Cicero represent the zenith of intellectual activity in theRoman republic. The murder of Cicero in December, 43 BCE, and thedefeat of Brutus and Cassius at the battles of Philippi in October, 42BCE, introduced a new political and intellectual age. For Cicero, phi-losophy was closely bound up with public life. Its study had practicalconsequences in the political activity of free men competing with eachother in the public arena and mindful of their duty of service to thestate. Lucretius explicitly advised against public service, yet it is theconstant and contrasting background to his Epicurean system. In themilitary and political turmoil of the decade after Philippi the Romanworld was deaf to the voices of Cicero and Lucretius. When peace andstability were restored, after the victory of Octavian at Actium in 31BCE and the death of Mark Antony in Alexandria the following year,the Republic was dead, alive only in the brilliant use of the term
res publica
by Octavian, whose restoration of constitutional government inJanuary, 27 BCE, inaugurated his tenure of power as the leading citi-zen (
princeps
), but
de facto
the first emperor, of Rome.
1
He took thetitle
of Augustus,
the Latin equivalent of the Greek term
sebastos
(rev-erend), an honorific title frequently bestowed on Roman grandees inthe Greek east in republican times. As Tacitus rightly observed, thetitles of public officials were the same as before, but the free republichad perished, never to be revived.
2
The consequences for intellectual life and freedom of expressionwere predictable and profound. Tacitus (putting the words in the mouthof the poet, Maternus, who had written a drama on the theme of theyounger Cato) asked:
3
What greater evidence [for the curbing of oratory] could befound than that
…
peace, the prolonged passivity of the people,
124
and, above all, the discipline imposed by the
princeps
, had paci-fied eloquence itself just as much as everything else?These words were published in 102 CE, but they accurately describe aprocess begun after Cicero
’
s death, irreversibly advanced by the tri-umph of Augustus, and perpetually confirmed by the accident of hislong life, for he died in 14 CE, 41 years after the transfer of power tothe senate and people. Tacitus began his history of the period from 14to 68 CE, with the death of Augustus, for that was the first (and, asevents showed, the only) time that the republican constitution couldpossibly have been restored.
4
With the transfer of power to Tiberiusthe principate was confirmed, the monarchy assured. The world of Seneca (born in 4 BCE) was totally different from that of Cicero.In this world, true freedom of speech was rare and dangerous, foroutspoken criticism of those who held political and military powercould bring exile or even death. And if free speech is curbed, then theprocess of limiting freedom of thought will begin, however insidi-ously. Thus, philosophical doctrines came to focus on private con-cerns, above all, ethical problems. The bearing of philosophy on publiclife became restricted to problems of coexistence with a political sys-tem in which the ruler held the power of life and death, while his fel-low-citizens had the choice of cooperation, acquiescence, or retirement(often through death or exile) from the public arena. Not surprisingly,one of the most prominent problems discussed by Roman philosophersin the early empire was that of
otium
, retirement from public activity.The period of the second Triumvirate (43
–
31 BCE) and the reign of Augustus (27 BCE to 14 CE) was transitional between a manifestlydysfunctional political system and a new system based on militarypower, in which the monarch needed the support of many people, whothemselves had considerable powers, subsumed under the power andprestige of the monarch. It was a period of political ambiguities: amonarchy was dressed in the forms and words of the Republic; politi-cians and military men wielded great power, yet were at the mercy of the monarch if they encroached on his power and prestige; people of ability owed their political or social advancement to the monarch andhis close friends; finally, a citizenry courted by the monarch (whodated his tenure of power by the annual renewal of the powers of theTribune of the People,
tribunicia potestas
) was powerless to vote himout of office.The goal of philosophers was still the good life, and the traditionalgoals of the Stoics and Epicureans were outwardly unchanged
—
theachievement of tranquillity and freedom from mental disturbance
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE125
through reason and virtue. But the political and social context was sochanged that the philosophers focused almost exclusively on problemsthat concerned individuals.Even in the triumviral period, philosophy continued to be practised,and a Roman school of philosophy came into existence, led by QuintusSextius, the details of whose life have to be gleaned mostly from refer-ences in Seneca
’
s letters.
5
He probably died early in the first centuryCE (Jerome says that he flourished around 1 CE), and Seneca, writingin 62
–
64 CE, lists his school among those which had become defunctby his time. Indeed, the last chapter of Seneca
’
s
Naturales Quaestiones
laments the distressing state of philosophy in his time:
6
Who enters on the path to wisdom? Who thinks it worthy [of study] except in so far as he has a passing acquaintance with it?Who pays any attention to a philosopher or to any liberal studyexcept when the games are suspended, or there is a rainy daywhich can be wasted? And so many schools of philosophy havecome to an end without a new leader. Both the Old and NewAcademies have left us without a Principal; who is there to teachthe doctrines of Pyrrho [the Sceptic]? The Pythagorean school(unpopular with the common people) has no Professor; the newschool of the Sextii, which showed Roman strength in its earlystages, began with great energy and now is dead.Sextius (who was succeeded as head of the school by his son) refusedthe invitation of Julius Caesar to enter on an active political career inthe senate. He studied in Athens, and, back in Rome, wrote philosophi-cal works
“
in Greek words but with Roman character
”
. Seneca callshim a
de facto
Stoic and quotes his use of the military metaphor for thewise man, who must advance like an army prepared for battle and onguard against the enemy. The wise man will deploy his virtues to pro-tect himself from fear, grief, poverty, disgrace and any other adver-sity.
7
Seneca describes a reading with his friends of
“
the fifth book of Quintus Sextius the father
”
, which he found vigorous and courageous,not anaemic and pedantic.
“
When you read Sextius,
”
says Seneca,
“
you will say,
‘
this man is alive, he is vigorous, he is free, he is super-human, he sends me away full of immense confidence
’
.
”
8
Sextius, itseems, had no use for the subtleties of Greek dialectic: his ethical doc-trines were appropriate for hard times, when courage and constancywere needed, but their virile independence was dangerous under anestablished principate.Sextius also taught the Pythagorean doctrine of vegetarianism,
126THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
which Seneca practiced for about a year, early in the reign of Tiberius.He seems also to have taught that the soul was incorporeal.
9
But moreimportant was his influence on the Alexandrian philosopher, Sotion,and the Roman rhetorician, Papirius Fabianus, both teachers of Seneca,who said that the latter
“
wrote more books of philosophy thanCicero
”
.
10
Among the followers of Sextius also was Cornelius Celsus,who wrote an encyclopedic work on the
Artes
, of which eight books
De Medicina
survive.
11
Sextius
’
son may have been the Sextius Nigerwho wrote a book in Greek on
materia medica
that the elder Pliny usedin his
Natural History
.The most durable survivor among the intellectuals of Cicero
’
s timewas Varro, to whom Cicero dedicated the second version of his
Aca-demica
. Varro (d. 27 BCE), seems to have kept up his scholarly activ-ity despite proscription by Mark Antony and the destruction of hislibrary at Casinum. His late work,
Disciplinae
, was a survey of theintellectual disciplines necessary for an educated person, and he usedas a principal source the Greek work of A
ë
tius, known by its Latintitle,
Placita
. This was a collection of the doctrines of Greek philoso-phers (known from fragments in later compilers), which has been vari-ously dated as late as the first century CE or as early as the third cen-tury BCE.
12
Jaap Mansfeld has shown that the earliest version of thework was compiled before the time of Chrysippus (
c
.280
–
207 BCE),and that Varro used a version updated in the first century BCE. Fromthis we learn that compilations of philosophers
’
doctrines, for whichthe technical term is
doxographies
, were being made and used in theperiod after the death of Cicero
—
significant evidence for continuingstudy of philosophy in the turbulent times of the second triumvirate.Less shadowy, but still controversial, was the doxographer AriusDidymus, whose ethical compilation is largely preserved in the Greek anthology (
Eclogae
) of Johannes Stobaeus (John of Stobi, the modernSkopje).
13
Stobaeus made his anthology (much of which is extant) forhis son, Septimius, early in the fifth century CE. Divided into fourbooks of extracts from a host of authors, it is
“
a textbook
…
aiming pri-marily at moral improvement and instruction in practical living
”
.
14
Chapter 2. 7 is the first chapter to be focused on ethics, Stobaeus
’
pri-mary interest for the rest of the work.
15
The chapter consists of threedoxographies, which anthologize respectively the doctrines of variousphilosophers, Zeno and the Stoics, and Aristotle and the Peripatetics.David Hahm has shown that Arius Didymus is the author of all threeparts of the chapter, and that he is the same person as the Arius (orAreus) mentioned by Plutarch and Suetonius as a friend and adviser of Augustus.
16
Suetonius (who had access to the imperial archives) says
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE127
that Areus [
sic
.] and his sons
“
filled Augustus with varied erudition byliving with him
”
. Plutarch describes Augustus entering Alexandria in30 BCE,
“
conversing with the philosopher Arius and giving him hisright hand
”
. Augustus (says Plutarch) then made a public speech in theGymnasium from a specially prepared dais, in which he announcedthat he would spare Alexandria for three reasons, one of which was hiswish to gratify
“
his friend
”
, Arius. The historian Cassius Dio (died
c
.230 CE) says that Augustus and Arius enjoyed many philosophicalconversations. Consistent with this, Seneca calls Arius
“
[Augustus
’
]philosopher
”
, and Marcus Aurelius names him, with Maecenas, as amember of the court.
17
In 9 BCE Arius addressed a
Consolatio
toAugustus
’
wife, Li via, on the death of her son, Drusus, which isquoted extensively by Seneca.
18
Besides showing that, 20 years afterthe entry into Alexandria, Arius was still a trusted member of Augus-tus
’
inner circle, the Consolation is Stoic in tenor, for example in itsadvice to Livia to remain outwardly calm and inwardly self-controlledin the face of bereavement:Remember that it is not a great thing to behave courageously inprosperity, when the course of life is favourable. A calm sea anda following wind do not call for a show of the helmsman
’
s skill.But when they are contrary, he must prove his courage. Then donot submit: on the contrary, walk firmly
…
Nothing is more hos-tile to Fortune than a calm mind.Opposition to Fortune is one of the most prominent elements in Stoicethics of the early Roman empire. Moreover, Arius emphasizes theprominent public position of Livia, in this continuing the Ciceronianemphasis on the duty of the public leader. Seneca
’
s Consolation forMarcia was probably written in 39
–
40 CE, nearly half a century afterArius
’
Consolation, yet Seneca can still say to Marcia (6. 1),
“
Arius issitting beside you
”
.Arius was not an out-and-out Stoic, however. The doxography of Stobaeus 2. 7 shows him to be concerned with the history of philoso-phy, organized in such a way as to bring harmony to the dissonance of competing schools and of different voices within single schools. Inparticular he seems to have attempted to reconcile dogmatists (whobelieved that knowledge was possible) with Pyrrhonian Sceptics, whohad been reinvigorated by Aenesidemus, probably in the decades after50 BCE.
19
Aenesidemus had left the Academic school, dismayed bythe quarrel between Antiochus and Philo, returning to the thoroughgo-ing scepticism of Pyrrho, to which his original contribution was the ten
128THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
modes of suspension of judgement (recorded by Sextus Empiricus inthe late second century CE). Arius, a dogmatist, sought to show thatharmony between Sceptics and dogmatists was possible, in that bothwere seeking the truth: the sceptics potentially could find it in thefuture, whereas the dogmatists had already found it.For our purpose, however, what is important is that Augustusfavoured a philosopher who took a positive view of the power of rea-son. Given Augustus
’
policy of preserving the past in order to build hisrevolutionary political system, a philosophy that suspended judgementin all matters was unacceptable. In giving Arius a place in hisentourage, Augustus was continuing the custom among the republicansenatorial class of maintaining a house philosopher, as, for example,Cicero did with Diodotus. Augustus in principle maintained the fictionof being
princeps
, chief among peers. Arius was valuable as an adviserwhere Greek matters (political or philosophical) were concerned, asSuetonius and Plutarch made clear. His presence in the inner circle of Augustus meant that the study of philosophy was still possible, indeedencouraged, under the new regime, so long as it was not politicallysubversive.The ambiguities faced by the philosophers are especially obvious inthe works of the great Augustan poets. Two of them, Horace and Vir-gil, were themselves close to Augustus through the patronage of hisprincipal adviser, Maecenas. A third, Ovid, was exiled in 8 CE forunspecified literary and political indiscretions, and died in exile threeyears after the death of Augustus. A fourth, Manilius, outlived Augus-tus and steered a safe course through the politically dangerous subjectof astrology by advocating the continuation of the principate.Horace (65
–
8 BCE) is both the most philosophical and the mostambiguous of these poets. His father, a freedman (i.e. ex-slave), wassufficiently prosperous to be able to take Horace to Rome for his educa-tion, and to send him to Athens to study philosophy, the traditionalfinal stage of a Roman upper-class education in the Republic.
20
Horacetells us that he studied in the Academy
—“
Athens added something tomy education, that is, that I would be disposed to distinguish thecrooked from the straight, and to seek the truth in the groves of theAcademy
”
.
21
But he soon was attracted to the cause of Brutus, also anAcademic, and so he fought as an officer (
tribunus militum
) at Philippi.After the defeat he returned to Italy to find his family property confis-cated. He turned to poetry as his sole way of making a living, althoughhe soon received a salaried position in the imperial civil service as atreasury official. Through his early poems he came to the notice of Vir-gil and his friend, Varius Rufus, who introduced him to their patron,
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE129
Maecenas, in 38 BCE. Maecenas provided Horace with the patronageand economic independence (most notably through the gift of a villa inthe Sabine hills) which allowed him to spend his time writing poetryand to be independent socially. Through Maecenas he came to theattention of Augustus, whose invitation to be his secretary for his pri-vate correspondence he declined, apparently without giving offence.Horace
’
s position was indeed ambiguous. Socially, he was an out-sider, even if his father (as is likely) was an Italian, enslaved after theSocial War of the 90s BCE. Politically, he had supported the losingside, and he was fortunate even to be able to return to Italy, let alone beaccepted as a friend of Maecenas and Augustus. Economically, hewould have been destitute if it had not been for his poetry, and it wasthe excellence of his early poems that guaranteed his friendship withVirgil and the circle of Maecenas. Nearly all these poems were writtenbefore Actium:
22
after the triumph of Augustus, Horace had no choicebut to support the new regime, and to respond to Augustus
’
requestsfor a poem on an occasion of state, as he did in 17 BCE with the
Car-men Saeculare
celebrating the Secular Games that inaugurated a newage.Eduard Fraenkel rightly reminds us that
“
in approaching a real poetit should be our main concern to try to understand his poetry
”
.
23
Animportant part of Horace
’
s poetic technique is self-irony: like any goodsatirist he wears a mask (Latin,
persona
), even in his non-satiricalpoems, and the mask is most concealing when he speaks of himself.Thus in his letter to the poet Albius Tibullus, published in 20 BCE, hedescribes himself as
“
a pig from the herd of Epicurus
”
, saying,
“
whenyou want a good laugh, you will see me, fat, sleek and with skin wellgroomed
”—
physical results one would expect from one who makespleasure his primary principle.
24
The self-irony does not invalidate theprevious lines (12
–
14), with their advice to keep a calm mind in themidst of hope and anxiety, fear and anger, and to live each day as if itwere one
’
s last.The Epicurean
lathe biosas
,
“
live unobtrusively
”
, is the most signifi-cant element in Horace
’
s philosophy of life, which we can best exam-ine by studying his later poems, when he had achieved the tranquillitythat earlier he had had to share with obligations in the city. In the firstepistle to Maecenas, Horace replies to Maecenas
’
invitation that hecontinue writing poetry, three years after the publication of the firstthree books of his
Odes
in 23.
25
He complains that he has given uppoetry to concentrate entirely on philosophy, building up philosophicalcapital, as it were, with which to meet the problems of old age:
130THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
And so now I have given up poetry and other amusements. I amconcerned with what is true and fitting. This is my enquiry,which occupies me totally. I am storing [philosophical precepts]and arranging them to draw from my store in the future. And, toanticipate your question about who is my leader and householdgod, I have sworn allegiance to no master.As an instance of his lack of rigidity, he says that sometimes he is asaustere
“
as any servant of true virtue
”
, at other times he relapses intothe attitude of Socrates
’
associate, the elder Aristippus of Gyrene(early fourth century BCE), who justified material and sensual enjoy-ment and defended his life with a female companion in this way:
26
I possess La
ï
s, but she does not possess me. For to be the masterof pleasures is best, rather than never to enjoy them.The middle way between Stoic rigidity and Epicurean pleasure has along history. Long before Zeno and Epicurus, Socrates was said tohave quoted Prodicus
’
parable of the Choice of Heracles for the benefitof Aristippus, and long after Horace
’
s time Seneca used Aristippus
’
argument in defence of his own enjoyment of material possessions.
27
Horace himself, later in the letter to Maecenas, says that
“
virtue is theavoidance of vice
”
, and he concludes with an ironic parody of the Stoicparadoxes:
28
In sum: the wise man is less only than Jupiter. He is wealthy,free, honoured, beautiful, king, finally, of kings, exceptionallyhealthy [
sanus
, punning on the double meaning of the word,
“
healthy
”
and
“
sane
”
]
—
unless he is suffering from a cold.With the last phrase he undercuts the extreme position of the Stoicsand affirms his own philosophy of life, that he will take life as itcomes, with its pleasures and pains
—
in other words, his way is themiddle way.Closely related to this letter is the next, addressed to a young friend,Lollius Maximus, who, like Maecenas, is the recipient of a second let-ter in this book. Horace begins with Homer and the Trojan War.Homer, he says, speaks more clearly and better than Chrysippus andGrantor on ethical questions,
“
what is beautiful or disgraceful; what isadvantageous and what is not
”
.
29
These are the same questions as thosethat concerned Horace in the previous letter, and he advises Lollius to
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE131
heed their lessons well, for
“
if a jar is not clean, whatever you pourinto it turns sour
”
.In the second letter to Lollius (written perhaps two years later),Horace both amplifies his earlier advice and distils his own philosophyof life.
30
Since this is his most important statement it should be quotedat length:In the midst of everything you will read, and you will ask yourteachers by what system you may pass your life gently. Ask whether desire (that always needs more) should trouble and dis-turb you; whether fear and hope for things that are not advanta-geous; whether philosophy or nature will give you virtue; whatwill lessen anxiety, what will make you a friend to yourself,what will bring you simple tranquillity
—
whether it is public hon-ours or the pleasure of profits or the secret way and the path of alife hidden from others. As for me, when I am refreshed by thecold stream of Digentia, which Mandela drinks, a village fur-rowed with cold, what do you think is my opinion, my friend,what do you believe is my prayer?
“
Let me keep what I havenow, or even less, so that I can live out the rest of my life (if thegods wish me to live longer) for myself. Let me have a good sup-ply of books and a year
’
s supply of food, and may I not floathanging on the hopes of an uncertain hour.
”
Well, it is enough toask Jupiter for what he gives and takes away. He may grant melife, he may grant me wealth: I myself will provide a mind freefrom anxiety (
aequum animum
).These beautiful and famous lines are the final expression of Horace
’
sethics. Although they are only indirectly concerned with pleasure andalthough they suggest that prayer to the gods is efficacious, they arefundamentally Epicurean. They are based on the maxim,
“
live unobtru-sively
”
, and they suggest the moderate enjoyment of moderate plea-sures. Their goal is a life free from mental disturbance, the achieve-ment of
ataraxia
that is as much Stoic as Epicurean. Finally, they sug-gest that happiness is ours to achieve through control of our will, what-ever the gods may give, good or ill. Here Horace agrees with the Sto-ics, and this doctrine will prove to be the foundation of the ethics of Epictetus.The first Book of Horace
’
s
Epistles
was the first collection ever of poetic letters reflecting on problems in philosophy and, as Fraenkel hasremarked, it is
“
the most harmonious of Horace
’
s books
”
.
31
The har-mony is not only literary and poetic: it is also the harmony of one who
132THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
has synthesized successfully the many facets of his search for happi-ness. Although there is much wisdom in his later poems, the lines thatwe have just quoted should stand as his final statement of a philosophyof life.Horace was consistent throughout his search in maintaining the Epi-curean doctrine of
lathe biosas
. It was a necessity in the fragile periodafter Philippi, when Octavian and his party could have destroyed him.When he became prominent through his poetry and his friendship withMaecenas and, later, Augustus, it became even more of a necessity.Thanks to his double life, as a friend of the great and a busy man atRome, and as the owner of a villa deep in the Sabine Hills (referred toin the passage from
Epistle
18 by its river and neighbouring village),he was able to achieve the synthesis without compromising Epicureanprinciples.At the beginning of his literary career Horace
’
s attitude to ethicalquestions was one of simple morality: his father trained him as a boy totell right from wrong, in keeping with archaic Roman morality:
“
I willbe satisfied if I can preserve the traditional morality of the ancient[Romans]
”
.
32
Thus his ethical philosophy, however much it owes tothe Greeks, is that of the conservative Roman, without the harsh auster-ity of the elder and younger Cato. Indeed, Horace satirizes the Stoicsfor their extremism and their insistence that only the
sapiens
of theStoic paradoxes can achieve happiness. Thus at
Satire
1.3. 96
–
98 hesays that the Stoic insistence that all delicts are equal flies in the faceof common sense and the facts.
33
He ridicules the Stoic paradox that
“
only the wise man can be a skilled craftsman or a king
”
. The Stoic
“
king
”
is teased by a crowd of boys, and has hardly any friends, whileHorace is truly happy, his peccadilloes forgiven by his friends andtheirs in turn forgiven by him.Horace returns to the Stoic paradoxes in Book 2 of the
Satires.
Thethird satire expounds and implicitly criticizes the Stoic paradox that
“
only the wise man is sane
”
(lines 43
–
46). In the second satire aRoman peasant, Ofellus (a simple Roman with archaic values), lecturesHorace on the virtues of living simply and not being attached to one
’
spossessions. In the seventh satire a slave, Davus, begins by criticizingHorace for moral inconsistency (it is the time of the Saturnalia, whenslaves can speak freely), and he shows that Horace is a slave to his pas-sions, which jerk him around like a puppet (lines 81
–
82). The wiseman alone is truly free (lines 83
–
88):Who then is free? The wise man, who gives commands to him-self; whom neither poverty nor death nor imprisonment can
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE133
frighten; who has the courage to challenge his desires, to despisehonours. He is complete in himself, smooth and round (
teresatque rotundus
), so that nothing external can stick on his smoothsurface. Fortune always is hobbled when she rushes at him.This satire expounds the Stoic paradox more successfully than
Satire
2.3, and it appears to give a positive definition of the wise man in thelines just quoted. Horace is his counterfoil, so it seems, but then wemust pause and consider: is not Horace implicitly criticizing the spheri-cal perfection of the Stoic wise man? Such perfection is still unattain-able, and Horace, with his failings, emerges as the real human being.The
“
black companion
”
of desire may constantly thwart his efforts toescape his slavery (7. 115), but in the end, it is Horace who is real, andthe Stoic wise man who is an unattainable ideal.Horace expounds his ideal most memorably in the sixth satire of thisbook, published a few years after he had taken possession of his Sabinevilla. The poem celebrates and contrasts the two sides of his life, thebusy friend of Maecenas in Rome and the independent poet in the coun-try. He begins (lines 1
–
23a), with a prayer fulfilled: he is at his villa,with its nearby spring of water and woods. The focus is on moderationand limits, and he asks for no more, beyond the security of continuedownership
—
this is his prayer to Mercury. Suddenly he is back inRome. He prays to Janus (god of beginnings), who sends him off earlyfor the long day
’
s grind. The tone is still Epicurean despite the prayersto the gods, for Epicurus, too, was a pious man. Horace
’
s prayersreturn with longing to the Sabine villa in line 59, as he endures thetime-consuming busyness of life in the city. At the centre of hisprayers is philosophy: he prays for a life that is
“
the pleasure of forget-ting the harried life
”
(line 62), a memorable summary of Epicureanfreedom from mental disturbance, and for the enjoyment with hisfriends of a simple meal, with as little or as much wine as each personwishes. An evening spent in this way is
“
a night of the gods
”
(line 65),for had not Epicurus himself said that the man who followed his pre-cepts
“
would live as a god among men
”
?
34
Above all, the conversationof Horace and his friends is about things that matter
—
not gossip aboutgames or other people
’
s possessions, but about the good life (lines72
–
76):we discuss subjects that concern us directly, ignorance of whichis harmful: is it wealth or virtue than makes men happy? Is itvirtuous character or self-interest that draws us into friendship?What is the nature of the good and what is the highest good?
134THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
These subjects, of course, were not exclusive to the Epicureans: Aristo-tle had discussed the importance of self-interest for friendship inBooks 8 and 9 of the
Nicomachean Ethics
; Cicero sought out the
sum-mum bonum
in the
De Finibus
, and the basic problem for Plato and theAcademy was the relationship of the universal, virtue, to the particu-lars of daily life. By setting the discussion in the context of friendshipand moderate pleasures, Horace gives all these things an Epicureanperspective. Like Plato, he illustrates his philosophy with a myth, herethe fable of the two mice (lines 77
–
117).The animal fable was a device of popular moralizing, the tradition inwhich Horace worked as a satirist. He called his satires
Sermones
, thatis,
“
Talks
”
, and
Sermones Bionaei
, a reference to Bion of Borysthenes,a Greek popular philosopher of the third century BCE.
35
Bion
’
s infor-mal talks were lectures couched in terms intelligible to ordinary hear-ers.
36
Works in this tradition required a light touch
—
a fable about twomice rather than a lecture comparing luxury to simplicity, self-ironyrather than self-importance, generalities rather than precise definition,the easy conversation of friends rather than a formal lecture or the con-trived setting of Platonic or Ciceronian dialogue. Horace himself instructed with a smile,
“
telling the truth with a laugh
”
, and heincluded his hearer in his ironic self-criticism
—“
you
are the subject of my story
”
.
37
Horace shares with the Cynic philosophers the attributesof wit, irony and candour, but he did not approve of the Cynics
’
shame-lessness and personal squalor.
38
An ironic persona suited the poet of the
Satires
, but a different onewas needed for the poet of the
Odes
. The eighty-eight poems that com-prise Books 1
–
3 of the
Odes
(the Latin title is
Carmina
,
“
Poems
”
)were published in 23 BCE. In them Horace is the bard (
vates
), theteacher of the community, that is, of Augustan Rome. The first fourodes are addressed to public figures, respectively Maecenas, Augustus,Virgil, and Sestius, consul in 23 CE. In the last ode (3. 30) Horaceassociates his achievement in lyric poetry with the greatest of Romanpublic occasions, the celebration of a triumph by a victorious general.Horace, therefore, steps forth as the teacher of society, expressing thepolitical and moral ideals of the renewed Republic. No longer does hewrite for Maecenas alone, or just for his friends, but for Augustus andthe Roman public.
39
The Epicurean principle of
lathe biosas
was inap-propriate for the
vates
, and so Horace
’
s philosophy in the
Odes
is morecomplex. Horace, the private individual, is still Epicurean, but the hori-zons of his public doctrine are as wide as those of the policies of Augustus and the responsibilities of the renewed republic and its citi-zens. There are Stoic elements as well as Epicurean, the gods of
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE135
Roman public religion (vigorously promoted by Augustus) appear fre-quently, and traditional Roman virtues are proclaimed as if the philo-sophical developments of the previous 150 years had not taken place.
40
The
Odes
needed a new technique for conveying moral doctrine. Inthe
Satires
Horace
’
s method had been
“
to tell the truth with a smile
”
,well described by Alexander Pope:
41
Horace still charms with graceful negligence,And without method talks us into sense,Will, like a friend, familiarly conveyThe truest notions in the easiest way.The
vates
, in contrast, spoke with authority appropriate to the dignityof the institutions of the state, especially the temples and gods of thestate religion. Yet the private individual, Horace, speaks as an Epi-curean, sometimes in poems of great complexity. In
Odes
3. 1, Horace,as a priest (
sacerdos
) of the Muses, solemnly announces to boys andgirls a new doctrine (lines 1
–
4). He recognizes that wealth, politicalpower and luxurious living are a necessary part of Roman life, but alsowith them come fear, anxiety, danger, failure and death
—“
behind thehorseman sits black Care
”
(line 40). He ends with a question:
“
Whyshould I exchange my Sabine valley for wealth that brings more trou-ble?
”
(lines 45
–
46). Privately he will live in the poet
’
s world, whichwe have seen described in
Satire
2. 6, but he must also teach the futurestatesmen, fathers and mothers of Rome, that their duty may be toleave such a world for public responsibility, and that they must be pre-pared to pay the price. The implication, however, is that they can doso, if (as he shows in the subsequent odes) they control the emotionsand temptations that he has described. In the next ode (3. 2), his doc-trine is consistent with the archaic Roman virtues of the elder Cato
—
alife poor in material things, rich in virtues, above all military courage,and, in private life, discretion and integrity. Here the notion of plea-sure, signalled by the word
dulce
(line 13), is transferred to dying forone
’
s country:
“
it is pleasurable and proper to die for one
’
s country
”
(
duke et decorum est pro patria mori
). Again, in the third ode, Horacepraises the man who is
“
just and holds fast to his principles
”
, whichwill make him equal to the gods. Here again, as in 3. 1, Horace ends bycontrasting his position as a lyric poet with those who are concernedwith high policies of state. In the fifth ode he uses the story of Regulus(as Cicero had done in
De Officiis
) to focus on the citizen
’
s duty to thestate, at whatever cost. Finally, in the sixth and last of these Roman
136THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Odes Horace calls for the rebuilding of temples, because neglect of thestate
’
s gods results in moral degeneration.These odes display the complex relationship between the philosophyof the individual poet and public policy and morality. Their doctrine isproclaimed in general terms. In the so-called Maecenas Ode (3. 29)Horace narrows the focus to two persons, the poet and Maecenas. Heinvites Maecenas to leave the
“
smoke and wealth and noise of Rome
”
and enjoy the pleasure of dinner with him in his villa (1
–
16). He imag-ines the cares of state and the anxieties involved in conducting foreignpolicy (25
–
28), and this leads to reflections on knowledge of thefuture, which the god has concealed (29
–
30). The prudent course is tobe sure of the present and to let the river of events flow as it will (it iscompared to the Tiber in flood, 33
–
41). Thus the prudent person cansay at the end of each day,
vixi
,
“
I have lived
”
, untroubled by thevagaries of Fortune. For Fortune
“
plays her insolent play
”—
and nowHorace directs attention to himself
—
and, whatever she does, he cloakshimself in virtue and takes poverty as his wife (41
–
56). In the finalallegory, he compares a merchant-captain anxious for his cargo on thestormtossed sea, and himself, safe in mid-ocean, bobbing along in adinghy under the protection of Castor and Pollux (57
–
64).This complex poem defies brief analysis, and it is, perhaps, the bestplace in which to study the poet
’
s philosophy in the
Odes
. The contrastbetween the city and the Sabine villa continues the themes
of Satire
2.6, as does the contrast between personal interactions in the city and theconversation of friends in the country. The Epicurean principle of plea-sure is implied by the doctrine (equally Epicurean) of living for thepresent (stated in
Odes
1. 11, as
carpe diem
,
“
seize the day
”
). The con-trast (familiar from
Satire
1. 6) between the senior minister of state,described by the historian Velleius Paterculus as
“
virtually sleepless,when affairs demanded it
”
, and the poet is elaborated by the simile of the river, and especially by the reference to Fortune.
42
This allowsHorace to end the poem, as he had begun, with the contrast betweenMaecenas
’
circumstances in Rome and his own in the villa, ironicallypictured by the allegory of the two boats, the laden merchant vesseland the carefree dinghy. Thus the proper distance between Horace andhis patron is maintained, and he avoids the appearance of lecturingMaecenas. Horace
’
s Epicurean philosophy, to be sure, is unchanged asfar as his way of life is concerned. But he takes from the Stoics thenotion of defying Fortune, and, from popular moralizing, the idea of the wise man married to poverty and wearing virtue as his cloak.
43
Horace appropriates Stoic doctrine in his defiance of Fortune. Healso appears to deviate from Epicurean orthodoxy in some of his atti-
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE137
tudes towards the gods. The gods of the state have their place when hespeaks as
vates
, but his piety towards the gods in a public context doesnot contradict his Epicurean views on the gods. The validity of thisstatement is best tested by
Odes
1. 34, where he begins as a
“
niggardlyworshipper of the gods
”
, confident in his stability as an
“
expert in phi-losophy
”
. But lightning appears in a clear sky, and he appears to gothrough a conversion
—“
now I am forced to sail backwards
”
. In fact,nothing of the sort occurs. Lucretius had shown that the phenomenoncould not and did not occur, and Horace is not here contradictinghim.
44
He gives an ironic and comic picture of himself in a moment of superstitious weakness, followed (lines 12
–
16) by an entirely seriousstatement about the divine power that
can
affect human lives. This
“
god
”
is Fortune, to whom the next poem (1. 35) is addressed. Theacknowledgement of the power of the abstract concept, Fortune, doesnot contradict Epicurean doctrine.
45
More difficult to evaluate is Horace
’
s attitude to death, a topic thatoccurs frequently in lyric poetry. Two poems especially focus on it,linking it with the renewal of springtime. In
Odes
1. 4 Horace invokesthe inevitability of death to encourage Sestius to enjoy the present andnot to hope that his pleasures will last for long. While the notion of
“
seizing the day
”
is Epicurean, Horace
’
s picture of regrets for the plea-sures ended by death recalls the satirical lines in Lucretius arguingagainst precisely such regrets.
46
In the second poem (4. 7) the attitudeof resignation to death is more consistent. It is springtime, and weknow that spring has its place in the cycle of the seasons, each of which must give way to its successor. So with human beings, for eventhe best of us is no more than
“
dust and shadow
”
.
47
In this poem,Horace is consistently Epicurean
—
death is inevitable but not to befeared.Our survey of the
Odes
has necessarily been selective, for manyother poems illustrate Horace
’
s philosophy of life. Yet we can nowinclude the
Odes
with the (earlier)
Satires
and (later)
Epistles
toattempt a synthesis. Horace is Epicurean, and there is no ground forsaying that he
“
moved away from Epicureanism
”
.
48
His philosophy isalmost entirely ethical, extended to politics and theology in the morepublic contexts of the
Odes
. He does not announce pleasure as thebasic principle, but he makes clear that a life free from pain and anxi-ety is his ideal. He addresses the gods formally (as did Lucretius at thebeginning of his poem),
49
and he accepts their importance in the reli-gion and morality of the state. As a public figure, and as a friend of Augustus and Maecenas, he accepts the religious, social, political andmoral principles of their policies. In his private life he was guided by
138THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
the Epicurean doctrine of
“
living unobtrusively
”
, and by the principleof the middle way, memorably epitomized in the
“
golden mean
”
.
50
TheEpicurean principles of moderate enjoyment of pleasures, privacy,friendship and the avoidance of pain, were essential to his life as apoet. But poetry involved obligations to Maecenas and Augustus andto Rome, which could only be fulfilled at the cost of some compromisewith non-Epicurean principles. The individualism of Horace
’
s philoso-phy is hardly surprising
—
after all, he himself said that he belonged tono particular school
—
and it suits well this most ironic and complex of Roman poets.
51
Virgil (70
–
19 BCE), like Horace, saw the world into which he wasborn collapse into civil war and political chaos; he probably lost hisfamily property in the land redistributions after Philippi, regaining itthrough the intervention of the historian and politician, Asinius Pollio.Soon after 40 BCE he gained the friendship and patronage of Maece-nas, and through him he became close to Augustus, to whom he readthe
Georgics
and part of the
Aeneid
. Unlike Horace, he did not takepart in the civil war after the death of Julius Caesar, and his social sta-tus as the son of free-born Italians was higher than that of Horace.Ancient sources say that he studied in Campania under the Epicurean,Siro, and that he had intended to devote his life to the study of philoso-phy after the completion of the
Aeneid
(he died before he could finishhis final revision of the poem).
52
Like Horace, Virgil is too complex a thinker to be identified withany one school of thought. Certainly he sought to
“
live unobtrusively
”
as far as possible, whether in Rome or in Campania, where he seems tohave spent most of his time. His
Eclogues
(ten
“
bucolic
”
poems pub-lished soon after 40 BCE) are ostensibly in the tradition of the Greek pastoral poetry of Theocritus (
c
.270 BCE), but their subject matter ismore complex and includes philosophy. In the sixth
Eclogue
, Silenus,captured by two shepherds, sings a song so enchanting that all naturelistens, for Silenus was even more bewitching than Orpheus, whosesong in the epic
Argonautica
of Apollonius Rhodius (mid-third centuryBCE) was one of his models.
53
Like Orpheus, Silenus begins with acosmogony (lines 31
–
40), the creation of the four elements, of earth
’
sglobe and of all the natural and meteorological features of the world.While these lines are full of Lucretian vocabulary, they are not espe-cially Epicurean. Silenus then turns to the history of humankind, toldthrough the myths of Deucalion and Pyrrha and Prometheus (lines 41
–
42), and myths of metamorphosis and love (lines 43
–
63), ending withpraise of Virgil
’
s friend, the poet Gallus (lines 64
–
73). The song endsat line 73, and, for the remainder of the poem, Virgil reports other tales
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE139
of love and metamorphosis (lines 74
–
86). Clearly the song is as muchabout poetry as it is about philosophy, and the literary allusions are asprominent as the philosophical allusions to Empedocles and Lucretius.Virgil returned to the theme of cosmogony with the song of lopas atthe end of Book 1 of the
Aeneid
, but by then his poetry was the vehiclefor a different philosophy.
54
Nevertheless, his admiration for Lucretius was still apparent in hisnext poem, the
Georgics
(completed in 29 BCE). In the second book Virgil expresses his hopes for his poetic career with two alternatives.
55
In the first he prays that the Muses will teach him:May they show me the paths of heaven and the stars, the eclipsesof the sun and the labours [i.e. phases] of the moon; may theyteach me the source of earthquakes, the force that makes the seasburst their bonds and swell high and fall back again into them-selves; may they teach me why the winter sun hurries to plungehimself into Ocean or why the slow [winter] nights delay.These are to some extent themes that Lucretius dealt with in Books 5and 6 of his poem, but, as the Song of Silenus has shown, Virgil
’
s allu-sions extend beyond Lucretius. For the second alternative he prays thatif cosmology and meteorology are beyond his poetic capacity, thenmay he live in and write poetry about the countryside.
56
Such a life,indeed, brings no fame, yet the poet who
“
knows the rustic gods
”
isblessed no less than the poet who
“
knew the causes of things
”
and ridhuman kind of the fear of death.
57
Here again the reference is certainlyto Lucretius, as well as to Aristotle. There follow lines that againallude to Lucretius but go beyond him, as Virgil contrasts the toil of the farmer
’
s life with the stress and anxiety of the life of the politician,statesman, merchant or warrior.
58
Virgil applies the farmer
’
s life to theideals of archaic Rome
—
a society based on the family, whose farmersworked hard and celebrated their holidays with athletic contests. Thusthe tough early Romans built their society and their city, a golden agebefore the coming of warfare.
59
Virgil chose bucolic poetry for himself, admitting that he could notequal the high achievement of Lucretius. But he saw that the Epicureanideals of pleasure and
“
living unobtrusively
”
were inappropriate forRoman society. He was feeling his way towards a philosophy that com-bined Epicurean quietism with the duty of involvement in the leader-ship of the state that Cicero and the Stoics had advocated. He knewalready that he could not limit himself to pastoral poetry, and in thevery next passage (the opening of Book 3 of the
Georgics
) he debated
140THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
his choice of epic themes, turning from the worn-out themes of mythol-ogy.
60
He knew that he would compose an epic in which Augustuswould be a constant (if not explicit) presence, and that this would callfor a different philosophical position. His view already extendedbeyond the horizon of the
Georgics
.In the fourth
Georgic
Virgil quotes the view (not necessarily hisown) that the bees, whose altruism and social coherence he has justdescribed, share in a kind of divine world-soul:
61
Some people, on this evidence and following these examples,have said that the bees share in the divine mind and have drunk deeply from ethereal sources. For (they say) god proceedsthrough all lands and all areas of the sea and of the lofty heavens.They say that from this source [i.e. god] sheep, cattle, humanbeings, every type of wild animal
—
each for itself summons itsfragile life at birth. They say, evidently, that to it everythingreturns and is brought back at the dissolution [of the body], andthat there is no place for death, but that everything flies in num-ber as the stars and ascends to the heavens.Virgil is careful to report these views as those of
“
some people
”
. Theyare largely those of the Stoics (the reunion of the soul
’
s divine spark with the divine fire) and the Pythagoreans (the immortality of the souland its rebirth). Virgil himself returns to the subject in Book 6 of the
Aeneid
, where Anchises is the speaker (probably expressing Virgil
’
sown views) and where the theory is combined with patriotic andRoman themes.The
Georgics
, of course, contain many other philosophical doc-trines, but in our present context we must consider the poem as a stagein Virgil
’
s development, that reaches its maturity in the
Aeneid
. At theend of the
Georgics
he added a
sphragis
(poetic epilogue), taking hisleave of the world of bucolic poetry and contrasting his life at Napleswith the military successes of Octavian.
62
He says,
“
at that time pleas-ant Parthenope [Naples] nurtured me, Virgil, as I flourished studyingin inglorious retirement
”
. This seems to be a description of the Epi-curean life, for the epithet for Naples (
dulcis
) implies pleasure, and
“
inglorious retirement
”
is consistent with the doctrine of livingunobtrusively.Virgil emerged from this Epicurean life, at least in the literary sense,in composing his epic. Its crucial scenes are in Book 6, which marksboth the end of the wanderings of Aeneas prior to his warfare in Italy,and the passing of authority from Anchises, representing the past, to
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE141
Aeneas, the leader of the future. Virgil chose to revive the Underworldmythology of Homer and Plato as the symbolic setting for the transi-tion, whose climax is the meeting of father and son in the Elysianfields. Anchises explains who are the souls that Aeneas sees crowdingthe fields and woods along the banks of Lethe, the river of forgetful-ness.
63
They are souls waiting to enter new bodies and a new life onearth, like the souls in Plato
’
s myth of Er. Anchises explains that allliving creatures share in the world soul that is immanent in the uni-verse. This is the source of their vitality and their emotions, and, whentheir bodies die, the corruption that has infected their souls in their cor-poreal life must be purified in the Underworld. Some then are allowedto enter Elysium, but the rest must undergo another cycle of corporealexistence.Thus Anchises uses the Pythagorean doctrine of rebirth, adaptingPlato
’
s myth. But Virgil now takes the doctrine further in a bold andoriginal invention. He relates the cycle of death and rebirth to Romanhistory, for Aeneas next sees his descendants, the leaders who willmake Rome great.
64
When Anchises comes to Augustus, he describesthe extent of his empire, likening his rule to a renewed golden age, andcalling his achievements greater than those of Hercules himself. Thenhe asks (lines 806
–
07):
“
and do we still hesitate to extend our virtue(
virtus
) by our deeds?
”
Thus Virgil takes the traditional furniture of theUnderworld, where mythological heroes had symbolically conquereddeath, and unites it with Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine to support aphilosophy of dying and renewal that is completely subsumed intoRoman history and Augustan imperial ideals. And these are stated inthe final and famous lines (851
–
53) stating Rome
’
s political, militaryand moral mission:You, O Roman, remember to rule peoples with your power (thiswill be your skill), to unite justice with peace, to spare those whohave submitted and to fight the arrogant to the end.Cicero had looked to the past to develop his philosophy of the justRoman state, and he had based it on the virtuous character of its lead-ers, seen especially in their sense of duty. Virgil looked to the future(Aeneas stands at the threshold of history, so that we, who look back tothe past, may with him see the future), and he identifies (from hisstandpoint in time) the Roman future with the virtues of Augustus.Thus, like Cicero, he identifies moral and political doctrines with thegreatness of Rome and its leaders.Ancient epic was defined by Aristotle
’
s successor, Theophrastus, as
142THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
“
the comprehensive narrative of the deeds of gods, heroes, andmortals
”
. Thus the philosophy of the
Aeneid
includes the gods, as wellas the heroic leader, Aeneas, and the countless people (born andunborn) whose lives depend on his leadership. His story is intertwinedwith the actions and passions of the gods. Except for Jupiter, Virgil
’
sgods are partial and passionate, and the opposition of Juno to Aeneasand his destiny is one of the sources of the poem
’
s energy.
65
Jupiter,however, is both the supreme cosmic power and the high god of theRoman state. In his former capacity he embodies the Stoic idea of Fate,an inexorable power, to whose will human beings must willingly con-form, yet also a power that leaves human beings with the freedom tochoose. Aeneas can choose to refuse the destiny that is revealed to himthrough the course of the first half of the poem, and in Book 4 he verynearly does choose to let love for Dido overwhelm his mission tofound a new state. Only the repeated visions of Mercury, Jupiter
’
sdivine messenger, compel him to renounce his choice and leaveCarthage. In repeated prophecies Jupiter tells us (Virgil
’
s audience) of the destiny that awaits Aeneas and his descendants
—
the founding of Rome and the deeds of Romans that will not be limited by time orplace, for
“
I have given [them] rule without limits
”
.
66
To end a bitterdebate between Venus and Juno, favouring respectively Aeneas or hisenemies, Jupiter reaffirms,
“
the fates will find [their] way
”
.
67
Thus thepoem is teleological, working towards a destined goal, the success of Aeneas and the greatness of his descendants.Yet Fate cannot be fulfilled without the moral excellence of humanleaders. Aeneas, who first appears ocean-tossed and wishing that hehad died at Troy, comes to realize fully, after the revelations of Book 6, what is his duty. He is distinguished by the virtue of
pietas
. We haveseen how Cicero had extolled
pietas
as the mark of the Roman leader(especially in Scipio
’
s dream), and we remember his treatise on duty,
De Officiis
. Virgil takes the virtue of dutifulness (
pietas
) and makes ita moral imperative: Aeneas knows that he must choose the course of duty, at whatever cost to his private wishes and to those people, likeDido, who will be hurt by his choice.The first word in Greek epic is
“
anger
”
,
68
and the final action of the
Aemid
is the killing of Turnus by Aeneas, who, Virgil emphasizes, ismotivated by anger,
“
set on fire by furies and terrible with anger
”
.
69
Our view of Virgil
’
s philosophy must be affected by our interpretationof the end of the poem. On one view, Aeneas is overcome by the mad-ness of anger (
furor
), the very passion that distinguished his enemy,Turnus. On this view Aeneas fails to observe Anchises
’
injunction
“
tospare those who have submitted
”
and Virgil, by presenting his hero as
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE143
morally flawed in this supreme moment, is himself despairing of thehuman condition.
70
Opponents of this view point out that Turnus him-self had repeatedly displayed
furor
and extreme cruelty, not least inkilling Pallas and spoiling his corpse; he had broken a treaty, and hetherefore deserved no mercy. It was a historical necessity that heshould be killed so that the will of Jupiter could be fulfilled. Finally,on this view, Aeneas
’
anger was justified: it was the anger of the justman punishing a crime (the breaking of a treaty), of the man whosefriend and prot
é
g
é
(Pallas) had been killed and despoiled against thenorms of heroic warfare.The most vigorous proponent of this view is Karl Galinsky, who intwo astringent articles has argued that the killing of Turnus was justand consistent with the expectations of Virgil
’
s hearers.
71
He reviewsthe philosophical debate about anger in Virgil
’
s time, and it is worthour while here to consider these conflicting doctrines. At one extremeis the Stoic view of the passions, according to which anger is againstnature and should be suppressed by reason.
72
Against this is the Epi-curean view, that anger is natural and is of two kinds,
“
empty
”
(whichthe wise person will suppress) and
“
natural
”
, which the wise personwill try to suppress as far as possible by means of reason.
73
In the Peri-patetic view, anger is natural and is just if moderated by reason,whereas excessive anger or passivity (where anger would be justified)are both bad.
74
Elsewhere Aristotle defines anger as
“
a painful appeti-tion towards punishment, because of a perceived slight against oneself or something concerning oneself, when the slight was notappropriate
”
.
75
While Aeneas
’
action could be seen to be consistentwith the Peripatetic definition, Virgil did not propose such a simple useof a Peripatetic template, for Philodemus had argued against the Peri-patetic position.
76
He said that anger of both sorts (empty and natural)was painful and therefore to be avoided. Nevertheless, if a person
’
sdisposition (
diathesis
) was such that his [natural] anger resulted from acorrect estimate of the circumstances, then to that extent it could becalled good. Now, we must ask, what was the disposition of Aeneas atthe moment when he saw Pallas
’
sword-belt? Virgil quite clearly sayshe was
“
set on fire by furies
”
, reminding us in that phrase of others(Dido and Amata) who had acted from
furor
, no one can deny that
furor
was Aeneas
’
motivation at this moment. Horace defines anger as
“
a brief madness
”
, and I have no doubt but that Virgil agreed.
77
But heis careful not to reveal what his view is: he leaves us, as a great poetshould, to ponder the meaning of Aeneas
’
action and to resolve (if wecan!) its ambiguity. Philip Hardie
’
s warning is well taken:
78
144THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
those who seek a philosophical solution run the risk of interpret-ing the end of the
Aeneid
into an unresolved dispute betweenancient philosophical schools.Virgil, it seems, like Horace, as a private individual preferred the Epi-curean unobtrusive life. His philosophical interests to begin with werecosmological and physical, as well as ethical. But in the
Aeneid
hedeveloped his own complex philosophy, in which Stoic and other doc-trines were interwoven with the ideology of Augustus and the ideals of Roman leadership, extended to the hopes and failures, and the idealsand passions, of human beings in all ages.The third of the great Augustan poets was Ovid (43 BCE to 17 CE),the only one of the three not to have experienced the free Republic (forin the twelve years of his life before Actium the Republic was at themercy of military and political leaders competing for extra-constitutional power). In his autobiography, he tells us that from hisearliest years poetry was his vocation.
79
In dealing with his exile in 8CE to the Black Sea city of Tomis, he says:my mind thought it unworthy to give way to misfortune, and itused its own resources to stand unconquered.This is certainly Stoic doctrine. Elsewhere in this poem Ovid refers toa life spent in retirement (
otium
) from public activity, in this being sim-ilar to Horace.
80
In fact, Ovid does not reveal a consistent philosophy,yet his most important poem, the
Metamorphoses
(completed in 8BCE, the year of his exile), is framed by two philosophical disquisi-tions which clearly engage with the doctrines of Lucretius.
81
Ovid,then, after his fashion, claims a place in the philosophical debates of the time.The
Metamorphoses
is an epic poem, which Ovid composed withexplicit reference to his predecessors in Latin epic, Ennius, Lucretiusand Virgil, for
aemulatio
(recognition of and competition with one
’
spredecessors in a literary genre) was a recognized element in Romanpoetry. Of these three, Lucretius is especially relevant to a discussionof Ovid
’
s philosophy. The poem begins with a prayer to the gods:I am moved to tell of bodies changed into new forms. Gods (foryou also changed those forms), inspire what I have begun andextend my continuous poem from the first beginning of the uni-verse to my own times!
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE145
Ovid
’
s poem, then, is epic (
“
continuous
”
) and historical (extendingfrom the beginning of the world to the present day), and its subject ischange. Lucretius
’
poem was epic and dealt with change, that is, thechange from unconnected atoms to the shapes of things formed bytheir union. It was also historical in its account of the development of human society in Book 5 and the plague in Book 6. While there areother poems to which Ovid is referring (notably the
Theogony
of Hes-iod and the sixth
Eclogue
of Virgil), Lucretius is the most importantcanon against which he measures himself. After the brief introductoryprayer Ovid moves immediately into a cosmogony, an account of thecreation of the world and its physical and meteorological features(lines 5
–
68). Next, the stars are created in the heavens, the fishes in theseas, wild animals on the earth, and birds in the air (lines 69
–
75)
—
Ovid
’
s way of pointing to the four elements of fire (the substance of the stars), water, earth and air. The climax to the process of creation isthe creation of humankind (lines 76
–
89), for which Ovid gives alterna-tive explanations: either humans were created by a divine creator from
“
divine seed
”
, or they were created from earth, which retained ele-ments of air and
“
heavenly seed
”
(i.e. fire). This Prometheus mixedwith water to form humankind, the first great metamorphosis of thepoem.Ovid goes on to describe the progression of the four ages of humankind, from gold to iron (in this differing from the progress of civilization described by Lucretius), ending with the flood. The twohuman survivors, Deucalion and Pyrrha, create a new human race from
“
the bones of their mother
”
(i.e. stones, lines 398
–
415), while a newanimal creation is formed from the heat and water in the earth (lines430
–
33).There are Stoic elements in Ovid
’
s cosmogony (e.g. the five zonesof the earth in lines 45
–
51) and features that go back at least to Empe-docles
’
system of creative strife (e.g. the
concordia discors
of line433). But most obvious is the response to Lucretius. While Ovid usessome Lucretian terminology (e.g.
semina
, seeds, for the constituentparticles of matter), his creation is controlled by an intelligent creator(whether an unnamed god or Prometheus) and the precise account of the formation of objects from atoms is avoided. Ovid retains the tradi-tional notion of the empty void (
Chaos
) out of which the universe wascreated, and he retains the creation myths of Prometheus and Deu-calion. His cosmogony, then, although it has philosophical features andallusions to earlier philosophers, affirms the supremacy of myth, andhis philosophical exposition is more narrative than dogmatic.This conclusion is supported by the quasi-scientific exposition of the
146THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
power of the wind spoken by Boreas, the north wind.
82
With suitablevigour, Boreas indignantly describes his violent functions in the heav-ens, on earth and in the sea, and under the earth. His speech explainsthe origin of thunder, lightning and earthquakes, all within five lines(lines 695
–
99). Ovid does not conceal his knowledge of Epicurean the-ory about these natural phenomena, but his purpose is to characterizeBoreas, frustrated in his efforts to win Orithyia, as he determines totake her by force.
83
The second philosophical exposition in the
Metamorphoses
is thespeech of Pythagoras addressed to Numa, the second king of Rome,who has gone to visit him at Croton in southern Italy.
84
Numa was tra-ditionally the founder of Roman religious ritual, but Ovid says that hisintellectual goals were greater than this, for he enquired into the natureof things.
85
This was the reason for his visit to Pythagoras. The refer-ence to the
De Rerum Natura
of Lucretius is confirmed by the introduc-tion of Pythagoras (who is never named) as
“
a man of Samos
”
, similarto Lucretius
’
,
“
a man of Greece
”
for Epicurus.
86
Ovid
’
s summary of Pythagoras
’
philosophical speculation again recalls Lucretius
’
Epicu-rus:
87
He approached the gods with his mind, far apart in the distantparts of heaven though they be. Things that nature denied tohuman sight he looked deeply into with the eyes of his intellect.Ovid then surveys the range of his speculations in physics, theology,cosmology, meteorology and astronomy:
88
When he had thoroughly surveyed everything in his mind withwatchful care, he gave it out for all to learn. He taught crowds of silent admirers of his words the origins of the mighty world andthe causes of things. He taught what nature and the gods are,what is the source of snow and the origin of lightning; whetherJupiter or the winds cause thunder by shattering the clouds; whatcauses earthquakes, what is the law governing the movement of the planets, and whatever is hidden.These are not the contents of his speech, but they do refer to the doc-trines of Book 6 of Lucretius, in preparation for an exposition that isquite different in content and purpose. In this way, Ovid once againdisplays his knowledge of Lucretius, only to expound a different wayof looking at the world.The speech begins and ends with the doctrine of vegetarianism,
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE147
which (as we have seen) was taught in Ovid
’
s time by the school of Sextius.
89
The central doctrines of the speech are introduced byPythagoras
’
claim to divine inspiration and oracular authority,attributes which Lucretius had specifically said were incompatible withphilosophical truth.
90
The first doctrine starts out in a Lucretian man-ner:
91
O humankind, stunned by the fear of cold death! Why do youfear the dead and empty names
—
a subject for poets (
vates
)
—
andthe dangers of an imaginary world? You should think that bodies
—
whether the flames of the pyre or the decay of time destroysthem
—
cannot suffer any evils.But the reason not to fear death is the opposite of that given byLucretius, for, in Pythagorean doctrine, the soul (
anima
) cannot dieand continues its life in a new body (lines 158
–
64). The idea of changeof body leads to the central theme of the speech
—
and, indeed, of thewhole of the
Metamorphoses
—
the mutability of everything.
“
Every-thing changes,
”
says Pythagoras,
“
and nothing perishes
”
(line 165),and therefore in eating animal flesh one risks eating the flesh of a for-mer human being (lines 173
–
75). He returns next to the theme of change:
cuncta fluunt,
“
everything is in a state of flux
”
(line 178),which he illustrates with many examples from the natural world, inwhich nature herself,
“
the renewer of things
”
, brings about change.Like Ovid, he begins his narrative of change with the flood, and hecontinues with a catalogue of natural wonders, including many meta-morphoses narrated earlier by Ovid. He ends the list with historicalchanges, the rise and fall of cities and peoples, among which the storyof Aeneas and the founding and growth of Rome again refer to Ovid
’
snarrative.
92
Ovid introduces Pythagoras as a kind of proto-Epicurus, a fearlessresearcher into the secrets of nature, a teacher of humankind, whosedoctrine sought to remove the fear of death and join humankind withanimals in the harmony of nature. Yet the doctrine of Pythagoras con-flicts repeatedly with Lucretius, even while recalling him in theme andterminology. At the same time Pythagoras recalls many of Ovid
’
sthemes and narratives, seen now from the philosopher
’
s point of view,which he defines in Lucretian terms:
93
I delight in travelling among the lofty stars, to leave behind theearth and its unmoving places and be borne on the clouds andstand upon the shoulders of Atlas, to look down from afar on
148THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
humankind wandering without direction, lacking reason and fear-ing death
—
thus to encourage them and unwind the scroll of fate.But the philosopher looking down on the purposeless lives of humanbeings is not the sole source of authority for those who wish
“
toenquire into the nature of things
”
. Ovid
’
s whole poem, and much of Pythagoras
’
speech, has focused on the wonders of change in nature,recorded in mythical narrative. Myth, therefore, also has authority inexplaining the workings of nature. Ovid recognizes the doctrines of philosophy (in particular those of Lucretius), but beside them he setsthe myths, which, he suggests, are equally valid for the enquirer intothe nature of things. The speech of Pythagoras, then, as Sara Myers hasrightly said,
“
mirror[s] Ovid
’
s own practice
…
of juxtaposing, but notthereby necessarily opposing, science and myth
”
.
94
The philosopherand the mythographer unite in the poet, who alone at the end of thepoem ascends beyond the stars, immortal and imperishable.
95
Virtually nothing is known of the life of Marcus Manilius, the fourthAugustan philosopher
—
poet. He dedicates his poem,
Astronomica
, toAugustus and mentions events late in the reign. Later he implies thatTiberius is emperor.
96
The poem, then, was begun under Augustus andcompleted under Tiberius, who became emperor in 14 CE. It is in fivebooks (about 4,250 hexameter lines), and is the earliest Latin treatiseon astrology and the first in any language in verse, as Maniliusboasts.
97
As a didactic poet Manilius emulates Virgil (in the
Georgics
)and Lucretius, whose philosophy he often criticizes, most notablywhere he argues for a divine governor of the universe and its constella-tions.
98
He was influenced also by the
Phaenomena
of Aratus, which atthis very time was being translated into Latin by Germanicus Caesar,who died in 19 CE.Astrology, which seeks to relate astronomical observations to humanaffairs and so to predict human fortunes, is said by Cicero to have beenthe particular skill of the Babylonians, who were the mathematiciansand astronomers
par excellence
of the ancient world.
99
Divination (theart of discovering the will of the gods) was an important feature of Roman religion, inherited from the Etruscans. The philosophical basisof astrology is the doctrine of the harmony of the universe, in whichhuman lives and the constellations are, to use Milton
’
s phrase,
“
in per-fect diapason
”
. The doctrine of the celestial origin of the soul madeastrology, which linked celestial and human events, acceptable, espe-cially to the Stoics. Cicero argued strenuously against astrology in the
De Divinatione
, and he mentions the fundamental arguments of Carneades against divination.
100
He also mentions that the only Stoic
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE149
philosopher not to accept the efficacy of astrology was Panaetius.Manilius is a Stoic, and it is the Stoic doctrines in his poem, rather thanthe technical exposition of astrology, that are relevant to our discussion.Manilius
’
Stoicism rests on two foundations
—
reason and the divinenature of the human soul. In Book 1 he surveys the development of human intellect, with obvious reference to Lucretius
’
survey of humanprogress.
101
He describes humankind as at first lacking reason but intime developing the powers of reason to achieve progress in civiliza-tion. Human beings then used reason to study celestial phenomena:Nor did reason set a limit and boundary to things before it hadclimbed the heavens and understood the deepest nature of thingsfrom their causes, and had seen whatever exists anywhere.In Book 4 Manilius argues that human reason can penetrate the utmostsecrets of the skies and
“
rise to the stars, from whom we are born
”
.
102
His conclusion is that through reason human beings share in the natureof god, who is their origin and exemplar:Can we doubt that god dwells in our breasts, that our souls comefrom heaven and return there? Can we doubt that, just as the uni-verse, made up of every element of air and fire that rises andearth and water, is the home of an immanent intelligence thatgoverns it, so in our bodies of earthly flesh and our life-givingblood there dwells a mind that governs everything and controlshuman life? Can we be surprised if human beings can understandthe universe, when the universe is within us and each humanbeing is an example of god writ small? Or is it right to believethat human beings have their origin in anything other than heaven?Manilius proceeds to his triumphant conclusion:
“
Reason conquersall.
”
103
Manilius and Lucretius draw opposite conclusions from the sameevidence. For Lucretius, the liberating force of the intellect of Epicurusproves that human beings, through knowledge of the physical world,can understand the finality of death and the irrelevance of the gods. ForManilius this same knowledge proves the identity of the human soulwith god, and proves therefore that the soul is immortal, reunited withthe divine at death. God, therefore, pervades the universe, which is
“
governed by the divine power of the soul
”
.
104
Manilius introduces each of the first four books of his poem with apassage of literary and philosophical interest. Those to Books 2 and 4
150THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
rise to heights of passion and even beauty. In Book 2. 1
–
136 he putshimself in the tradition of Homer and Hesiod, which, he says, hasbecome degraded (lines 51
–
52). He claims that he is renewing thepurity of the tradition and that his work is original (lines 57
–
59), pre-cisely because his theme is
“
god immanent in sky, earth and sea
”
(line61). In lines of great power, he describes the divine government of theuniverse and its creatures as proof of the interaction of celestial andhuman activity. Therefore, he concludes:
105
Who could understand the heavens except by the gift of heaven?Who could find god, unless he were himself part of the gods?And it is reason that gives human beings this licence, reason that
“
can-not be deceived nor ever be deceiving
”
(line 131). Thus, he argues,reason, because of the link between the human and celestial spheres,can gain knowledge of Fate and human fortune (lines 132
–
35).Manilius appeals again to Stoic Fate in the preface to Book 4. LikeLucretius, he argues that human beings should not fear the future, buthe draws a different conclusion. For Lucretius, knowledge of the disso-lution of body and soul at death leads to freedom from fear. For Manil-ius, knowledge of Fate gives human beings the power to rid them-selves of fear, for (as the Stoics taught) the wise person will be recon-ciled to fate and so achieve freedom from anxiety. Manilius exhortsus:
106
Liberate your minds, O mortals, and lift the burden of anxiety!Empty your life of so many vain complaints! Fate rules theworld, everything stands firm by a fixed law, and the long agesare marked by predestined fortunes. In our birth we begin to die,and in our beginning is our end.Manilius then cites examples from history of human fortunes, focusingespecially on reversals, much as Ovid
’
s Pythagoras had focused on theparadoxical wonders of nature. As he says,
“
who can make suchchanges [namely, in human fortunes] without the divine power of fate?
”
(line 56). Reason, then, can know human destiny and reconcilethe human will to it. Further, it supports virtue, for the virtuous personwill be ruled by reason:
107
This reason does not persist in defending crime, nor does itdeprive virtue of the gifts of her rewards
…
So let the glory of
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE151
human beings won by their virtuous actions be all the greaterbecause they owe their reputation to the heavens.Manilius builds his defence of astrology on the foundations of Stoicdoctrine
—
reason, virtue, acceptance of Fate, unity of god and thehuman soul, divine governance of the universe. His poem has gener-ally been underrated, largely because its subject is technical and histreatment of it falls short of the passion and power of Lucretius. Yet ithas attracted the best labours of two of the greatest classical scholars,Joseph Scaliger and A.E.Housman, who saw in it, as we should too,the majesty of Stoic doctrine capable of lifting human beings above thelimitations of earthly existence.
152THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
6SENECA AND HISCONTEMPORARIES
With the accession of Tiberius in 14 CE the continuation of the monar-chy was assured. Tiberius himself soon found that the senate, althoughit kept the title and forms of the Republican institution, was
de facto
powerless, and for the most part unwilling, to oppose his will in anysignificant matter. The schools of philosophy continued to exist inRome, Athens and Alexandria, but the decline of free speechinevitably led to restrictions on freedom of thought. The process accel-erated after 23 CE, with the ascendancy of the Praetorian Prefect,Sejanus, and especially after his fall seven years later. The fate of thehistorian, Cremutius Cordus, prosecuted and driven to suicide in 25,was exemplary, as Tacitus showed in his account of the trial and theburning of Cremutius
’
books.
1
Under Tiberius
’
successors, Gaius (37
–
41), Claudius (41
–
54) and Nero (54
–
68), free thought and free speechwere increasingly dangerous. All three were constantly suspicious of claimants to the throne, and the crisis of the Pisonian conspiracy in 65was devastating to Roman intellectuals. Both Seneca and his nephew,Lucan, were executed in its aftermath, and the Stoics Thrasea andBarea Soranus followed in the next year. The philosopher MusoniusRufus had joined the Stoic senator, Rubellius Plautus, in exile in 60 inAsia: he returned to Rome after the execution of Rubellius in 62 andwas exiled to the prison island of Gyaros in 65.The number of the Neronian Stoics (to whom we will return later) isthe best evidence for the continuing study of philosophy at Rome. Nev-ertheless, Seneca
’
s pessimistic summary of the state of the philosophi-cal schools in the 60s is largely accurate.
2
The only purely Romanschool, that of the Sextii, had died out with the son and successor of itsfounder. The Pythagoreans produced no leader at Rome of the statureof Nigidius Figulus, who is prominent in Book 1 of Lucan
’
s
BellumCivile
, where Lucan portrays him using his astrological knowledge to
153
prophesy the disastrous consequences of the Civil War.
3
This, with theunderground basilica near the Porta Praenestina in Rome, is evidence,however weak, for the continued interest in Pythagoreanism in thecity.
4
A Pythagorean, Sotion, was Seneca
’
s teacher.
5
He encouragedvegetarianism, since in Pythagorean doctrine the human soul mightmigrate to an animal body after death. Seneca practised vegetarianismfor a year, but gave it up at the request of his father, who
“
hated philos-ophy
”
. Seneca says that at this time foreign cults were being banned,and that the emperor, Tiberius, viewed refusal to eat certain animals asevidence for the practice of superstition.
6
Two other Neopythagoreans active in the first century CE aremarginal to a discussion of the Roman philosophers. Moderatus of Gades (active towards the end of the century) wrote eleven books of
Pythagorean Lectures
, focusing, it seems, particularly on Pythagoreannumerology. Apollonius of Tyana (in Cappadocia, part of Asia Minor),known from the biography of Philostratus (early third century), was aPythagorean, whose philosophy was obscured by his reputation as awandering holy man. Neither of these colourful personages is men-tioned by Seneca. Among philosophers of other schools, Philo of Alexandria (who as an old man joined in an embassy to the emperorGaius in 40 CE), is more important for his influence on later Neopla-tonism and as a prominent author of the Jewish-Greek tradition.Also on the margins of Roman philosophy was Chaeremon of Alexandria, a scholar on Egyptian matters and a Stoic, who was sum-moned to Rome, probably during the years 49
–
51, to be tutor to Nero(born in 37).
7
(
Seneca, it should be noted, was Nero
’
s tutor in rhetoricand politics, but not in philosophy.) Michael Frede has shown thatChaeremon
’
s Stoicism was practical, ascetic and theological, and hebelieves that traces of his doctrine appear in Seneca
’
s 90th letter, in theview of Posidonius (criticized by Seneca) that philosophy contributedto improvements in human dwellings.
8
Since Seneca never mentionsChaeremon by name, we may conclude that his influence on philoso-phy in Rome was minimal.Other schools of philosophy were still active in Rome, although lessthan in the Greek world. The Cynic Demetrius was prominent inSeneca
’
s time and irritated Nero and Vespasian, who exiled him to anunnamed island in 71. Given the closeness of Cynic and Stoic ethicaldoctrines, it is not surprising that Demetrius was a friend of Seneca andof the Stoic politician and martyr, Thrasea Paetus. His name is the lastword in the extant text of Tacitus
’
Annals
, which break off as Thraseacommits suicide on the orders of Nero. Thrasea had been discussing
“
the nature of the soul and the separation of soul from body
”
with
154THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Demetrius when the centurion brought the order for his execution, andhe withdrew to his bedroom with his son-in-law, Helvidius Priscus,and Demetrius. The nature of Stoic constancy, exhibited in the pres-ence of the Cynic philosopher, is dramatically expressed in Thrasea
’
swords as reported by Tacitus:
9
We are making a libation to Jupiter the Liberator. Watch, youngman [namely, Helvidius]. And may the gods keep the omenaway, but you have been born into a time when it is useful toconfirm your courage by examples of constancy.Like Seneca in the previous year, Thrasea compares his death to that of Socrates, while exemplifying the Stoic paradox that only the wise manis free, even if his freedom is obtained at the expense of his life. Thatthe Cynic philosopher should be present at such a moment speaks forthe common ground between Stoics and Cynics in their indifference tothe incidents of life (including death itself) and readiness to accept will-ingly the decrees of Fate.Demetrius was himself exiled later the same year (66), and was back in Rome before the end of 69. Tacitus says that at that time, before thesenate, he defended the disgraced Stoic, Egnatius Celer, who in 66 hadbetrayed his patron and friend, the Stoic Barea Soranus.
10
Somemonths later Demetrius was exiled by Vespasian, who dismissed hisdisobedience and free speech with the words,
“
I do not execute a bark-ing dog
”
.
11
Seneca admired Demetrius, calling him a great man and the best of men.
12
He quotes him at length in the first chapter of Book 7 of the
De Beneficiis
, a diatribe that shows how close Cynic and Stoic doctrineswere. Demetrius advocates economy in thought and life: only a fewphilosophical maxims are needed, he says, as guides to life; unneces-sary knowledge is superfluous; one should despise the chance happen-ings of life; death is the end of many evils and not in itself evil; thewise person consecrates his mind to Virtue; human beings are part of acommunity dwelling in a universe shared by human beings and gods;the wise person is free from the storms of life, standing beneath anunclouded sky and on firm ground. All these maxims are Stoic and canbe found elsewhere in Seneca
’
s writings. Seneca says:
13
I carry Demetrius around with me; I converse with that half-naked man and I admire him
—
and why not? I have seen that helacks nothing.
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES155
Demetrius represented an ideal of the simple life that Seneca tried topractise in his last years.From the fragmentary evidence it appears that the four majorschools of philosophy were still active in the first century CE but that,with the exception of the Stoics, they lacked significant leadership.The Academics and Peripatetics were in something of an eclipse, butthey remained strong enough to join the Stoics and Epicureans in thenext century, when professorial chairs were inaugurated at Athens byMarcus Aurelius in 176 CE for the four schools.
14
Their true revivalcame in the following century with the emergence of Neoplatonism.Epicureanism, likewise, seems to have been practised privately in thefirst century, especially in Campania, but there was no significant fig-ure to energize its doctrines. The Epicurean doctrine of a simple lifefree from anxiety was congenial to the Stoics, and Seneca frequentlyquotes Epicurus with approval. But the Epicurean principle of livingunobtrusively was inconsistent with the demands of public life, espe-cially for senators below the age of sixty-five, for whom attendance atmeetings of the senate was compulsory.The Stoics were the only school truly to flourish at Rome in thisperiod, in some measure because they encouraged participation in polit-ical activity, and because their doctrines provided comfort and supportwhen participation became morally intolerable and the individualfound himself at odds with those who held power. While the names of many Stoics of this period are known, that of Lucius Annaeus Senecais uniquely important. He was born between 4 BCE and 1 CE, and hedied in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy, in 65 CE. His family,from the Spanish city of Corduba (modern Cordoba), was wealthy.Seneca came to Rome as a small boy, and his education focused espe-cially on rhetoric. His father, Annaeus Seneca, was a considerableauthor, who wrote a History of Rome from the start of the Civil Wars,now lost, and two extant volumes of quotations from, and commentaryon, declaimers whom he had heard.
15
The cumbersome title is informa-tive:
Oratorum et Rhetorum Sententiae Divisiones Colores
, that is,examples of the epigrammatic sayings (
sententiae
), the arrangementsof arguments (
divisiones
)
,
and the way of shading those arguments(
colores
) adopted by declaimers addressing various set themes. Thesemight have the appearance of a case at law (
Controversiae
), or theymight be speeches advising a historical figure (for example, Alexanderthe Great or Cicero) at a decisive moment (
Suasoriae
). Although theelder Seneca compiled these works towards the end of his life, after hisson
’
s reputation as an orator was established, it shows how importantfor the latter
’
s style was the epigrammatic style of the declaimers.
156THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The elder Seneca hated philosophy, according to his son, yet theyounger Seneca studied with philosophers. We have mentioned theimportance of the Neopythagorean Sotion and the Cynic Demetrius.Among the most important of his teachers was Papirius Fabianus (
c
.35BCE to 35 CE), who was a prominent declaimer and a philosopher, afollower of the Sextii. The elder Seneca says that Fabianus
’
philosophi-cal writing was obscure, but that his rhetoric was flowing, epigram-matic, and especially inspired when he wished to censure contempo-rary morals.
16
In an extended quotation, Fabianus attacks homicide,luxury, wealth, fine buildings and artificial lakes.
17
His apostrophe toPoverty,
0 paupertas
,
quam ignotum bonum es!
(
“
Oh Poverty, what anunknown good thing you are!
”
) anticipates a frequent topic in Seneca
’
sdiatribes.
18
Fabianus was a prolific philosophical writer (he was saidby Seneca to have written more works than Cicero), but his works arenot extant and Seneca only once discusses them at any length (in letter100), while he refers to a work on natural history in connection withthe final flood at the end of the world.
19
Elsewhere Seneca severaltimes mentions both the moral integrity and fluent rhetoric of Fabianus.An equally important teacher was the Stoic, Attalus, who probablylaid the foundations of Seneca
’
s Stoicism. In the 108th letter Senecadescribes how as a young man he was the first to arrive at the lecturesof Attalus and the last to leave, and he implies that what Attalus taughthim was of permanent value. Attalus was exiled from Rome during thedomination of Sejanus (23
–
31 CE), presumably after Seneca hadattended his lectures. The elder Seneca calls him
“
a most eloquentman, and the most subtle and fluent philosopher of your [the youngerSeneca
’
s] generation
”
.
20
Attalus, like Fabianus, was both an orator anda philosopher. From Seneca
’
s many quotations we can get a sense of his colourful style, pointed and rich in imagery, and we learn of hisminimalist philosophy of life and his asceticism, principles that Senecahimself tried to imitate. In an extended quotation Seneca reports a dia-tribe of Attalus against wealth, illustrated by vignettes of contemporarydisplays of wealth.
21
These he contrasts with the life of one who is sat-isfied with very little (
“
bread and barley-cakes
”
). The ideal is a lifepared down to the minimum:
“
turn your minds to true wealth: learn tobe contented with a little
’
. Attalus
’
epigrams anticipate Seneca
’
spointed style:
“
Hunger puts an end to hunger
”
(i.e. death by starvationwill be the end of need), or
“
that man over whom fortune has limitedpower is not free: he is free over whom fortune has no power at all
”
.Seneca approves of this, commenting that
“
Attalus said this to us [hisstudents]: Nature has said it to everyone.
”
These contrasts
—
wealth andpoverty, luxury and bare necessity, death and the tyranny of creature
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES157
comforts
—
are very common in Seneca
’
s teaching, and they wererooted in the teachings of Attalus.Like Cicero, Seneca developed a new prose style for his philosophi-cal works. Except in Renaissance Europe, readers have always beenambivalent about it. Seneca strives after brevity and
“
point
”
to presenthis doctrine vividly, but this very virtue palls with familiarity.Macaulay complained that reading Seneca
“
is like living on nothingbut anchovy sauce
”
. Seneca
’
s words flow smoothly and inevitably:Lipsius likened Cicero
’
s philosophical style to a pond, but Seneca waslike
“
a fast-flowing river that carries the reader along with it
”
. Suchvirtuosity invites hostile criticism. When Seneca was still quite young,the Emperor Gaius dismissed his oratory as
“
sand without mortar
”
, andfifty years later Quintilian wrote a hostile critique of Seneca
’
s style,which he believed was corrupt and corrupted the young.
22
He recog-nized Seneca
’
s range of writing and excellence in rhetoric and poetry,but he found his philosophy careless, his moral criticisms tiresome,and the idiosyncrasies of his style dangerously attractive. He thoughtthat Seneca was a narcissist and unable to practise self-criticism. Thiscelebrated criticism has been echoed down the ages, including ourown. Even after the recent modest revival of his fortunes among Latin-ists and philosophers, he still is little read in universities and hardly atall in schools, and his philosophy is still underrated. F.H.Sandbachdismisses Seneca as
“
a spare-time amateur philosopher
”
and states that
“
It is hard for the Englishman of to-day [1975] to approach Senecawith sympathy.
”
23
Others take refuge in psychology, and as an exam-ple of biased judgement by otherwise intelligent scholars we may takethe following statement from the article (now suppressed) on Seneca inthe first edition of the
Oxford Classical Dictionary
by E.P.Barker:In the tragedies we meet
…
the primitive thought-forms
…
andnightmares risen out of a tortured egoist
’
s unconscious mind.Everywhere are traceable the erratic ability and the limitationswhich are common stigmata of paranoiac abnormality.Much the same sort of thing has been said of Seneca
’
s prose works, yetin his own time his influence was palpable, and in the Renaissance hewas the Roman philosopher
par excellence
, to whom Erasmus and Lip-sius devoted some of their best work. Their editions (along with thoseof Muretus and Gruter) guaranteed that Seneca was the ancientphilosopher to whom readers turned for comfort and guidance in harshand unpredictable times, when violence and torture could suddenlyextinguish one
’
s possessions or even one
’
s life.
24
158THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The fairest estimate of Seneca
’
s style has been made by Anne-MarieGuillemin in two articles whose titles are significant:
“
S
é
n
è
que,directeur d
’â
mes
”
and
“
S
é
n
è
que, second fondateur de la proseLatine
”
.
25
In the mid-first century CE the Roman audience for philoso-phy had changed since the time of Cicero, the founder of Latin philo-sophical prose. Cicero
’
s audience, like many of the participants in hisdialogues, was homogeneous, drawn from the circle of senatorial andequestrian intellectuals who had for the most part been active politi-cians and had all grown up under the Republic. Even though thatRepublic had collapsed by the time of Cicero
’
s greatest philosophicalactivity, its ideals remained alive in this circle, whose members legiti-mately looked back to the idealized politics of the second century,when (so skilfully did Cicero set his scenes) leaders such as ScipioAemilianus and Laelius were portrayed as conducting their lives andtheir politics according to philosophical principles. Little of this wastrue for Seneca and his readers, born into a Roman world where, asTacitus remarked, few had ever seen the free Republic.
26
The leisurelypace of Ciceronian prose, appropriate for the exposition of unchangingmoral and political principles, was inappropriate for a world of moraland political ambiguity. The glorious vision of the
Dream of Scipio
was refracted into prismatic slivers of an ever-shifting political andmoral scene. In such circumstances an urgent, colourful and pointedstyle was needed. As Lipsius said, Seneca
’
s
sententiae
(pithy sayings)were pointed, lucid and penetrating (
acres
,
argutae
,
penetrantes
),reaching their audience with an immediacy that was all the moreinsightful in times when exile and death could be inflicted by theemperor or his agents suddenly and arbitrarily. Seneca was indeed
“
thesecond founder of Latin prose
”
, and it was his style, rather than theCiceronian style of Quintilian and Pliny, that proved to be the vehiclefor the doctrines of the Latin church fathers.The description of Seneca as
“
Director of Souls
”
is again accurate,reflecting the ever-changing dilemmas of individuals trapped in politi-cal and moral ambiguities. Cicero had recorded the doctrines of theGreeks, which he adapted and expanded to meet the circumstances of Roman society and politics. The foundation of his philosophy was afirm belief in Roman ideals, Roman history and Roman political prin-ciples. Whatever the public rhetoric, little of this remained in the timeof the emperors Claudius and Nero. Seneca
’
s philosophy is predomi-nantly ethical, focusing on the needs of the individual. Even the mostpolitical of his philosophical works,
De Clementia
, was addressed tothe individual, Nero
—
a mirror in which Nero would see himself reflected.
27
Most of Seneca
’
s prose works give moral advice to individ-
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES159
uals, or they discuss the individuals response to moral, social or (morerarely) political situations. This is most obvious in the case of Lucilius,to whom the
Epistles
are addressed. From the very first sentence Lucil-ius is urged to study philosophy under Seneca
’
s guidance: in letter 19Seneca rejoices that he has made such moral progress, and letter 75,which begins with remarks about the nature of Seneca
’
s letter-writing,focuses on the question of moral progress. The very last sentence of the last letter, 124, offers Lucilius a
“
formula
”
for measuring hisprogress towards moral perfection. Seneca, then, adopts the persona of the moral guide,
“
Director of Souls
”
.Seneca was exceptionally prolific, and I will be compelled to setsome limits to the range of my survey. Although there is a great deal of Stoic doctrine in his tragedies, I will not here discuss their philosophy,beyond pointing out that Seneca
’
s understanding of human psychol-ogy, allied to his knowledge of the workings of ambition and power,gives a uniquely powerful dramatic setting for the principles of philos-ophy. The conflict between private desire and public responsibilitymotivates the
Phaedra
. The unquenchable anger of a tyrant and awronged brother energizes the
Thyestes
, where a world devoid of moral and religious principles is the result of emotion unrestrained byphilosophy.Seneca
’
s philosophical treatises fall into four groups. First are the
Dialogues
(which deserve this title even less than the dialogues of Cicero), twelve books of medium length, of which nine discuss spe-cific ethical topics. These are works on Providence, Constancy, Anger(in three books), the Happy Life, Retirement from Public Life (largelylost), Tranquillity, and Shortness of Life. The remaining three booksare Consolations, two of which (those addressed to Marcia and toHelvia, Seneca
’
s mother) are true consolations, while the third,addressed to Claudius
’
powerful freedman, Polybius, contains moreflattery and special pleading than philosophy.The second group of writings consists of two extended works onspecific ethical topics, the
De Clementia
and the
De Beneficiis
. Theformer, of which only the first book and part of the second are extant,was written at the beginning of Nero
’
s reign (54 CE), when theemperor was seventeen years old, to advise him on how to be a merci-ful king. The latter, in seven books, concerned a topic of great impor-tance in Roman society, the correct relationship of giver and receiverof benefits. Seneca returned to this topic more concisely in his 81stletter.The third
—
and best-known
—
group consists of the 124
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium
, divided into twenty books. These are not letters
160THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
like Cicero
’
s correspondence with Atticus, in which he expressed hisstate of mind from day to day and discussed his doubts, worries andhopes. They are really a course on ethics, self-contained disquisitionson specific topics, leading Lucilius from his former non-Stoic ways of thought to Stoic progress, not towards the perfection of the wise man,but as close to perfection as ordinary people may come, which is hap-piness based on reason and virtue.Finally, and forming a fourth group by itself, is Seneca
’
s sole surviv-ing work on physics,
Quaestiones Naturales
. Although the text hasbeen disordered, six of the eight books survive more or less complete,and two (numbered IVA and IVB in modern editions) are mutilated.While the work deals with specific natural phenomena (fire, thunderand lightning, water, the Nile, clouds, wind, earthquake, comets), italso contains moral disquisitions, like that at the end of the first book,that takes mirrors as its starting point.
28
In the following discussion, wewill focus on some of the
Dialogues
and the
Epistles
.The first two dialogues in the traditional order,
De Providentia
and
De Constantia Sapientis
, display Seneca
’
s attitude towards the humanpredicament clearly and forthrightly, often with a noble simplicity,equally often with wearying dogmatism. The subtitle of each of theseworks is significant. That to the
De Providentia
is:
“
Why some badthings happen to good people, although Providence exists.
”
The subti-tle of the
De Constantia
is:
“
The wise man cannot be affected by insultor injury.
”
From these sentences we can deduce the lineaments of Seneca
’
s ethical universe. Over all human beings is Providence, whichis the same as Fate or God. The etymology of
Providence
, literally
“
seeing in advance
”
, indicates a power that has already foreseenhuman destinies, but not in such a way that human beings are its slavesor victims. On the contrary, they are free to choose whether to harmo-nize their individual wills with that of Fate, or whether to resist and tryto change their destiny. The former choice leads to happiness and tran-quillity, the latter to frustration, anger and discontent. Thus these subti-tles show that the wise person will indeed be prepared for Fate to dealsome harsh blows
—
bad things
will
happen to good people. If the wiseperson recognizes the overall power of Fate, which includes divinewisdom and concern for the well-being of human beings, then he (andhere I use
“
he
”
and
“
his
”
inclusively) brings his will into conformitywith the divine will. Thus he will understand why bad things happen,he will accept them, and endure adversity with constancy: indeed, hewill be contented with it, not seeking to avoid or change the decrees of Fate. This is a challenge that requires reason and virtue
—
the attributesof the wise person
—
to be accepted successfully. Thus the wise person
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES161
is pre-eminent: those who have not achieved such wisdom will allowthemselves to be affected by bad things
—
death, disease, poverty andso forth, or insults and hostility from one
’
s fellow human-beings. InSeneca
’
s moral universe, then, the wise person is exceptional, and hiswill is in harmony with the divine will, his emotions (grief, anger, fearand frustration, for example) controlled or suppressed to the extent thathe can call himself truly happy, even in the midst of suffering andadversity. The rest of humanity will strive to reach that level of wis-dom, hard
—
indeed, impossible
—
as it is, and individual human beingswill be found at different stages of progress towards the perfection of the wise person.Let us see now how these austere outlines are filled out in Seneca
’
sprose writings. In the very first sentence of the
De Providentia
Senecasays:You have asked me, Lucilius, why so many bad things happen togood men if providence rules the world. This could be moreappropriately discussed in the context of this work if we provethat providence presides over the whole universe and that god isconcerned with us.Seneca then goes on to prove the existence of god from the order andregularity of the universe, and to assert that god is not the source of evil, rather that god loves good people. What appear to be evils, then,are not so for the good person, who recognizes that they are morallyimproving, like a parent
’
s punishment of a child or medicine for thesick. And over all is the irrevocable progress of Destiny (
§
7):Fate leads us on and the first hour of our birth has ordained therest of each person
’
s life. Cause depends on cause, the longseries of things lengthens [the chain of] public and privateevents. Therefore we must endure everything courageously.Elsewhere Seneca briefly doubts whether events are preordained byFate or an all-wise god, or simply by chance.
29
His conclusion is thesame in all cases:
“
one must be a philosopher
”
, for philosophy willexhort us
“
to obey god willingly, to obey Fortune defiantly
”
. Theexhortation is not new, but Seneca
’
s brisk and sententious style is,along with its memorable images and poetic colouring. Thus he bringsphilosophy to the level of the ordinary person. With Seneca it becomesthe teacher and comforter for people caught in the human predicament,and from him this style of philosophical encouragement for the individ-
162THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
ual enters into the still-unfolding tradition of Roman ethics, pagan andChristian.In a late letter Seneca returns to the theme of conforming one
’
s willto Fate. He sees natural phenomena as a metaphor for human life:
30
Clouds give way to clear weather; the calm sea grows rough; thewinds blow from different quarters; day follows night; somestars rise while others set. Eternity exists through opposites. Thehuman spirit must adapt itself to this law; it must follow it; itmust obey it. Whatever happens we must think happens throughnecessity, nor may we wish to blame Nature. It is best to acqui-esce when you cannot change something for the better; to followgod without complaint, for god is the origin of everything thathappens. That man is a bad soldier who follows his commanderwith a groan.The metaphors follow thick and fast, but it is impossible for a reader toignore the urgency of Seneca
’
s doctrine. Finally he addresses Jupiterhimself, translating the
Hymn to Zeus
of Cleanthes:
31
Lead me, O Father, ruler of the lofty heavens, wherever youwish: readily I will obey. Here am I, eager to follow. If I amunwilling, I shall follow groaning, and suffer myself to do withill grace what I could have done happily. Fate leads on the will-ing, and drags the unwilling.Thus Seneca associates himself with the great early Stoic master. Butthe doctrine is appropriate for individuals in the early Roman empire,especially under a weak and cruel ruler with arbitrary power over thelives of those who might disagree with him.We have seen that the figure of the wise man is prominent inSeneca
’
s philosophical universe. While Seneca admits that such a per-son is rare and morally far superior to ordinary human beings, he main-tains that
“
at great intervals of the ages
”
such a person will exist.
32
From Roman history the younger Cato is the closest example, althoughSeneca is not always consistent about him.
33
He uses Cato to make theideal
“
wise person
”
more real. At the beginning of the
De Constantia
Cato is the historical example of the dialogue
’
s subtitle,
“
the wise man[who] cannot be affected by insult or injury
”
. Seneca draws a vividpicture of Cato having his toga torn by a mob in the Forum, being vio-lently manhandled
“
from the Rostra to the Arch of Fabius
”
(i.e. thelength of the Roman Forum), being spat upon. Seneca concludes:
34
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES163
The immortal gods have given Cato to us as a more reliableexample of the wise man than Ulysses and Hercules from earliertimes, whom our Stoic philosophers have named as wise men,[heroes] unconquered by labours, who despised pleasure andwere victors over every sort of terror. Cato did not wrestle withwild beasts (the opponents of hunters and farmers); he did notpursue monsters with fire and iron weapons; he did not live intimes when it was possible to believe that the heavens could becarried on the shoulders of one man. Shaking off the credulity of ancient times
…
he fought with corruption
…
, with unlimited lustfor power
…
Against the vices of a state in decline and collapsingfrom its own weight he stood alone. He held up the republic, asfar as it could be held back by one man
’
s hand alone, until,dragged off, he shared in a collapse that he had long held off
…
For Cato did not outlive Liberty, nor did Liberty outlive Cato.This brilliant parable is a perfect example of Seneca
’
s method. Theconcrete example of Cato makes the abstract notion of
“
the wise man
”
real. The labours of the great heroes of myth are contrasted with thelabours of a Roman politician, less glamorous than the labours of Her-cules, yet involving the disappointments and humiliations of politicallife. Thus the point is made: the wise man need not be a hero, for hecan overcome adversity through reason and constancy. Only the wiseman is free, according to the Stoic paradox: Cato, faced with the reali-ties of an autocracy and the futilities of a dying republic, chose in life ahopeless but morally good cause and in death the way to preserve hisfreedom. Seneca exploits the paradox (of being free through death) byconfusing the two denotations of the word
“
liberty
”
. The one is moral,for the wise man does not become a slave to the emotions that motivatethe autocrat
’
s followers. The other is political, for the wise man willdie rather than compromise with tyranny. In a Roman context, Cato,rather than the heroes of mythology, exemplifies the heroic status of the wise man.Seneca admits that Cato
“
may be too lofty an example for us
”
,
35
andin letters 41 and 75 he shows how ordinary human beings may admirethe wise man from a distance, yet in themselves have the potential forsharing in such perfection. Since the Stoics maintained that only thewise man could be sane, virtuous, free, etc. (and the non-wise wouldall be imperfect, however close to or far from perfection they mightbe), Seneca
’
s admission of grades of progress towards virtue was realis-tic. The idea, prominent in letter 41, that all human beings have thepotential to share in divine perfection, seems to have much in common
164THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
with the doctrines of Cicero
’
s
Somnium Scipionis
. Yet, here again,Seneca brings a lofty ideal down from Cicero
’
s aristocratic milieu tothe level of all human beings, who are endowed with reason and capa-ble of using reason to live according to nature. His approach wasappropriate for the social and political realities of his time. In letter 41Seneca joins two ideas
—
the divine nature dwelling in human beings,and the perfect example of the wise man
—
to show that the attributesof the wise man can be within the reach of ordinary people. He beginswith the divinity immanent in human beings (
§§
1
–
2):We do not have to lift up our hands to heaven or get the temple-keeper to let us in to speak into the ear of the god
’
s statue, as if that could make us more audible. God is close to you, he is withyou, he is in you. Yes, Lucilius: the divine spirit has his homewithin us, he is our guardian and watches over us in good andbad times alike.Then Seneca describes natural objects that inspire awe: an old tree, avast cave, a river
’
s source, a deep and dark lake. These he compares toa virtuous person (
§§
4
–
5):If you see a man who is not frightened by danger, who isuntouched by desires, who is happy in adversity and calm in themidst of storms, who looks at human beings from above and atthe gods eye to eye
—
do you not feel in awe of him? Will younot say,
“
This is something greater and loftier than I can believe,out of all proportion to the little body in which it dwells?
”
Adivine force has descended into that body. A divine energydrives that extraordinary spirit, which is disciplined and superiorto all that it experiences, laughing at all our hopes and fears. Sogreat a thing cannot exist without the support of the divine.Seneca considers the nature of this spirit. It does not consist in externalthings
—“
golden reins do not make a horse better
”
(
§
6). No, whatshould be praised in a human being is the human nature which is pecu-liar to each individual (
§
8):
“
What is this?
”
, you ask. It is his spirit, and Reason that dwellsperfected in his spirit. For a human being is a living creatureendowed with Reason (
rationale animal
)
…
What, then, does thisReason demand of a human being? Something very easy
—
tolive according to his own nature.
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES165
Lipsius rightly exclaims in his commentary on this letter:
“
O what abeautiful and lofty letter!
”
The ideals are noble, the examples of human excellence inspiring; the moral advice is sensible, its goalattainable (even if we may disagree with Seneca
’
s description of ourtask as
“
something very easy
”
). The link between the Stoic god and themorally perfect human being is made more immediate by the vividexamples from the familiar world of nature. Awe-inspiring objects innature are used as metaphors for awe-inspiring virtue. Seneca easilyidentifies the essential attributes of such a nature, and shows that we,too, possess such attributes, if we choose to employ them. And so thefamiliar bases of Stoic ethics
—
Reason, Nature and Virtue
—
reappearas our means of union with the divine, and, far from being discouragedby the perfection of the wise person, we are made to feel that we, too,have the potential to realize our divine nature and, through reason, toachieve virtue.But not many of us reach the goal, strive as we may. Here Senecabreaks with traditional Stoic severity and in letter 75 he develops theidea of stages of progress towards virtue, using the flexibility thatPanaetius had introduced into orthodox Stoicism. Cicero had said that
“
no one should be overlooked in whom some evidence of virtueappears
”
,
36
and from this Seneca develops the notion of the
proficiens
,the person who is progressing towards the perfection of the wise man.The letter begins in an artfully informal way, which prepares for theinformal and undogmatic theory of the
proficiens
. Seneca imaginesthat his letters are like informal conversation between friends
—“
I wantmy letters to be like my conversation if we were sitting or walkingtogether, easy and not artificial
”
. So the formal distinction between thewise man and everyone else becomes blurred (
§
8):
“
Are there no grades below the wise man? Is there a sheer dropbelow wisdom?
”
No, in my view. For the person who is makingprogress is, to be sure, in the class of
“
fools
”
, but already far dif-ferent from them. And between those who are making progressthere are great distinctions, and they can be divided into threeclasses, according to some people.Seneca then defines these three classes. Highest (and close to the wiseman) are those
“
who have not yet achieved wisdom, but stand close toit
”
. They have abandoned the emotions and vices, yet still are diffidentabout their wisdom. They are cured of the diseases (
morbi
) of themind, but still are liable to its moods (
adfectus
). Seneca defines theformer as
“
inveterate and hardened vices, such as avarice and ambi-
166THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
tion
”
, whereas the latter are
“
bad motions of the mind, sudden andswift
”
, but not permanent. In this analysis Seneca shows his interest inhuman psychology, which makes him a more humane teacher than thedogmatic Stoics.
37
Seneca
’
s second class (
§
13) includes those who are free of the great-est passions and troubles of the mind, yet still may relapse. The thirdclass (
§
14) consists of those who are free of many of the vices but stillare liable to some. They may not be liable to avarice, but they feelanger; they may be free of lust, but they are afflicted with ambition,and so on. Seneca says that most of us will be doing well to belong tothis class, and that only by exceptional effort will one reach the secondclass:
“
you will understand that we have made progress enough if weare not included with the worst people
”
(
§
15). We might object thatSeneca has set too low a standard for moral progress, yet his realisticassessment of human morality gives a gentler face to Stoic austerity.The usual Stoic classification of human beings into the wise man andthe rest is plainly impractical. Ordinary people need encouragement if they are to start along the road to virtue, and they need to know thatprogress is possible, that falling short of perfection is not total failure.The profound human dilemma between evil and unattainable good,has, of course, been basic to many religions and philosophies, and itssolutions range from the heroic humanism of Sophocles to the divinesaviour of Christianity. Seneca
’
s solution is undramatic and unheroic,but it provides the majority of human beings with a practical way toescape from hopeless passivity.The emotions are central to Seneca
’
s moral philosophy, as they werefor Chrysippus and Posidonius. He was especially concerned withanger, and
De Ira
in three books continues the debate between the Sto-ics, on the one hand, and the Peripatetics and Epicureans, on the other,that we have briefly discussed in connection with Virgil. It is an earlywork, completed possibly in 41 CE and certainly before 52. Like the
De Clementia
, which aimed to soften Nero
’
s cruelty,
De Ira
probablyhad a political context, in that the disposition to anger of Claudius(emperor 41
–
54 CE) was well known and even admitted by theemperor himself.
38
The distinction that Seneca draws between anger(
ira
) and an angry disposition (
iracundia
) in
De Ira
1. 4 was made byClaudius, when he promised that
“
his anger would be brief and harm-less, his angry disposition would not lead to injustice
”
. But the treatiseis far more important as a meditation upon the emotion that Senecaperhaps feared most. It is worth noting here that anger in the Senecantragedies is frequently the motivating and destructive emotion, reach-ing its climax in the character of Atreus in the late play,
Thyestes
.
39
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES167
“
Anger
”
is the first word in European literature (
Iliad
1.1), and, as wehave seen above, it is the crucial emotion in the
Aeneid
, the principalmotivation for Juno and her human prot
é
g
é
s, and the emotion thatdrives Aeneas to kill Turnus. Its importance in Roman ethics cannot beoverestimated. Seneca
’
s treatise is addressed to his older brother, Nova-tus (better known by his adopted name, Gallio), who had asked him towrite on the means of assuaging anger, the emotion that Novatusfeared above all others. In the first chapter, Seneca gives a horrifyingdescription of human and animal anger, and the rest of Book 1 is spentlargely in describing and defining anger. Seneca disagrees with one of Aristotle
’
s definitions (that anger is the desire for revenge), and hesays that the anger of animals is similar to human anger but not thatemotion itself, since animals do not have human emotions, whichrequire rational assent.
40
Therefore anger exists only where there isreason. The main doctrine of Book 1 is that anger is contrary to nature,and Seneca defends this against a number of hypothetical questions.
41
The book ends with a comparison of the meanness of anger with thesublimity of virtue.
42
The end recalls the beginning, where anger hadbeen defined as
“
brief insanity
”
, that is, a madness that deprives theangry person of reason that leads to virtue.In the second book Seneca further examines the sources of angerand at
§
18 he begins to answer Novatus
’
basic question,
“
What are theremedies for anger?
”
In one of the most interesting passages of thework, Seneca begins his remedies with the education of children,where he shows how important are parental example and early trainingin controlling the emotions.
43
Here he is following Plato, and he endsthe passage with an anecdote of the boy who returned home fromPlato
’
s class to see his father in a fit of anger and said,
“
I didn
’
t seethis at Plato
’
s school
”
.The antidotes to anger are continued throughout Book 3. HereSeneca takes issue particularly with Aristotle
’
s defence of anger as
“
the spur to virtue
”
, in particular the virtue of courage.
44
Seneca
’
sexamples support the Stoic doctrine that the wise man does not feelanger, which is contrary to nature and must be suppressed by reason.In contrast, the Epicureans said that anger was natural and could bemoderated by reason. The Peripatetics agreed, adding that anger couldbe just if so moderated. The work ends nobly with a meditation onhuman mortality, in which Seneca
’
s prose rises to loftiness:
45
Let each person say to himself and to another,
“
What is the pointfor those born
…
to eternity to make a declaration of anger andwaste their short span of life?
…
Why not rather put your short
168THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
life in order and make it peaceful for yourself and others?
…
Whydo you try to crush violently the man who barks at you, a low-class, contemptible person, yet one who is bitter and hostile tohis superiors? Why be angry with your slave, your master, yourruler, your client? Be patient for a little while: death, you cansee, is at hand, which will make you all equal
…
In the meantime,while we live, while we are among human beings, let us cultivatehumanity. Let us not be a source of fear or danger for anyone.Let us despise losses, wrongs, abuse, criticism. Let us be high-minded and put up with short-lived nuisances. While we look behind us, as the proverb goes, and turn our backs, death drawsnear.
”
The
De Ira
is the most successful of Seneca
’
s long treatises. While itdraws heavily on his Stoic predecessors, it is original in its vivid exam-ples, its realism (based on Seneca
’
s own experience), and its under-standing of human irrationality.
46
In contrast to the
De Providentia
and
De Constantia
, the work sets before us the attainable ideal of a peace-ful life, marked by respect for the feelings of others (this is one of theaspects of
humanitas
), rather than the distant austerity of the wise man.And here again, Seneca
’
s guiding principles are the fundamental Stoicattributes of virtue and reason, practised in a life lived according tonature.The
De Ira
focuses on interpersonal relationships, another aspect of which is the relationship between giver and recipient, the subject of Seneca
’
s longest treatise,
De Beneficiis
, in seven books, much of which is repeated in summary form in letter 81. The subject was impor-tant in Roman society, which was more contractual in its relationshipsthan modern Western societies. The prominence of duties in the philos-ophy of Panaetius and Cicero is evidence enough for this, while theRoman social institution of clientship rested on the proper understand-ing of the giving of benefits (
beneficia
) by the patron, superior inwealth, power and social status, and of the services of the client to thepatron in return. Seneca, however, does not discuss this aspect of Roman social relationships, and the exchange of benefits betweensocial equals is his primary focus.Ingratitude, or the failure to return a
beneficium
, is a cause of angeror mental perturbation in Seneca. It breaks the social contract, andtherefore it is harmful both for the individual and for society. There-fore he begins his treatise by saying that among the worst of humanerrors is that
“
we know neither how to give nor receive benefits
”
. Inthe first four books Seneca defines benefits and examines them from
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES169
every aspect. In Books 5
–
7 he examines particular topics, the mostinteresting passage being his praise of Demetrius the Cynic at thebeginning of Book 7.
47
He expresses his conclusions more concisely inletter 81, which begins by focusing on cases where the giver of a bene-fit later injures the beneficiary. Seneca expands this to affirm the Stoicparadox, that
“
only the wise man knows how to be grateful
”
. For thewise man will use reason to estimate the benefit, the giver, the reasonfor it, and so on, and he will come to a just and dispassionate estimateof the proper extent of gratitude.
48
And in the end such a rationalapproach will lead to happiness and a peaceful life. Thus both the trea-tise and letter 81 confirm the definition of
beneficium
with which thetreatise began.
49
It is a well-disposed action which gives joy and derives it fromthe action, when the giver is ready and willing. It is not theaction or the gift that is important, but the intention, because thebenefit consists, not in what is done or given, but in the mind of the doer or giver.Thus Seneca makes reason, not social convention or monetary value,the criterion for the giving and receiving of benefits.Seneca also considers whether a free man can receive a benefit froma slave.
50
This had been discussed by the Stoic philosopher Hecato of Rhodes, a pupil of Panaetius, whose work on Duties was quoted byCicero. Hecato asked whether in a shipwreck a valuable horse or acheap slave would deserve more to be saved.
51
Like Cicero, Senecarises above this bleak level of ethics. He says that the person whodenies that a slave can give a benefit to his master is
“
ignorant of therights of human beings
”
. A slave is as human as his master: it is hisbody that has been enslaved, not his mind, which is free. Since it is theintention that is decisive in the giving of a benefit, the slave is just asable to give a benefit as a free person. Seneca supports his statementwith a number of examples where slaves performed great benefits fortheir masters or mistresses, and he concludes that the free person canbe just as much enslaved by his vices as the slave by his master.Although Seneca has been vigorously criticized as being insincere inhis views on slavery, letter 47 is the most humane statement about theinstitution from the pagan world, a striking contrast to Aristotle
’
s viewthat a slave is
“
a living tool
”
and
“
by nature a slave
”
.
52
Seneca doesnot question the institution of slavery, to be sure, but he does admitthat a slave is a human being no different from his master and subjectto the same fortune. He cites examples from Roman history of Roman
170THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
citizens who have been enslaved (for example, after a military defeat),and he makes the point that all human beings are slaves to their vicesand their desires. Slaves, then, should be treated humanely and reason-ably, so that they will respect, not fear, their masters. We may rightlybe disappointed that Seneca goes no further than this in his criticism of Roman slavery: we will learn more about the meaning of slavery andfreedom from Epictetus, who was himself a former slave. Neverthe-less, Seneca
’
s doctrine is based on the Stoic idea that all human beingsshare in the same divine origin, to which they will return, and that allare endowed with reason, and thus with the potential to achieve virtue.The doctrine of the community of human beings is extremely impor-tant for Seneca, most interestingly in the dialogues
De Otio
and
DeTranquillitate
, written probably before his retirement from Nero
’
scourt in 62 CE. Whether or not these works are closely linked to eventsin Seneca
’
s life (as some scholars suppose), they address the problemof political participation, a central dilemma to the philosopher who wasalso a politician.
53
Important aspects of the problem are freedom andthe proper course of action for the virtuous person involved in politics.Stoic doctrine taught that the virtuous person will participate in thelife of the city, that is in political activity. In Roman history this isborne out in the careers of Cato the Younger, of Seneca, and of Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus. In Zeno
’
s ideal republic all citizens arevirtuous, so that there is no need for the laws and institutions of conven-tional cities.
54
But in states as they actually are, the virtuous personfaces an exquisite dilemma if the ruler is morally bad. Panaetius had justified the imperial mission of the senatorial class and encouraged itsmembers to undertake heavy political responsibilities on the groundsof the community of humankind and the assurance of their place in thedivinely ordered cosmos, a doctrine vindicated in Cicero
’
s
SomniumScipionis
. But under the Roman emperors political power flowed fromthe emperor, and the model of senators exercising power in competi-tion with their peers was distorted by the concentration of militarypower, political influence and social patronage in the person of theemperor. The leader under the Roman republic undertook his duties inthe context of service to the community of humankind, towards whomhe directed his
oikeiosis
, that is, his moral affinity or orientation.Cicero, through the Academic speaker, Piso, had shown how the affin-ity of human beings spread from parents and family, through friendsand fellow-citizens, to the whole of the human race.
55
The idea of
oikeiosis
towards all humankind, first articulated by Zeno, wasextended by Chrysippus, in his work
On Nature
, to the
“
community of all rational beings who are citizens of the universe
”
, including gods
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES171
and humankind.
56
Thus the possibility of dual citizenship was created:one was a citizen of Rome or Athens, but also of the community of allhuman and divine beings.For Seneca this was the solution to the dilemma of political participa-tion. The
De Tranquillitate
, which is addressed to Seneca
’
s friendAnnaeus Serenus (also a high official in Nero
’
s court, who died in orabout 62 CE), begins with Serenus consulting Seneca about themalaise that he feels
—
he wishes to continue in public life, yet he feelsthe attraction of retirement (
otium
). In reply, Seneca recommendsinvolvement in politics and he disagrees with the philosopher Athen-odorus of Tarsus who advised swift and complete retreat into
otium
when public life became too corrupt for a virtuous person to participatein.
57
Seneca advises a gradual retreat
“
with standards uncaptured andmilitary dignity unimpaired
”
. Here is the virtuous man
’
s gradual retreat:He may not serve in the army: let him run for political office. Hemust live as a private individual: let him be an orator. He is for-bidden to speak: let him help his fellow-citizens by means of hisprivate support. Even the Forum is dangerous for him to enter: inprivate houses, at public shows, at dinner parties, let him play therole of a good companion, a loyal friend, and a moderate fellow-guest. He has lost the duties of a citizen: let him perform those of a human being. Therefore with a generous spirit we have notshut ourselves inside the walls of one city, but we have sent our-selves to interact with the whole world. We have declared thatthe universe is our fatherland, so as to give ourselves a broaderfield for virtue.Thus the retreat from public life is defined by broadening circles of activity, which finally include
“
the community of the citizens of theuniverse
”
of Chrysippus. Seneca
’
s
otium
is active, in contrast to that of the philosophers criticized by Quintilian for shirking their duties ascitizens.
58
Elsewhere, returning to the military metaphor, Seneca tellsLucilius that
“
to be alive is to be on campaign
”
and that it is shamefulto be inactive while others labour. Wherever he is, the virtuous citizenwill consider that he is like a soldier assigned to a post (
statio
) whichhe may not desert.
59
This apparently neat theory, however, clashed with the rules for sena-tors, who were compelled to attend the senate until the age of 65 (or60). When Thrasea was put on trial, the charge was that he had with-drawn from the senate although he was an ex-consul, that he did notperform his duties as a priest, that he had not honoured his oath as a
172THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
citizen
—
in brief, that he had become a traitor and an enemy of thestate.
60
Some further justification was needed for withdrawal into
otium
. This Seneca provides in his
De Otio
(now incomplete) byappealing to the doctrine of the dual citizenship of the virtuous person.Denied public activity at Rome, he will still try to be actively useful tothe human community:
61
This surely is what is demanded of a human being
—
that he be of use to human beings, to many if that can be achieved; to few if itbe less possible; to those closest to him if it be still less possible;to himself if it be less still. For whenever he makes himself use-ful to others he is transacting the business of the wholecommunity.Finally, Seneca enunciates the doctrine of the two republics:
62
In our mind we embrace two republics. The first is large andtruly
“
public
”
and includes gods and human beings. In it we donot look at this or that corner, but we limit the boundaries of ourrepublic with the sun. The second republic is that in which thecircumstances of our birth have enrolled us. This will be Athensor Carthage or some other city which belongs not to all humanbeings but to a definite group
…
This former, greater, republic wecan serve even as private individuals
—
indeed, perhaps better inprivate so that we can enquire into the nature of Virtue.Thus Seneca adapts the doctrines of Zeno and Chrysippus to the con-stricting circumstances of public life under Nero. Like Cicero, he turnsfrom the constraints of contemporary politics to the wider universe of gods and human beings, using the doctrine of dual citizenship toencourage the virtuous person still to be active on behalf of humankind, even when political activity in his own community isrestricted. His theory was destined to have long-lasting influence, notleast in the history of early Christianity.Seneca recommends suicide as a way of withdrawing from publiclife only in the context of escaping from the cruelties of orientaltyrants.
63
He calls it in this passage
“
the road to liberty
”
, and it is lib-erty that is the basis of his frequent discussions of suicide.
64
Thraseahad modelled his death on that of Socrates, particularly in the libationof his blood to Jupiter the Liberator, and he also had in mind Seneca
’
ssuicide the previous year (65 CE), in which Socrates was again theexample and again the dying man with his last words offered a libation
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES173
to Jupiter the Liberator.
65
People of high social or political rank atRome who were condemned to death were allowed to commit suiciderather than wait for the executioners stroke. Both Seneca and Thraseawere condemned by Nero (the former suspected of participation in thePisonian conspiracy, the latter convicted of disloyalty for not perform-ing his public duties), and both used their suicides both as political actsand as assertions of individual liberty. They were, then, reasoned acts,worthy of the Stoic wise man.The basic Stoic doctrine on suicide was Zeno
’
s:
66
The wise man will make a reasonable exit from life, for the sakeof his country and his friends, and if he is in unyielding pain orsuffers loss of his limbs or incurable disease.Seneca was very clear that suicide was not justified by boredom withlife, or lust for, or even fear of, death.
67
He says,
“
the brave and wiseman ought not to run away from life but make his exit
”
. He admiredhis friend, the historian Aufidius Bassus, for enduring the infirmities of age rather than yielding to them by committing suicide.
68
Bassus
’
mindwas unimpaired, and therefore he used reason to continue his life, likethe captain of a damaged but still seaworthy ship. Like the wise man,he contemplated death rationally, and he would meet it gladly becausehe was mentally prepared.So much for reasons not to commit suicide. At the end of the
DeProvidentia
(
§
6) and in Letters 70 and 77 (along with many other inci-dental references) Seneca recommends it as a means to freedom, rely-ing on Zeno
’
s doctrine of the
“
reasonable exit
”
and the Stoic paradoxthat
“
only the wise man is free
”
. So in the passage from the
De Provi-dentia
he catalogues different methods of suicide as speedy ways toescape from the tyranny of intolerable evils. Death, in Stoic doctrine,belongs to the category of
“
indifferent
”
things, and therefore is not tobe feared. In letter 70 he attacks philosophers who say that one mustwait for a natural death (
§
14):he who says this does not see that he is closing the road to lib-erty: the eternal law has achieved nothing better than that it hasgiven us one entrance into life, but many ways out.One does not have to be a Cato to die by a noble suicide (
§
19), foreven criminals, prisoners and gladiators have achieved this (Senecagives a number of examples). How much more then should the personwho is guided by reason, and has meditated upon death for a long time,
174THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
be capable of a noble suicide! (
§§
27
–
28). What is important to Senecais how well one dies, for dying well is to escape from living disgrace-fully (
§
6). Later, in Letter 77, Seneca describes the suicide of TulliusMarcellinus, which is especially interesting because Marcellinus is aborderline case of justifiable suicide. He was
“
a peaceful young manwho quickly grew old
”
, and he suffered from a chronic disease thatwas curable, although troublesome (
§
5). He took the advice of
“
ourStoic friend
”
(who is not named), that death is not to be feared andnoble if one dies with honour, prudence and courage (
§
6). So Marcelli-nus fasted for three days and died (as he himself said) with a certainpleasure after being placed in a hot bath. Seneca
’
s point here, which hemakes with a series of historical examples, is that suicide is justified if it is based on reason, and that it is more virtuous to confirm one
’
s lib-erty through death than to be subject to the loss of freedom. He con-cludes that length of life is insignificant compared with its moral qual-ity:
“
what matters is not how long you live, but how well
”
(
§
20). Wemay deplore Seneca
’
s morbid interest in suicide, but his own death,even if it was as histrionic as Tacitus describes it, exemplified his prin-ciples.
69
In letter 89. 9 Seneca accepts the traditional Stoic division of philos-ophy into three parts, which he names in this order: moral (ethics), nat-ural (physics, including theology), and rational (logic, which hedefines as requiring accuracy in vocabulary, structure and argument).Like the Epicureans (
§
11), who, he says, got rid of the
“
rational
”
cate-gory, Seneca appears to have very little interest in logic and epistemol-ogy.
70
He does discuss these matters in several letters: for example, inthe 65th letter he discusses causes and material, including the Aris-totelian
“
form
”
(
eidos
) and the Platonic
“
ideas
”
(
§§
4
–
11), but hequickly dismisses them as
“
including either too little or too much
”
(
§
11), and he hurries to give his own definition of the original cause,which he says is
“
reason, that is, god
”
(
§
12). In letter 58. 26 he dis-misses Plato
’
s
“
ideas
”
by asking,
“
How can Plato
’
s
“
ideas
”
make me[morally] better?
”
While he can on occasion use Stoic logic (for exam-ple, the series of syllogisms in letter 87), his primary concern is withethics. The letters constitute a programme of moral improvement, andthe focus on Reason and Virtue is exclusively moral. Even the discus-sion of philosophical categories in letter 89 ends with a diatribe againstluxury and greed, in keeping with Seneca
’
s earlier remark (89. 8), that
“
Philosophy is the study of virtue.
”
Yet his attitude to logic is not simply hostile. As Jonathan Barneshas shown, he is hostile to the wrong uses of logic, for example, forintellectual showing-off or for raising logical problems that have no
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES175
ulterior purpose. His warnings to Lucilius about logic indicate concernthat Lucilius was too much involved in its study, for it is worthlessunless it is subordinated to the goal of moral improvement.
71
To him,then, logic is an instrument for leading a better life or for the study of physics, if such study will lead us to a better life.Seneca was deeply interested in natural philosophy: he wrote a work (now lost) on earthquakes, and the
Naturales Quaestiones
is anextended exposition of Stoic natural philosophy
—
the most completethat survives.
72
Towards the end of letter 65, after the discussion of causes, he imagines Lucilius criticizing him for wasting time in suchenquiries (
§
15) because they have no moral effect.
“
But
”
, repliesSeneca,
“
you cannot forbid me to study the nature of things (
rerumnatura
, perhaps an intentional reminiscence of Lucretius), or the originof the universe and its creator, the secrets of cosmology and the originof light and fire, or the home of the soul after the death of the body.These are lofty subjects worthy of the human mind, for they lift itabove its prison in the body to contemplation of the universe and of god
”
(
§§
19
–
24).Seneca believed that philosophy is the supreme activity of thehuman mind and that it alone will lead to the virtuous and happy life.Perhaps the most well-known of his letters is Letter 88, in which heattacks
“
liberal studies
”
for being at best introductory to the study of wisdom and generally morally inferior. He examines the conventionalstages of Roman education and asks (
§
3),
“
Which of these builds theroad to virtue?
”
He looks at the subjects which later became the medi-aeval
quadrivium
—
geometry, arithmetic, astronomy (to which he addsastrology,
§
14), and music
—
and finds that none of them teach virtue(
§
20). Even literature fails in this: Homer was not a philosopher (
§§
5
–
8)
—
does the
Odyssey
teach
“
how I may love my country, my wife, myfather, or how I may travel over the seas to reach these good thingseven if shipwrecked?
”
Posidonius is attacked for his fourfold divisionof
“
the arts
”
(in Greek,
technai
:
§§
21
–
23). The inferior categories,which concern the practical details of life or the increase of pleasure orthe elementary training of children, are easily dismissed; the highestPosidonian category,
artes liberales
, Seneca will admit only if the lib-eral arts are truly
“
free
”
(
liberae
: he plays on the words
libera
and
lib-eralis
), for only the wise person is free, and in education freedombelongs only to the study of virtue. At the end of the letter Seneca dis-misses Greek epistemology, reserving his greatest scorn for the Scep-tics, including the new Academy (
§§
43
–
46):for they have introduced a new kind of knowledge, knowing
176THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
nothing
…
[The earlier philosophers] do not shine a light to directmy sight towards the truth, while these [the Academic Sceptics]gouge out my eyes.Seneca returns to the attack in Letter 90, where he criticizes Posidoniusfor claiming for philosophy the invention of buildings and architecturalimprovements (
§§
7
–
10, 32). He denies the possibility of philosophy inthe early stages of human development, and
—
perhaps answering Book 5 of Lucretius
—
he sees the progress of human civilization as accompa-nied by vice. The primitive golden age was morally innocent becauseof ignorance, and virtues such as prudence, temperance and couragedid not exist, for they occur only
“
in a mind that is educated andtrained and brought to the heights [of virtue] by constant practice
”
(
§
46).Finally, in letter 108, Seneca recalls his early enthusiasm for philos-ophy under his teachers, Attalus and Sotion. He contrasts philosopherslike them with pedants who miss the philosophical importance of thewords that they read in their search for answers to trivial questions.And so, says Seneca (
§
23),
“
What had been philosophy became philol-ogy
”
. In this same letter (
§
1) Seneca refers to his intention of
“
settingout in order the whole of moral philosophy
”
, as if ethics were all thatconcerned him in philosophy. In reality, as we have seen, physics andlogic had their part in leading the student to reason and virtue.Thus in the
Naturales Quaestiones
the moral dimension is as impor-tant to Seneca as the physical. In the opening chapter he contrastsethics and physics: the former
“
teach what is to be done on earth, theother what is being done in the heavens
”
, for an enquiry into the natu-ral world concerns the gods and shows how far different their perspec-tive is from that of human beings. In the Preface to Book 3 (
§
18) hesays that study of
“
the nature of things
”
raises the mind above lowthings (
sordida
) and liberates it from the body. Here again Seneca isdebating Lucretius, who expounded the nature of things in order toprove that the gods do not concern themselves with human affairs andthat human beings will be liberated from fear by knowledge of thematerial composition of the universe and of the human soul.Seneca has always been a controversial figure. As a politician hehad learned to compromise, if only to survive. His passivity in Nero
’
smore egregious crimes cannot be reconciled with his ethical doc-trines.
73
His insistence on the
“
indifference
”
of money is inconsistentwith his own wealth, and he does defend himself on this charge in the
De Vita Beata
17
–
22, quoting his critics at some length.
“
You speak
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES177
one way and live another
”
, they said (
§
18). His defence is summarizedin
§
21.4:For the wise man does not think himself unworthy of chancegifts. He does not love wealth, but he prefers it. He admits it notinto his mind, but into his house. He does not reject the wealththat he has, but he knows its limits, and he wishes to make hisgreater means the servants of his virtue.Finally, Seneca says (
§
22. 4):
“
If my wealth disappeared, it would takeaway nothing except itself.
”
We must form our own opinions on the efficacy of this defence. Cer-tainly it did not impress Seneca
’
s contemporaries (as Tacitus reports innarrating the attack on Seneca by Suillius in 58 CE), or the third-century historian, Cassius Dio.
74
The charge of hypocrisy wasexpressed pithily by Milton:
“
Seneca, in his books a philosopher.
”
Yetit his books that are important. In his language he created a new vehi-cle for Roman philosophy, and he expressed truths about the humancondition and human aspirations that have been an inspiration to count-less readers in times of perplexity. Macaulay sneers at the impractical-ity of Seneca
’
s Stoic categories, for bereavement, grief, anger and lossare all too real to their sufferers. Is it helpful, he asks, to call thesethings
“
indifferent
”
? Contrasting the Stoicism of Seneca and Epictetuswith the
“
common-sense
”
practicality of Bacon, Macaulay says:
75
They (a Stoic and a Baconian) come to a village where the small-pox has just begun to rage
…
. The Stoic assures the dismayedpopulation that there is nothing bad in the smallpox, and that to awise man disease, deformity, death, the loss of friends, are notevils. The Baconian takes out a lancet and begins to vaccinate.To Macaulay, Seneca
’
s philosophy is
“
a philosophy of thorns
…
a phi-losophy of words
”
. Against the charge of barrenness and hypocrisy wecan and must set the very real achievement of Seneca in setting forth ina new Latin prose style a way of looking at the world that has broughtcomfort and inspiration to people through the ages in times of trouble.For Seneca understood the shortcomings, and especially the emotions,of human beings as they are, and he sought to heal them by settingbefore them an ideal to which every person might aspire, however dis-tant the goal. Let us end, then, by setting against the satire of Macaulaythe judgement of Justus Lipsius:
76
178THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
And so I boldly cast my vote for you, Seneca. In philosophy, andespecially in moral philosophy, you are the best.
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES179
7STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THEFLAVIANS
Unshaken by the deaths of Seneca, Thrasea and Barea, the Stoics con-tinued to be the most vigorous philosophical sect in the Roman world,although Platonists and Epicureans remained active. In this chapter,which covers the period from the accession of Nero (54 CE) to the endof the reign of Domitian (96 CE), almost all the philosophers whom weshall discuss were Stoics. We shall need first to review the social andpolitical context of Stoicism in this period.The death of Nero in 68 CE brought to an end the Julio-Claudiandynasty, rulers who were descended either from Augustus (adoptedson of Julius Caesar) or Tiberius Claudius Nero (d. 33 BCE), first hus-band of Livia, the wife of Augustus, and father of the EmperorTiberius. Nero was descended from both, and with his suicide the fieldwas open for claimants to the throne, for no one seriously expected theRepublic to be restored. For over a year civil wars were fought by fourclaimants, each of whom became emperor in succession, until thefourth, Flavius Vespasianus, emerged to reign for a decade (69
–
79 CE)and found a new dynasty. These events affected the development of Roman philosophy in several ways.First, there was the weakening of the central position of Rome inpolitics, patronage and culture. Tacitus remarked that in 68
–
69 CE
“
asecret of empire had been revealed
—
that an emperor could be madeelsewhere than at Rome
”
.
1
In 68
–
69 the armies in Gaul, Germany andSyria chose, and fought amongst themselves for, Nero
’
s successors,and thereafter the central authority of the emperor and senate dependedon the armies in the provinces. Ambitious men from the provinces rosein the Roman hierarchy in greater numbers, and the first non-Italianemperor, Trajan (from Spain), succeeded in 98 CE. Other centres com-peted with Rome for intellectual and cultural leadership, and the impor-tance of centres in the provinces was increased by the foreign wars of
180
the emperors or their tours of inspection (true especially of Hadrian).Increasingly, the Roman philosophers did not have to teach at Rome,and neither did they necessarily depend on the patronage of aristocraticRomans, among whom the emperor was the dominant patron.
2
Second, Greek recovered its near-monopoly as the language of phi-losophy, even for Roman audiences. Cornutus (perhaps a native of Lepcis, in Libya), Musonius (a Roman knight of Etruscan descent),and Epictetus (from Phrygia in Asia Minor) all lectured in Greek.Plutarch spent nearly all his time in his home town of Chaeronea, visit-ing Rome twice, probably around 80 and 90 CE. He wrote exclusivelyin Greek and admits that he did not learn Latin thoroughly:
3
I live in a small city
…
When I was in Rome and staying in otherareas of Italy, I did not have the leisure to exercise myself in theRoman dialect because of my political duties and the numbers of people who came to hear me lecture on philosophy.Even the Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in Greek. Of the philoso-phers whom we shall consider in this chapter and the next, onlyApuleius wrote in Latin. The dissipation of political and militarypower in the century between Nero and Marcus Aurelius was accompa-nied by intellectual decentralization, which benefited the Greeks.Greek intellectual hegemony was recognized and symbolized by theestablishment of the four chairs of philosophy at Athens by MarcusAurelius in 176 CE.Nevertheless, philosophy was less prominent in the Greek worldthan rhetoric, and the period between the reign of Nero and that of Alexander Severus (d. 235 CE) is that of the Second Sophistic, a termcoined by the third-century writer, Philostratus (
fl
.
c
. 230 CE), authorof the biography of Apollonius of Tyana.
4
In this period Greek declaimers flourished, who, Philostratus believed, were the intellectualheirs of the early Greek Sophists. He wrote about 40
“
biographies
”
,which, with few exceptions, are no more than short sketches. Of thelonger ones, that on Herodes Atticus (2. 1) is exceptionally full andappears to be the central feature of the whole work. Philostratusincludes about ten of the early sophists (for example, Gorgias and Pro-tagoras) and orators, ending with the fourth-century BCE orator andopponent of Demosthenes, Aeschines (1. 18), whom he credits with thefounding of the second sophistic, although Aeschines died in about322 BCE. Rather surprisingly, Carneades is included with the sophists(1.4), because of the force of his oratory. After Aeschines, Philostratusnames an orator of Nero
’
s time, Nicetes of Smyrna (1. 19), who, he
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS181
says, revived the art of oratory in the Greco-Roman world, and so, weare led to assume, was really the initiator of the Second Sophistic. Thesophists after Nicetes, whose oratory brought them wealth and pres-tige, were prominent in the cultural and intellectual life of the Greek world in the second century. The emperors Antoninus Pius (138
–
61CE) and Marcus Aurelius (161
–
80 CE) had much to do with theseflamboyant polymaths, whose arrogance and egoism amused and irri-tated them. The rhetorical fireworks of the sophists contrast with thefocused intensity of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, who pointedlythanks his tutor in philosophy, Rusticus (Quintus Junius Rusticus, con-sul in 133 and 162 CE), for preventing him from
“
being diverted tosophistic exhibitionism
”
.
5
Some sophists did claim to be philosophers,but Rutherford is right to say of their philosophy that
“
in general theypeddled second-hand ideas and richly wrought trivialities
”
.
6
Therewere exceptions, such as the Academic Favorinus (
c
.85
–
165 CE) andGalen (
c
.129
–
200 CE), the great doctor, medical writer, and author of works in logic and psychology and commentaries on earlier philoso-phers. Favorinus came from Arelate (Aries) in southern Gaul, andGalen from Pergamum in Asia Minor, and both wrote in Greek forGreek and Roman audiences.
7
But they were exceptions: for the mostpart the serious philosophers pursued their studies apart from thesophists.In the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 CE, several Stoicpoliticians perished. Seneca, Thrasea, Barea and Lucan (Seneca
’
snephew), were executed, and Thrasea
’
s son-in-law, Helvidius Priscus,was
“
relegated
”
, that is, expelled from Italy but not exiled to a particu-lar place. These people were convicted on political grounds, althoughStoicism influenced their political decisions. Nevertheless, many schol-ars have believed that there was a
“
Stoic opposition
”
to the monarchy.This is unlikely: men like Barea, Rubellius and Thrasea opposed Neroor were thought to threaten his position for other reasons than Stoicideology, while Seneca was condemned, not for being a Stoic, butbecause he was believed to have been involved in the Pisonian conspir-acy. On the other hand, the Stoic veneration of the younger Cato wouldmake any ruler nervous, for Cato was the paragon of liberty, defined inthis context as the refusal to accept the rule of a tyrant. As the trial anddeath of Thrasea showed, the line between a morally acceptablemonarch and a tyrant was easily crossed. Thus the Stoic emphasis onliberty
—
political and intellectual
—
could and did lead to refusal tocooperate with a ruler and thus to a charge of treason. Philosophers, asopposed to philosophical politicians, were not executed,
8
but they wereexiled, as was the fate of the two most prominent Stoic philosophers of
182THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Nero
’
s reign. Cornutus was exiled, ostensibly for insulting commentson Nero
’
s plans for an epic poem.
9
More probably his exile was con-nected with that of Musonius, who was exiled after the Pisonian con-spiracy, recalled by Galba, and exiled again by Vespasian.Of the senators, Helvidius Priscus returned from his relegation andbecame praetor under Vespasian in 70 CE. He attacked Thrasea
’
saccuser, Eprius Marcellus, in the senate, and addressed Vespasian ashis peer, not as his inferior. Eventually his freedom of speech droveVespasian to relegate him a second time, and shortly after he was exe-cuted, almost certainly without the approval of Vespasian. Helvidiuswas relegated on political, not philosophical, grounds: it was his free-dom of speech, not his philosophy, that destroyed him.
10
Nevertheless,his words and actions made it easy for his enemies to confuse his Sto-icism with Cynic outspokenness and thus to accuse him of behaviourinappropriate for a senator.
11
Vespasian did expel philosophers fromItaly in or about 74 CE, with the exception of Musonius, no doubtbecause of their freedom of speech.
12
Vespasian
’
s younger son, Domitian (reigned 81
–
96 CE), was hostileto philosophers as a group and again expelled them from Italy in 93CE, the fourth such expulsion in Roman history.
13
Suetonius connectsthe expulsion with the executions of the Stoic politicians, the youngerHelvidius Priscus (son of Thrasea
’
s Helvidius), and Junius ArulenusRusticus, both of whom had held the consulship. To these Tacitus andPliny add the names of the senators Herennius Senecio, who was exe-cuted, and Junius Mauricus, brother of Rusticus, who was relegated.
14
Pliny recalled that seven of his friends were executed or relegated in93 CE (including the four named above), and Tacitus regretted his partas a senator in the condemnation of these men. Evidently Domitianlinked the philosophers to the speech and actions of the Stoic politi-cians. Pliny, in praising Thrasea
’
s widow, Arria, and her daughter,Fannia, showed that the independent spirit of Thrasea was still a threatto Domitian nearly thirty years after his death.
15
At the time of the Pisonian conspiracy the most prominent profes-sional philosophers in Rome were Cornutus and Musonius.Lucius Annaeus Cornutus was born in Lepcis, the chief city of Tripolitania, part of the Roman province of Africa. He lived and taughtin Rome, and his name, Annaeus, may be evidence for the patronage of Seneca
’
s family
—
for example, in helping him obtain Roman citizen-ship
—
but certainly not for his being a freedman of the Annaei. Verylittle is known of his life after his exile (there is a single literary refer-ence that dates to 84 CE), and for us his importance lies in his relationswith the two greatest poets of the Neronian age, Persius and Lucan,
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS183
and in the survival of a single work written in Greek, the
Epidrome
or
“
Summary
”
(the full title is
“
Summary of the Traditions of Greek The-ology
”
). Lost are works on Aristotle, while a few fragments exist of commentaries on Virgil and works on language and rhetoric. The
Epidrome
is a short prose work (about seventy-five small printedpages) addressed to a young student. It reviews Greek mythology,using etymology and allegory to explain the names and myths of theGreek gods.
16
Zeus, for example (chapter 2), is so called because he isthe cause of life (in Greek,
zen
); destiny, Aisa, is so called because it isthe unseen (
aistos
) cause of events (chapter 13); Atlas is namedbecause
“
without tiring
”
(
atalaiporos
)
“
he represents the events in themyths about him and in this way [i.e. without tiring] he holds up theheavens
”
(chapter 26). This kind of etymological interpretation has along history in Greek and Latin literature, going back at least to thefifth-century sophist, Gorgias, to whom Plato refers when he makesSocrates say that
“
I have heard a clever man say that our body is ourtomb
”
(
soma
, body, and
sema,
tomb).
17
The theory that the resem-blance in the sounds of two words corresponds to a factual relationshipis analogous to the idea that the attributes of a mythical figure may beallegories for human circumstances or attributes. At the beginning of Cornutus
’
Epidrome
we learn that
“
the heaven encircles the earth andthe sea and all that is upon the earth and in the sea
”
(1. 1). All theseentities constitute the cosmos, whose nature is fiery, while the gods areresponsible for
“
the changes in the air and the security of the whole
”
.Then Cornutus compares the order of the cosmos, whose existence isparallel to that of human beings, to the order of human nature (2. 1): just as we are governed by the soul, thus the cosmos has soulwhich holds it together, and this is called Zeus
…
and he is said torule over the whole just as in us our soul and nature are said torule.As A.D.Nock and Malcolm Lapidge have shown, Cornutus is expound-ing existing Stoic doctrine rather than developing new views, both inhis cosmology and in the other topics of the
Epidrome
.
18
The work isin fact a student textbook (unique in surviving classical literature),whose apparently naive use of traditional mythology rests on Stoicorthodoxy, much of which goes back to Chrysippus. In this way itthrows light on several places that the largely ethical Stoicism of Seneca had left in the dark.The teaching of Cornutus appears much more vividly in the poetryof his student and friend, the satirist Aules [
sic
] Persius Flaccus (34
–
62
184THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
CE). Persius was Etruscan in origin, a Roman of high social standingand connected with prominent Romans, including Thrasea, whoseclose friend he was for ten years. According to an ancient biography hewas 16 years old when he began his friendship with Cornutus
“
in sucha way that he never left his company
”
, and, according to the biogra-pher,
“
he made some progress in philosophy
”
. The
Life
further saysthat Cornutus was both his financial and literary executor, and its evi-dence is probably reliable for both the life of Persius and the teachingof Cornutus.The six satires of Persius (amounting to about 640 lines in all) are inthe tradition of Horace, but their philosophy is clearly Stoic.
19
In thefifth satire, Persius begins by showing how Cornutus criticized anddisciplined his style, teaching him to use Latin vocabulary (
verbatogae
) with striking collocation of words (
iunctura callidus acri
: line14). Cornutus is
“
a great part of Persius
’
soul
”
(lines 22
–
23) and as aresult Persius
’
poetry is sincere, the true representation of his inmostheart (lines 24
–
29). This is as much a philosophical theme as a literaryone, for Seneca
’
s 114th letter is on the theme of the similarity betweena person
’
s speech and character as shown in his way of life.
20
This isalso the main theme of Persius
’
first satire
—
a corrupt style, he says, isthe expression of a corrupt character, and the debased literary taste of the Romans is evidence for the moral debasement of Roman society.The importance of vocabulary and style for philosophy had beenshown by Cicero, Horace, Lucretius and Seneca, but Persius sees itmore as a criterion of morality.Next, in the fifth satire, Persius describes the close relationship thathe began with Cornutus in his
“
tender years
”
, when a youth on thethreshold of adulthood can make many wrong choices (lines 30
–
51).Cornutus received Persius in his
“
Socratic bosom
”
and became, likeSeneca, a
“
director of souls
”
, whose moral guidance was exercisednight and day in friendship and shared living. Indeed, Persius con-cludes, their horoscopes and the influence of the stars at their birthsbrought them together, an idea consistent with the astrological doc-trines of the Stoic Manilius.Other prominent themes of the fifth satire are freedom and slavery,familiar from the Stoic paradox that only the wise man is free. So Per-sius describes the many pursuits which enslave a human being
—
incontrast to the
“
harvest of Cleanthes
”
(i.e. Stoic doctrine: line 64) fromseed planted by Cornutus. He continues with many striking images andvivid examples, ending with a contrast between the philosophy of Cor-nutus and his poetry on the one hand, and the values of the commonman on the other (lines 189
–
91).
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS185
In the third satire Persius focuses on the paradox that only the wiseman is sane and healthy. In this poem the student (perhaps Persius him-self) reluctantly rises to study, and again his poetry is valued at nothingby the common man, here a
“
hairy centurion
”
and
“
muscular youths
”
(lines 77
–
87). But the critics do not know how morally sick they are:they do not think they are ill, but show them a pretty girl or money andthey behave like madmen (lines 88
–
119).Persius and Cornutus looked back to Socrates as the fountain-headof philosophy, and based their lives on Stoic freedom from the
pathe
and use of reason. In the second satire Persius addresses the theme of prayer (a reminder of the focus on theology in Cornutus
’
Epidrome
),and in the fourth the necessity for self-knowledge and morality if oneaspires to public office
—
perhaps the most Socratic of Persius
’
themes.As a critic of contemporary morals, Persius is less subtle than Horaceand less abrasive than Juvenal. While Horace is personally Epicureanand Juvenal expressly refuses any philosophical allegiance, he is explic-itly Stoic.
21
Seneca and Cornutus are directors of souls, but Persius isthe critic of society, and his unique style is the vehicle for Stoic doc-trine that criticizes and at the same time heals and liberates hiscontemporaries.The epic poet, Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (39
–
65 CE), stud-ied under Cornutus with Persius. Since he was seven years youngerthan Persius, their relationship would not have been one of equals, forwhen Lucan joined Cornutus (probably in 55 CE) Persius already hadmade progress in philosophy (as the
Life
tells us) and poetry. Lucanadmired Persius, whose poems, he said,
“
were true poems, while mineare child
’
s play (
ludos
)
”
. Lucan was not a modest man, and this remark must have been made before he composed his epic poem and while hewas still engaged with the study of philosophy. Unlike Persius, Lucanentered on an ambitious political career, helped by the fact that he wasthe nephew of Seneca. He was an official
“
friend
”
of Nero (two yearshis senior), a status which admitted him to the emperor
’
s inner circle,and Nero advanced him to the quaestorship and membership of thesenate. He and Nero certainly shared cultural and literary interests, butby 63 CE the friendship had soured, perhaps out of personal rivalry,but more likely for political reasons connected with the weakening of Seneca
’
s position after 62. Lucan was deeply involved in the Pisonianconspiracy and was forced to commit suicide in April of 65, evidentlyafter the death of Seneca. His father and his other uncle (Seneca
’
sbrothers) perished in the aftermath of the conspiracy, while his mother,Acilia, although implicated, was neither charged nor acquitted.Lucan
’
s epic in ten books,
De Bello Civili
(also known as
186THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Pharsalia
), was unfinished. It is the only Latin epic worthy to standbeside those of Virgil and Lucretius. It emulates Virgil in its epicthemes of war and political and moral disintegration (as opposed toVirgil
’
s narrative of war and political and moral renewal), and it emu-lates Lucretius in its contrasting view of the cosmos, in which thedestruction of Roman liberty is bound up with the fate of the cosmos.Its narrative focuses on the first two years of the civil war betweenCaesar and Pompey, with its climax at the battle of Pharsalus and thesubsequent murder of Pompey in Egypt. These events occur in Books7 and 8 of the poem, which extends its narrative to a wide range of political and philosophical speculation. Ren
é
Pichon
’
s catalogue of Lucan
’
s Stoic passages is still valuable, but his conclusion, that Lucanis
“
a sincere disciple of Seneca
”
, cannot be maintained.
22
There aremany similarities, but Lucan
’
s attitude towards the gods and fate
—
togive but one example
—
is quite different from that of Seneca.The account of the Nile given by the Egyptian priest, Acoreus, hasmuch in common with Seneca
’
s.
23
Lucan dismisses earlier explana-tions of the Nile
’
s annual flood, preferring to affirm the laws of Nature(10. 238) and the existence of underground springs created by theworld
’
s intelligent creator (10. 262
–
67). Here he adapts a theory of thefifth-century pre-Socratic philosopher, Diogenes of Apollonia, whobelieved that the sun was responsible for the underground stores of water. Seneca quotes Diogenes only to criticize him, and Lucan seemsto answer the criticism by supposing that the divine creator was respon-sible.
24
There are many other passages in which Lucan shows his interest inphysics, cosmology, astronomy and astrology. They are aspects of Lucan
’
s conviction that the macrocosm of the universe and microcosmof Rome are involved with each other. We have seen that Cornutusused allegory as a principal mode of interpretation of the myths of thegods, and this is the principle on which Lucan
’
s interpretation of human events rests. He sees the civil war not only in political terms
—
the loss of liberty with the collapse of the Roman republic
—
but as acosmic disaster. In the introduction to Book 1 he explicitly makes thecomparison, first listing the causes of the collapse:
25
[The causes were] the envious progress of Fate, the denial of along period of stability to the greatest [states], the collapse undertheir own weight of those that are too heavy
—
and Rome thatcould not bear its own weight. So when the world
’
s frame isloosened and the final hour gathers in so many ages of the uni-verse and original chaos returns, the fiery stars will join the sea,
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS187
the earth will be unwilling to extend its level shores and willshake off the waters of the ocean, the moon will travel contraryto her brother [the sun]; refusing to drive her chariot across thearch of heaven, she will demand daylight for herself, and thewhole discordant structure of the shattered universe will throwits laws into confusion.In this remarkable sentence, Lucan uses the Stoic doctrine of cyclicalcreation and destruction of the cosmos to describe a world where thedestruction of the laws of the Roman republic involves the destructionof the laws of nature. Again, Lucan invokes the Stoic
ekpyrosis
after avivid passage in which Caesar surveys the battlefield of Pharsalus theday after his victory, and denies the customary cremation to thecorpses of the Pompeian soldiers. Lucan addresses Caesar:
26
You achieve nothing by this anger of yours. It makes no differ-ence whether corpses perish through decay or the pyre. Naturetakes everything to her peaceful bosom, and corpses owe theirend to themselves. If, Caesar, fire will not burn these peoplesnow, it will burn them with the earth, with the ocean
’
s waters.The common pyre of the universe remains, which will mix thestars with [human] bones.The Roman civil war is a cosmic event, and the destruction wrought byCaesar
’
s anger anticipates the destruction of the final
ekpyrosis
.Lucan
’
s Stoic view of fate is orthodox, but his attitude to it is differ-ent from that of Seneca, and it is further complicated by his ambiguousviews on the gods. In 1. 70
–
80 (quoted above) Lucan refers to
“
theenvious progress of Fate
”
(
invida fatorum series
), where the word
series
denotes an inexorably linked chain of events through which fateis unfolded. But the word
invida
reveals pessimism towards fate, for itis jealous of human happiness, and in return Lucan refuses to accept itsdictates cheerfully. This is contrary to Seneca s doctrine in the
De Prov-identia
and the 107th letter (discussed in the previous chapter). Indeed,Lucan is driven by frustration and anger against fate. He is, as OttoSteen Due has remarked,
“
a Stoic who has lost his faith
”
.
27
Lucan speculates on foreknowledge, wondering if the intelligentcreator, at the start of the present cycle of the history of the cosmos,has fixed immutable destiny and set the inexorable course of futureages.
28
If this is so (and Lucan seems to accept it), while the chain of events cannot be changed, it can be revealed by divination or othermethods of prediction. Therefore Lucan devotes many lines to revela-
188THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
tions of the future, which arouse fear and foreboding in the actors inthe poem, and helplessness, anger and frustration in the poet and hisreaders.
29
Lucan himself says of his narrative:
30
When also future generations and our grandchildren
’
s descen-dants read of these wars
—
whether their own fame brings them tofuture ages, or whether my labours can help great names survive
—
then they [namely, these wars] will rouse hope and fear andvain prayers, and all [my readers] will be stunned as they read of destiny as if it were in the future, not in the past.Even the most powerful of Lucan
’
s agents of prophecy, the witch andnecromancer Erichtho, confesses that she has no power to change fate:
31
Once the chain of events descends from the beginning of the uni-verse, and if all fate will be disrupted should you wish to changeanything, and if the whole human race stands subject to one pow-erful stroke, then we, the Thessalian band [of witches], confessthat Fortune is more powerful.There are two exceptions to Lucan
’
s pessimism, the poor man and thewise man. The former is represented by the fisherman, Amyclas, whois the
“
captain of his boat
”
and
“
safe enjoying the life of a poorman
”
.
32
For Lucan and his readers this is ironical, for the world of Amyclas is as far distant from the facts of Lucan
’
s life as the Stoicindifference to wealth was from the life of Seneca. As for the wiseman, Lucan admits that he can respond to the dictates of fate as Senecawould have prescribed. Lucan portrays Cato as an ideal leader inepisodes in which historical facts are elaborated so as to show Cato
’
swisdom and virtue in splendid isolation and superiority.
33
In the firsttwo (2. 234
–
391) Cato advises Brutus on the correct attitude to civilwar and then takes back his former wife, Marcia (now the widow of Hortensius), exhibiting a moral perfection that pitilessly focuses on thegulf between himself and ordinary human beings.
34
After Pompey
’
sdeath, Cato assumes the leadership of Pompey
’
s forces, and then setsout across the Libyan desert in perhaps the most colourful episode of the whole poem.
35
Its crucial passage is Cato
’
s arrival at the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, where (as Lucan
’
s readers well knew), Alexander theGreat had been saluted as the Son of Zeus.
36
Labienus encourages Catoto consult the oracle and learn the future. Here is Cato
’
s reply:Cato, full of the god whom he carried in his calm mind, uttered
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS189
words from his heart that were worthy of the oracle.
“
What ques-tion do you suggest, Labienus? Should I ask if I should wish todie in battle a free man, rather than witness tyranny? Whether itmakes any difference if our life is long or short? Whether anyviolence can harm the good man? Whether Fortune can lose herterrors when faced with virtue?
…
I know, and Ammon will notplant knowledge any deeper in my heart. We all are one with thepowers above, and though the oracle be silent, we do nothingwithout the will of god. The divine power needs no [oracular]utterances, and our creator has told us at our birth whatever wemay know. Has he chosen desert sands to chant his oracles to afew [enquirers]? Has he buried the truth in this dust? Is the god
’
shome anywhere except in earth and sea and air and heaven
—
andvirtue? Why look for the gods any further? Jupiter is whateveryou see, whatever you do.
”
The wise man needs no external assurance, no divination or prophecy.The god is within him, and he proceeds through life unmoved by fearand other emotions, knowing one fact about the future
—
that he mustdie.
37
This is the obvious significance of the passage. Cato, however,also sees that divine power is immanent in the four
“
elements
”
of theuniverse (
“
heaven
”
standing for the fiery upper air of Stoic cosmology)and in virtue, meaning the virtue of all wise men rather than of a partic-ular individual. Lucan, then, follows Seneca in seeing the divineeverywhere in the universe and the wise man as being himself divine.
38
Thus it comes as no surprise when Lucan ends his eulogy of Cato byequating him with the gods:
39
See, then, the true father of his country, most worthy, Rome, of your altars! Never will you be ashamed to take your oaths byhim, for if ever you stand free from the yoke of slavery, him willyou make
—
now, in the future
—
a god.Lucan
’
s portrait of Cato as the s
apiens,
for all its bizarre features andexaggerations, is based on philosophical principle.For Lucan, Fortune is the dynamic and universal power, replacingJupiter and the Olympians. He dispenses with the gods of Homeric andVirgilian epic, except for Hercules, whose struggle with Antaeus isnarrated more as a parable of Roman success in Africa than as anaffirmation of the reality of the Olympian gods.
40
Nevertheless, theStoic god pervades the poem. Among mortals, only Cato is worthy of divine status and the deified Caesar and other emperors are worthy
190THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
only of scorn.
41
In passionate despair Lucan consoles himself for thevictory of Caesar with the hollowness of his divinity:
42
Still, we have this consolation for the disaster, as much as it isright for the divine power to give to mortals: the civil wars willcreate gods equal to the gods above. Rome will equip dead mor-tals with thunderbolts and radiate crowns and stars, and in tem-ples of the gods she will swear her oaths by dead ghosts.These words follow the surprising cry:Indeed we have no gods: since the ages are hurried along byblind chance, we lie when we say that Jupiter is king.A few lines later Lucan says
“
mortal affairs are of no interest to god
”
.Is he then being inconsistent with Stoic doctrine? I think not. Repeat-edly he appeals to the
“
chain of fate
”
, and emphasizes that fate isunkind to mortals
—
most particularly those who supported the republi-can cause against Caesar and their sympathizers in later ages. Theinconsistency lies, not so much in the nihilism evident in these lines,but in Lucan s refusal to accept the dictates of fate. If fate has dealtmortals such a terrible hand, then how can one accept it willingly? Theonly answer must be nihilism, he says. And this is consistent, for, aswe have seen, Lucan shows that the only person secure against suchdespair is the wise man
—
Cato
—
who is in a different category fromother human beings. For the rest of us the divine power
—
whether of the Olympian gods or the Stoic divinity
—
is irrelevant, for our world isdisintegrating.Lucan links Roman and cosmic disaster in another dynamic featureof the poem, Caesar
’
s anger. The governing principle in the greatstorm of Book 5 is the interaction of Caesar
’
s madness (
furor
) with theraging of the elements
—
and madness, as Seneca had taught, is part of anger.
43
At the climax of the storm, the universe itself collapses:then the vault of heaven trembles and the axis [of the world]thunders and the poles begin to collapse, their structure shaken.Nature fears chaos: the elements seem to have broken therestraints that held them in harmony and night seems to return, toconfuse the spirits of the dead with the gods.We see here once more Cornutus
’
principle of allegory
—
the raging of
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS191
the individual, Caesar, involves the raging of nature, and the destruc-tion to be wrought by Caesar finds its parallel in cosmic disruption.Lucan is a Stoic with a difference, a Stoic who cannot accept theinjustice of the Roman republic destroyed and liberty removed, exceptby seeing in these disasters the dismantling of the ordered cosmos. Hiswise man, Cato, points out the difference between the Stoic ideal(which Seneca taught was possibly attainable) and the cruel reality of the world of the
Bellum Civile
.Lucan
’
s attitude to the divine power, to fate and to the cosmos, isone of two essential aspects of his philosophy. The second is his atti-tude towards Roman history and its great disaster, the loss of republi-can liberty with the victory of Caesar at Pharsalus. Repeatedly hehammers at the theme of lost liberty. Caesar and Liberty are like a pairof gladiators; after Caesar
’
s victory
“
Liberty retreated beyond theTigris and the Rhine
”
, never to return to the Roman world.
44
Facedwith tyranny, how should the individual react? We have seen in Cato,the wise man, the ideal answer, but ordinary mortals, Lucan seems tosay, give way to their emotions. Occasionally there are exceptions:Cotta dissuades Metellus from opposing Caesar s efforts to plunder theRoman treasury by saying that
“
the people
’
s liberty, when suppressedby a tyrant, perishes through liberty
”
, that is, the person who tries tospeak freely under a tyranny discovers how much freedom he haslost.
45
The corollary is silence and a withdrawal into the freedom of themind, as the Roman people do, suppressing their grief at the loss of liberty even while outwardly celebrating the tyrant
’
s triumphs.
46
Equally pointedly, Caesars entourage openly rejoice at the sight of Pompey
’
s head, while Caesar appears to grieve.
“
This
”
, says the poet,
“
is good Liberty
—
to dare to be happy while Caesar weeps
”
. Liberty,then, is the victim of the civil war: as the Egyptian vizier, Pothinus,says to the young Ptolemy:
47
Let the man who wants to be morally good (
pius
) leave the court.Virtue and supreme power cannot coexist.Withdrawal into
otium
, Seneca
’
s solution for maintaining freedomunder a tyranny, is not an option for Lucan. He does, however, con-sider Seneca
’
s extreme solution, suicide. He seems to have been fasci-nated by death and modes of death, and his most elaborate portrayal of suicide in the cause of liberty is the episode of Vulteius and his men.
48
They are trapped on a raft, surrounded by the enemy, and Vulteiusurges them to die through mutual suicide rather than let the Pompeianskill them (lines 476
–
520). The first word of his speech is
“
Free
”
(
lib-
192THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
era
), and his theme is that to assert one
’
s freedom through death is todie happy (line 520). Yet Vulteius is hardly a rational man, for he isdriven by
“
madness, the goads of death
”
(line 517), and, in a finalirony, he is a Caesarian. Lucan reflects on his death:Yet even after these examples future generations will not seehow virtue is not difficult to attain, if one escapes slavery byone
’
s own hand. Yet tyrants are feared and peoples do not knowthat swords are given so that no one need be a slave.The last line (
ignorantque datos
,
ne quisquam serviat
,
enses
) has longbeen admired by patriots. While the sentiment may be disturbing, theexpression epitomizes the noblest aspirations of Lucan
’
s philosophy.One death, however, stands apart, the murder of Pompey.
49
Pompeyhas been at best a morally ambiguous figure throughout the poem, buthere Lucan portrays him as facing death with Stoic courage.
“
I am
”
, hesays,
“
happy, O gods
…
Death cannot make a man unhappy
”
(lines 630
–
32). At the beginning of Book 9 Pompey
’
s soul rejoins the divine firedwelling among the stars, where
“
the half-divine dead spirits dwell,those whom fiery virtue has allowed to endure without guilt the lifebelow
”
(lines 7
–
8). But Lucan diverges from the pattern of Cicero
’
s
Dream of Scipio
, for he imagines the soul returning to earth to exactvengeance on Caesar by taking up its residence in the
“
pure heart of Brutus
”
and
“
the unconquered mind of Cato
”
(lines 17
–
18). While thisseems to be a kind of Pythagorean transmigration of the soul, it shouldbe interpreted rather as an expression of Lucan
’
s unwillingness toleave the disembodied Pompey to enjoy the rewards of virtue when thevictory over the tyrant (Caesar) is still to be won.Like Virgil, Lucan is an epic poet whose philosophy is integral tohis poetry. It is basically Stoic, but his despair sets him apart fromother Stoics, and his tempestuous commitment to the ideal of republi-can liberty opens a gulf between his view of life and the
ataraxia
of the Stoics. He is closest to Seneca in his speculations on the cosmosand the physical world, and to Cornutus in his allegorical interpretationof events in human history. Whatever our judgement of his philosophi-cal views (and there is huge disagreement among his readers), they areexpressed with a vigour unique in classical literature. SamuelJohnson
’
s view is closest to the truth:
50
Lucan is distinguished by a kind of dictatorial or philosophicdignity
…
; full of ambitious morality and pointed sentences, com-prised in vigorous and animated lines.
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS193
The most distinguished Roman philosopher of the later part of the firstcentury was Gaius Musonius Rufus (
c
.30
–
101).
51
Like Persius, he wasEtruscan by descent and of equestrian rank (that is, he belonged to theupper socio-economic class of Roman society but was not a senator).He joined the exiled Rubellius Plautus in Asia and returned to Romeafter the execution of Rubellius in 62. He was exiled to the island of Gyaros in 65, and while there he discovered a spring of water whichbecame an object of pilgrimage for the students who came to Gyaros tohear him lecture. Musonius himself reflects on his exile in his 9th Dis-course. Clearly he endured it with courage and equanimity, for he prac-tised the Stoic belief that exile did not
“
deprive a man of things that aretruly good
”
, such as courage, justice, moderation or reason. He wasrecalled after the death of Nero, and Tacitus reports that when the armyof Vespasian
’
s general, Antonius Primus, was poised to capture Romein December of 69 CE, the emperor Vitellius included Musonius in amission sent out to attempt to find a peaceful solution to the war. Hisefforts to show the soldiers that peace was preferable to war were metwith derision and violence
—
philosophy and soldiers thirsting for battledo not mix.
52
After the death of Vitellius and the establishment of Vespasian
’
ssupporters in Rome, the senate began to settle old scores.
53
Musonius,although not a senator, addressed the senate as prosecutor of the Stoic,Egnatius Celer, who had gained the conviction and execution of histeacher, Barea Soranus, in 66. Although Egnatius was defended by theCynic philosopher, Demetrius, he was condemned and executed.About four years later Musonius was again exiled, although he had atfirst been exempted from Vespasian
’
s order expelling philosophers. Onthis occasion he seems to have travelled to Syria (for he lectured to
“
aSyrian king
”
in Discourse 8), and to have met Pliny
’
s close friend, thephilosopher Artemidorus, who became his son-in-law.
54
Musonius wasrecalled, perhaps in 81 (the year of Pliny
’
s military service in Syria),and seems to have spent the remaining twenty years of his life in Romestudying and lecturing.Among Musonius
’
students were Epictetus, Dio Cocceianus of Prusa (Dio Chrysostom), and the Stoic philosopher Euphrates, whomPliny met in Syria and greatly admired.
55
Pliny says that Euphratestaught that
“
the most beautiful part of philosophy is to transact publicbusiness
…
and to make practical use of the philosophers
’
doctrines
”
.Epictetus quotes a lecture of Euphrates defending his refusal to flaunthis philosophy openly, preferring to practise it privately (
“
everythingfor myself and God
”
) and to live publicly like other people.
56
Musonius taught in Greek, and in his time Roman intellectual life
194THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
was becoming more catholic, socially and geographically, as the fol-lowing examples show. Musonius himself spoke Greek and Latin, andArtemidorus, his son-in-law, was very probably a Greek citizen.Euphrates and Artemidorus conversed easily with Pliny in Syria and atRome. When Epictetus was driven from Rome he set up his school atNicopolis in western Greece, where many young Romans came to hearhim lecture in Greek. Dio Chrysostom, expelled from Italy by Domi-tian, travelled all over the Mediterranean world before returning to hisoriginal home at Prusa in Bithynia.Musonius seems to have left no written works. Twenty-one of hisdiscourses (short lectures addressed to non-specialist audiences) wererecorded by his student Lucius, perhaps not long after his death, andthere are thirty-two shorter fragments, of which six are quoted byEpictetus. The discourses and nineteen of the fragments were pre-served by the fifth-century scholar, John of Stobi (Stobaeus). Somescholars optimistically refer to Musonius as
“
the Roman Socrates
”
because of his high moral character (on which all ancient sources areunanimous) and because he committed nothing to writing, as far as canbe known.The twenty-one discourses fall into three groups: the first elevendeal with general philosophical questions; numbers 12
–
17 with socialquestions; and numbers 18
–
21 with questions concerning the minutiaeof daily life. Like Seneca and Epictetus, Musonius was not greatly con-cerned with logic, although Epictetus quotes an episode in whichMusonius criticized him for not understanding a syllogism.
57
UnlikeSeneca, he discouraged giving many examples to support a philosophi-cal point. The first discourse is on the subject
“
that there is no need formany proofs in dealing with one problem
”
, a statement he supportswith analogies from medicine
—
the doctor who can cure you is betterthan the one who prescribes many medicines. The medical analogy ismore than decorative, for underlying it is Musonius
’
belief that philos-ophy must lead to practical results in one s daily life. In Discourse 5 heargues that ethical behaviour in accordance with theory is the goal of the student of philosophy, and that therefore it is more important thantheory because it is practical. In Discourse 6 he says:
58
Virtue consists not only in theoretical knowledge but also in prac-tical [living], like medicine and music. Just as the doctor and themusician must learn not only the theories of each one
’
s art butalso train themselves to act in accordance with theory, so theman who will be morally good must not only learn the lessons
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS195
that lead to virtue but must also train himself in them with enthu-siasm and hard work.This doctrine is not entirely new: for example, Seneca said that
“
virtueonly touches a mind that is thoroughly educated and taught and hasreached the highest point through constant practice
”
. Socrates fre-quently used analogies from the practical arts (carpentry, shoe-makingand so on) to illustrate the process of acquiring virtue, but the profes-sional sophists who came after him went beyond analogy and claimedthat they could teach virtue as if it were a
techne
(that is, an art orskill). Musonius
’
focus is the moral excellence of the individual, whocan study it theoretically but acquire it and maintain it only throughconstant practice.In Musonius
’
moral scheme, the first stage is reason
(logos),
the sec-ond is virtuous action (
ethos
), and the key to virtuous behaviour is prac-tice (
askesis,
perhaps better translated as
“
training
”
). The sixth dis-course (the beginning of which is quoted above) is devoted to
askesis,
which seems to have been Musonius
’
particular contribution to Romanethics.
59
He says:One kind of training rightly concerns the soul alone; the other iscommon to the soul and the body. The kind common to both willoccur if we accustom ourselves to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, lim-ited food, hard beds, abstinence from pleasure and endurance of hard labour.Musonius says that this kind of training will harden the body and directthe soul to courage and self-control. The training for the soul aloneprepares the student to distinguish between good and evil, to knowwhat things are truly good or evil (as opposed to seeming to be so), andso to avoid the one and pursue the other. The focus on training thebody as part of philosophy appears in Cicero, as does the doctrine thatspecific virtues (for example, courage) will follow from training themind.
60
Seneca and Epictetus are more concerned with the mind, andfor the former, especially, virtuous behaviour will follow from theright exercise of reason.Musonius discusses the education of women and the proper relationsbetween husband and wife. In Discourse 3 he says that women shouldstudy philosophy, for they are endowed with reason no less than men,and they have the same disposition (
orexis
) towards and natural affin-ity (
oikeiosis
) for virtue as men. Seneca, it is true, had said that naturehad been as generous with virtues to women as to men, and he gives
196THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
examples of virtuous women from Roman history.
61
But Musonius ismore precise and works out the details of a woman
’
s virtuous activityin daily life. He concludes:Hence it is reasonable to expect that such a woman will be indus-trious and able to endure evil, a woman who will nurse her ownchildren at her breast and minister to her husband with her ownhands. Activities that some people think are appropriate forslaves she will do without shrinking. Is not such a woman a helpto her husband, an ornament to her family, and a good examplefor those who know her?While this picture of the woman who has studied philosophy is moreor less one of the ideal Roman matron, it is based on Musonius
’
doc-trine that right reason will be followed by right action, which will bemaintained through continuous practice. As part of his doctrine that theindividual must take responsibility for the moral quality of her life, heparticularly takes issue with the custom among Roman upper-classmothers of giving their babies to wet-nurse slaves and relying onslaves to perform all domestic chores. We may deplore Musonius
’
assumptions about the comparative roles of men and women in domes-tic activities, but we should at least give him credit for some practicaladvice on the proper role of slaves in the economy of a house, asopposed to the generalizations of Seneca
’
s 47th letter. And we shouldapplaud his pleas for the equal education of women, which he repeatsin the 4th discourse on
“
whether daughters should have equal educa-tion with sons
”
. He points out that
“
all human tasks are perhaps com-mon to men and women
”
, while education in virtue is equally appropri-ate for both sexes.
62
He concludes that since philosophy is training fornoble character, it cannot be limited just to boys and men.Musonius discusses sexual behaviour more than most Romanphilosophers. He believes that extramarital sexual relations are wrong,and that within marriage their purpose should be the procreation of children, not pleasure. Husband and wife should provide mutual com-panionship and share all things and offer mutual love, respect and sup-port. Neither should marriage hinder the study of philosophy, for theresult of such study is right action. Musonius seems to be answeringthe bleak picture of Stoic marriage given by Lucan in Cato
’
s remar-riage to Marcia, for, in place of the unbending priggishness of Cato, herecommends mutual support and love, with as much being given by thehusband as by the wife.
65
The Dutch scholar, A.C.van Geytenbeek, says that
“
If one judges
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS197
Musonius as a philosopher, the judgement will have to be damning if one applies modern standards.
”
66
He is troubled by the gulf betweenthe high reputation of Musonius in his own time and the lack of philo-sophical originality or depth in the discourses. It is true that the dis-courses that deal with traditional Stoic topics (for example, luxury) areunoriginal, and van Geytenbeek rightly judges Musonius
’
treatment of equality of education for women and of sexual activity (along withother topics such as the exposure of infants and obedience of childrento their parents) to be superior. Musonius is important for his positionin Roman society as a teacher who successfully related Stoic doctrineto the problems of daily life, that is, one who preferred applied ethicsto theory. In this he is an interesting foil to Seneca, who constantlyseeks to apply Stoic doctrine to daily life, yet leaves the impressionthat there is a gulf between what he writes and how he lives his life.Thus Seneca
’
s readers, in his own time and ever since, have had con-flicting views about him. About Musonius, who was less ambitious asa stylist and philosopher, there seems to have been unanimity. EvenTacitus, so ironic in recording the tragicomedy of his mission to thesoldiers of Antonius Primus, says of him (in a passage written perhapstwo decades after his death), that he was exiled in 65 CE
“
because of his distinguished reputation
…
as a teacher of the young in the preceptsof wisdom
”
.
67
198THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
8FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUSAURELIUS
Epictetus was the most famous pupil of Musonius. He was a Phrygianfrom the town of Hierapolis (one of several with this name), situated inthe southern part of central Turkey. He was born in about 50 CE andprobably lived into the reign of Hadrian (117
–
38 CE). He was a slaveof Nero
’
s freedman, Epaphroditus, but we do not know how he becamea slave, or when was freed.
1
Epaphroditus himself was one of Nero
’
smost trusted ministers and was present at his suicide, in which he isreported to have assisted. He survived for nearly thirty years after this,but was executed by Domitian in 95, perhaps because of his part inNero
’
s death. Epictetus studied under Musonius while he was still aslave, and by 93 he was well enough established as a freedman atRome to be expelled along with the other philosophers that year. Hewent to the city of Nicopolis (on the western mainland of Greece, closeto the site of the battle of Actium) and there established his school,where many students came to hear him. He described his school as a
“
hospital
”
(
iatreion
), and he exhorted his students to leave it
“
in pain,not with feelings of pleasure
”
, because their souls were sick in the waythat one
’
s body might have a dislocated shoulder or a headache.
2
Epictetus focused largely on practical ethics, while allowing thatlogic was essential in the training of the philosopher. In
Disc
. 1.7, hismost important discussion of logic, he argues that it has a direct effecton morality and behaviour.
3
Right behaviour is the result of reason,and logic is essential in training for the proper use of reason. Thereforelogical errors lead to ethical errors, a point that Epictetus supports withan anecdote from his own training in logic under Musonius.
4
Among the students of Epictetus was the historian Arrian of Nico-media (in Bithynia), consul in 129 CE, whose name is attached to thefour extant books (out of eight originally published) of the discoursesof Epictetus, together with a digest with the title
Encheiridion
(
“
Hand-
199
book
”
).
5
Arrian says in his preface that he did not compose the dis-courses, and neither did he
“
bring them out to the public
”
, and thatthey were circulating without his knowledge before he published hisedition. Further, he says that he transcribed them word for word as heheard Epictetus deliver them. Thus the actual authorship of the
Dis-courses
and
Handbook
is uncertain, although there is no doubt thatthey reproduce the views of Epictetus himself. It is possible
—
but farfrom certain
—
that they were actually composed by Epictetus (forexample, their language is the
koine
, not Attic Greek, which Arrianused in his own writings), and circulated, as Arrian indicates, beforeArrian issued them in a definitive form. They were popular in antiq-uity, and the
Handbook
has been amongst the most widely admired of all philosophical books in any language.
6
The most important of Epictetus
’
doctrines concerns the freedom of the will, the subject of the first chapter of the
Discourses
and the firstchapter of the
Handbook
, quoted here:
7
Of things that exist some are in our control, and some are not inour control. In our control are thought, impulse (towards an end),desire, rejection (of desire)
—
in a word, everything that is
our
doing. Not in our control are our body, property, reputation, polit-ical power
—
in a word, everything that is not our doing. And thethings that are in our control are by nature free, without hin-drance, without impediment, but the things that are not in ourcontrol are weak, slavish, subject to hindrance, in the control of others. Remember, then, that if you think that the things that areby nature slavish are free, and that what is in another
’
s control isyours, you will be frustrated, you will be unhappy, you will bedisturbed, and you will find fault with gods and men. But if youthink that only what is under your control is yours (and that whatbelongs to another is another
’
s), no one can compel you, no onewill prevent you, you will not blame anyone, you will not accuseanyone. You will not do one single thing against your will, youwill not have enemies, no one will harm you, for you cannot suf-fer harm.Epictetus focuses on the concept of
“
what is in our control
”
repeatedly.It is closely linked to his doctrine of moral choice (
prohairesis
).
8
Thechief component of the Greek word is
“
choice
”
, and it was used in thissense by Aristotle, but extended by Aristotle
’
s contemporary, Demos-thenes, to mean
“
purpose
”
. Epictetus combines the two connotations,so that
prohairesis
means
“
moral choice leading to a practical end
”
, in
200THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
other words, moral purpose. Obviously, the category of
“
things that arein our control
”
implies
“
things about which we can make a choice
”
,which Epictetus divides into two categories, things to be chosen (
pro-haireta
) or rejected (
apoprohaireta
). He thinks that the physical bodyis unimportant compared to the human capacity for making moralchoices:
“
you are not flesh or hair, but moral choice
”
.
9
He teaches, fur-ther, that it is our impressions (
phantasiai
) about which choices haveto be made.
10
First you must make your governing principle (
hegemonikon
)pure and make this your attitude:
“
Thought is my material, justas wood is the carpenter
’
s material
…
My task is the right use of impressions. My little body is nothing to me
…
Death? Let itcome when it wishes.
”
Epictetus
’
moral scheme, then, requires the use of reason to evaluateimpressions, refusing to be affected by impressions of things that arenot in our control. For those that are in our control, we must use reasonto decide which are to be rejected and which accepted, and these deci-sions are our moral choices.Perhaps
Disc
. 3. 24 is Epictetus
’
most detailed exposition of the prac-tical effects of this doctrine. Its subject is
“
That we should not sufferby anticipating things that are not in our control
”
. Epictetus shows thatemotions such as grief or sorrow (for our own misfortunes or those of others) do us no good, for these misfortunes are not in our control.
“
Tolong for something that is impossible is slavish, foolish, the desire of astranger who fights against God
”
(
§
21). The mention of God intro-duces a new part of Epictetus
’
scheme, for, as Cleanthes and Senecahad taught, the wise person will make his will conform to the will of God, who controls all things. Epictetus uses the military metaphor,familiar to us from Seneca and Sextius, as in
§§
31
–
32:Do you not know that the matter [i.e. of right living] is a cam-paign? One man must be on guard duty, another on reconnais-sance patrol, another fighting in battle. All soldiers cannot be inthe same place
…
But you fail to carry out the general
’
s orders,and you complain when you are given a hard task.Epictetus draws another analogy from a ship
’
s crew, and he continues(
§
34):Life is a long and varied campaign for each individual. You must
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS201
observe the duties of a soldier and perform each task as the gen-eral orders.The parable here involves a double analogy, for
“
the general
”
is theStoic divine being, and the individual is a citizen of
“
no mean city
”
, areference to the universal Stoic community of gods and human beings.So in
Handbook 7
he says:Likewise on a voyage, if the ship is at anchor and you leave it tofind water, and on the way you find a sea-shell or an edible bulb,you must be attentive to the ship and continually turn round, lestthe captain call. If he does, you must drop them immediately, soas to avoid being trussed up like sheep and thrown on board. Soin life, if instead of a shell and a bulb, you are given a little wifeand a little child, well and good. But if the captain calls, givethem up and run to the ship
…
And if you are old, do not go toofar from the ship, in case you are absent when he calls.So Epictetus
’
doctrine of moral choice includes the disciplined life of one who is obedient to the commands of God and whose will conformsto the will of fate. In
Handbook
31, he says that one must have rightopinions about the gods, obey them and follow them willingly. Andthis one can only do by placing what is good and evil in the category of things under one
’
s control. Again and again, Epictetus emphasizes obe-dience to the divine will. Here, for example, he combines the metaphorof military discipline with obedience to the divine will:
11
The good and fine individual will remember who he is, fromwhere he came, and by whom he was created. He will focus onthis one thing, how he will fill his own [assigned] place in properorder, obedient to the god.More systematically than Seneca, Epictetus analyses the process of moral choice, and, like Musonius, he teaches that training (
askesis
) isessential for the person who will be disposed to make the right choices.He describes the philosopher
’
s
askesis
vividly with the analogy of anathlete training for the Olympic Games.
12
Elsewhere he is less austere:
13
Training should not be by means of activities contrary tonature
…
: not every difficult and dangerous thing is necessary fortraining
…
And what is the goal of our labours? To live one
’
s lifewithout obstacles to our desire (
orexis
) and aversion (
ekklisis
).
202THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
And what is this? Not to fail in achieving what we desire and notto experience that to which we are averse. This is the goal of ourtraining.Epictetus next analyses the attributes of each stage of moral choice,basing himself on the three
“
areas
”
(
topoi
) of training for the studentwhich he had discussed earlier:
14
There are three areas in which the future good and fine personmust be trained. First, concerning desire and aversion
…
Second,concerning impulse (
horme
) and refusal (
aphorme
)
—
in a word,concerning duty, that he may act with order and reason
…
Third,concerning avoidance of delusions and rashness
—
in a word, con-cerning assent (
synkatathesis
).The first
topos
concerns the emotions (
pathe
), and the second thedesires and aversion. Epictetus extends the latter to include duty, buthe takes a different line from Cicero
’
s
De Officiis
, for he focuses onthe student as an individual rather than on Cicero
’
s citizen as a mem-ber of society. Nevertheless, he keeps Cicero
’
s theory of the expandingcircles of the objects of duty. A person who has mastered the emotionsthrough practice in the first
topos
will use reason to act appropriately,that is, he will know what his duty is. But such a person must still be ahuman being, linked to other human and divine beings to whom heowes his duty:
15
I do not have to be unfeeling like a statue, but I must keep up myattitudes (
hexeis
) both towards those who are physically relatedto me and to those with whom I have come to have a relation-ship, in so far as I am pious, a son, a brother, a father, a citizen.The third
topos
concerns the training of the intellect through logic. It isfor the person who has made some progress in philosophy, so that theywill not be not liable to false judgements or rash actions. Their assentis based on reason, and thus they are assured of making the right moralchoices, even if they are impaired by wine or sadness or are actingunconsciously, as in a dream.
16
Here again Epictetus agrees withSeneca in allowing for the notion of stages of progress towards wis-dom, something that he has previously discussed.
17
He says, moreover,that the philosophers of his time have devoted themselves to the third
topos
, to the exclusion of the first two, whereas the good student of philosophy must study all three
topoi
, for logic is a necessary instru-
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS203
ment for success in studying the first two. Epictetus, then, is attackingthe fashionable and exclusive focus on logic among his contempo-raries, but he also finds a place for it in his system.
18
To return now to
Disc
. 3. 12, the discussion of
askesis
expands onthe doctrine of
topoi
set forth in 3. 2. To achieve the right choicesbetween desire and aversion one must train to counteract that which iswrong, one must
“
go to the opposite side of the rolling ship
”
.
19
Here,too, Epictetus is more understanding of human weakness than mostStoics. Like Persius he warns the young student against temptation:
20
A young beginning student in philosophy has an unequal battleagainst a smart girl. As the proverb goes,
“
the pot and the stonedo not match
”
.He shows that the second
topes
, that of duty, is governed by reason,which will lead the philosopher to choose actions that are appropriatefor the time, place and context. In commenting on the third
topos
, thatof assent, Epictetus appeals to Socrates, who said that
“
the unexaminedlife is not worth living
”
.
21
So the philosopher must be sceptical of hisimpressions: like the sentry who asks for the password, he must ask each impression,
“
Do you have Nature
’
s password?
”
Epictetus
’
doctrine of freedom of the will and its related topics is themost coherent exposition of the process of moral choice in Roman phi-losophy. Equally distinguished is his second principal doctrine, that of liberty. Here he speaks from unique experience, for alone of Romanphilosophers he had been a slave. The longest of his
Discourses
(4. 1)is also his most important discussion of liberty. Here is its opening:Free is the man who lives as he wishes. It is not possible to com-pel him or prevent him or force him. His impulses are not hin-dered, what he aims at he achieves, and what he tries to avoid hemisses. Who then wishes to live in error?
“
No one.
”
Who wishesto live being deceived, being hasty in his judgements, unjust,undisciplined, cantankerous, ignoble?
“
No one.
”
So no one whois bad lives as he wishes, and no bad person is free. And whowishes to live being subject to grief, fear, envy, pity, aiming forthings and missing, trying to avoid things and meeting withthem?
“
No one at all.
”
Can we point to any bad person who isfree from grief and fear, from meeting what he wishes to avoid,from failure to achieve his goal?
“
No one.
”
Then we cannotpoint to any bad person who is free.
204THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
This splendid passage brings to life the dry Stoic paradox,
“
Only thewise man is free
”
. As we read further in the discourse, we find familiardoctrines, themselves liberated from the ethical imperatives of the dis-cussions of
prohairesis
and
askesis
, to become part of a life truly freefrom moral slavery. The analogy with physical slavery is especiallyforceful in the light of Epictetus
’
experience. Yet he shows that humanslaves or caged animals are subject to other forms of slavery on theirrelease (
§§
24
–
40). The problems of life as a free man still enslave thefreedman, even if he rises to the highest posts of political power. Theirsolution lies in the Socratic principle of scepticism, asking
“
What eachthing that exists
is
”
(
§
41). And the result of such enquiry will be toknow the distinction between what is in our control and what is not(
§§
62
–
75). Then comes the hard part, which is to let go of things thatare dear to us but whose fate we cannot control
—
one
’
s body, one
’
swife, one
’
s children: since the body is like a donkey and the otherthings are accoutrements for the donkey, let them go! (
§
80). This, then,is the first way to freedom, summarized in a single, cumulative, sen-tence (
§
81):If you have prepared yourself with this preparation and havetrained yourself with this training
—
to distinguish between whatis your own from what is another
’
s, what is subject to hindrancefrom what is not, to think that the former is your concern and thelatter is not, to make your desire continually for the former andyour aversion from the latter, well, will you have anyone to fear?Yet there still remains a higher power to which the free person mustsubmit (
§
89):I have subordinated my impulse (
horme
) to God
…
He wants meto desire something
—
I want to desire it.The things we count most dear are but gifts from God, to whom wemust return them willingly, if he so wills (
§§
107
–
10). Like Seneca,Epictetus quotes Cleanthes
’
Hymn to Zeus
(
§
131) to prove that truefreedom consists in conforming one
’
s will to that of the divine power.Unlike Seneca, however, he admits that this is difficult: the Cynic, Dio-genes, and Socrates himself succeeded, but what of ordinary people?
“
Make the effort
”
, is his reply,
“
and you will know from experiencethat the philosophers speak the truth, even if it is contrary to generallyaccepted opinion
”
(
§§
173
–
74). He concludes (
§§
175
–
77):
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS205
Freedom is achieved not by fulfilling one
’
s desires, but by sup-pressing them. And so that you may know that this is true, just asyou laboured to fulfil those things [i.e. your desires], so transferyour labour to these. Endure sleeplessness to master a doctrinethat will make you free: pay court to a philosopher, not to a richold man
…
Try it! You need not be ashamed of trying.In
Handbook
14 the basic principle concerning
“
things that are underour control
”
is once more stated forcefully, a final reminder of itsessential part in the doctrine of liberty:So whoever wishes to be free, let him not wish for anything noravoid anything that is in the control of others. Otherwise he mustinevitably be a slave.A prominent feature of the
Discourses
is Epictetus
’
use of the Socraticdialogue, the subject of
Discourse
2. 12. Socrates, he says (
§
5),
“
com-pelled his interlocutor to be his witness
”
. Although relentless in hisdiscovery of the truth, Socrates was never angry with his interlocutors.As Epictetus points out, this was a lot easier in democratic Athens thanin the Rome of his time (
§
17), where Socratic interrogation of a socialsuperior (for example, an ex-consul) might end (and evidently did forEpictetus) in a beating (
§§
24
–
26). In his own school Epictetus musthave been a lively and demanding teacher, for there was constant giveand take with his students, who would have needed to concentrate hardto catch the stream of analogies and questions with which he enlivenedhis presentations. Arrian has left us a unique portrait of a philosophicalteacher, for Seneca and Cicero both had constructed artificial situationsfor dialogue or lecture, and Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius were writ-ing in very different circumstances from those of the classroom. Per-sius, however, does lift the curtain on the teaching of Cornutus, and itis likely that Musonius was also a forceful teacher.
22
Aulus Gellius,quoting Favorinus, reveals the integrity and passion of Epictetus
’
teach-ing.
23
Like the satirists (for example, Juvenal in his second satire)Epictetus could not endure a
“
philosopher
”
whose squalid life beliedhis fine words
—
this was, he said, like pouring a pure liquid into a dirty jar, where it turns into
“
urine or something worse
”
. In a second anec-dote, Favorinus reported that Epictetus was upset by two vices in par-ticular
—
inability to be patient when others harm us and lack of self-control when we are tempted by pleasure. The former calls forpatience, the latter for restraint. Hence, says Gellius, Epictetus
’
famousmaxim,
“
Bear and forbear
”
(
anechou kai apechou
).
206THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Epicurus shares with the Cynics a focus on training, endurance andconsistency in one
’
s way of life and one
’
s philosophy. As our brief discussion inChapter 1has shown, Stoic ethics had much in commonwith Cynicism, but the unconventional behaviour of individual Cynicswas offensive to most Romans. Epictetus attempted to resolve the con-flict between the good and unattractive aspects of Cynicism, and in sodoing he has left us the most comprehensive discussions of the Cynicsby a Stoic philosopher.Twice, Diogenes, the paragon of the Cynics, is described as a
“
scout
”
(
kataskopos
), that is, a soldier sent to find out the facts aboutthe enemy and to report the truth to those who sent him.
24
The militarymetaphor, as we have seen, was used by the Sextii and by Seneca forthe disciplined life of the philosopher, for the most dangerous of mili-tary assignments was that of the scout.
25
Epictetus had sent one of hisstudents from Nicopolis to Rome as a scout, to report on affairsthere.
26
In the same way, Diogenes had been sent into the world toreport to us, ordinary people and his hearers, the truth about the dan-gers among which a person trying to live a good life must live. ThusEpictetus meets the dangers of life in his Roman world with the time-less answers of Diogenes: death is not an evil; what men say about usis not worth our notice; the body needs only minimal clothing and com-fort to be satisfied. Diogenes could truly say that he was at peace, thathe had attained tranquillity and freedom.In this parable Epictetus summarizes the fundamental principles of the Cynics
—
control of the emotions (especially fear of death), disre-gard of physical comforts, contempt for reputation in the eyes of thecommunity, and the assurance that the person who lives according tothese principles will be tranquil and free. In
Disc
. 3. 22 and 4. 8 hedevelops these themes in such a way as to soften the features of Cyni-cism that the Romans found offensive, and to focus on those that wereconsistent with Stoic ethics.
Discourse
3. 22 begins with a warning
—
the student who is inclinedto Cynicism must know how great a challenge the Cynic
’
s callingpresents. Unconventional clothing and an ascetic life mean nothingunless they involve a conversion (
§§
13
–
15):First, in everything that concerns you your behaviour must notappear to be like your present way of life in any respect. Youmust not blame God nor human beings. You must eradicatedesire and change aversion towards only those things that con-cern moral purpose (
prohairetika
). You must not show anger orfury or envy or pity. No little boy or girl may seem attractive to
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS207
you, no bit of glory, no sweet little piece of cake. You mustknow that other men protect themselves with walls and housesand darkness when they act in this way
…
But the Cynics duty isto protect himself with the wall of integrity (
aidos
), otherwise hewill be behaving disgracefully [even if] he is scantily clad andhomeless.In this way Epictetus answers the commonest criticism against the Cyn-ics. The person who lives and acts unconventionally is a hypocriteunless his clothing and behaviour are the outward signs of an innermoral certainty, which can be achieved only through conviction thatthe divine being has called him to a life based on absolute moral andphysical discipline. Again, in
Disc
. 4. 8, Epictetus distinguishesbetween the true Cynic philosopher and the person who merely lookslike one. You do not become a musician, he says, just because youcarry a musical instrument; no more are you a philosopher just becauseyou have a long beard and coarse clothing (
§§
15
–
16). Socrates, hesays, was the example of the true philosopher, even if people failed torecognize him as one from his outward appearance, for he knew howsolid his principles were (
§§
22
–
23). Thus the true Cynic philosopherwill say to his listeners (
§§
30
–
31):Look at me, my [fellow] human beings, so that you can see thatyou are searching for happiness and tranquillity not where theyare, but where they are not. I am your example, sent by the god. Ihave neither possessions nor home nor wife nor children, noteven a mat or a garment or a cooking-pot. Yet see how healthy Iam. Test me, and if you find that I am free from disturbance, letme tell you the medicines that healed me.Like the Stoics, the Cynic exploits the medical metaphor, consistentwith the Stoic paradox that
“
only the wise man is healthy
”
. The picturegiven here of the sincere Cynic is at variance with the skin-deep would-be Cynic, with his beard, his coarse clothing, and his uncouth manners
—
all unsupported by the long training of the true philosopher (
§
34
–
35). Such
“
cardboard
”
philosophers are all show and no substance. Thetrue path to happiness is inner certainty and outward anonymity:
“
know yourself and do not attempt the Cynic way without the help of God.
27
And, as a corollary,
“
take care not to have your real characterbe known: spend a little time being a philosopher to yourself
”
.
28
So the true Cynic is assured of his philosophical calling and princi-ples, and he alone has a just pretext for unconventional behaviour.
208THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Epictetus, however, does not favour the shamelessness (
anaideia
) of the typical Cynic and prefers a more conventional appearance that willnot disgust those who meet him:
“
even his squalor should be pure
”
.
29
Epictetus again and again emphasizes the preparation (
paraskeue
)necessary for the true Cynic, for this will allow him to show his superi-ority to kings and other powerful leaders.
30
He may marry, but heshould not be distracted by the time-consuming chores of being a hus-band and a parent.
31
The Cynic philosopher contributes more to societythan the citizen who begets many children, and he cares for the com-munity like a father (
§§
81
–
82):All men are his children; he has [all] men for his sons, womenfor his daughters. This is his approach to all, this is how he caresfor all. Or do you think that he carelessly castigates those whomhe meets? He does it as a father, as a brother, as the servant of Zeus, his father and the father of his hearers.Another difficulty for a Roman Cynic is non-participation in politics,which puts him at odds, too, with Stoic principle. Epictetus has alreadycontrasted the Cynic with political and military leaders, in the dialoguewith Agamemnon (
§§
30
–
44). Now he shows that the Cynic
’
s activityon behalf of his fellow human beings is more noble than political activ-ity in a particular city working for particular short-term goals (
§§
84
–
85). Discussing the finances of Athens or Corinth is nothing comparedto the philosopher
’
s discussions of universal human issues:[his discussion is] about happiness and unhappiness, about goodand bad fortune, about slavery and freedom. How can you ask if a man who is involved in this sort of activity for the common-wealth will take part in politics? You can ask me further if hewill be elected to office. What a stupid question! What greateroffice is there than that which he holds?Epictetus is playing on the word
politeia
and its cognates: it meansboth
“
politics
”
and
“
republic
”
and he refers both to the
“
republic
”
of aparticular city and to the Stoic
“
commonwealth
”
shared by gods and allhumankind. The English translation lacks the economy of the Greek,but the point is clear enough
—
the philosopher is a citizen of a widercommunity than any one city or state, and his activity has infinitelywider scope than that of any politician or statesman. As Epictetus sayslater,
“
when he [the Cynic philosopher] oversees the affairs of humanbeings, he oversees his own
”
.
32
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS209
In his discussions Epictetus has done much more than
“
idealize
”
theCynics.
33
He has made an extended argument for including them in theRoman state and for reconciling their philosophy with Stoicism. Hehas sought to explain in what way their unconventional manners can beassimilated to conventional society, and he has justified their marginalstatus by reference to the universality of their concerns. He has shownwhere they march in step with the Stoics: his picture of the self-sufficient Cynic realizes the ideal wise man of the Stoic paradoxes,who alone is free, happy, a king. So Epictetus, far from sanitizing theuncomfortable figure of the Cynic, shows how such a philosopher fitsinto even such a conventional society as that of Rome, while hereminds his hearers of the roots of Stoic ethics in the philosophy of Zeno
’
s master, Crates the Cynic. He quotes the Stoic
Hymn
of Clean-thes in support of the Cynic
’
s unity with the divine will.
34
His pictureof the Cynic
’
s patience in the face of injustice and physical hardship isconsistent with Stoic constancy.
35
In this way Epictetus bridges the gapbetween the Stoic ideal and reality that is so disturbing to critics of Seneca
’
s lifestyle. His Cynic, in the context of real life, is an example,therefore, as much for Stoics as for would-be Cynics.It would be easy to quote Epictetus for pages on end, so lucid andattractive are his doctrines. Let us leave him, however, with his ownmoving self-portrait, which ends his discussion of divine providence. Itis consistent with all that we have seen of his teaching:
36
We must sing the greatest and most pious hymn [to God], that hehas given us the power to follow these things [i.e. the gifts of God] and to use his path [i.e. the path of reason]. What then?Since the majority of you have blinded yourselves, should notone person fill the gap and on behalf of all sing the hymn to thegod? I am a lame old man: what else do I have the power to doother than sing the hymn to the god? To be sure, if I were anightingale I would sing like a nightingale, and if I were a swan Iwould sing like a swan. But as it is I am endowed with reason: Iam compelled to sing the hymn to the god. This is my task: I per-form it and I will not leave this post that has been assigned tome, so long as it has been given to me. And I summon you tosing this same song with me.Epictetus probably lived into the reign of Hadrian (117
–
138 CE). Analmost exact contemporary was Plutarch, whose dates are usuallygiven as
c
.45
–
120. We have mentioned (at the beginning of the previ-ous chapter) that he chose to spend the greater part of his life in his
210THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
birthplace, Chaeronea, a strategically placed town in north-west Boeo-tia, the site of Philip of Macedon
’
s victory over the league of southernGreek states in 338 BCE and of Sulla
’
s victory over Mithradates in 86BCE. The town was about 30 km east of Delphi, where for the last partof his life Plutarch was a priest and honorary citizen. Many peopledeny that Plutarch is a philosopher (he is not listed, for example, in the
Oxford Companion to Philosophy
), still less that he is a
Roman
philosopher, for he made but two visits to Italy and himself admittedthat he was not expert in Latin. Certainly he was not a professionalphilosopher like Musonius or Epictetus, and his intense local loyaltylimited his impact on Roman thought. Nevertheless, he was trained inphilosophy and many of his essays are on philosophical subjects. Hehad many influential friends at Rome, including his patron L.MestriusFlorus (consul before 82 CE), whose name he took when he became aRoman citizen as L.Mestrius Plutarchus, and Q.Sosius Senecio, consulin 99 and 107 CE, to whom he dedicated several of the
Lives
, the essayon
Moral Progress
, and the
Quaestiones Convivales
(
“
Table Talk
”
).Further, he probably was given significant honorary titles by Trajanand Hadrian.His vast output makes it impossible to deal with him at any length inthis chapter. The ancient catalogue (under the name of Lamprias) of his works lists 227 titles: surviving are forty-eight
Lives
and about sev-enty-eight essays and dialogues, collectively called
“
ethical works
”
or
Moralia
. His claim to be a philosopher rests on many of the works inthe latter group. Significant also is the fact that his
Lives
, along withLivy
’
s history
Ab Urbe Condita
, have been the most important ancientprose works by which Renaissance and modern readers have formedtheir ideas of Roman moral character.Plutarch was an Academic, a follower of Plato, and in this respectgood evidence for the survival of Platonism in the early second cen-tury, anticipating its reinvigoration later in the century and its triumphin the third century.
37
We have seen that he was consistently critical of Epicureanism,
38
while his views on Stoicism were somewhat morecomplex, if on the whole hostile.
39
He wrote nine works against theStoics, only two of which survive, along with a prospectus for a third.Three other works criticizing the Stoics should be mentioned herebefore we examine the three openly anti-Stoic works. These are theessays on
Moral Virtue
(
De virtute morali
), on
Moral Progress
(
Quo-modo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus
), and
Gryllus
(
Bruta ani-malia ratione uti
).Plutarch approaches these subjects as a common-sense enquirer.Much like Cicero in his satirical attack on Cato, he focuses on the rigid
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS211
definitions of Stoic ethics and their corollary paradoxes, which contra-dict the experience of ordinary people, especially warm-hearted empiri-cists like himself.
40
In both
Moral Virtue
and
Moral Progress
he isespecially critical of the Stoic paradox that all moral delicts are equaland its corollary, that all emotions (
pathe
) are equally bad.
41
The essayon
Moral Progress
, dedicated to Sosius Senecio, is especially lively,dealing with the topic of the person who makes progress in virtue,which was the subject of Seneca
’
s 75th letter and of several of the dis-courses of Epictetus. Plutarch asks,
“
How can a person suddenlybecome wise without perceiving that he has been making progress?
”
For the Stoics say that the wise man is one who
“
does not yet perceivethat he has become wise
”
, that is, that he is unaware of his progress.This, says Plutarch, is
“
to fit the line to the stone
”
, rather than
“
to fitthe stone to the line
”
, a proverb meaning that one
’
s doctrine should fitthe facts, not the other way around.
42
As an example of distorting theevidence of experience, Plutarch attacks a second Stoic doctrine, thatall moral delicts are equally bad.
43
If this is so, then how is moralprogress possible? Having set up these targets of his criticism, Plutarchthen shows that there
are
degrees of vice, so that moral progress is pos-sible. For the rest of the essay he produces examples of signs of moralprogress, enlivened by literary references, quotations and analogies, allresting on the foundation of common-sense experience as opposed tothe rigid and unreal dogmas of the Stoics. In fact, Plutarch does not do justice to the Stoic positions, for the Stoics did allow for moralprogress, as Seneca and Epictetus showed, even though all delicts,even the most innocuous, fell short of virtue. This essay is a goodexample of Plutarch
’
s philosophical method: focus on practical ethics,accurate (but incomplete) quotation of Stoic sources, and persuasiveuse of a vast array of literary allusions and rhetorical devices.The essay on the intelligence of animals,
Bruta animalia
, alsoknown by the name of its principal character,
Gryllus
, shows a differ-ent technique in attacking the Stoic doctrine that animals lack reasonand exist for the use of human beings.
44
The essay is in the form of adialogue between Odysseus and one of his men who has been turnedinto a pig by Circe. The pig, Gryllus (a common Greek name, but alsoa noun meaning
“
Porker
”
), eloquently declines the opportunity offeredhim by Odysseus and Circe of returning to human form: life in thepigsty is preferable to life on Ithaca, and a pig
’
s intelligence is morepure and moral than that of human beings, as Gryllus observes in hisopening argument (986F):I must begin with the virtues, in which I see you take great pride.
212THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
[You say that] you differ greatly from the animals in justice andreason, and in courage and the other virtues
…
[987B] Well, youagree already that the soul of animals is more suitably formed forthe birth of virtue and more perfect. For without orders and with-out instruction
…
it brings forth and increases in accordance withnature the virtue that is suitable for each animal.Odysseus, most intelligent of human beings, is defeated in argumentby a pig! Here Plutarch accurately sets up Chrysippus
’
doctrine of human superiority, to demolish it by brilliant literary and rhetoricalmethods, of which George Orwell would have been proud. The topicitself
—
the proper attitude towards animals
—
had had a long history inGreek philosophy, going back at least to Plato.
45
It was a matter of spe-cial importance to the Pythagoreans, although influences other thanPythagorean doctrine seem to have led to Plutarch
’
s vegetarianism, to judge from his dialogue
On the Intelligence of Animals
and the twofragmentary speeches
On Eating Flesh
(
De Esu Carnium
).
46
Plutarch
’
s three extant anti-Stoic works are
On Stoic Self-Contradictions
(
De Stoicorum Repugnantiis
),
The Stoics Talk MoreParadoxically than the Poets
(no more than a summary with the Latintitle,
Compendium argumenti Stoicos absurdiora poetis dicere
), and
On Common Conceptions
(
De Communibus Notitiis
). The treatise onself-contradictions is the most substantial of the three.
47
In it Plutarchtakes well-known Stoic doctrines, for example, that all delicts areequally bad, to show that they are self-contradictory, or that they are atvariance with the Stoics
’
actual lives. This is a long and intricate essay,which has been carefully analysed by Harold Cherniss: here it will beenough to say that once again Plutarch shows his knowledge of Stoicsources, even as he argues against them with the weapons of the skilledcontroversialist. He criticizes primarily the early Stoics, above allChrysippus. In other works of the
Moralia
and in the
Lives
he occa-sionally mentions Posidonius and Panaetius, but it is hard to know howfar he had read them. He never refers to current Stoic debates andnever names Seneca, Musonius or Epictetus. Probably this is not out of ignorance, but rather it is a way of arguing
a fortiori
—
if Chrysippuscan be proved wrong, then there is no need to criticize later Stoics.The treatise on
Common Conceptions
is ostensibly a dialogue, but infact a speech by an Academic philosopher, Diadoumenos, against theStoics, with an introductory dialogue and a few interruptions by anunnamed interlocutor.
48
Its basic topic is the Stoic doctrine best setforth by Diogenes Laertius.
49
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS213
[Chrysippus says that] virtue is a consistent disposition and oneto be chosen for itself, not because of some fear or hope or any-thing external. Happiness consists in virtue, since virtue is a soulthat has become consistent with regard to life as a whole. But arational being is perverted [from virtue], sometimes because of awrong belief in external matters, sometimes because of the influ-ence of other people. For nature gives starting-points that cannotbe perverted.Diadoumenos begins his speech by showing that the Stoic doctrines
—
that common conceptions agree with nature and that virtue consists of living in agreement with nature, and that living happily consists in liv-ing virtuously
—
contradict common experience and contain self-contradictions, for the Stoics sometimes reject the conceptions of ordi-nary people, and sometimes appeal to them for support.
50
As in thetreatise
On Stoic Self-Contradictions
, Plutarch exploits both theseweaknesses, ranging over the whole field of Stoic logic, physics(including theology) and ethics. Diadoumenos divides his speech atchapter 29 (1073D), where he turns to criticism of Stoic physics. Here,as for Epictetus, the three areas of philosophical enquiry are seen to beinterdependent, so that ethics is inseparable from logic and physics.
51
Plutarch was not consistently hostile to the Stoics.
52
While there arepassages in several treatises which appear to be based on Stoic doc-trine, his approval of Stoic ethics is undeniable in several of the
Lives
,for example, those of Phocion, Cato the Younger and Otho. The deathsof Cato and Otho are made to be consistent with Stoic doctrine, andPlutarch
’
s narrative is approving.
53
Phocion, the just man unjustly exe-cuted, is an example of Stoic virtue. His
Life
begins with a comparisonwith that of Cato, who
“
was involved in the great struggle with For-tune
”
.
54
Plutarch continues:The virtues of these men
…
exhibit one character and form, andtheir moral behaviour was dyed with the same colour, mixed, asit were, with a common measure with regard to their austere loveof humanity, their unshaken courage, their care for others andtheir lack of fear for themselves, their avoidance of shamefulacts, and the tension [of their souls] in harmony with justice.These are Stoic virtues, and the terminology of
“
tension
”
or being
“
intune with
”
virtue is Chrysippean.
55
When Phocion and his colleagues were led off to execution, theonlookers
“
wondered at his control of his emotions (
apatheia
) and his
214THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
noble spirit (
megalopsychia
)
”—
again Stoic virtues. The last sentenceof the
Life of Phocion
(38. 5) expressly compares him with Socrates:But what was done to Phocion reminded the Greeks of what hadbeen done to Socrates, for the injustice done to him was verysimilar to the case of Socrates, as was the misfortune that itbrought to the city.Plutarch, then, also recognized the excellence of Stoic virtue in thecontext of public life and political leadership.About the time of Plutarch
’
s death, a very different Platonist,Apuleius, was born at Madaurus in the Roman province of Africa,about 230 km south-west of Carthage.
56
He received his basic educa-tion at Carthage and lived there for the last decades of his life, dyingsome time after 170 CE. He went to Athens for his higher educationand there studied philosophy. Before returning to Africa he spent sometime in Rome. He spoke three languages
—
Latin (his principal lan-guage), Greek and Punic
—
and his surviving works are all in Latin.Like Plutarch, he combined philosophy and rhetoric, and he covered awide range of subjects.
57
While he was known as
philosophus Platoni-cus
, his rhetoric is at least as important as his philosophy, for his Latinprose is rich and colourful, often as magical as the stories that he tells.The hero of the
Metamorphoses
, Lucius, is called a descendant of Plutarch, and in the prologue Lucius says that he was first educated inGreek at Athens, Corinth and Sparta, and that later he learned Latin,self-taught, at Rome. While it is impossible to know how far Luciusrepresents Apuleius himself, Lucius
’
knowledge of Greek and Latinliterature, rhetoric and philosophy is similar to that of Apuleius. He isthe Latin equivalent of a sophist of the Greek Second Sophistic, flam-boyant and colourful in presentation, catholic in intellectual range, aserious but unoriginal philosopher.
58
In no. 7 of
Florida
(23 extracts from his speeches and lectures)Apuleius describes how Alexander the Great insisted on idealism andconformity in his statues, and he laments that philosophers have notdone the same.
59
Many so-called philosophers, he says, have, by theirsordid speech and way of life, degraded philosophy,
“
a royal disciplineinvented as much for good speech as for morally good living
”
. In alater extract he elaborates on the breadth of his philosophical educa-tion.
60
The more you drink of the cup of the Muses and the stronger itswine becomes, the closer you get to health of mind. The first
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS215
cup, that of the primary teacher, awakens the students with basiceducation; the second, that of the secondary school-teacher,instils disciplined learning; the third, that of the
rhetor
, arms thestudent with eloquence. These cups are drunk by most people.But 7 also drank other cups at Athens: the elegant cup of poetry,the clear cup of geometry, the sweet cup of music, the austerecup of dialectic, and finally the cup of universal philosophy thatcan never be filled. For Empedocles sings in poetry, Plato in dia-logues, Socrates in hymns, Epicharmus in verse, Xenophon inhistories, Crates in satire
—
your Apuleius cultivates all these andthe nine Muses with equal enthusiasm.Apuleius ends this tribute with praise of Carthage,
“
where the citizensare all most completely educated
…
, and the children study every intel-lectual discipline
”
, a city that is the
“
divine Muse of Africa, the Museof [Africa
’
s] Roman inhabitants
”
.
61
Apuleius the philosopher inhabits a very different world fromPlutarch. As with Seneca, rhetorical style is all-important to his dis-course: his medium is his message. His range is impressive. Extant aretreatises
On the God of Socrates
(
De Deo Socratis
),
On Plato and his Doctrine
(
De Platone et eius Dogmate
),
On the Universe
(
De Mundo
),and
On Interpretation
(
Peri Hermeneias
). The last of these may not beby Apuleius and is written in Latin, despite its Greek title. The otherthree works are authentic, while an
Asclepius
(a Latin translation of aGreek
“
hermetic
”
work, that is, one associated with the Egyptian cultof Hermes Trimegistus) is not by Apuleius.
62
The
De Deo Socratis
is especially interesting for its doctrine about
daimones,
intermediaries between the world of the gods and that of human beings.
63
There exist certain divine powers, intermediate between the high-est upper air (
aether
) and the lowest earth, situated in the spaceof the air (
aer
). By their means our desires and our deserts aremade known to the gods. These the Greeks call
daimones
.Apuleius is building on a passage from Plato
’
s
Symposium,
where Dio-tima says, in reply to Socrates
’
question:
64
Love (
Eros
) is intermediate between mortal and immortal. He isa great
daimon
, for all that concerns the
daimones
exists betweengod and mortal. [His power is] to be messenger and interpreterfor human beings to the gods, and from the gods to human
216THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
beings: for the prayers and sacrifices of mortals, and for thecommands of the gods and their rewards for sacrifices.Towards the end (
§
167) Apuleius urges his hearers to
“
follow theexample of Socrates
”
and study philosophy, and he concludes with theexample of Odysseus, whose constant companion was wisdom,through whom he was able to overcome all difficulties and temptations.The treatise
De Platone et eius Dogmate
, in two books, is compara-tively restrained in style, as befits a summary of Platonic physics,ethics and political doctrines. It is in fact closely related to an earlier
“
Handbook of Plato
’
s Teaching
”
or
Didaskalikos
by Alcinous (whichuntil recently was ascribed to Albinus).
65
Not all the doctrines in the
De Platone
are Platonic, for some come from later Academics, someeven from Stoics. The topic of Plato
’
s logic, missing from the
De Pla-tone
, is dealt with in
Peri Hermeneias
, which is one of the few sus-tained Latin treatments of logic, focusing on the syllogism, for whichthe author uses the Latin term
propositio
.Finally, the work on cosmology,
De Mundo
, is an adaptation of awork (still extant) spuriously ascribed to Aristotle but in fact datingfrom around 1 BCE.
66
This work deals first with cosmology (
§§
1
–
23)and then with theology (
§§
24
–
38), mostly concerning God as creatorand ruler (
rector
or
gubernator
) of the universe. Apuleius says that
“
although he is one, he is addressed by many names
”
, including theRoman
Jupiter
and the Greek
Zeus
(
§
37), whose all-embracing func-tions are quoted from an Orphic hymn. The work ends with Fate orNecessity, but the connection between Fate and the divine being is notworked out.The one god who
“
is addressed by many names
”
is important inApuleius
’
masterpiece,
Metamorphoses
(also known as
The Golden Ass
).
67
It is a novel in which the curiosity of the hero, Lucius, leads tohis metamorphosis into a donkey as the result of a magic ritual thatgoes wrong. After many adventures, he is saved from an act of publiccopulation at Corinth by the goddess, Isis. She appears to him and tellshim how he may recover his human form the next day at Cenchreae(the port of Corinth). He does this, and he becomes an initiate anddevotee of Isis.
68
There is great disagreement as to how far the finalscene is autobiographical
—
is the final metamorphosis that fromLucius into Apuleius?
—
and as to the significance of the centralepisode of the novel, the story of Cupid and Psyche, which on onelevel, at least, is an allegory of Love and the Soul, related in some wayto the final conversion. We can be quite sure, however, that theology isessential to Apuleius
’
philosophy. We have seen how in the
De Mundo
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS217
the one god has many names, a sign of the syncretism of second-century religious beliefs.
69
Lucius prays for help to Isis as
“
Queen of Heaven
”
, uncertain whether to address her as Ceres or Venus or Dianaor Proserpine (11. 2). Here is how Isis speaks at her epiphany (11. 5):Behold, Lucius, I am here, moved by your prayers. I am themother of nature, the mistress of all the elements, the first childof the ages, the highest of the gods, the queen of the dead, thefirst of the gods of heaven, the unchanging epiphany of the godsand goddesses. By my power I dispense the shining lights of thehighest heavens, the health-giving winds of the sea, the mourn-ing silences of the underworld. The whole world worships mydivine power, for it is one, yet with many aspects, many rituals,and many titles. [Isis then recites the names by which differentpeoples address her, finishing with the Egyptians], who
…
call meby my true name
—
Queen Isis.Lucius describes his conversion in mystical terms (11. 23):I approached the confines of death; I entered the realm of Proser-pine; I was carried through all the elements, and I returned. Atmidnight I saw the sun shining with brilliant light; I approachedthe gods below and the gods above, face to face, and I wor-shipped them in their presence. Behold, I have told you all, andyet
…
you cannot know it.How far we have come from the
Dream of Scipio
! The philosopher isalso the religious devotee, but his experience is ecstatic, leading to abetter individual life and better hope for the life after death, not to amoral imperative to improve the lot of human beings by duty and ser-vice. In his enthusiasm Lucius anticipates third-century Neoplatonismwith its focus upon union with the One.The last of the Roman philosophers in our survey is Marcus AnniusVerus, known to us as Marcus Aurelius (121
–
80 CE, emperor 161
–
80CE), a contemporary of Apuleius. His family came from Spain and,like the Spanish Annaei in the time of Claudius and Nero, climbed tothe top of the political ladder in Rome. Marcus was favoured by theemperor Hadrian, and was adopted, shortly before Hadrian
’
s death in138, by his successor, Antoninus Pius (emperor 138
–
61 CE), with thenames Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus.
70
His reign was marked by pres-sure on the northern and eastern frontiers of the empire. Marcus him-self campaigned against the Germanic tribes on and beyond the
218THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Danube frontier in 170
–
74 and 178
–
80, and he died on campaign in theRoman province of Pannonia, either at Vindobona (modern Vienna inAustria) or at Sirmium (modern Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia). His col-leagues also campaigned against the Parthians beyond the eastern bor-ders of the empire in 162
–
66 (bringing the plague back with them toItaly), and Marcus himself was in the east in 175
–
76. His brother andcolleague as emperor, Lucius Verus, died in 169, and his wife,Faustina, died in Cappadocia in 176, the same year that he made hisson, Commodus, his colleague in place of Verus. His German cam-paigns are recorded on the Antonine Column (Column of Marcus Aure-lius), which still stands in Rome.All this is necessary background for an understanding of both thecontext and tone of Marcus
’
philosophy, recorded in his private diaryaddressed to himself: its proper title is
To Himself
(Greek,
Eis Heau-ton
), although it is usually referred to as
Meditations
.
71
The work is intwelve books, written in Greek, but the divisions into books and chap-ters were not made by Marcus. How it was preserved and copied we donot know. It was known in Byzantine times (the earliest reference to itdates from the later fourth century, but the next is not until the tenthcentury), and it was first published in Z
ü
rich in 1559 by Andreas Ges-ner, with a Latin translation by Xylander (Wilhelm Holtzmann). Themanuscript used by Xylander is lost. At the beginning of Books 2 and3 (or possibly the end of Books 1 and 2) are notes saying
“
[written]amongst the Quadi
”
(Book 2) and
“
[written] at Carnuntum
”
(Book 3),indications that Marcus was writing on campaign against the Germanictribes (one of which was the Quadi) or at the Roman military base atCarnuntum, a few kilometres below Vienna on the Danube, to thenorth of which was the territory of the Quadi. It seems, then, that the
Meditations
were written during the campaigns of the 170s, and thatthey were a personal record (Peter Brunt calls them
“
a spiritual diary
”
),addressed solely to Marcus himself. Books 2
–
12 contain the
Medita-tions
proper, while Book 1 is a catalogue of those to whom Marcuswas indebted for moral instruction and example. The overall tone isone of moral earnestness and pessimism. These are the meditations of a lonely ruler under the stress of heavy responsibilities, one who is con-cerned to be a morally good ruler, fulfilling his duties towards theRomans and their empire and towards the gods, or rather, the Stoicgod. His concerns, then, are first his place as a ruler in the world of histime, and second as a human being in the universal community of godsand human beings.Among the instructors to whom Marcus expresses his gratitude inBook 1 are six philosophers and a seventh, Severus, whom he calls
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS219
“
my brother
”
, since his son married Marcus Aurelius
’
daughter.
72
Fiveof these men were Stoics, one was a Platonist and one, Severus, a Peri-patetic, although Marcus credits him with introducing him to the Stoicheroes Thrasea, Helvidius and Cato. The most influential was Q.JuniusRusticus, the son (or grandson) of Domitian
’
s victim, Arulenus Rusti-cus, and consul in 133 and 162 CE. As city prefect (
praefectus urbi
) hecondemned the Christian, Justin the Martyr, to death in 166 CE. Mar-cus thanks him for practical advice towards becoming a philosopherwhose life matched his doctrine in its discipline and virtuousbehaviour. He says that Rusticus
“
gave me a copy from his own homeof the discourses of Epictetus
”
.
73
Of all earlier philosophers, Epictetuswas the most important influence on Marcus, for from him he learnedthe importance of developing a character in keeping with one
’
s philos-ophy. Like Epictetus, he gave high priority to the relationship betweenthe human and the divine, that is, to the proper place of human beingsin the universe of gods and mortals.Marcus
’
teacher in rhetoric was M.Cornelius Fronto (
c.
95
–
167; con-sul in 143 CE), with whom he corresponded in Latin until 166.
74
Mar-cus valued philosophy more than rhetoric (not that the
Meditations
aredevoid of rhetorical elements), and in his brief tribute to Fronto hethanks him, not for his rhetorical teaching, but for teaching him to bewary of the dissimulation that pervades life at court. It is worth noting,also, that he thanks Rusticus for saving him from being
“
diverted tosophistic exhibitionism
”
and for teaching him
“
to stand apart fromrhetoric
”
.
75
The longest tributes in Book 1 are those to his [adoptive] father,Antoninus Pius, whose virtues were those of the ideal Roman leader
—
including a sense of duty, thoroughness, constancy, clemency andintegrity.
76
The portrait of such a leader recalls Cicero
’
s
Dream of Sci- pio
and Virgil
’
s Aeneas, but in this tribute we have a unique statementfrom a Roman ruler of the ideals that he saw in his predecessor andwished himself to follow. This is quite different in quality and credibil-ity from public policy statements or political documents such as the
Res Gestae
of Augustus. For example, Marcus specifies:
77
Always to watch over the needs of the empire, to administer itsfinances, and to be patient with critics. Not to be superstitious asregards the gods, nor to curry favour with the people, nor to seek popularity or to become the favourite of the masses, but to besober in everything and steadfast.Later he exhorts himself
“
to do everything as a pupil of Antoninus
”
.
78
220THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
In the last chapter of Book 1 (1. 17) Marcus thanks the gods forthings belonging to Epictetus
’
categories of things under his controland out of it. From the latter category he was thankful for the fact thathe had good parents, brother, wife and children (
§§
1,4, 7); that he wasstrong enough to live as long as he had (
§
6); that he had friends likeRusticus and models to emulate like Antoninus Pius (
§§
3, 4). Marcusadds a
“
mixed
”
category between the two categories of Epictetus, incases where his will (under his control) was helped by something notunder his control. Thus his will to control his emotions (especially insexual matters) was helped by the removal of his grandfathers concu-bine (
§
2); his impulse to study philosophy was helped because
“
I didnot fall under the control of a sophist
…
nor did I resolve syllogisms orbecome an expert in celestial matters (
meteorologika
)
”
(
§
8). In the cat-egory of things under his control was his decision to be chaste (
§
2); tolive simply without detracting from the dignity of his position as theheir apparent to Antoninus (
§
3); to have clear perceptions of the mean-ing of
“
living according to nature
”
and not to be hindered in that (
§
5);to be generous to those in need (
§
7). In the last sentence of Book 1 (17.8) he says that
“
all these things need the help of the gods and fortune
”
,a significant difference from the doctrine of Epictetus, who taught thatone
’
s will was sufficient for making right moral choices.These two chapters (1. 16 and 17) outline the structure of Marcus
’
system of philosophy, for he did have a system, even if the
Meditations
are unstructured, informally written, sometimes ungrammatical andhard to follow. What else would one expect from a genuinely personaldiary, written without thought of publication? Yet Marcus
’
“
preoccupa-tions
”
(Brunt
’
s term) are clear
—
to be a virtuous ruler, to be a virtuoushuman being, and to understand the proper place of the good man inthe divinely ordered universe. The two chapters focus first on Antoni-nus as the good ruler, which he could not have been without the virtuesof the good man; second, they focus on the gods. Both categories reap-pear throughout the
Meditations
, so that here we will necessarily haveto base our review on many discrete passages. Marcus was almostexclusively concerned with ethics and very little with logic or physics(except in so far as theology was a part of physics): an exception is 8.13, where he exhorts himself to test his impressions against the
“
reason-ing of physics, ethics and logic
”
. His philosophy is Stoic, in spite of the many non-Stoic philosophers whom he quotes with approval.
79
Of these, the Platonists are the most important, with Socrates at their head.Socrates, however, was revered by the Stoics, and there is nothing inMarcus
’
references to him (more than to any other philosopher) that isinconsistent with Stoicism. Of the Stoics, he is closest to Epictetus. He
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS221
quotes him frequently, for example at 6. 41, where he reminds himself that,
“
if we judge good and evil by what is under our control and whatis not
”
, then we have no cause to blame the gods or other humanbeings for our misfortunes. At 5. 33 he quotes
“
bear and forbear
”—
thevirtues of patience and self-control
—
the rule for a life unaffected bythe injustice of human beings and the attractions of pleasure.As Marcus meditates on his moral duty as a ruler he often expressesdistaste for the people with whom he must deal:
Say to yourself in the morning:
“
I shall meet people who are offi-cious, ungracious, arrogant, deceitful, malicious and self-centred.They have all become like that because they are ignorant of goodand evil. But I have seen the nature of the good, that it is beauti-ful, and the nature of the evil, that it is ugly
…
and I cannot behurt by any of these people
…
I cannot be angry with my fellowhuman being and I cannot be his enemy. For we have come intoexistence in order to work together.Like Antoninus, he will be
“
sober and steadfast
”
as a ruler. For exam-ple:
81
Every hour be strong and think, as a Roman and a man should,how you can do your job meticulously and with genuine dignityand charity and independence and justice.He is concerned to be a human being among human beings while main-taining the dignity proper to his position:
82
See that you do not become
“
Caesarized
”
or dyed [in royalcolours]. For it does happen. Watch yourself: see that you aresincere, good, straightforward, dignified, modest, a lover of jus-tice, reverent towards the gods, approachable, sympathetic, andstrong in bearing your responsibilities. Strive to maintain thecharacter that Philosophy intended for you. Revere the gods, pro-tect human beings. Life is short. There is one fruit of life on earth
—
a pure character and deeds for the good of the community.The
“
community
”
to which Marcus refers extends beyond Rome to theuniverse (6. 44):
My city and my fatherland is Rome, in so far as I am Antoninus.
In so far as I am a human being, the universe is my city and myfatherland.Neither does he look for a return for his good deeds; his view of
benefi-cia
is less complex than that of Seneca:
One man, when he does a good deed for another, is ready tocredit it to his account, that he is owed a debt of gratitude.Another
…
thinks privately about the debt and knows what he hasdone. But another does not know
…
: he is like a vine which bearsgrapes and does not want anything else after it has once borne itsproper fruit
…
The man who has done good does not make anissue of it, but he turns to another task, just as the vine turns back again in due season to produce grapes.Marcus returns to this theme at 9. 42, where he says that it is his ownfault if he misreads the character of a man whom he has benefited andwho is ungrateful (
§
5):What more do you want if you do a good deed for someone? Is itnot enough that you have acted in accordance with your nature,but you still seek some reward for this?Marcus was especially worried by anger, which he discusses in hislongest and most systematic chapter.
85
We have seen how he tried notto be irritated by people he had to deal with every day. Here he consid-ers nine headings (
“
like gifts of the Muses
”
,
§
10) under which heshould analyse his feelings and control them. He must consider thecharacter of those who irritate him, realizing that it is
their
failure of reason that has caused them to act badly, and
his
failure of perceptionif he lets their actions cause him to be angry (
§§
2
–
3, 7). He mustexpect other people to be morally bad (this, he says, is
“
a tenth giftfrom the leader of the Muses [Apollo]
”
,
§
11). Only a tyrant wouldallow their bad actions to harm others, without trying to correct themby humane admonition given
“
not as if by a schoolmaster
”
(
§
9). As forhis own emotions, it is more manly to be gentle and mild, in thisbecoming closer to achieving Stoic
apatheia,
freedom from the pas-sions (
§
10). While many of these details are traditional to Stoic discus-sions of anger, Marcus is original in his focus on the moral conditionof the person causing anger, for a morally bad person harms himself and the community. His own anger must be controlled by looking athis attitude (Greek,
schesis
) towards all human beings (
§
1), for, as a
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS223
ruler and a human being, he exists for the sake of other human beings.This
schesis
protects him from being resentful if he is slighted by oth-ers, an attitude which Plutarch, following Aristotle, had said was thechief cause of anger.
86
While Marcus does not mention this source of anger, he does follow Aristotle in trying to achieve that mildnesswhich Aristotle had defined as the
“
calming of anger
”
.Marcus
’
ethics are best expressed in the famous chapter where hesets his own emotions in the context of the divine nature of the humansoul:
If you find something in human life that is better than justice ortruth or self-control or courage or, in a word, self-sufficiency inyour mind
…—
if, as I say, you find something better than these,then turn to it with all your soul
…
But if there seems to be noth-ing better than the divine spirit that has been placed withinyou
…
, and if you find everything else smaller and more insignif-icant, then allow no room for anything else
…
Simply and freelychoose that which is better and hold on to it.The sense of the community of the human soul with the divine is thebasis of the second principal category in Marcus
’
philosophical sys-tem, the place of human beings in the divinely ordered cosmos.
In 1.3 he thanks the gods that his mother had taught him to be god-fearing,and in 1. 16. 3 that Antoninus had been an example to him of freedomfrom superstition. Like many Stoics he believes that the gods do com-municate with human beings, especially through dreams (1. 17. 6, 9)and in answer to prayer (9. 40), but their help is predicated upon hisown self-sufficiency. Thus his prayers should be for support in over-coming the
pathe
of fear or lust (9. 40), not for the fulfilling of someparticular desire. As a rational being he must willingly acquiesce inwhat happens to him (10. 28), for human beings alone are endowedwith reason that allows them to follow willingly the necessity of fate.Elsewhere he says:
What the gods bring about is full of Providence. What Fatebrings about is not separate from Nature nor from the closely-woven works of Providence.This belief in the texture of the universe, which cannot be unravelledby the desires or fears of an individual human being, is the foundationof Marcus
’
religious views, as it is of his ethics:
Everything is woven together with everything else, and the bind-ing together is sacred, and virtually nothing is alien to anythingelse. For all things have been arranged together and make up theorder of one universe. For the universe is one, made up of allthings, and god is one, existing in all things, and substance isone, and law is one, and reason is common to all intelligentbeings, and truth is one.
If
indeed there is one goal of perfection(
teleiotes
) for beings that have the same origin and share in thesame reason.Despite the doubt expressed in the final sentence, this is the dynamicsource of Marcus
’
striving for virtuous character and action, so power-ful that it does not need the precise definitions of a theologian. This isa sufficient explanation of the ambiguities in his views of the survivalof the soul after death. In 12. 5 he asks why good men should perish attheir death, and he answers that if this is so, then it has been soordained justly by the gods. In 4. 21 he ponders how there can be suffi-cient space in air and on earth for the souls of the dead
“
if
they con-tinue after death
”
. He does not pursue this question and, as Rutherfordhas said,
“
he maintains a firm agnosticism
”
.
Marcus therefore falls back on the unity of the cosmos as an answerto the question of 4. 21. He confesses:
Everything is in harmony with me, O Cosmos, that is in harmonywith you! Nothing is too early or too late for me that is at theright time for you. Everything is fruit for me, O Nature, that yourseasons bring. From you comes everything, in you is everything,to you everything [will return]. One man says,
“
I love the city of Cecrops [Athens]
”
, but will you [Marcus] not say,
“
I love thecity of Zeus
”
?Marcus
’
sense of citizenship in the universe energized his principles asa ruler, and it allows him to contemplate death more positively:
It makes no difference where you live, if one lives everywhere asif the universe were his city. Let others see, let them observeclosely, a man who is truly living according to nature.In the first chapter of Book 12 he exhorts himself
“
to let go of the pastand leave the future to Providence, and for the present keep to thestraight path of purity and justice
”
. Thus, he continues, he will beready for death:
If, when it is time for you to go, you leave everything else andhonour your guiding spirit (hegemonikon) and the divine elementin you, and you are not afraid of ceasing to live…, you will be ahuman being worthy of the universe that created you and nolonger will you be a stranger in your own country.Finally, in the last chapter of the Meditations (12. 36), he takes hisleave of a life well lived:O human being, you have been a citizen in this great city [i.e. theworld]. What difference does it make if you have been one forfive years or for one hundred? For all are equal under the law.Why should you be fearful, then, if he who sends you away isnot a tyrant nor an unjust judge, but Nature, which brought youthere? You are like an actor whom the presiding judge dismissesfrom the stage: “But I have not finished five acts, but onlythree!”Right! But in life three acts make up the whole play. Forhe who was the cause of the composition of your body is nowthe cause of its dissolution: he it is who sets the limit of yourcompleted life. You are not responsible for either. Depart, then,graciously, for he who dismisses you is gracious.Marcus Aurelius is an appropriate terminus for our survey of theRoman philosophers, even if we may rightly say,“We have finishedonly three acts!”
“
those who look for gold will endure every hard-ship: we, who are searching for justice, a thing much more valuablethan gold, indeed must not avoid any hardship
”
. So Philus, the friendof Scipio Aemilianus and a Roman consular, is made to represent thearguments of Carneades, which he personally deplored. The actual dateof the composition of the
De Re Publica
was 54
–
51, and Cicero isreflecting on the consequences of the moral relativism of people likeCarneades in the light of the collapse in his own day of the republicanconstitution, which by then was clear for all to see. Like Cato in 155,he answered Greek logical rigour with Roman common sense,affirmed in Laelius
’
appeal to the universal
“
natural law
”
of justice,which Carneades had demolished a century earlier.
39
Carneades had the finest mind of the three ambassadors, yet hismethods were incompatible with Roman modes of thought. Ciceroseems to be saying (in the
De Republica
) that his methods were destruc-tive in the context of Roman society and politics, just as Cato had con-tended in 155. Of the other ambassadors, Critolaus seems to have madevery little lasting impression, but Diogenes perhaps had a lasting influ-ence, for he was the teacher of Panaetius, and he impressed Laelius,the friend of Scipio Aemilianus. Laelius (
c
.190
–
125) was praetor in145 and consul in 140. He was perhaps the first Roman noble who canbe called a philosopher, for he was known as
Sapiens
(the Wise), a titlegiven him by the satirist Lucilius.
40
Cicero makes him the principal
speaker in his dialogue
De Amicitia
(
“
On Friendship
”
, also known as
Laelius
), and he responds to the arguments of Carneades in Book 3 of the
De Republica.
Indeed, Cicero elsewhere says that he cannot name asingle Roman
“
student of wisdom
”
earlier than the time of Laelius andScipio Aemilianus.
41
He implies that Laelius was encouraged by thelectures of Diogenes to study with Panaetius, whose influence in Romewas profound and lasting.
42
Indeed, in
Pro Murena
66 (a speech deliv-ered during Cicero
’
s consulship in 63) Cicero contrasts the easy man-ner of Laelius, which (says Cicero) he had learned from Panaetius,with the harsh manner of Cato Uticensis, the paragon of Stoicism inCicero
’
s time.Panaetius of Rhodes (
c
.185
–
109) came to Rome some time after146, and stayed there, evidently for substantial (but separate) periodsof time, until he returned to Athens in 129 as head of the Stoic school.Cicero says that he lived in the house of Scipio Aemilianus, and heaccompanied Scipio on his embassy to Egypt and the eastern parts of the Roman empire that began in 140 and lasted, probably, for at least ayear. Cicero also says that Panaetius was Scipio
’
s only companion onthe embassy, but Alan Astin has shown that we should not infer fromthis that Panaetius had any direct influence on the political activities of Scipio.
43
Neither did his doctrine of
humanitas
(i.e. the qualities andbehaviour proper to a civilized person) necessarily influence Scipio
’
spublic actions, which were notorious for their frequent cruelty and vin-dictiveness.
44
Panaetius was significant at Rome because of the modifi-cations that he made in Stoic theories, some of which were transmittedby Cicero.In
Pro Murena
60
–
66 Cicero mocks the austerity of the youngerCato
’
s doctrinaire Stoicism. We should not, of course, take the banterof a brilliant defence lawyer (who was also consul at the time) at facevalue. Nevertheless, we can see from the climactic reference toPanaetius
’
living in Scipio
’
s house (
§
66), that in Cicero
’
s timePanaetius was revered for having made Stoicism less rigorous anddogmatic, and therefore more accessible to ordinary people. Cicero iscareful to say, however, that for Panaetius
’
influence on Scipio
’
s char-acter he relies on the testimony of
senes
, i.e. men who in 63 BCE hadtalked with those who knew Scipio (who had died in 129 BCE) or evenhad as children themselves seen him. Scipio
’
s
humanitas
was limited,and his cruelty was well attested. Cicero, however, could be more dog-matic about the
comitas
(humane manners) of Laelius, who, he says,was more pleasant (
iucundior
), serious (
gravior
), and wise (
sapien-tior
), because of his studies with Panaetius. In contrast, Cato theYounger remained true to the paradoxical doctrines of Zeno
—
that the
22THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
wise man is unmoved by others; that only the fool shows pity; thatonly the wise man is a king; that the wise man never changes his con-sidered opinion; that all moral delicts are equal, so that
“
he who wringsa chicken
’
s neck
…
is equal to the man who strangles his father
”
.
45
Cicero appeals to Plato and Aristotle as authorities for flexibility inmaking moral and political judgements, which are the mark of moder-ate and restrained human beings. These qualities
—
moderation andrestraint
—
are prominent in the humanism of Panaetius and of Cicerohimself. Cicero the lawyer ridiculed Cato because he was out of stepwith the ethics of his contemporaries, both Stoics and Academics.Panaetius had returned to Plato and Aristotle, the ultimate sources of Stoic doctrine, in modifying the Stoic ethics of Zeno and Chrysippus.A.A.Long has rightly said that
“
human nature rather than universalnature was Panaetius
’
primary interest
”
, and because of this, his ethicsfocused on human beings as they are, including (but not limited to) thewise man.
46
Panaetius
’
most influential work was on appropriate behaviour (
PeriKathekonton
), the source for the first two books of Cicero
’
s work onduties (
De Officiis
). The distinction between actual human beings andthe Stoic ideal of the wise man is made clear in this passage fromCicero.
47
Since we live not among human beings who are perfect and fullywise, but among those whose actions are exceptional if theyachieve the likeness of virtue, I conclude that no one should beoverlooked in whom some evidence of virtue appears. Indeed,we should cultivate most of all that human being who is most of all endowed with these gentler virtues
—
moderation, restraintand
…
justice itself. For often the spirit of courage and nobility istoo fervent in a man who is not perfect nor wise, [while] thesevirtues seem rather to belong to the good person.Panaetius, therefore, made Stoic ethics less rigorous and more practi-cal, and thus more attractive to Roman leaders such as Scipio Aemil-ianus, Laelius, and Cicero himself. Elsewhere Cicero (speaking in hisown voice in answer to the Stoic orthodoxy of Cato) says of Panaetius:
48
he fled from the gloom and harshness [of the rigorous Stoics]and did not approve of their thorny arguments. In one branch of philosophy [i.e. ethics] he was more gentle, in the other [i.e.physics and logic] clearer. He was always quoting Plato, Aristo-
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME23
tle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, Dicaearchus, as his writingsclearly show.Panaetius, however, did not reject the Stoic ideal of the wise man, forCicero says (
Pro Murena
66) that the discourses and precepts of Panaetius were pleasing to Cato
—
which would not be the case if Panaetius had totally rejected the rigorous ideals of orthodox Stoicism.Rather, Panaetius included the morally imperfect human being in hisdoctrine, showing how such a person could aspire to the virtue of theideal wise man. So Cicero emphasizes that Panaetius used popularvocabulary in discussing popular views and that his political discoursereflected the everyday usage of ordinary citizens.
49
Panaetius
’
practicalfocus on ordinary people found a sympathetic response among hisRoman contemporaries.
50
It is the basis of Cicero
’
s moderate doctrinein the
De Officiis
, and it finds an echo in Seneca
’
s 75th and 116th let-ters. In the latter Seneca quotes Panaetius to show how the perfectionof the wise man is separate from the efforts of ordinary people to dealwith the passions.
51
In other areas of Stoic philosophy Panaetius
’
modifications seem tohave been less influential, if only because they did not affect the actualday-to-day life of his Roman followers. As Cicero says, he was clearerthan his predecessors, and so inclined to be more sceptical of Stoicdoctrine that could not be clearly justified.
52
In cosmology he believedthe universe to be eternal and indestructible, and therefore he rejectedthe Stoic doctrine of periodic dissolution of the universe by fire (
ekpy-rosis
), followed by reconstitution of its material elements.
53
He wassceptical about divination (an important feature of Roman religiouspractice) and, unlike many Stoics, he rejected astrology.
54
On the otherhand, he did not reject the Stoic doctrine of divine providence and fate,which he reconciled with individual moral responsibility.
55
Cicero,without naming Panaetius, explains this by reference to the dual natureof the human soul:
56
For souls have a dual power and nature. One part resides inimpulse (
appetitus,
Greek
horme
), which drives a human beingin different directions, and the other in reason (
ratio
), whichteaches and explains what should be done and what should beavoided. Thus it comes about that reason leads, impulse obeys.This is similar to Aristotle
’
s theory of the soul, according to which thesoul consists of two parts, one without reason and the other having rea-son.
57
It appears to modify the doctrine of Chrysippus, who taught that
24THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
impulse was the result of
“
reason commanding action
”
.
58
WhetherPanaetius was responsible for the modification is debatable: what issignificant is that he focused on the responsibility of human beings fortheir moral choices, a doctrine in keeping with the traditional emphasison individual initiative among the Roman senatorial class.
59
Finally, Panaetius was considered by Cicero to be an expert on polit-ical theory. In the
De Re Publica
he makes Laelius say to Scipio:
60
I remember that you very often used to discuss [political theory]with Panaetius in the presence of Polybius (the two Greeks per-haps the most expert on political matters), and that you wouldcollect much material and argue that by far the best constitutionis that which our ancestors have left us.Scipio replies that he is like a craftsman in the practice of his profes-sion, and that, despite his respect for the authority of his Greek sources(which certainly included the
Republic
of Plato and perhaps the
Repub-lic
of Zeno, as well as the doctrines of Panaetius and Polybius), he willcontribute to his exposition what he has learned from his own experi-ence and from his education at Rome, which included family tradition:
61
I am not content with these works on the subject (i.e. politics)that the most distinguished and wisest of the Greeks have left us,yet I would not dare to prefer my opinions to them. Therefore Iask you to hear me as one who is not entirely unfamiliar withGreek doctrine and as one who is not ready to prefer Greek works, in this field especially, to Roman [doctrine]. I ask you tohear me as a Roman (
unum ex togatis
), educated (thanks to myfather
’
s diligence) liberally and from my childhood on fire witheagerness for learning, yet also trained much more by experienceand by the precepts that I learned at home than by books.Thus Cicero, writing in the late 50s BCE, introduces his
Republic
, stak-ing a claim through the persona of Scipio Aemilianus for the practicalpolitical ideas of the Romans, derived from experience, without deny-ing the authority of the Greek philosophers. The deliberate mention of Panaetius indicates that he was one who, in Cicero
’
s view, understoodthe Roman claim and joined it appropriately to Greek theory. At thesame time, the Stoic emphasis on the duty of the virtuous person totake part in the political life of the city was compatible with Romanideas of public service, which find their most eloquent expression inthe
Dream of Scipio
, the final episode of Cicero
’
s
Republic
. We may
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME25
also see the doctrine of Panaetius behind Cicero
’
s doctrine of the idealRoman leader:
62
It is therefore the proper duty of the magistrate to understand thathe wears the mask of the state (
personam civitatis
); that his dutyis to uphold the dignity and honour of the state, to preserve itslaws and define its rights, and to remember that these things havebeen entrusted to his good faith.We should especially note the precision of Cicero
’
s metaphor of themask, which is usually translated by some form of the word
“
represent
”
. The ideal leader is recognized (as we recognize a personby his face) as
being
the state
—
his own appearance and personality aremerged with those of the state which he leads and serves. Cicero wasperhaps referring to the famous description of a Roman aristocrat
’
sfuneral in Polybius, in which the dead man
’
s mask is prominent alongwith those of his ancestors, as an inspiration to his descendants to winglory in the service of the state.
63
A.A.Long has said that
“
it is difficult to see anything specificallyRoman in the philosophy of Panaetius
”
.
64
This is true only in the nar-row sense (as Long points out) that the modifications of Panaetiusstemmed from
“
philosophical dissatisfaction with certain aspects of Stoicism
”
. The importance of Panaetius in the development of Romanphilosophy lay in his perception of specific Roman needs, which hesatisfied by the modification of Greek theory, especially in the fields of ethics and politics. Thus he answered, in a way, the criticism of Catothe Censor that Greek philosophers were corrupting the young. For byintroducing flexibility into the rigorous ethical doctrine of Chrysippushe made Stoicism acceptable to the Roman senatorial class; by develop-ing a theory of public duty he made it possible for Roman leaders toaccept Greek political theories compatible with their own experienceand responsibilities. In the period leading up to the formation of thefirst triumvirate Cicero criticized the political inflexibility of Cato theYounger.
“
Cato
”
, he said,
“
gives his political views as if he were inPlato
’
s
Republic
, not among the
‘
dregs
’
of Romulus (i.e. the commonpeople of Rome)
”
.
65
The criticism reminds us of the achievement of Panaetius in reconciling Greek theory and the realities of Roman poli-tics and society.Posidonius, the greatest of the middle Stoic philosophers and the lastoriginal thinker of the school, studied at Athens under Panaetius. Hewas a Greek, born in about 135 BCE in the Syrian city of Apamea.After his education at Athens he settled in Rhodes, where he became
26THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
an honoured and prominent citizen, serving in public office and as anambassador to Rome in 87 and, probably, 51, the year of his death.Like Herodotus, he travelled to further his research, and he journeyedas far as Gadeira (Cadiz, on the Atlantic coast of Spain), where heobserved the Atlantic tides and the constellations visible from thecoast. He mentioned visits to the islands off North Africa, to the Lipariislands (in the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north of Sicily), to Gaul, and toItaly. In Rhodes he headed a Stoic school, which attracted studentsfrom Rome, including Cicero (during the years 79
–
77), and was visitedby Roman politicians and generals during their journeys to the east.Thus Cicero refers to him three times as
“
my close friend
”
and as
“
ourPosidonius
”
.
66
In 60 Cicero sent Posidonius a copy of his
commentarii
(memoirs), in the hope that he would elaborate them into a formal his-tory, a request that Posidonius declined with admirable tact.
67
He wastwice visited by Pompey, in 66, before his campaigns against Mithra-dates, and in 62, on his way back from Syria to Rome, on each occa-sion being treated with the utmost respect. Of the older generation of Roman political leaders, he knew P. Rutilius Rufus (consul in 105),who had served under Scipio Aemilianus and had been a student of Panaetius. Rutilius is important as an example of the principled manwho was ruined by his political enemies, being exiled in 92 BCE(when he was nearly seventy years old) to Smyrna, where he wrote inGreek a history of his own times, which was widely read and used byhis contemporaries and later historians. Rutilius was a political enemyof Marius, the most powerful of Roman leaders in the years from 106to 86. Posidonius visited Marius in Rome shortly before his death (13January, 86), and he is mentioned by Plutarch as one of the sources forhis description of the final days of Marius, when he was ill and alco-holic, obsessed with fears and memories.
68
Thus Posidonius was a significant figure in Roman political andintellectual circles. His importance rests on the extraordinary range of his intellectual activities. Since none of his works survive complete,his philosophy must be reconstructed from the approximately 300extant fragments, of which some are quite substantial. Cicero, Strabo,Seneca, Galen and many other ancient writers testify to his originalityand importance. This has led many scholars to attribute to him moreinfluence than can be proved.
69
More sober assessments of theachievement of Posidonius have been made from the evidence of securely attested fragments.
70
Posidonius accepted the traditional division of philosophy intophysics (i.e. study of the natural world), ethics and logic. He acceptedthe authority of the founders of Stoicism (most notably Chrysippus),
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME27
but he believed in the progress of philosophy, which implies changeand, where necessary, correction. Like Panaetius, he taught thatphysics was the area of philosophy from which others proceeded,whereas Chrysippus had put logic first.
71
Consequently he wrote onnatural phenomena, with works on astronomy, mathematics and meteo-rology, among others, including a major work
On Ocean
, which
“
isone of the lost books of antiquity one would most like to recover
”
.
72
From this comprehensive view of the world in which human beingsexist he developed his simile for philosophy:
73
The Stoics plausibly liken philosophy to a garden with all sortsof fruit, in which physics is like the height of the plants, ethics islike the productivity of the fruit, and logic is like the strength of the walls. Other [Stoics] say it is like an egg: they liken ethics tothe yolk
…
, physics to the white
…
, and logic to the outer shell.But Posidonius, since the parts of philosophy are indivisible
…
,thought it right to liken philosophy to a living creature, [inwhich] physics is like the blood and flesh, logic is like the bonesand sinews, ethics is like the soul.The change from Chrysippus
’
simile is fundamental for Posidonius
’
method and views. Plants, fruit and walls are separate from each other,entailing the separation of the branches of philosophy.
74
Thus logicwas made the tool (
organon
) of philosophy, and therefore subordinateto the other parts. The simile of Posidonius makes logic an organic partof philosophy, to which it gives structure and movement. The tools of physics (natural philosophy) are particular sciences (geography, seis-mology, oceanography, etc.), which serve natural philosophy byexplaining the causes of phenomena. Thus the philosopher observesnatural phenomena (as Posidonius himself did on the Atlantic coast of Spain) and deduces their causes from his observations. By means of philosophy (especially logic), he will determine the right causes, distin-guishing between various pieces of evidence, and he will relate hisconclusions to the cosmos, which Posidonius saw as a living, organicand finite whole surrounded by an infinite void.
75
The importance of Posidonius
’
method is well expressed by Arthur Darby Nock:
76
Posidonius did perhaps communicate to others a sense for thewonders of nature
…
and let us note that whereas others shrank from rising to contemplate all things, philosophy did not fearthis
…
[T]his is a desire for knowledge of the secrets of the uni-
28THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
verse on the basis of human penetration and not of supernaturalrevelation.To this extent, Reinhardt
’
s notion of
Kosmos und Sympathie
has somevalidity, so long as it is realized that Posidonius came to his conclu-sions on the basis of rigorous observation and logical deduction of causes from the evidence. Indeed, he was criticized by the geographerand Stoic Strabo (
c
.64 BCE to 25 CE) for being too much concernedwith causes, in this, said Strabo, being an Aristotelian rather than aStoic.
77
Strabo
’
s facts are correct, as the Posidonian fragments show,except for the charge that the search for causes was not typical of theStoics. For Chrysippus had looked for causes, but denied that thehuman mind could discover all causes.
78
Posidonius argued (in the con-text of deducing causes for the weakening of emotions with time) thatfrom study of actual human behaviour its causes could be deduced, justas evidence from observed natural phenomena led to the deduction of underlying causes.
79
Posidonius used the methods of the scientist
—
philosopher to find the causes of human behaviour or historical events.Observation of physical and emotional behaviour or the evidence of history were the tools for the discovery of causes and therefore foracquiring knowledge of ethics, leading to correct moral choices.Posidonius developed his theory of ethics in
On the Emotions
(
PeriPathon
), which can be partly reconstructed from quotations in Galen
’
s
On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato
.
80
He saw that examinationof the emotions was the essential beginning of ethical enquiry (thewriter is Galen):
81
Posidonius says something like this (I quote his words) in thefirst book, near the beginning of his work
On Emotions
:
“
for Ithink that the enquiry about good and evil and about ends andabout virtues starts from the correct enquiry about emotions.
”
Posidonius accepted the traditional Stoic definition
of pathos
as
“
exces-sive impulse
”
.
82
He disagreed with Chrysippus about causes of theemotions, for Chrysippus had taught that they were caused by errors in judgement, which entails the possibility of reason itself being theircause.
83
Posidonius differed from both Zeno and Chrysippus. He praises andaccepts Plato
’
s doctrine and disagrees with the followers of Chrysip-pus. He shows that the emotions are neither judgements nor the conse-quences of judgements, but that they are motions of separate irrationalpowers, which Plato called
“
desiring
”
and
“
spirited
”
. In his work
On
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME29
Emotions
he asks Chrysippus and his followers what is the cause of excessive impulse. For reason could not exceed its own functions andlimits. So it is clear that some other irrational power causes the impulseto exceed the limits of reason.Since reason cannot be subject to excess, and the evidence fromobserved human and animal behaviour contradicts Chrysippus, Posido-nius renewed Plato
’
s theory of the soul, according to which reason isthe highest faculty, while the two other irrational faculties account forthe emotions of anger and desire.
84
He then showed how
in fact
humanbeings and animals are naturally affected by the emotions, which canbe controlled by reason. Thus his method relied on the observed facts,from which a consistent explanation of their causes could be deduced,leading to an understanding of correct moral choices. Chrysippus took the wise man as his starting point in arguing that reason led to correctmoral choices, and errors in judgement to incorrect choices ruled bythe emotions. Posidonius took human beings and animals
as they are
as his starting point, and his observations corresponded with the factsof human experience
—
that human beings and animals do show anger,fear and desire. From the observed evidence, he deduced his proof of the causes of the emotions, which is the basis for his ethical theory.Finally, his definition of the end (
telos
) of human life modifiesZeno
’
s definition,
“
to live in accordance with nature
”
.
85
It is quoted byClement of Alexandria (
c
.150
–
216 CE) in a catalogue of Stoic defini-tions of the
telos
:
86
to live contemplating the truth and order of the whole [i.e. allthings together], and organizing it [namely, the truth] coherentlyas far as possible, not being led in any respect by the irrationalpart of the soul.Thus Posidonius combined observation of nature, conclusions fromevidence deduced by reason, and the achievement of the good life
—
corresponding, respectively, to the philosophical disciplines of physics,logic and ethics
—
into a coherent system.Perhaps the most influential of Posidonius
’
works was his
History
,written in fifty-two books.
87
In time it began where the
History
of Polybius ended, 146 BCE, and in scope it ranged over the whole of theMediterranean world, from Spain to Asia Minor, and from northernGaul to Egypt. It may have been unfinished, and it certainly continueddown to the mid-80s BCE, since it contains the narrative of Posido-nius
’
interview with Marius shortly before the latter
’
s death in Januaryof 86.
88
Posidonius
’
usual method is apparent in the extant fragments:
30THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
careful observation of human and natural phenomena, from which his-torical causes are deduced. He was especially concerned with thecauses of human behaviour, both in individuals and groups, crowdsand communities. This is clearly seen in the best known of the frag-ments, the account of the tyranny of Athenion in Athens in 88.
89
Theepisode itself was not particularly significant, and Athenion quicklydisappeared from the scene to be succeeded by a more formidabletyrant, Aristion, who was executed in the sack of Athens by Sulla in86. The story of Athenion demonstrated Posidonius
’
interest in causes,and specifically in the psychological causes of morally bad behaviour,both in the individual (Athenion) and the Athenian people. The sameconcern with the causes of human behaviour is apparent in the narra-tive of the interview with Marius.Many fragments show Posidonius
’
precise observation of the cus-toms of tribes and nations, for example of the Celts, from which againhe deduced the causes of human behaviour.
90
Finally, Posidonius isquoted at length by Seneca in his 90th letter, which concerns the rolein philosophy in human political, social and cultural development.
91
Posidonius, as quoted by Seneca, believed that philosophers were therulers in the Golden Age and that they were responsible for political,social and cultural developments. Seneca, however, while agreeingwith the first two of these categories, disagreed with Posidonius aboutthe role of philosophers in developing the arts and sciences.In another passage, Posidonius shows peoples of the Black Sea coastvoluntarily submitting to others who were
“
more intelligent
”
.
92
In his
History
, as in his other works, he deduced from the observed evidencethat the greatest good is achieved by submitting to reason. People inthe golden age submitted to wise men because they used reason andwould provide the things that were necessary for a better life. The Mar-iandyni of the Black Sea coast submitted to the Heraclians because thelatter, with their superior use of reason, could provide the necessities of life for them. In both cases the submission of one group to another wasvoluntary: as Seneca says of the golden age philosopher
—
rulers,
“
itwas a duty to give commands, not a tyranny (
officium erat imperare,non regnum
)
”
.In the intellectual history of Rome, Posidonius
’
importance in theshort term lay in his influence on Cicero (who was about thirty yearsyounger). In the long term, however, the extraordinary range of hisenquiries encouraged Romans to share in the Greek tradition of univer-sal enquiry. Most important, however, was his method of enquiry, withits rigorous focus on deduction of causes from observation. He lookedupon the universe as an organic whole, in which human beings had
THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME31
their place. In keeping with his simile of the body, he taught that justas the components of the universe are interdependent, so all knowledgeis subsumed into one coherent system. He changed the intellectual lifeof all Roman students of philosophy and history.
32THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
3CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106
–
43 BCE) was the most influential of theRoman philosophers. He most extensively interpreted Greek philoso-phy in Latin, and to do so he developed a Latin prose vocabulary thatcontinued to be influential throughout the Middle Ages and the Renais-sance. Only Seneca and Augustine matched his prolific output of Latinphilosophical works, and they too each developed a new Latin style asthe vehicle for their doctrines. All three were skilled orators, experi-enced in the arts of persuasion. It is usual to refer to
“
Cicero thePhilosopher
”
(the title, for example, of a recent collection of papers onCicero), but Cicero had as one of his ideals
“
the proper combination of philosophy and rhetoric
”
, which he saw (rightly) as a particularlyRoman development in the history of philosophy.
1
The canonical defi-nition of the orator was that of Cato the Elder:
“
a good man skilled inspeaking
”
(
vir bonus
,
dicendi peritus
), implying that the orator whosought to be a political leader must be morally good as well as skilledin rhetorical techniques.
2
Cicero announced this theme in his earliest rhetorical work,
De Inventione
, and elaborated it thirty years later in
De Oratore
. Ciceroexpanded the implications of Cato
’
s
“
good man
”
, and to do so invokedPlato. Like Panaetius and Posidonius he revered Plato as the fountain-head of philosophy, while he understood the importance of Plato
’
s
elo-quentia
(style) in making philosophy attractive to his readers and hear-ers. In his
Orator
(whose subject is the perfect orator), Cicero says thathe seeks to find not an eloquent individual, but
“
eloquence itself,which can only be seen with the
“
eyes of the mind
”
(
§
101). He is allud-ing to Plato
’
s theory of forms, which he had endorsed earlier in the
Orator
(
§§
7
–
10). There he says that the orator to be described in thetreatise is so perfect that he has perhaps never existed. But, Cicerosays, he will search for the most excellent eloquence, whose beauty
33
can be likened only to the ideal of oratory, which only the mind cancomprehend. Even so, Phidias, in creating his statues of Zeus andAthena, copied a mental image of ideal beauty, not the beauty of anindividual model. Cicero concludes (
§§
9
–
10):So just as there is something perfect and superior in statues andworks of art, to whose appearance in the mind they are related(but itself it cannot be seen), so with our mind we see the appear-ance of perfect eloquence, we aim at its likeness with our ears.These forms of things Plato called
ideai
, Plato who is the mostweighty authority and teacher not only of understanding but alsoof speaking. He says that the Forms do not come into being andare eternal, and that they always are comprehended by reasonand intelligence. Other things come into being, die, dissolve anddisintegrate, and they do not exist any longer in one and thesame state. Therefore whatever exists and is the subject of methodical reasoning, must be referred to the Form and Idea of its class.Thus Cicero combines rhetoric and philosophy: the former comes intobeing through reason, the servant and interpreter of philosophy; thelatter needs rhetoric if its conclusions are to be communicated to andunderstood by a wide audience. Before he came on the scene (heimplies) philosophy had been the special field of disputatious Greeks,criticism of whom in Rome goes back at least to Plautus in the earlysecond century BCE.
3
Through his rhetoric, founded on philosophy, hewill make the doctrines of the Greeks intelligible to Roman audiences.His claim has proved to be justified.Cicero tells us a great deal about his rhetorical and philosophicaltraining. In the last part of his
Brutus
(
§
305 onwards) he recalls hisyears in Rome during the troubles of the 80s BCE that culminated inthe capture of the city by Sulla in 82 and the subsequent proscriptions.He says that he listened to the most prominent orators, some of whomhe describes as
“
living on the speaker
’
s platform
”
(
§
305). At this time(88) Philo of Larissa, the head of the Academy at Athens, fled to Romefrom the imminent sack of Athens by Sulla. His arrival was importantfor Cicero (
§
306):Then, when the tribune P.Sulpicius was making speeches to thepeople every day, I gained a deep knowledge of the whole fieldof rhetoric. And at the same time, when Philo, head of theAcademy, fled from his home with the leading men of Athens in
34THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
the [first] Mithradatic War and came to Rome, I gave myself over to him completely. For I was stimulated by an amazingenthusiasm for philosophy. While the variety and importance of the subjects of philosophy kept me involved in it, one reasonespecially made me more attentive
—
that the administration of justice through the courts seemed to have been permanentlyremoved.Cicero goes on to tell how he did not make any speeches in thoseyears. Instead, he says (
§§
308
–
09):during that period I spent all my days and nights in the study of every [philosophical] doctrine. I consorted with the StoicDiodotus, who recently died at my house, where he had made hishome and had lived with me.
4
He made me practise dialecticmost vigorously.Cicero is recalling 40 years later (46 BCE, but with a dramatic date of 49) the turbulent days of Marius and Sulla and explaining how heavoided the troubles in which many politicians and orators lost theirlives. While his recollection is artfully narrated, he reveals four signifi-cant facts about his intellectual and professional development.First, this account anticipates and confirms the close union of philos-ophy and rhetoric. His diligence in those years enabled him to transmitGreek philosophy to Roman audiences later in his life. He notes thatDiodotus taught him dialectic, an essential rhetorical and logical toolfor philosophical argument. He says also (
§
310) that under Diodotushe declaimed rhetorical exercises every day, more often in Greek thanin Latin, partly because he could then be taught and criticized by Greek teachers, partly because Greek oratory provided him with style andmodes of expression (his word is
ornamenta
) that could be transferredto Latin
—
significant evidence for the development of his Latin philo-sophical vocabulary.Second, Cicero shows that he turned to philosophy when free speechwas suppressed and he could not continue with his political and legalactivity. When he was in political eclipse after the renewal of the firsttriumvirate in 56, he turned to the writing of political philosophy in his
De Re Publica
and
De Legibus
. In the last years of his life, during thedomination of Caesar (and especially after the death of his daughterTullia in February, 45), he devoted himself to philosophical writing,and it is in these few years that the great bulk of his philosophical work was written. Writing late in 45 he said:
5
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES35
when I was [politically] inactive in retirement and the conditionof the state was such that it was necessary for one man to governit with his responsibilities and policies, I thought that I shouldexpound philosophy to my fellow-Romans principally for thesake of the state. And I thought that it would increase the honourand glory of the state if I should include subjects so weighty andimportant in Latin literature.Cicero goes on to say that other Roman students of Greek philosophyhad been unable to translate Greek doctrine into Latin, whereas
“
now
”
(by which Cicero means after the publication of his Latin philosophicalworks) the Romans have a Latin style and vocabulary equal to those of the Greek philosophers.In the
Brutus
Cicero claimed that he had been consistently active onbehalf of the state: when it was impossible to speak freely in the forumor the courts or the senate, then he withdrew from public activity intophilosophical study and writing, an activity that was equally beneficialto the state and its citizens. This is Stoic doctrine: the wise man willparticipate in politics as far as he can. But if he is hindered
—
by dis-ease or disability or by the suppression of free speech
—
then he willpursue his activity (
negotium
) in retirement (
otium
).Third (to return to the passage from the
Brutus
), Cicero says that theteaching of the Academic sceptic, Philo, deeply influenced him. Hebecame a follower of the Academic school, whose scepticism, how-ever, led him to deduce the most probable conclusion from the evi-dence, even if it was one put forward by a rival school.
6
Finally, Cicero says that the Stoic Diodotus became a lifelongfriend. He taught Cicero dialectic (the importance of this for an under-standing of logic has been discussed inChapter 2) and supervised hisdaily rhetorical exercises. The association with Diodotus meant that,despite being an Academic, Cicero was sympathetic to Stoic ethics,with their emphasis on virtue and reason. He was always opposed toStoic inflexibility and lack of human sympathy.
7
In
De Natura Deorum
6
–
7 Cicero reviewed his long involvementwith philosophy (40 years at the time of writing):I did not suddenly become involved with philosophy, and frommy youth I gave considerable effort and trouble to it. When Iseemed least to be involved, then was I most being a philoso-pher. You can see this from my speeches, which are stuffed withthe maxims of philosophers. You can see it from my close friend-ships with the most learned men, who have always lent distinc-
36THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
tion to my home. Chief among these were Diodotus, Philo, Anti-ochus, Posidonius, who were my teachers. If all the teachings of philosophy are relevant to life, then I think that in my private lifeand my public career I have followed the precepts of reason andphilosophy.Two of the four philosophers named by Cicero in this passage wereStoics
—
Diodotus and Posidonius. The others, Philo and Antiochus,were Academics, and their influence on Cicero was, by his ownaccount, the most significant in his philosophical development. In
Bru-tus
306, quoted above, Cicero describes the effect of Philo
’
s arrival inRome in 88 BCE:
“
I gave myself over to him totally
”
. Before this timeCicero had flirted with Epicureanism: writing in 51 BCE he tellsMemmius that
“
when we were boys
”
he and his friend Patron hadadmired the Epicurean philosopher, Phaedrus,
“
before I met Philo
”
.
8
So Philo was the catalyst for Cicero
’
s mature philosophy, and from thetime of their meeting in Rome in 88 Cicero was a follower of the Aca-demic school.In 80 Cicero achieved fame as an orator through his defence of Sex-tus Roscius, having previously improved his rhetoric by studying withthe distinguished Greek orator, Molo of Rhodes, who had come toRome in 81 as an envoy of the Rhodians. The speech
Pro Rosrio
attacked the partisans of Sulla, and Cicero prudently left Rome for twoyears, 79
–
77, although he also withdrew (as he says in
Brutus
313
–
14)for reasons of health. He went first to Athens and there spent sixmonths studying with the Academic philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon, who may have visited Rome with Philo in 88:When I reached Athens I spent six months with Antiochus, thenoblest and wisest philosopher of the Old Academy. With hisencouragement I renewed philosophical studies once more,which I had never interrupted and had pursued and augmentedever since my first years as a young man, with him as mysupreme teacher.After the time in Athens, Cicero toured Asia Minor to study with theleading Greek orators. Finally, he visited Rhodes, where once more hestudied under Molo. Cicero returned to Rome in 77 as a complete ora-tor,
“
not only better practised but almost changed
”
.
9
Essential to hisimprovement was his renewed commitment to philosophy. His autobi-ography is fashioned to show how the two fields of endeavour wereinseparable.
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES37
Philo taught rhetoric as well as philosophy, and this perhaps was onereason why he made such a deep impression on Cicero.
10
When he fledto Rome he had been head of the Academy for over twenty years, andapparently he continued to act as head even in Rome, where he proba-bly spent the rest of his life (perhaps as much as a decade). Neither henor his most important pupil, Antiochus of Ascalon (a native of Syria,like Posidonius), was a philosopher of the stature of Carneades or Posi-donius, but their debate virtually put an end to the Academy as a func-tional school of philosophy.
11
Nevertheless, there were still Academicsceptics, such as C.Aurelius Cotta, consul in 75 and one of the partici-pants in the dialogue
De Natura Deorum
, and Cicero himself. Hisolder contemporary, Marcus Terentius Varro (116
–
27), followed theOld Academy of Antiochus. Other sceptics adopted Pyrrhonism (notmentioned by Cicero), which was revived by Aenesidemus some timein the first half of the first century. Although Cicero was a follower of Philo, he was sympathetic with much of Stoic doctrine. A.A.Longrightly has said:
12
the humane Stoicism of
De Officiis
, his most influential work,represents views of which he himself approved. It is the bearingof philosophy on human conduct which matters most to Cicero.It is not surprising, therefore, that Cicero was more interested in ethicsthan in epistemology. Nevertheless, he would, as a lawyer, have foundscepticism attractive, with its method of examining both sides of aquestion. Psychologically (as we can see from many of his letters toAtticus), he was slow to come to a firm decision, and the built-indilemmas of scepticism suited him better than the dogmatism of theother schools.Scepticism had been the principal mode of Socrates
’
teaching, thatis, critical examination of both sides of a question, which would provethe fallibility of his interlocutor
’
s views. Socrates himself laid no claimto knowledge beyond knowing that he knew nothing.
13
Plato savedSocrates
’
sceptical approach from total negativity through his magicalmastery of Greek prose, and by developing the theory of Forms (Ideas)as his answer to the problem of knowledge.
14
But, as Aristotle, Plato
’
spupil, pointed out, Plato separated the forms from the world in whichwe actually live, and the more realistic doctrines of other schools (mostnotably the Stoics) proved more attractive, so that the Academy lost itsvitality.
15
The school was reinvigorated as the New Academy by Arce-silaus, its head from about 268
–
242 BCE, who made the scepticalapproach of Socrates (rather than the Platonic forms) its philosophical
38THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
foundation. He taught that there could be no objective certainty aboutanything, and that the philosopher should, in the search for truth, sus-pend judgement. He argued particularly against the Stoic doctrine thata
“
cognitive impression
”
could be the basis of knowledge.
16
Neverthe-less, he allowed that even without assenting to anything (i.e. withoutcertain knowledge) one could make decisions by following what wasreasonable.
17
Arcesilaus
’
doctrine was presented more systematically byCarneades, whose speeches for and against justice had so alarmed Catothe Elder. In particular he preferred what was persuasive as the crite-rion of truth, which must be convincing and thoroughly examined byphilosophers before they give their assent.
18
Philo, who had been a student of Clitomachus, at first agreed withCarneades, but at about the time that he went to Rome he publishedtwo books in which he said that the Academy had always been one andthe same from Plato to his own time.
19
Without reviving Plato
’
s theoryof forms, he seems to have agreed with Plato that we can comprehenduniversals intellectually, even if we cannot know particular thingsbecause of the fallibility of our impressions. His effort to combine scep-ticism with dogmatism angered Antiochus so much that he wrote abook titled
Sosus
(not extant) against Philo. In it he rejected scepticismand adopted the Stoic theory of knowledge, going back not merely toZeno, the founder of Stoicism, but to the founder of the Peripateticschool, Aristotle, for his authority.
20
Antiochus also adopted much of Stoic ethics and, it seems, physics.
21
He said that the Stoics agreedwith the Peripatetics in substance but differed in terminology.
22
It ishardly surprising, then, that Cicero described him as
“
one who wascalled an Academic, and was in fact (with only a few changes) an abso-lutely genuine Stoic
”
.
23
The conflict between Philo and Antiochus put an end to the unity of the Academy and to such vitality as it still had. It so upset the Aca-demic Aenesidemus that he dismissed it as
“
Stoics fighting with Sto-ics
”
,
24
and left the Academy to revive the sceptical doctrines of Pyrrho(
c
.365
–
275 BCE). Cicero does not mention Aenesidemus, whose exactdates are unknown. His chief work on Pyrrhonism was dedicated to L.Aelius Tubero (a younger contemporary and friend of Cicero), and isdated by Barnes as not earlier than the 70s BCE. In any case, he is notsignificant for our understanding of Cicero
’
s scepticism, which is thatof Philo before the publication of the two books that had so upsetAntiochus.These Academic squabbles could be seen, as
“
esoteric bickering,unintelligible to the layman and unprofitable to the discipline
”
.
25
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES39
Cicero himself says that to many people Academic scepticism
“
appeared to be taking away light and veiling the world in night-likedarkness
”
.
26
Indeed, in Cicero
’
s world, philosophy was a guide to life:the conclusions that you reached intellectually had practical conse-quences. Philo, in going back to Plato, seems to have understood this,while Antiochus, in rejecting scepticism, most certainly did, for hesaid:
27
The two greatest things in philosophy are discernment of thetruth and the goal (
finem
) of things that are good. A man couldnot be wise who did not know that there was a beginning of com-ing to know and an end of searching, so as to be ignorant of hisstarting point and his goal.Thus Antiochus linked epistemology and ethics, the process of knowl-edge and the goal of the good life. Long has justly said that
“
he suc-ceeded in turning the Academy back towards a positivist philosophy
”
.
28
Epistemology is the most barren branch of philosophy if it is pur-sued as an intellectual chess game. Plato, Aristotle and Zeno hadshown that the answers to the questions of
“
What do we know?
”
and
“
How do we know it?
”
must affect our moral and practical decisions.Plato
’
s theory of forms is one such example, and his belief in its practi-cal importance is eloquently and memorably expressed in Socrates
’
closing words of the
Republic
:
29
In this way, Glaucon, the myth [of Er] was saved and did notperish. It would save us, too, if we obey it, and we shall cross theRiver of Forgetfulness [Lethe] safely and our souls will not bedefiled. But if we follow my words
—
that the soul is immortaland able to endure all things good and evil
—
then we shallalways stay on the upward path and practise justice with intelli-gence in every way. Our goal is to be dear to ourselves and to thegods, both while we remain here and when we receive her [Jus-tice
’
s] prizes, being rewarded like victors in the games. And hereand in the one-thousand-year journey which we have passedthrough we shall do well.Plato
’
s poetic eloquence makes us forget that this is the conclusion toan epistemological enquiry, that is, into a definition of the universal,Justice. He expanded the logical problem of defining universals to itsethical and practical consequences for the individual and society. Anti-ochus, as Barnes has said,
“
was prepared to publish a plain and conser-
40THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
vative system of philosophy
—
and to commend his system to the rulersof the world
”
.
30
This explains why Cicero, the Philonian sceptic, foundeven in the dogmatism of Antiochus features to guide him in his searchfor the good life.Cicero
’
s discussion of the Academic theory of knowledge is in the
Academica
, of which only part of one book (out of four) survives of the revised version and one complete book (out of two) of the first ver-sion.
31
The composition of the work was exceptionally tortuous, as canbe seen from Cicero
’
s letters to Atticus in the period between Marchand July of 45 BCE.
32
Cicero originally composed the work in twobooks, respectively titled
Catulus
and
Lucullus
. In the
Catulus
, nowlost, the consul of 78, Q.Lutatius Catulus, expounded the scepticalviews of Carneades, which were those held by his father, consul in 102and a victim in the Marian proscriptions of 87.
33
He was answered byHortensius (son-in-law of the elder Catulus), who defended the dogma-tism of Antiochus. The second book,
Lucullus
, is extant. In it Lucullusexpounded Antiochus
’
views (
§§
11
–
42), to which Cicero replied witha defence of Philo
’
s scepticism (
§§
64
–
147).The choice of Lucullus to expound the views of Antiochus seemedat first logical, for he was a friend of Antiochus. M.Licinius Luculluswas consul in 74 and commander in the third war against Mithradates(which was brought to a successful conclusion by his successor, Pom-pey, in 66). He was beginning his political career at the time whenPhilo (and probably Antiochus) fled to Rome. In 87 Antiochus accom-panied him on a visit to Alexandria and there read the two books of Philo that upset him so much. He went with Lucullus on his campaignsin Armenia and was present at the battle of Tigranocerta in 69, of which he said
“
the sun had never seen such a battle
”
. He died not longafter. The
Catulus
and the
Lucullus
were completed in mid-May of 45,some 11 years after the death of Lucullus, with a dramatic datebetween 63 and 60.Cicero realized, however, that it was stretching the facts to make themilitary and political leader Lucullus into a philosopher discoursing onepistemology. In June he rewrote both books, so as to give Brutus andCato (Uticensis) the principal parts.
34
He had already, however, beenthinking of transferring these parts to Varro, and within two days of completing the second version he had done this. The third and finalversion of the work was in four books, with Varro and Cicero as inter-locutors (Atticus was a third, but took a very small part), Varro speak-ing for Antiochus and Cicero for the scepticism of Philo. Only part of the first book is extant: in it Varro
’
s speech occupies
§§
15
–
42 (with afew interruptions from the interlocutors) and Cicero
’
s begins at
§
44:
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES41
the extant part breaks off at
§
46. Cicero refers to the four books of thefinal version as
Academic Libri
, and the two books of the first versionas
Catulus
and
Lucullus
. Modern editors, however, usually refer to thetwo surviving books as
Academica
, even though they come from dif-ferent versions.
35
These books are the principal source for the views of Antiochus, together with Book 5 of the
De Finibus
, in which M.Pupius Piso (consul in 61) is the speaker for his ethical doctrines, withCicero as respondent.
36
The choice of M.Terentius Varro (116
–
27 BCE) for the revised
Aca-demici Libri
was appropriate, for he was the greatest of Roman schol-ars, although he also had a public career, rising to the praetorship in the70s and serving as propraetor in the east in 67 and in Spain in 50
–
49.His range of scholarship was vast, but, of the fifty-five works whosetitles are known, only two are extant to any great extent (
De Lingua Latina
and
De Re Rustica
). He did write a work
De Philosophia
,known from Augustine
’
s description, and, as the second part of hismonumental
Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum et Divinarum
, he wrotesixteen books (dedicated to Julius Caesar) on the gods and their wor-ship.
37
In a letter written towards the end of June, 46, Cicero expresseshis admiration of Varro for his immersion in study (which includedphilosophy) at such a time of political instability:
38
I have always considered you to be a great man, especiallybecause in these stormy times you are almost the only one to beenjoying in harbour the fruits of learning.Varro had studied under Antiochus in Athens, and Cicero says of him,
“
no one is more fitting for the doctrines of Antiochus
”
.
39
Cicero agonized over the choice of Varro, as we know from a seriesof letters to Atticus.
40
He was never on close terms with him andVarro
’
s hot temper made him nervous.
41
He was embarrassed by Varros failure (after nine years) to publish the work that he had promised todedicate to Cicero.
42
In the dedicatory letter of the
Academid Libri
toVarro, Cicero remarks that in fact the discussion between himself andVarro in the work had never taken place, striking evidence for the abil-ity of Rome
’
s two most distinguished intellectuals to work on parallellines.
43
At any rate, the revised
Academid Libri
were sent by Atticus toVarro before mid-July of 45.
44
Cicero was anxious to know whatVarro thought of the work, but Varro
’
s letter (if he ever wrote one) isnot extant. Cicero himself was proud of the revised work, as he writesin several letters to Atticus. For example, writing in May of 45, hesays:
45
42THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The books have turned out (unless human self-love deceives me)such that not even the Greeks have anything in this genre likethem
…
They are far more brilliant, more concise, better (
splen-didiora, breviora, meliora
).In his mention of the
Academid Libri
in
De Divtnattone
(2. 1), Cicerofocuses on the approachability of the work, for he knew how intimidat-ing Greek epistemology would be for his Roman audience. He says:I set forth in the four books of the
Academid Libri
the kind of philosophy that I thought would be least arrogant and most con-sistent and elegant.How seriously he took his task can be seen from the series of letters toAtticus, written during the revision of the first publication, to which wehave referred earlier.
46
He took particular pride in making Greek phi-losophy intelligible to young Roman readers in Latin whose style, heclaimed, outdid that of the Greeks.Cicero dedicated the intermediate version of the
Academica
to Bru-tus, and it is appropriate to say more here about this younger friend of Cicero.
47
M.Junius Brutus (as he is usually called, although after hisadoption into the family of the Servilii Caepiones he actually took hisadoptive father
’
s name) was born (probably) in 85 BCE and studiedphilosophy at Athens under Aristus, the brother of Antiochus and hissuccessor as head of the Old Academy. (Although Cicero calls Brutus
Antiochius,
he almost certainly never heard Antiochus.) Brutus, there-fore, was an Academic, despite the fact that he married (as his secondwife) Porcia, daughter of M. Porcius Cato (Uticensis). In his publiccareer, which began in 58 with a controversial mission to Cyprus onCato
’
s staff, he was efficient and (in Cyprus at least) rapacious, and hecould be high-handed. After the battle of Pharsalus (48), in which hehad fought on Pompey s side, he was pardoned by Caesar, no doubt inpart because his mother, Servilia, had been Caesar
’
s mistress. In 46 hewas sent by Caesar to Cisalpine Gaul (i.e. northern Italy) as proconsul,and governed so well that he was elected Praetor for 44 and designatedconsul for 41. But when Caesar was made Dictator for life in Februaryof 44, Brutus could not ignore the demands of family tradition (for hisancestor, Lucius Junius Brutus, had ended the tyranny of TarquiniusSuperbus nearly five centuries earlier) and he became the leader of theconspiracy against Caesar which culminated in the murder on the Idesof March, 44. It is doubtful if solely philosophical principles led him torid Rome of a tyrant (as has often been said), so much as the realiza-
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES43
tion that with Caesar as Dictator free competition among Roman sena-tors for political power would be ended. Brutus at first disapproved of the suicide of Cato, but he changed his mind before the battles of Philippi and said to Cassius:
48
I used to blame Cato for his suicide, because it was not virtuous(
hosion
) nor manly to yield to the god rather than to acceptevents without fear, and instead to run away. But now beset byfortune I have changed. If the god does not decide these eventsin my favour, I do not ask to make trial of other hopes
…
but Ishall leave with praise for Fortune, that I gave my life to mycountry on the Ides of March and have lived another life becauseof her with liberty and glory.And so, after his defeat in the second battle of Philippi, Brutus killedhimself.
49
We may doubt if his decision was entirely a philosophicalone, although Plutarch makes him seem to act as a Stoic. Rather, realiz-ing how hopeless his political position was after the victories of Antony and Octavian, he followed Cato in refusing to live under thosewho had destroyed the Republic. Plutarch also reports that the enemiessaid that he alone of the conspirators made it his goal to restore
“
thetraditional Roman constitution
”—
that is, they said that his motiveswere political.
50
Brutus did not invite Cicero to join in the conspiracy against Caesar,but they corresponded after the murder until July of 43, by which timeBrutus had left Italy for Greece and the east. It is a sad correspondenceto read, for it cannot conceal their deep political differences, especiallyover Octavian (the future emperor Augustus), whom Cicero underesti-mated and Brutus rightly distrusted. One hint of their common philoso-phy remains in the consolatory letter that Cicero wrote after the deathof Porcia, Brutus
’
wife, in June of 43.
51
Brutus had been critical of Cicero
’
s grief in his letter consoling Cicero after the death of his daugh-ter, Tullia, in February of 45. Referring to this in his consolatory letter,Cicero reminds Brutus that his public position does not allow him togive way to his emotions. Though he has lost
“
one who had no equalon earth
”
, he cannot allow himself to appear weak in the eyes of
“
almost the whole world
”
.Brutus first wrote to Cicero from Asia, where he had gone afterPharsalus. Cicero says that this letter (which is not extant) first revivedhim from the depression that the defeat of Pompey had caused and hadbrought him back to the study of philosophy.
52
It was a letter, saysCicero, full of prudent advice and friendly consolation, and it led to a
44THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
period of intellectual closeness between Brutus and Cicero at the timewhen Cicero was most productive as a philosophical writer. Brutushimself wrote treatises (all lost) on Virtue (which was dedicated toCicero), on Patience and on Duty. According to Quintilian he was abetter philosophical writer than orator:
“
you would know that he feltwhat he said
”
, says Quintilian.
53
Cicero naturally was sympathetic toan orator who was also a philosopher.The first work that he dedicated to Brutus, the
Brutus
, was a surveyof Roman oratory which included, as we have seen, an autobiographi-cal account of Cicero
’
s own development in the 80s as an orator andphilosopher. Cicero speaks warmly of Brutus
’
friendship in the
Brutus
:Brutus and Atticus together as friends who were
“
so dear and pleasingto me, that at the sight of them all my anxieties about the state wereallayed
”
.
54
This did not stop Brutus from criticizing Cicero
’
s oratorywhich, so Tacitus tells us, quoting Brutus
’
own words, he said was
“
broken and dislocated
”
, with reference, however, more to the rhythmsthan to the content of his rhetoric.
55
At the end of the
Brutus
(
§
330),Cicero laments the road-block (Cicero is using the metaphor of a char-iot) that the misfortunes of the state have thrown in the way of Brutus
’
career. Therefore, he urges him to devote himself to his continuingstudies, that is, to philosophy. So, for a short time, Cicero saw in Bru-tus a serious philosopher, and, despite occasional irritation with him,he dedicated a series of works to him. After the
Brutus
, another work on oratory, the
Orator
, was dedicated in 46 at Brutus
’
request, to befollowed in 45 by the
De Finibus
, the
Tusculan Disputations
and the
De Natura Deorum
. Cicero also (in 46) dedicated to him a muchslighter work, the
Paradoxa Stoicorum
, which was really a rhetoricalexercise rather than a serious philosophical examination of the Stoicparadoxes.Of these dedications, those to Books 1, 3 and 5 of the
De Finibus
areespecially interesting. Book 5 begins with the words,
“
When, Brutus, Ihad listened to Antiochus, as was my custom
”
, a direct reference totheir common allegiance to the Academy and a reminder of Cicero
’
saccount in the
Brutus
of his time in Athens in 79. Cicero begins thework with a defence of the writing of Greek philosophy in Latin andreminds Brutus of the supreme importance of an enquiry into thenature of good and evil for the living of the virtuous life.
56
The settingof Book 3 is the library in the Tusculan villa of the younger Lucullus(son of the Lucullus of the
Academica
), in which Cicero finds CatoUticensis, the guardian of the young Lucullus, whose mother wasrelated to Cato. Cato is the speaker in defence of Stoic ethics, and Bru-tus, as Cicero remarks, is already proficient
“
in philosophy and in its
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES45
best field
”
(i.e. ethics).
57
While the dramatic date of Book 3 is the late50s, the date of writing was a year after the death of Cato. There ispoignancy in the dramatic presentation of Cato in a work written afterhis death and dedicated to Brutus, his son-in-law and nephew, himself destined to die in the same cause.M.Porcius Cato (95
–
46 BCE) is the major figure in the backgroundof Cicero
’
s relations with Brutus. To Cicero he was
Stoicus perfectus
,who introduced weighty philosophical discourse into his speeches inthe senate.
58
Cato did not travel to Athens to hear the philosophers
’
lectures, and Plutarch says that
“
he did not study with others and noone heard him speak
”
, that is, that he did not take part in the exercisesthat were part of the usual training in philosophy.
59
On the other hand,he was a friend of the Stoic philosopher Antipater of Tyre, whoaroused his interest in Stoicism:
60
He made friends with Antipater of Tyre, a Stoic philosopher, andattached himself particularly to [Stoic] ethical and political doc-trines. He was especially possessed, as if inspired, by everyaspect of virtue. He was an enthusiastic lover of that part of thegood that concerns inflexible justice, which never bends to allowleniency or special pleading. He trained himself also in rhetoricappropriate for addressing crowds, thinking that in a great citythere would be controversy along with political philosophy.In 67 Cato went to Macedonia as military tribune, and during this ser-vice he travelled to Asia Minor, in order to meet Athenodorus(Kordylion) of Tarsus, who was then head of the Library at Pergamum.Athenodorus was a Stoic, and Plutarch tells how Cato cajoled him intoleaving Pergamum and returning with him to the camp in Macedonia.He eventually went to Rome, where he lived in Cato
’
s house until hisdeath. Plutarch comments that Cato was especially impressed by hisrefusal to make friends with rulers and military leaders.
61
Cato
’
s philosophy was, as it were, home-grown. He chose the styleof Stoicism that suited his austere, craggy character, and he practised itin his own fashion, regardless of the cost to his political career. It madehim a redoubtable political competitor, feared and hated by his oppo-nents. Yet even Cato could not always put philosophical principleahead of political expediency, as, for example, when he secured theelection to the consulship for 59 of Bibulus, his son-in-law, throughbribery.
62
In his public career Cato infuriated Cicero by his inflexibility. Hisrigid adherence to principle led him to block Cicero
’
s request for a
46THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
supplicatto
(a public thanksgiving, ranking below a triumph) in honorof his military achievements in Cilicia.
63
This caused Cicero to remark to Atticus that Cato
“
has been disgracefully malevolent towards me
”
.
64
His rigidity led most disastrously to his refusal of any compromisewith Caesar in the months leading up to the outbreak of the Civil Warin January of 49. But Cicero admired and respected his devotion to theStoic principle of service to the state, which led to an extraordinarilyselfless patriotism. Indeed, in the
Pro Murena
he saluted Cato (whowas then thirty-two years old) as
“
born not for yourself, but for yourcountry
”
, words that the epic poet Lucan adapted and expanded,
“
believing that he was born not for himself but for the whole world
”
.
65
After the victory of Caesar at Thapsus in April, 46, Cato did what hecould to protect the people of Utica from harm, but for himself heresolved to die. He would not accept clemency from Caesar, and hedecided that he could not live under the rule of one man. Better to die,he believed, than to compromise with a tyrant. Therefore he committedsuicide, a scene vividly described by Plutarch.
66
Plutarch says that hehad with him two philosophers, Apollonides (Stoic) and Demetrius(Peripatetic), with whom he discussed philosophical matters on theevening before his death, until the discussion reached the Stoic para-dox that
“
Only the good man is free
”
.
67
Demetrius argued against this,and Cato argued so violently for it, that those present realized that hehad determined to die. Later, only the philosophers were left with him,and to them he reaffirmed his decision. They then left, and early in themorning he killed himself.Cato
’
s death was a public act based on Stoic principle. The virtuousman could not compromise with evil, neither could the man who wastruly free live under a tyranny, nor could the Roman patriot live in arepublic where the constitution had been rendered meaningless. WhileStoic doctrine was ambiguous about suicide, it did allow for the wiseman to withdraw
—
whether from political activity or from life itself
—
when circumstances made it impossible to live a virtuous life.
68
ThusCato reasoned that he should die, and by that act he more effectivelyopposed Caesar than by any of his political acts, as Caesar himself saw.
69
In a later age (as we shall see in the discussion of Seneca andLucan) his suicide was a beacon of encouragement for Stoics whofaced similar political and moral dilemmas.After Cato
’
s death Cicero wrote a pamphlet praising him, at therequest of Brutus, who followed with one of his own. These stimulatedCaesar to publish as his response an
Anticato
. Thus Cato achievedmore by his death on philosophical principles than he had been able toachieve in life by his politics. About ten years after his death Sallust
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES47
wrote a comparison of Caesar and Cato as part of his narrative of thesenatorial debate that preceded the execution of the Catilinarian con-spirators in 63.
70
In his speech Cato refers to his many earlier speechesin the senate
“
lamenting the luxury and avarice of Roman citizens
”
,and a little later, consistent with Stoic doctrine, he refuses to showmercy or pity towards the accused, whose execution he called for.These sentiments he supported with appeals to patriotism and to histor-ical examples of harsh punishments in support of the best interests of Rome. In the comparison that follows, Sallust (himself a former Caesar-ian) says that in his time only two men were endowed with great virtue
—
Caesar and Cato. In the present context we may leave his estimate of Caesar on one side, while recognizing that for Sallust, as for many oth-ers, Cato had become the unique example in his time of the Romanwho effectively transferred his philosophical principles into public life.We have reviewed Cicero
’
s early training in philosophy, and thishas led us to review several of his friends who appear as philosophersin successive versions of the
Academica
. It is time now to turn toCicero
’
s own review of his philosophical works, which he gave in
De Divinatione
, 2. 1
–
7. This work was written in early 44 BCE, largelybefore the Ides of March (but completed later), so that it does notinclude the later works on Friendship, on Fate, on Topics and on Duty.Cicero
’
s list is part of his defence of his philosophical activity as ser-vice to the state. He particularly justifies his making Greek worksavailable in Latin on the grounds of educating the young (
§
4):What greater or better duty could I perform for the state than inteaching and training the young, especially in these times of lowmoral standards, for the young have so far deteriorated thateveryone should do what they can to discipline them and put thebrakes on [their moral decline]?Thus Cicero answers the chief objection of Cato the Elder to the influ-ence of Greek philosophy. He says also (
§
6) that he became so activein philosophy because it was the activity most worthy of him, as asenior statesman, in a time when free political activity had been sup-pressed under the rule of one man. At this stage he is beginning toresume his public career, and so he expects that he will not have timeto devote his full attention to philosophy.Cicero
’
s survey begins with a lost work, the
Hortensius
, which hedescribes as an exhortation to study philosophy, written early in 45BCE. More than 100 fragments survive, from which it has beendeduced that the work consisted of a debate between Hortensius (speak-
48THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
ing against philosophy) and Catulus (defending its study), thus intro-ducing Cicero
’
s preferred style of presenting arguments for and againsta thesis.
71
It has also been suggested that the work is largely based onAristotle
’
s
Protrepticus
, a lost work defending the study of philoso-phy.
72
The
Hortensius
is best known for its influence on Augustine,who has preserved many of its fragments. In his
Confessions
he tellshow he was affected as he read the work as part of the regular curricu-lum in his rhetorical education:
73
That book contains Cicero
’
s own exhortation to philosophy andit is called
Hortensius
. It was that book that changed my feelingsand changed my prayers to you, Lord, and made my vows anddesires different.Augustine elsewhere quotes the
Hortensius
on living virtuously aspreparation for life after death. If, says Cicero, we go from this life tothe Islands of the Blessed, there will be no need there for the four car-dinal virtues, courage, justice, temperance and prudence. But in thislife they are necessary.
74
Again, Augustine quotes the end of the
Hort-ensius
, where Cicero ecstatically urges devotion to philosophy as themeans to
“
an easier ascent and return to the heavens
”
.
75
The passageshares with Cicero
’
s
Dream of Scipio
a poetic vision of the rewards of virtue achieved through philosophy.Cicero next lists the
Academica
, which we have already discussed inreviewing Academic skepticism and its background. After this he men-tions the five books
De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum
, which he wrotebetween March and June of 45 BCE, concurrently with the revised
Academici Libri
. Their subject is ethics, literally
On the Ends of Good and Evil
. The Latin word
finis
translates the Greek term
telos
, whichdenotes both
“
end
”
(i.e. the extreme limit) and
“
target
”
or
“
goal
”
, butCicero preferred to use the plural
fines
. The title implies that the personwho hits the target of what is good also reaches its ultimate limit (inLatin
summum bonum
), and so achieves the good life or, more specifi-cally,
“
happiness
”
, which the Greeks defined as
eudaimonia
andCicero translated as
vita beata
. Conversely, the person who reaches thefurthest limit of evil is afflicted with the worst life and the greatestunhappiness.The
De Finibus
is really an introduction to ethics, or, as Cicero says,it is the
“
foundation of philosophy
”
. Like university
“
basic
”
or
“
founda-tion
”
courses, it deals with a huge topic attractively and comprehen-sively, with the obvious drawbacks of such a presentation. Because of its approachability it has been highly praised and, especially since the
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES49
Danish scholar, J.N.Madvig, published his monumental commentary in1876, it has been more widely read than many of Cicero
’
s philosophi-cal works. Yet it does not reach the religious and emotional intensity of the
De Natura Deorum
or the intellectual precision of the
Academica
,or the Platonic enthusiasm of the
Hortensius
.
76
Nevertheless, it is stillamong the most readable of Cicero
’
s philosophical works and it isespecially valuable for its exposition of the ethical doctrines of thethree major schools of philosophy. Cicero claims that he dealt with thetopic completely (his word is
expurgatus est
, literally
“
completelyflushed through
”
), which he himself admitted was not so, for in hisnext work, the
Tusculan Disputations
, he says:
77
we ought to realize that when we have come to know (as far as ahuman being can know) the ends of good and evil, we can prayfor nothing greater or more useful from philosophy than thesethings which we have been discussing in these four days.The
Tusculan Disputations
, then, complemented the
De Finibus.
Cicero makes especially clear the importance of his Latin terminol-ogy in the
De Finibus
. In the dedication to Brutus (
§
1) he says that heknows that critics object to his presenting Greek philosophy in Latin,on the grounds that it is wasted effort, that it is beneath the dignity of aman of Cicero
’
s standing in public life, and that anyway they wouldprefer to read the original Greek. Cicero answers each criticism mostpassionately in
§§
10
–
11, where he defends the dignity of the Latinlanguage and the patriotism that his translations display:I have often discoursed on the Latin language, that it is not poor(as is commonly thought), but that it is even richer than Greek
…
.As for myself, since I have never (in my view) deserted my postin my work in the forum, in my labours [for the public good], inmy dangers, I certainly owe it now [to the Roman people] tolabour to make my fellow-citizens better informed through mydiligence, my research and my labour
…
For what in our lives
—
both in all of philosophy and in the discussions in these books
—
should we prefer in our enquiries to finding out the end, thelimit, the ultimate goal, to which every precept for the good lifeand morally right action has to be related? Or what should weprefer in our enquiries into what nature should follow, as themost desirable object to look for, and what it should avoid, as theworst of evils?
50THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The search for Latin terminology was especially important in the expo-sition of Stoic doctrine in Book 3. Cicero says that the Stoics were thegreatest innovators in philosophy, and that Zeno (their founder) was
“
not so much a discoverer of new things as he was of new words
”
.
78
Therefore Cicero is justified, he says, in developing a new terminol-ogy. He admits that some Greek words (for example,
philosophia
) areestablished in Latin usage, but he argues that Latin has a rich vocabu-lary of its own for the translation of Greek terms. Thus the importantStoic concepts of
proegmena
(things preferred) and
apoproegmena
(things to be rejected) he translates by
praeposita
and
reiecta
.
79
Heuses
laetitia
(pleasure of body and mind), as opposed to
voluptas
(sen-sual pleasure), where the Greek uses the same word,
hedone
, for both,and the emotions (
pathe
) become in Latin
perturbationes.
80
Cicerocompliments Cato (the Stoic speaker) on his use of Latin:
81
Indeed, Cato, you are using lucid vocabulary, whose words sayexactly what you mean! And, in my opinion, you are teachingphilosophy in Latin and, so to speak, making it a Roman citizen.Cicero certainly enjoyed the irony of giving Roman citizenship to aGreek term!The
De Finibus
consists of three separate dialogues, each with itsown dramatic date, and each devoted to the ethical doctrines of one of the major schools. The first dialogue (Books 1 and 2), whose dramaticdate is 50 BCE, focuses on Epicurean ethics. The setting is Cicero
’
svilla at Cumae
—
an appropriate choice, since there were many Epicure-ans living in the area round Naples. In Book 1, Epicurean doctrine isdefended by L.Manlius Torquatus, to whom Cicero responds in Book 2. Torquatus (90
–
46) was a friend of Cicero
’
s, although in 62 he wasthe prosecutor of P.Sulla, whom Cicero defended. Torquatus was alsoa poet, and his marriage to Junia Aurunculeia was celebrated by Catul-lus with an epithalamium.
82
He became Praetor in 49 (the year after thedramatic date of the dialogue) and fought on Pompey
’
s side in theCivil War. After the defeat at Thapsus he committed suicide, as didCato, the principal speaker in Book 3. Thus Cicero, by his choice of speakers, creates a memorial to those who perished in the Civil War.Torquatus
’
exposition focuses on pleasure (
voluptas
) and pain (
dolor
),which Epicurus had posited as the greatest good and the greatest evil.
83
Cicero mentions that he himself had heard the Epicurean philosophersPhaedrus and Zeno (who preceded Phaedrus as head of the Epicureanschool at Athens), and he names two other Epicurean philosophers,Siro and Philodemus, as his close friends and sources for a further
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES51
defence of Epicureanism.
84
These four philosophers, rather than thewritings of Epicurus himself, are likely to be the sources for Torqua-tus
’
exposition of contemporary Epicurean doctrine.
85
Cicero
’
sresponse in Book 2 probably derives from Antiochus.
86
His mainargument is that pleasure is not by itself sufficient for the good life, forwhich only virtue is sufficient, while there are morally good objects of desire (courage, justice, etc.) which have nothing to do with pleasure.Similarly, the desire to avoid pain is not rational but natural, if unattainable. Cicero
’
s arguments, despite their Academic origin, arecloser to Stoic ethics, which is understandable, given Antiochus
’
ownacceptance of much of Stoic doctrine. Cicero seems to have respectedhis Epicurean teachers and friends, even though he was consistentlyoutspoken in his hostility to Epicureanism, and he admits that in Book 2 he is speaking rhetorically, rather than dialectically.
87
This wouldexplain a number of distortions of Epicurean doctrine that appear in hisspeech.Books 3 and 4 of the
De Finibus
consist of the second dialogue, anexposition of Stoicism by Cato and, in Book 4, a response by Cicero,again probably largely derived from Antiochus.
88
The setting is thelibrary of the villa of Lucullus near Tusculum, where Cicero comesupon Cato, who is
“
surrounded by many Stoic books
”
(
§
7), and thedramatic date is 52 BCE. Book 3 is among the most important of allCicero
’
s philosophical writings, for it contains the only continuousexposition of early Stoic ethical doctrine that is extant.
89
In it Cicerotakes great care with Latin terminology, and he is far more engagedwith the topic than he was in the dialogue on Epicureanism.Cato begins with the primal human instinct for self-preservation,developing the Stoic doctrine of
oikeiosts
, which Cicero translates byvarious forms of the verb
conciliare
, in English
“
affinity
”
or
“
affec-tion
”
. From this derives the desire for what is good (
honestum
), whichis found to be the only good, for other things that people think are goodare in fact
indifferentia,
that is, they are not necessary to the goodlife).
90
Some of them, to be sure, are to be preferred (
praeposita
) andsome to be rejected, but it is virtue alone, gained through reason, that isnecessary and sufficient for the good life. Cato defines the
summumbonum
:
91
the highest good is to live using the knowledge of the things thathappen naturally, selecting those which are in accordance withnature and rejecting those which are against nature. This is tolive a life that is in harmony with and consistent with nature.
52THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
This definition is significant. It became the standard for the RomanStoics
’
idea of the good life, and it happens that we can see exactlyhow Cicero developed it from the definitions of Chrysippus, Diogenesof Babylon (one of the ambassadors to Rome in 155), and Antipater of Tyre, Cato
’
s friend and teacher.
92
Cato touches on many other topics, and he ends with praise of thewise man, in terms that recall the Stoic paradoxes (
“
only the wise manis a king, is beautiful, is free, is unconquered
”
). The wise man and hisphilosophy become divine:
93
If it is true that only the good man is happy and all good men arehappy, then what should we revere more than philosophy orwhat is more god-like than virtue?Cicero
’
s response in Book 4 criticizes each of Cato
’
s arguments,mainly to show that the Stoics agree with the Peripatetics in much, butthat their arguments are poorly expressed and their ethical ideals areimpracticable. He agrees with the Stoic end as defined in 3. 31 (quotedabove), but he objects to their arguments in support of it. Elsewhere hesupported the Stoic view, justifying his inconsistency by saying thatZeno
’
s doctrines derived from Plato, the source also for the views of the Peripatetics and Academics.
94
Book 5 of the
De Finibus
consists of the third dialogue. It is set inAthens in 79 BCE, where Cicero is walking with his friends, M.Pupius Piso (consul in 61, active in the Pompeian cause in 49, but deadby 47), T.Pomponius Atticus, his brother Quintus, and his cousinLucius Cicero.
95
They start from the Gymnasium of Ptolemy, wherethey had heard Antiochus lecture, for it continued to function as aneducational centre even after it had been sacked by Sulla in 86.
96
Theypass by the Stoa Poikile, where Zeno taught, to the Dipylon Gate(about 500 metres) and thence to Plato
’
s Academy (six stades, saysCicero, or about 1,100 metres), passing by Epicurus
’
garden.
97
It is awonderfully evocative scene, recalling the setting of some of Plato
’
sdialogues (for example, the
Phaedrus
) or of Cicero
’
s earlier work (forexample, Book 2 of the
De Legibus
). It enables Cicero to recall thehappy times of his youth and to remind us of his philosophical trainingin Athens. It also allows him to link himself with the great philoso-phers of the past
—
Plato and the Academy, Epicurus and the Garden,Zeno and the Stoa
—
along with their successors, of whom Aristotle,Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, Carneades, Phaedrus and Antiochusare named. Cicero reminds Piso of a similarly evocative visit they hadmade to Metapontum (in southern Italy), where Pythagoras had lived
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES53
and died. The great Athenian orators, Demosthenes and Aeschines, arementioned, thus linking philosophy and rhetoric. In every part of Athens, says Cicero (
§
4), one is reminded of the great men of the past,but nowhere so much as in the Academy, where Carneades had lectured.The continuing presence of great men of the past was a prominentfeature of Roman upper-class culture of the last two centuries of theRepublic. So Cicero makes Piso say (
§
2) that looking at the Academyreminds him of being in the senate house at Rome (he had entered thesenate as Quaestor in 83), where he could
“
see
”
Scipio (Aemilianus),Cato (the Censor), Laelius, and his own grandfather (L.Calpurnius PisoFrugi, consul in 133). Thus the introduction to Book 5 links Greek phi-losophy with Roman intellectuals and with rhetoric. It links Cicero andhis friends to the great philosophical schools of the past, and it remindshis audience in 45 of the very different world of his youth. It is one of Cicero
’
s finest pieces of writing, for it supports his principal claims asa writer of philosophical works
—
that he is interpreting Greek philoso-phy in Roman terms, and that in so doing he is acting as a patriot andpublic servant no less than the great leaders of the past, such as Scipioand Cato the Censor.The main part of Book 5 is the speech of Piso (
§§
9
–
74), skilfullylinked to Brutus (to whom the work is dedicated) at the end of
§
8:pay close attention to Piso
’
s speech, Brutus, and see if he hassatisfactorily expounded the doctrines of Antiochus, which Ithink you approve of most of all, since you frequently attendedthe lectures of his brother, Aristus.Thus the doctrine of Book 5 is that of Antiochus (as Piso says in
§
76),defining
the fines bonorum
of the so-called Old Academy. Piso essen-tially accepts the Stoic definition of 3. 31, but he examines closelywhat is meant by
“
good
”
and by
“
nature
”
, and hence proves that thevirtuous life is the life lived according to nature (
§
58), but that
“
virtue
”
includes many specific good things in life besides the abstract qualityof virtue, which the Stoics said was the
only
thing necessary for thegood life. Cicero, more Stoic than Academic here, criticizes Piso in thedialogue of
§§
75
–
96, and so the work ends.The
De Finibus
is amongst Cicero
’
s finest works. This certainly canbe said of the opening of Book 5, and the importance of Book 3 cannotbe denied, whatever shortcomings it may have in its philosophicalargumentation.Next, in the
De Divinatione
survey, Cicero mentions the five booksof the
Tusculan Disputations
, probably his most approachable work
54THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
and therefore amongst the most popular of his philosophical writings.
98
Cicero calls them
“
an old man
’
s declamations
”
, and both in form andstyle they are indeed more rhetorical than the earlier dialogues.
99
Instead of the dialogue form in which one speaker develops a point of view and is then criticized by another, Cicero
’
s unnamed interlocutorproposes a thesis, which he then opposes in a virtually uninterruptedspeech. The setting is his villa at Tusculum, and from his letters andthe information given in the dedication to Brutus in 1. 7, it seems thatthe date of the five dialogues (one to each day) was an actual one, June16
–
20, 45. Cicero summarizes the work as follows:
100
The same number of books [i.e. as for the
De Finibus
] of
Tuscu-lan Disputations
followed. They explained the things most neces-sary for achieving the happy life. For the subject of the first isdespising death; of the second, enduring pain (
dolor
); of thethird, allaying mental distress (
aegritudo animi
); of the fourth,the other psychological disturbances (
perturbationes animi
). Thefifth contains the subject that throws the most light on the wholefield of philosophy, for it teaches that virtue by itself is sufficientfor achieving the happy life.The subject of Book 1 is the same as one of the central themes of Lucretius
’
Epicurean poem, and its goal is the same, that is, to rid thereader of the fear of death. It is remarkable that Cicero pays very littleattention (
§§
18
–
25) to Lucretius
’
principal argument, that is, that thesoul, being corporeal, disintegrates at death, so that there is nothing tofear thereafter, and instead he argues for the immortality of the soulalong Platonic and Stoic lines. Again, it is striking that Virgil (in
Aeneid
6) devoted some of his finest poetry to an account of theUnderworld in its relationship to present and future lives and to pastand future history. But Cicero, only two decades earlier, has very littleto say about the Underworld and its traditional function as a place of judgement and punishment (
§§
48
–
50).In Books 2
–
5 Cicero deals with matters that were particularly promi-nent in Stoic ethics, pain, grief and other emotions. In 2. 14 the inter-locutor proposes the thesis that
“
Pain (
dolor
) is the greatest of allevils
”
. Cicero responds that those (like the Epicureans) who say thatpain is the ultimate evil are as wrong as those who (like the Stoics) saythat it is not an evil at all (
§§
15
–
32). Instead Cicero shows that theantidote to pain, which is an undeniably bad human experience, is rea-son exercised through philosophy (
§§
42
–
67).As the length of Book 2 shows (little more than half that of Book 1)
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES55
Cicero was not as deeply engaged with its subject as with that of deathin Book 1. Again, he is quite brief and not very profound with the sub- jects of Books 3 and 4. In 3. 12 the interlocutor proposes the thesis that
“
the wise man will suffer from mental distress
”
. Cicero replies thatsuch distress (of which grief is the most difficult manifestation) isincompatible with the virtues of the wise man, and that again, reason isits antidote. Therefore the wise man, being ruled by reason, will notsuffer from it.
101
In Book 4. 8 the interlocutor suggests that
“
the wise man cannotavoid all psychological disturbances
”
, inviting a discussion of the emo-tions. Again, Cicero takes a Stoic point of view and shows that reasonis the antidote, so that the wise man will not be subject to the
pathe
(
§§
9
–
84). Book 4 is remarkable for the focus on terminology in
§§
23
–
26, for precision is necessary where medical terms are being used asmetaphors for emotional disturbances. Cicero
’
s discussion of the
pathos
of love is thin, but he does consider the question of the Greek attitude towards homosexual love (
§§
70
–
72), once again proposingreason as an alternative.With Book 5 the
Tusculan Disputations
take on new energy. In itthe interlocutor proposes (
§
12) that
“
virtue cannot be sufficient forliving a happy life
”
. In the preface (
§§
1
–
11) Cicero rises to heights of passionate eloquence in praise of philosophy, whose historical devel-opment he surveys. It corrects all human faults and vices (
§
5), it is theharbour of refuge from the storms of life. Then Cicero utters a paean of praise, composed in the form of a Greek hymn, in which the formaladdress to the god is followed by a narrative of the god
’
s deeds, aprayer and expressions of hope for future favour:O Philosophy, guide of life! O tracker (
indagatrix
) of virtue andexpeller of vice! What could not only I, but all living humanbeings have done without you? You have brought cities intobeing, you have brought separated human beings together into alife of community, you have linked them first by means of homes, then by marriage, then by the common sharing of lan-guage and writing, you have been the discoverer (
inventrix
) of laws, you have been the teacher of morality and orderly living.In you we take refuge, from you we pray for help, to you I givemyself, as I did formerly in large part, so now completely andthoroughly. Indeed, one day spent in accordance with your pre-cepts is better than eternity spent in doing wrong.The punctuation of the narrative element (
“
You have brought
…”
)
56THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
shows the flood of emotion with which Cicero recalls the good deedsof philosophy, expressed in a flow of paratactic clauses quite unusualin the complex syntactic structure of Cicero
’
s prose. Cicero invents themajestic titles ending in
-trix
(a suffix denoting activity), and
indaga-trix
is a hunting metaphor.
102
Finally, the compressed account of human progress contrasts both with the myths of degeneration (bestknown from Hesiod
’
s five ages) and with Lucretius
’
extended accountin Book 5 of the
De Rerum Natura
.The rest of Book 5 (
§§
12
–
121) is devoted to proof that virtue aloneis sufficient for happiness. As Cicero admits (
§§
82
–
84), this is Stoicdoctrine. He therefore argues also for the Academic view, that thereare good things in addition to virtue that add to happiness, and in thissection (
§§
83
–
120) he argues along the lines of Antiochus. Cicero doesnot resolve the dilemma between the doctrine of the Stoics (that virtuealone is sufficient) and that of the Academics.
103
And this is significantfor our understanding of his philosophy, for in this, as in so much of his political career, he was able to see all sides of a question andunable to make a firm decision.The
Tusculan Disputations
are a completion of the
De Finibus.
Theyalso complete the list of Cicero
’
s major philosophical works given inthe
De Divinatione
, and it seems that Cicero looked upon these twoworks and the
Academica
at the time of writing as a complete pro-gramme for epistemology and ethics. Separately he mentions the
DeSenectute
(
On Old Age
) and the
Cato
, written after Cato
’
s suicide,which is not extant. Still to be written were the works on friendship(
De Amicitia
) and duty (
De Officiis
).Cicero also mentions his
Consolatio
, a lost work which should bediscussed here, since it is relevant to several parts (mostly in Books 1and 3) of the
Tusculan Disputations
. Cicero
’
s daughter, Tullia, died inFebruary of 45 BCE, and he addressed a
Consolation
to himself, being,so he said, the first to do so.
104
The Consolation was a well-known lit-erary form, going back at least to the Academic philosopher Crantor(335
–
275 BCE), whose own
Consolation
(not extant) was Cicero
’
smodel.
105
Unlike the Cynics and Epicureans, Crantor and his succes-sors did not deny that the grief of bereavement was natural.
106
Insteadthey sought to use arguments to make it tolerable and so to
“
heal
”
themourner and enable him or her to resume a normal life. Their purpose,then, as Cicero says of his own
Consolatio
, was to lessen grief ratherthan to deny it.
107
Cicero refers to his
Consolatio
so many times that itsmain outlines are known. He brought in arguments other than those of Crantor, such as those later used in the
Tusculan Disputations
on thenature of the soul.
108
Since, as he argued, the soul was divine and the
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES57
souls of the virtuous ascended after death to join the gods (or rather, inStoic doctrine, god) in heaven, Tullia
’
s soul had joined the gods andshe herself had become divine.
109
Lactantius observes that this was not
“
the ravings of one stricken with grief, but rather a conclusion reachedby reason.Cicero
’
s
Consolatio
was widely admired, and the consolatory genrecontinued to be practised. Among surviving consolations, the introduc-tion to Book 3 of Cicero
’
s
De Oratore
(especially
§§
12
–
16), written in 55, is a consolation for the death of L.Licinius Crassus and other distin-guished men. The letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero about Tullia’s death is one of the shortest and most remarkable.
Seneca wrote sev-eral Consolations; Juvenal satirized the genre in his thirteenth satire,and, centuries later (524 CE), Boethius had Philosophy herself consolehim in prison with the
Consolation of Philosophy
, the greatest and lastrepresentative of the genre.In
De Div
. 2.3, Cicero next (after the
Tusculan Disputations)
liststhree theological works,
De Natura Deorum
,
De Divinatione
, and
DeFato
. The first of these he describes as completed by the time of writ-ing the
De Divinatione
, that is, March 44 BCE, and we know from sev-eral letters to Atticus that he was working on it during the summer of 45. It may have been published before the end of 45, while the othertwo works followed in the spring of 44 (
De Divinatione
) and beforeNovember of 44 (
De Fato
). He says that the
De Natura Deorum
was acomplete examination of its subject, while the other two works wouldextend and complete his enquiry into the whole field of religion.
Wilhelm Suss confesses that for him the De Natura Deorum is “thecrown of all Cicero’s philosophical work ”, and there are many whowould agree with him, as against the
communis opinio
that this titleshould be awarded to the
De Finibus
or the
De Officiis
.
Cicero wasdeeply engaged with its subject (he had been a member of the Collegeof Augurs
—
high officials in Roman state religion
—
since 53) and here,as much as anywhere in his philosophical writings, he was most suc-cessful in transmitting his Greek sources to a Roman audience. In the
Dream of Scipio
in Book 6 of the
De Republica
, published six or sevenyears earlier, he had already shown how contemplation of the divinesphere, to which human souls would ascend after death, inspired himto write prose of poetic intensity as the vehicle for philosophical doc-trine, religious exaltation and patriotic fervour. These are attributesalso of the
De Natura Deorum
, particularly in the second book.The work is in three books. Cicero sets the dramatic dialogue at thehouse of C.Aurelius Cotta, a senator who had been exiled in the politi-cal troubles of 91
–
90 and who returned in 82 to resume a career that
58THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
brought him to the consulship in 75, the year in which Cicero himself entered the senate as a quaestor. The occasion was the religious festi-val of the
feriae Latinae
(the annual festival that celebrated the unionof Rome with Latin tribes) in 76, the year before Cotta
’
s consulshipand after Cicero
’
s return from his study-tour in the east. Cicero takesvirtually no part in the dialogue, as befits a young man in the presenceof an elder statesman. The main speakers are C.Velleius, a member of the senate and a leading Epicurean, and Q.Lucilius Balbus, who, saysCicero, was so expert a Stoic that he could compete with Greek Stoicphilosophers. Little else is known of these two men. The dialogueseems to take place within one day, although it is likely (from internalevidence) that Cicero originally planned it for three days, one for eachbook.In the first book Velleius sets forth the Epicurean doctrine on thegods, devoting only
§§
43
–
56 to the topic itself. He does not discuss thegods
’
immortality or where they are located. His speech is easilyrefuted by Cotta in
§§
57
–
124. As he says (
§
115), why should humanbeings worship gods who (according to Epicurean doctrine) have noconcern with human affairs? He quotes Posidonius, who said that infact Epicurus did not really believe in the gods.
113
The second book is devoted to Balbus
’
exposition of Stoic doctrineabout the gods. Here Cicero devotes four times as much space as hehad allotted to Velleius, and the exposition is carefully structured. Bal-bus divides his speech into four sections:
114
[The Stoics] divide the enquiry about the immortal gods into fourparts. First, they demonstrate that the gods exist; second, theydiscuss their nature; third, they show that the universe is regu-lated by them; finally, they prove that the gods are concernedwith human affairs.In each section Balbus adduces detailed arguments, advancing cumula-tively to the climax, which is the proof of the interaction between godsand human beings. This is especially appropriate for a Roman audi-ence, for the successful conduct of public affairs depended on theproper relationship of gods and human beings. Proof, then, of the indis-soluble bonds between the divine and the human, would have a specialresonance for Cicero
’
s readers. Here we may quote the first section of the fourth set of proofs as an example of the union of Stoic, religiousand political fervour:
115
First, the world itself was created for the sake of gods and human
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES59
beings, and the things in it were produced and discovered for theadvantage of humankind. For the world is, so to speak, the com-mon home of gods and human beings, or it is the city-state of both, for they alone live making use of reason, justice and law.So just as we must suppose that Athens and Sparta were foundedfor the advantage of the Athenians and the Spartans
—
and every-thing that is in these cities is rightly said to belong to their citi-zens
—
so everything that is in the whole world must be supposedto belong to the gods and human beings.Balbus continues with various aspects of the created world
—
the heav-ens, the earth and its products, the animal realm
—
to support this com-prehensive statement. The doctrine of the two worlds
—
the ideal worldof the Forms and the physical world of particular objects
—
is Platonic,and, as Aristotle pointed out, it is flawed because of Plato
’
s separationof the two. The Stoics to some extent succeeded in uniting themthrough the doctrine quoted here, which proved to be so powerful inRoman thought. It is brilliantly presented in the
Dream of Scipio
, and itwill find new expression in the works of Seneca, not least in his trea-tises on Tranquillity (
De Tranquillitate
) and Retirement (
De Otio
).Cicero, then, is showing that the divine is not, as the Epicureans said,separate from the human. On the contrary, it is intertwined with humanexperience, and the Stoic god (as Cleanthes had said in his
Hymn to Zeus
) was both the origin and the ultimate home of the human soul. InRoman life this had the practical consequence that the gods were verymuch a part of public activities, whose success they would further bytheir goodwill.In Book 3, Cotta, the Academic, criticizes the Stoic view, using thefour-part division of Balbus. Unfortunately nearly all of his third set of arguments (against the government of the world by the gods) is lost,and with it some of the validity of his counter-arguments. Neverthe-less, he quotes the proofs of human mortality from Carneades, whichno Stoic was ever able to refute.
116
Like Balbus, he stresses the impor-tance of the gods to him as a Roman, as
pontifex
(priest, the title of high officials in the state religion) and as a senator. So he prefaces hisspeech with an appeal to Roman tradition:
117
As a Cotta and
pontifex
I should defend both the views about theimmortal gods that I have inherited from my ancestors and thesacrifices, ceremonies and religious rituals. I will defend themalways, and I have always defended them, nor will any speech of anyone
—
whether scholar or amateur
—
move me from the views
60THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
about the worship of the immortal gods that I have inheritedfrom my ancestors. I follow Coruncanius, Scipio and Scaevola,all chief priests (
Pontifices Maximi
), not Zeno or Cleanthes orChrysippus
…
. I am convinced that Romulus, by taking the aus-pices, and Numa, by establishing religious rituals, laid the foun-dations of our state, which never could have grown so great with-out the gaining the complete favour of the immortal gods.This is a truly
Roman
statement and Cicero deserves credit for original-ity in casting his discussion of the gods in such a light. It is true thatGreek sources can be identified for most of the
De Natura Deorum
(inparticular Carneades, Panaetius and Posidonius), but the politicalgrounds for the pious observance of Roman religion are Cicero
’
s owncontribution. Not surprisingly, he is less than whole-hearted in his sup-port of the Academic doctrine. Cotta himself at the end of his speechexpresses scepticism:
118
This is more or less what I have had to say about the nature of the gods. My purpose is not to deny its existence, but to haveyou understand how obscure it is and how difficult to explain.In the last sentence of the work Cicero says that the Epicurean,Velleius, was inclined to support Cotta
’
s view, but that he himself believed that the views of the Stoic, Balbus,
“
seemed to be closer tothe likeness of truth
”
. As an Academic sceptic, Cicero could onlycommit himself to probability.Theology was part of the philosophical category of physics, and soCicero gives considerable attention to natural phenomena both on earthand in the heavens. Since he did not write a treatise on the physicalaspects of the world it is worth mentioning here that he did, as a youngman, translate into Latin hexameters the poem of the Stoic Aratus(
c
.315
–
240). Entitled
Phaenomena
(literally,
“
Appearances
”
), Aratus
’
poem gave an account of the constellations (lines 1
–
732) and of weather-signs (lines 733
–
1154), usually given a separate title,
Diose-meiai
. As part of the Stoic proof of divine governance of the world,Cicero quotes about eighty-five lines (out of about 575 extant) from hispoem which was published perhaps six years before the dramatic date(76) of the dialogue.
119
By quoting the lines here Cicero is not showingany deep interest in astronomy or physics, and he is probably accuratewhen he makes Balbus say:
“
I will quote your
Aratea
, which so delightme, because they are Latin.
”
120
Cicero elsewhere makes Quintus quotetwenty-three lines from the poem, which concern weather-signs.
121
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES61
Another Latin poet, Varro of Atax (born in 82 BCE), at about the timewhen Cicero was writing the
De Natura Deorum
, may have been com-posing his
Ephemeris
(
“
Almanac
”
), in which he adapted many linesfrom Aratus. Only two fragments are extant, and it is not knownwhether Cicero had any knowledge of the poem.
122
In
De Natura Deorum
3. 19 Balbus complains that Cotta is passingover important topics
—
specifically divination and fate
—
in silence, notgiving him a chance to discuss them. Cicero had reserved them for sep-arate works,
De Divinatione
and
De Fato
, both written in the first half of 44. In the preface to Book 2 of the
De Divinatione
, Cicero refers tothe resumption of free political activity, that is, to the situation after themurder of Caesar on 15 March, while in
De Fato
2 he makes anenquiry into the causes of the troubles after Caesar
’
s death
—
the start-ing point for the work
’
s discussion of causation. The extraordinaryevents of the time of composition made these works especially timely,for the custom of Roman state religion demanded that the will of thegods be discovered in times of crisis, not least by means of divination.And knowledge of the divine will inevitably involved considerations of human free will, destiny and fate.
De Divinatione
is in two books. In the first, Quintus Cicero(Cicero
’
s brother) expounds the case for divination, which MarcusCicero demolishes in the second. Quintus argues the Stoic case, whichCicero includes in his historical survey of divination that serves as thepreface to Book 1.
123
Introducing his response, Cicero says to Quintus(2. 8):
124
You have defended Stoic doctrine in the Stoic manner and (athing which gives me the greatest pleasure) you have used manyRoman examples
…
So I must reply to your discourse but in sucha way that I should affirm nothing and question everything.This is a neat summary of the problems that Cicero solved in compos-ing the
De Divinatione
. For divination was indeed prominent in theRoman religious and political landscape.
125
Romulus himself hadfounded Rome with the aid of augury, and the Romans had early intheir history adopted Etruscan methods of divination, to say nothing of the Sibylline Books, which had been consulted in Cicero
’
s own life-time.
126
There was considerable contemporary interest in divinationand augury. For example, Cicero
’
s friend, Aulus Caecina (from an Etr-uscan family), had written a work on the
Disciplina Etrusca
, whichwas used extensively by Seneca in his discussion of thunder and light-ning.
127
In his correspondence with Caecina, Cicero shows great
62THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
respect for him as a scholar but bases his political predictions on othergrounds than divination, since Caesar had exiled Caecina from Italyand appeared to be implacable.
128
Divination was approved by the Stoics.
129
Zeno approved of it, andboth Chrysippus and Posidonius (as well as other Stoics) had writtenworks on it, although Panaetius had had doubts. There was, then, abasis in philosophy, as well as in Roman religious and political cus-tom, for arguments in support of divination. As a Roman statesmanand augur Cicero could not dismiss them outright, but he could expressdoubt, that is, he could (and did) approach the topic from the point of view of Academic scepticism, relying particularly on Carneades forarguments against the Stoics.
130
Cicero skilfully varied his methods, to produce
“
a multilayered work of surprising obliqueness and complexity
”
.
131
In Book 1 Quintusindulges in what Schofleld calls
“
the rhetoric of anecdote
”
, that is, hesupports his case with a multitude of examples, largely chosen fromRoman history.
132
In Book 2, however, Cicero uses
“
the rhetoric of cross-examination
”
, for example, the sharp questioning of 2. 85:
“
should we wait for animals to speak?
”
, he asks, as opposed to actingon the best judgement of human reason. Or in 2. 56, where he cites theTheban seers who foretold the victory of Leuctra from the crowing of cocks:
“
that [i.e. the crowing] was the miracle
”
, you say.
“
Well, what asurprise! As if fishes were crowing, not cocks!
”
Yet Cicero mustrespect the established place of divination and augury in Roman publiclife. Like the sceptical Cotta in
De Natura Deorum
, he defends them asan augur and a patriotic Roman:
133
In accordance with the opinion of the people and because thesethings are of great advantage to the state, we still maintain thecustomary ritual [of augury], its religious rites and discipline, theaugural laws and the college of augurs.Near the end of the work Cicero expands this by distinguishingbetween religion and superstition:
134
It will be greatly to our advantage and that of our fellowRomansto root out superstition. But in removing superstition
…
we mustnot remove religion. A wise man will preserve the traditionalinstitutions by maintaining their rituals and ceremonies.And having thus spoken as a Roman he ends as a sceptic:
135
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES63
The particular method of the Academy is not to interpose its ownopinion but to approve those things which seem to be most likethe truth. It will compare causes and expound the supportingarguments for each side. It will not bring its own authority tobear, but it will leave enquirers free to make their own judge-ment without prejudice.Cicero calls this the Socratic method, and so the dialogue ends with anappeal to the iconic source of Academic scepticism.In the third and final treatise on religion,
De Fato
, Cicero adoptsquite a different method, described by Schofield:
136
[It] is technical, dense, intense, full of subtle dialectical twistsand turns
…
and devoted to an abstruse metaphysical topic. It con-veys the interplay of ingenious minds arguing and putting freshand unexpected lines of thought to each other better than any of Cicero
’
s other philosophical writings
…
It is the Ciceronian trea-tise philosophers most enjoy reading.Schofield admits that works like the
De Divinatione
take
“
a lot of get-ting through for philosophers: it is too popular a read for them
”
, whichis testimony to Cicero
’
s success in transmitting Greek philosophy to aRoman upper-class public which, by definition, was not made up of professional philosophers. The text of
De Fato
is fragmentary (perhapsone quarter of the whole is extant). Ostensibly a dialogue with AulusHirtius (consul designate for 43, the year in which he died) held atCicero
’
s villa at Puteoli shortly after Caesar
’
s murder, it was written inMay and June of 44, when the usual topics of discussion betweenCicero and his friends were peace and withdrawal from public life (
paxet otium
). But the stunning events of 15 March inevitably led to consid-eration of their causes, and so to a discussion of fate. In
De Div
. 1. 127Quintus says that
“
I will demonstrate in another place [that] everythinghappens by fate
”
, a promise fulfilled by the
De Fato
(with Marcus asthe speaker). In
De Fato
4 Hirtius asks Cicero to propose a thesis anddiscuss it in the fashion of the
Tusculan Disputations
. The thesis(which is not given in the surviving part of the manuscript) must havebeen that contained in Quintus
’
words in
De Div
. 1. 127:
“
everythinghappens by fate
”
(
fato omnia fiunt
), and Cicero is the sole speaker dis-cussing it.Fate, providence and free will were prominent topics for the Stoics,Epicureans and Academics.
137
The Stoics believed in the supremacy of fate, and Chrysippus (whom Cicero quotes here extensively) had writ-
64THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
ten a work
On Fate
. Likewise, Panaetius wrote a work on Providence,and Posidonius one on Divination and one on Fate.
138
Closely con-nected was the question of free will, which the Stoics allowed, for,they said, human beings still had moral choices which allowed them tochoose to follow fate willingly. While (a century after Cicero) Senecamade this the principal topic of his dialogue
De Providentia
and of his107th letter (in which he quotes lines from the
Hymn to Zeus
of Clean-thes expressing the doctrine), Cicero was more interested in the ques-tion of causation, which lies at the heart of the problems of fate andfree will.
139
Cicero first denies the validity of the Stoic doctrine of
“
sympathy
”
, that is that external factors (such as climate) determinehuman action (
§§
7
–
11). Later he turns to the so-called
“
lazyargument
”
, which Chrysippus had criticized.
140
Cicero here relies onthe syllogistic argument of Carneades. Finally, Cicero himself attacksthe Epicurean grounds for positing free will, most notoriously by thedoctrine of the
“
swerve
”
(Latin,
clinamen
) of atoms.
141
Cicero had long been concerned with the question of free will. In aletter to Varro written in May, 46, he says that he has written a work on things possible (
Peri Dunaton
) which, he says, he had discussedwith Diodotus, who did not agree with him.
142
Since Diodotus died in59, Cicero had been thinking about the problem for at least fifteenyears when he came to write the
De Fato
. As in the other theologicalworks he takes the Academic approach, relying most particularly onCarneades
’
proof. This states that if we extend the chain of causalityback infinitely, nothing can be left to free will: but, since we do makechoices (and therefore exert free will), it cannot be said that all thingshappen through fate. Cicero argues the sceptical point of view withskill and exemplary logic, in a fashion quite different from the othertheological works.Cicero says in
De Div
. 2. 4 that he was eager to finish his pro-gramme of philosophical works but was interrupted by the events of the Ides of March. If he had done so, he says,
“
I would not have leftany philosophical subject that was not open to all and illuminated bythe Latin language
”
. He believed then (shortly after the murder of Cae-sar) that he would immediately resume political activity and be unableto devote so much time to philosophy.
143
Since his effective politicalactivity did not begin until September, 44, he still had time to write theshort treatises on old age (which he does mention in the
De Divina-tione
list), on glory (now lost), and on friendship, and his final majorphilosophical work,
De Officiis
, on duties, which was completed byDecember, 44, a year before his death. During this period he also wrote
Topica
, which, like the
Paradoxa Stoicorum
(written in 46), is more
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES65
rhetorical than philosophical. We will postpone discussion of theseworks and turn now to other works that he names in the
De Divina-tione
list.First is the
De Republica
, published in 51 and written
“
when I stillwas steering the ship of state
”
. This is accurate only in so far as Cicerowas active in the senate and the courts, which continued to functionaccording to the republican constitution. But in fact the constitutionwas inexorably and violently disintegrating and, since 60, politicalpower rested with those who had money and military backing, that is,the members of the extra-constitutional alliance called the first triumvi-rate. These men (Pompey, Crassus and Caesar) renewed their alliancein 56, and soon after silenced Cicero, who had already been exiled in58
–
57 with their tacit approval. For the next twelve years he was moreor less impotent politically, although his oratory was occasionally use-ful when called for by the triumvirate, and he was proconsul of Ciliciafor the year 51
–
50. Therefore he turned to philosophy as the way inwhich to continue his service to the state. Between 55 and 51 he wrotethree works that linked philosophy to political leadership, perhaps hismost original idea and certainly one foreshadowed in his early rhetori-cal work,
De Inventione
. The first of the three works was the
De Ora-tore
, published in 55. Since Cicero lists it after the
De Republica
asone of the
oratorii libri
, we will discuss it after the two political works,
De Republica
and
De Legibus
.The
De Republica
is one of the fragmentary works of the ancientworld whose missing parts are an inestimable loss. It was widely readin Cicero
’
s time and into late antiquity, but by the seventh century itwas so little valued that at the monastery of Bobbio a vellummanuscript, written in the fourth or early fifth century in a beautifuluncial hand (i.e. in large letters), was washed off and a manuscript of Augustine
’
s
Commentary on the Psalms
was written over it. Thus the
De Republica
disappeared from sight, beyond fragmentary quotationsin various Latin authors (including Augustine) and the
Dream of Scipio
(
Somnium Scipionis
) of Book 6, which survived intact in a separatetradition. In 1819 the Prefect of the Vatican Library, Cardinal AngeloMai, discovered much of Cicero
’
s text beneath that of Augustine, andhe published it in 1822. Apart from the
Somnium
we have about two-thirds of Book 1, about half of Book 2, perhaps one-sixth of Book 3,and very little of the other three books. As for the
Somnium,
it survivedwith a Neoplatonist commentary by the fifth-century Christian author,Macrobius Theodosius.
144
Macrobius saw in Cicero
’
s main speaker,Scipio Aemilianus, the union of all the virtues, and in the
Somnium
theunion of all branches of philosophy.
66THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Cicero did not have such an ambitious goal. The title of the work immediately draws attention to the model that he was emulating,Plato
’
s
Republic
, although in the
De Divinatione
passage he mentionsseveral other Utopias by Peripatetic authors, while omitting the mostnotorious one, the
Republic
of the founder of Stoicism, Zeno.
145
Tohim the subject was
“
important and appropriate for philosophy
”
,
146
precisely because it united politics and ethics, a traditional Roman atti-tude, implicit in Cato the Censor
’
s definition of the orator,
“
the goodman skilled in speaking
”
. Now Plato had begun his
Republic
with asearch for justice in the individual, which he expanded (by analogy) to justice in the state, returning finally to justice in the individual. Cicerofound the unreality of Plato
’
s ideal world unsatisfactory. In the intro-duction to his work he points out the contrast between the philoso-phers
’
teaching and the practical
“
school
”
of experience:
147
It is not enough to have virtue as if it were some sort of an art,unless you use it. It is true, I
’
ll grant, that you can keep an artthrough knowledge, even if you do not use it. But virtue existstotally through its use. And its greatest use is the government of the state and the performance in real life, not in words, of thosethings that the philosophers lecture on in their corners. For thereis nothing that the philosophers have said
—
at least nothing rightand honourable
—
that has not been evolved and confirmed bythose who have been lawgivers for states.Thus Cicero
’
s Republic will not be a Utopia: his search will be for theideal government and the ideal leadership for an actual state, Rome.His Republic is the reality of which Plato
’
s is but the idea
—
an ironicreversal!
148
Cicero
’
s first problem was to choose the dramatic time and the par-ticipants. He decided against setting the dialogue in his own time, for itwould have been politically dangerous to have living statesmen as thespeakers.
149
As we have already seen, he looked back to the third quar-ter of the second century as the period when the Roman republic beganto decay politically and morally, and he saw Scipio Aemilianus as thebest Roman leader, whatever flaws there actually were in his characterand policies. We have seen also how external events of the mid-secondcentury (the defeat of Perseus of Macedon, the destruction of Carthage,Corinth and Numantia), and in Rome the influx of Greek intellectualsand the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, caused cultural, social and polit-ical upheavals. Gicero was shrewd to set the dialogue in Rome of 129,a time, like the late 50s, of political instability and shortly before the
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES67
death of Scipio himself, whom he made the principal speaker.
150
Thedialogue is set in the grounds of the leader
’
s suburban villa at the timeof the
feriae Latinae
. Scipio is joined by eight friends, four seniorpoliticians and four younger men. Of the former group, Laelius
“
thewise
”
had been consul in 140; Furius Philus had been consul in 136,and Manilius (an expert on the law), had been consul in 149, when Sci-pio served under him as military tribune.
151
The fourth senior, SpuriusMummius, was the brother of the Mummius who destroyed Corinthand was one of the two senators, along with Scipio (who was accompa-nied by Panaetius), sent by the senate on the embassy to Egypt and theeast in 140
–
139. Of the four younger men, only Rutilius Rufusdeserves mention here. He would have been 25 years old in 129, andCicero visited him when he was in exile in Smyrna fifty years later.Cicero claims that Rutilius was the source for the conversations in Sci-pio
’
s garden.
152
The introduction to Book 1 is elaborate. Its apparent purpose is struc-tural, to bring together the nine participants in the dialogue. But itsmain function is to establish the proper subjects for philosophicalenquiry in Rome. The conversation is directed towards celestial events,in which, Scipio says,
“
our friend Panaetius used to be such a carefulobserver
”
.
153
But, he adds, Socrates was wiser for turning away fromsuch subjects. Eventually, after some discussion of astronomy, Laeliusleads the conversation to affairs at Rome.
154
Those
“
Greek studies
”
, hesays, are valuable for sharpening the minds of the young, but they arepreparatory for more important studies:those arts that make us useful to the state. For I think that that isthe most excellent function of wisdom, and that it is the best evi-dence of virtue and its highest duty
…
Therefore, let us ask Scipioto explain to us what he thinks is the best form of government(
optimum statum civitatis
).Thus Cicero establishes his topic. Perhaps we can be critical of thelength of the introduction, but it is intrinsically important for the con-trast it draws between Greek enquiries into the physical world (it isconvenient here for Cicero to overlook Greek ethical and political phi-losophy!), and the record of the Romans in political administration. Itwas a commonplace among Romans that the Greeks, for all their intel-lectual brilliance, never achieved political unity, and evidence for thatwas the conquest of Greece by Rome, only seventeen years before thedramatic date of the dialogue. Now, says Laelius, at a time whenRoman political unity is threatened, no topic could be more important
68THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
than
“
those arts that make us useful to the state
”
. Further, the abortivediscussion of astronomy is structurally connected with the dream withwhich the work ends. The work begins with the heavens as an object of study, and it ends with them as the proper home of the souls of the vir-tuous. It begins with the heavens separated from human beings, and itends with the undivided universe, which human and divine beingsshare in timeless unity.There are two subjects in the main discussion, as Cicero hadexplained in the letter to his brother Quintus.
155
First,
“
What is the bestconstitution of the state?
”
, and, second,
“
Who is the best citizen?
”
Thefirst question occupies the first two books and the second the last two.Book 5 began with a quotation of Ennius
’
famous line,
“
the Romanstate stands firm by means of old-fashioned customs and men of old-fashioned character
”
.
156
Book 6 ended with the description of the idealleader and his place in the universe and in eternity, as opposed to theparticular place and time of Rome in 129 BCE. Books 3 and 4 con-tained a discussion of the education and laws that would produce theideal citizen. The dialogue took three days, two books for each day.Scipio
’
s accepts Laelius
’
invitation, once again drawing the contrastbetween Greek theory and his own training in traditional Roman pre-cepts and his practical experience in public service. He will speak as
“
one of those who wear the [Roman] toga
”
.
157
His main expositionbegins with the brief definition of a republic:
“
a republic belongs to thepeople
”
.
158
Then he considers the development of societies and sur-veys three types of government (monarchy, aristocracy anddemocracy), concluding that the best form is the
“
mixed
”
constitution,with elements of all three. When pressed by Laelius, Scipio admits thatmonarchy is the best of the three, because the sole ruler is the strongestexecutive.
159
In this Scipio seems to be anticipating arguments for asingle
“
governor of state
”
(
rector reipublicae
) in Books 5 and 6,which, however, have been shown by Jonathan Powell to apply tomore than one
rector
at the same time.
160
Here, as James Zetzel pointsout,
“
the argument in favour of monarchy
…
emphasizes the problemsof administration rather than the problem of rights
”
.
161
Thus the discus-sion of the mixed constitution, which draws so much from Book 6 of Polybius
’
Histories
and Book 8 of Plato
’
s
Republic
, is given a Romancolouring appropriate to the problems of political rights and politicalpower that (in Cicero
’
s view) began with the tribunate of TiberiusGracchus and led to the imminent collapse of the republic in the 50sBCE.In Book 2 Scipio surveys the historical development of the Romanstate. While Cicero owes much here to Polybius, the key statement is
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES69
at the beginning, where Scipio acknowledges his debt to Cato theElder:
162
he used to say that the reason for the superiority of our constitu-tion was that in other states a single man had established the con-stitution by his laws and institutions. The Roman state had beenestablished, not by the genius of one man, but of many. It hadevolved not in the lifetime of one man, but over a period of manycenturies and ages.Whatever this passage says about Cato
’
s theory of history,
163
it givesScipio
’
s basis for his view of Roman history, summed up in the linefrom Ennius quoted above. Scipio shows that the Roman constitutionhas evolved through the labours and virtues of individuals, but, asTubero objects (2. 64), he has not discussed the education (
disciplina
),customs (
mores
) and laws (
leges
) which establish and maintain thestate. These are the topics of Books 3 and 4.Book 3 is concerned with the laws and therefore with justice in thestate. As we have seen in the second chapter, Philus unwillingly under-takes to argue Carneades
’
view that a state cannot be successful with-out injustice.
164
Less is extant of Laelius
’
reply defending justice,which he bases on natural law.
165
His definition is eloquent:True law is right reason in accordance with nature. It applies toall human beings, it is unchanging and eternal. It calls one toduty by its command, and it deters one from wrongdoing by itsprohibition. It never commands good people in vain, and neveraffects the bad by its commands or prohibitions. This law cannotbe superseded, amended or repealed. Indeed, neither the senatenor the people can release us from this law, which needs neithercommentary nor interpretation. Nor will there be one law inRome, another in Athens; one now, another in the future, for oneeternal and unchangeable law will apply to all peoples at alltimes. There will be one master and commander for all
—
the god,who proposed, arbitrated and carried this law. He who disobeysthis law is running away from himself and despising humannature.The basis of this noble ideal is Stoic, for the Stoics taught that moralprinciples were laws of nature applicable to all human beings, of what-ever time or place.
166
Whereas Plato had separated his world of ideasfrom the world of particulars, the Stoics emphasized the unity of the
70THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
whole universe. Cicero goes further in applying the ideal of natural lawto the Roman state, which, as Laelius says (3. 34),
“
ought to be so con-stituted as to be eternal
”
. Thus a particular Roman statesman, Laelius,at a particular time, enunciates to an audience of Roman leaders anideal that will be attainable in the
Roman
state. To underline this,Cicero uses Roman legal terms throughout the passage
—
the words forthe processes of proposing and legislating, emending and annulling,are all common in the Latin technical and legal vocabulary. We maydeplore the irony that the ideals of Laelius in 129, and of Cicero in 54
–
51, were little heeded and quite disconnected from the harsh realitiesof political power, but we must admire Cicero
’
s vision of a betterRoman political life.Very little remains of Book 4, but enough to show that the discus-sion now turned to the training of the good citizen. Thus, Cicero pre-pared the way for consideration of the good citizen, the second of hismajor subjects, which is the topic of the third day
’
s discussion, con-tained in Books 5 and 6. Book 5 (which survives only in a few frag-ments) begins with the oracular line from Ennius, immediately estab-lishing a Roman context for the ideal citizen. Scipio evidentlydescribed the virtues of the ancient Roman leaders, which he applied tothe ideal of the virtuous leader. This leader is called by the terms
“
gov-ernor
”
,
“
steersman
”
,
“
driver
”
(in Latin, respectively,
rector
,
guberna-tor
,
moderator
), all significant metaphors. As
rector
, the leader keepsthe state and its citizens on a straight path with upright morality; as
gubernator
, he steers the ship of state (a metaphor that goes back to thepoems of Alcaeus in the seventh century BCE); as
moderator
he drivesthe team of the chariot of state, reining in the citizens or relaxing hiscontrol in accordance with what is right. Cicero is not describing a sin-gle
rector rei publicae
, but the qualities and attributes of an ideal
rec-tor
, who might be one of several existing at the same time or, excep-tionally, a single
rector
if the times demand such a statesman.
167
It ismost unlikely that Cicero had any particular contemporary leader inmind, and it is a waste of time to try to see in his
rector
a model formodern leaders, as has been attempted, most unfortunately, by toomany commentators and politicians.
168
What is important is, first, thatCicero linked morality to political life; second, that he described his
rector
in a Roman context and in Roman terms.None of Book 6 survives in the Vatican manuscript, but a few quota-tions by ancient authors survive, along with the
Dream of Scipio
andthe commentary of Macrobius, which were combined only in fivemedieval manuscripts. Scipio introduces the subject of the rewards of the virtuous leader, which, in contrast to the metal statues and fading
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES71
triumphal laurels of Roman leaders, are lasting and for ever fresh (6.8). Laelius invites him then to describe them. The dream is Scipio
’
sreply. It takes his hearers back to the heavens, where the discussionhad begun on the first day. But now the heavens are in the same uni-verse as that of the participants: the union of ideal and particular thatunderlies Laelius
’
definition of natural law (in 3. 33) finds its climax inthe cosmos, the home of the divine human soul and the place to whichit returns, the more quickly if its corporeal life on earth has been virtu-ous. And Cicero has already shown that the most virtuous person is theone who serves his country well. Such a person was Scipio (at least forthe purposes of the
De Republica
).In the introduction to Book 6 Cicero mentions the myth of Er, withwhich Plato
’
s
Republic
ends, and this undoubtedly was his model.Here again he successfully transferred his myth from the realm of theimpossible to the Roman world. As Zetzel has remarked,
“
the
Som-nium
requires no suspension of disbelief
’
.
169
A real Roman leaderrelates his dream, and he sets it in a real place, the palace of the Numid-ian king, Masinissa, in north Africa, at an actual time, 149 BCE(whether or not Scipio did visit Masinissa that year, rather than twoyears earlier, is irrelevant). At the dramatic date of the dreamMasinissa was about ninety years old, and he provides the historicallink with the Roman heroes of the second Punic war (which ended in202 BCE), when he was the staunch ally of Scipio Africanus Maior,the grandfather (by adoption) of Scipio Aemilianus. The elder Scipio,together with the younger Scipio
’
s natural father (Aemilius Paullus,another Roman military hero), are the principal speakers in the
Somnium
—
another way in which Cicero unites the ideal world with Roman real-ity. Thus the divine cosmos and the actual Roman world are joined, forthe virtuous leader ascends to the divine realm, to rejoin god, who isthe
rector
of the universe. Raised to the heavens, Scipio (the dreamer)looks down on the earth and sees the universe in its true perspective.The earth is central, but its scale
—
and therefore the glory of its virtu-ous leaders
—
is insignificant in comparison with the heavens and theeternal glory which the virtuous soul will attain.At the beginning of the dream Africanus foretells Scipio s career anddeath (
§§
11
–
12): he enunciates the reward for Scipio
’
s virtuous actions(
§
13):For all who have saved, defended or increased their fatherland, aspecial place in the heaven has been assigned, where they mayenjoy an eternal life of happiness. For nothing that is done onearth is more pleasing to that supreme god, who governs the
72THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
whole universe, than the councils and assemblies of men whohave joined in just communities, which are called states (
civi-tates
). Those who govern and defend them come from this place,and to this place they return.Thus the relationship between the virtuous leader and the eternal cos-mic reward is established. Scipio
’
s natural father, Aemilius Paullus,then appears (
§§
14
–
16) and urges Scipio to recognize the high serious-ness of his duty in life, when his immortal soul is imprisoned in a mor-tal body, to act virtuously and not to leave the body (Aemilius is refer-ring to suicide) until god releases it. He has been assigned a duty in lifeas if it were a military assignment: to leave it would be the equivalentof desertion. Paullus then succinctly describes this duty (
§
16):Imitate your grandfather, imitate me, your father, and love jus-tice and duty (
pietas
), which is owed to parents and family, andmost of all to one
’
s fatherland. This is your way to heaven.And then (
§§
16
–
26) Paullus and Africanus show Scipio the cosmos asit is in its true proportions, and they explain its astronomical organiza-tion: in this Cicero is to some extent imitating Plato (in the myth of Erand in the
Timaeus
), but his purpose is different, which is to show theproper relationship of the earth and its temporal events to the cosmosand eternity. Scipio on earth is encouraged to fix his gaze on the heav-ens and be drawn to the true and eternal rewards of virtue. Speaking of the soul, Africanus says,
“
Know, then, that you are a god
”
(
§
26): likegod the soul is self-moving and eternal (
§
27) and therefore should beemployed in the highest calling (
§
29):Use this [soul], then, in the noblest activity, which is the serviceof your country. And if the soul is trained and engaged in suchdeeds, it will fly more quickly to this, its dwelling-place andhome.So ends the
De Republica
(at least, as we now have it: perhaps therewas a closing passage in which the participants left Scipio in his gar-den). More than any other of Cicero
’
s philosophical works it shows theextent of his originality. It makes no pretence of complete originality,for Roman authors preferred to practise emulation (
aemulatio
) ratherthan imitation or innovation, not that the latter modes were ignored.Cicero, then, acknowledges his debt to Plato (which is clearly shown tobe to the
Phaedrus
as well as to the
Republic
and the
Timaeus
), but he
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES73
recasts the Platonic material
—
and, no doubt, much else from theGreek philosophers
—
in the context of Roman history, politics andsociety. Cicero
’
s doctrine that there is a practical connection betweenthe morality of citizens and their leaders and the success of the state, isquite different from Plato
’
s analogy of the just state to the just individ-ual. Finally, Cicero presents his republic in Latin of remarkable flexibil-ity and range of style, which rises in Laelius
’
speech and Scipio
’
sdream to a sublime level.
170
The third of Cicero
’
s political/philosophical treatises from the 50sBCE was the
De Legibus
, which he does not mention in the list in the
De Divinatione
.
171
He seems to have begun it in 52 and left it unfin-ished when he went to Cilicia in 51. There is no firm evidence that hereturned to it, and it was not published during his lifetime. Survivingare most of the first three books, but we do not know how many bookswere planned or written, beyond a single reference by Macrobius toBook 5. In this work Cicero himself is the main speaker, and the partic-ipants are his brother Quintus and his friend Atticus. The setting is asummer day at his family property at Arpinum, lovingly described atthe beginning of each of the first two books, where the dialogue is seton the banks of the River Liris and on an island in the river. In theintroduction to Book 2 (2. 6) Cicero compares the setting to the famousopening of Plato
’
s
Phaedrus
, another example of his emulation of Plato. His attention to the setting is purposeful, for it establishes hispersonal involvement with Italy and with Rome and its historicalvirtues, not least among which is the rule of law. In Book 1 he showsthat the
De Legibus
is essentially a continuation of the
De Republica
,for, he says (
§
20):since we must maintain and preserve that constitution which Sci-pio showed to be the best in those six books, and since all lawsmust be fitted to that sort of state, and since we must sow theseed of morality (and must not prescribe everything in writing)
—
since this is so, I will review the origin of law in Nature. She willbe our guide for the whole of our discussion.Cicero, then, repeats the theory of natural law expounded by Laelius inBook 3 of the
De Republica
and once again links ethical values to polit-ical institutions.In Book 1 Cicero discusses natural law, which is the basis of justice,and therefore of relations between human beings (1. 28). Justice mustbe pursued for its own sake, and this principle will apply to all thevirtues (1. 48). Quintus makes the objection that the discussion of ethi-
74THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
cal principles has little to do with the main subject, that is the laws (1.57), but, as Marcus replies, the law must reform vice and commendvirtue (1. 58). Therefore wisdom
—
the result of the search for virtue
—
is indeed relevant to a discussion of the law, and Cicero ends the book with a speech in praise of wisdom (1. 62). The discussion, then, reaf-firms the conclusion of the
De Republica
, that moral excellence mustbe the foundation of the successful state.In Book 2 Cicero discusses religious laws. Like a lawgiver (or, asQuintus points out, 2. 23, like Numa, the founder of Roman religiouslaws), Cicero pronounces the text of his laws and then gives a commen-tary.
172
Next, in Book 3, he discusses the offices, powers and functionsof the magistrates, giving the text of his laws, followed by his commen-tary.
173
Both books are remarkable for Cicero
’
s use of Latin legal lan-guage and for the adaptation of Greek ideas to a Roman context. Heacknowledges his debt to Plato
’
s
Laws
, but he adds:
174
Who could ever imitate Plato? It is, to be sure, very easy to trans-late his opinions, and this I would do, if I did not clearly want tobe my own person. For how much effort is it to say the samethings in translation in the same words?This is crucial to our estimate of Cicero
’
s originality here and in the
De Republica
. He names his Greek models in 3. 13
–
14, includingTheophrastus and others who had written on the laws. Most of theGreek works, he says, were theoretical, but he praises Demetrius of Phalerum (a student of Theophrastus and governor of Athens in thelate fourth century) as the first to bring the discussion of law
“
out of the shadows of scholarship into the sunlight and dust
”
of practical poli-tics. Cicero emphasizes that he too is one who has excelled in theoreti-cal studies and in political leadership. Thus, he claims that he hasexpanded legal theory from its basis in Greek philosophy by adaptingit to Roman law and custom and creating a Roman legal terminology.He claims further that his political career and his experience as an ora-tor and jurist qualify him uniquely to propose a Roman legal code. Asin the
De Republica
, Cicero seeks to construct an ideal
Roman
system,and he appeals to his knowledge of Greek philosophy and theory, onthe one hand, and to his practical experience in Roman life, on theother, to support his goal of
“
being his own person
”
. It has been sug-gested above that there is considerable originality in the
De Republica
,and we can confidently say the same of the
De Legibus
.At the end of the
De Divinatione
list (
De Div
. 2. 4), Cicero says thathe followed the example of Aristotle and Theophrastus in composing
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES75
rhetorical works which united the precepts of rhetoric with philosophy.Here he names three works:
De Oratore
,
Brutus
,
Orator
. The first of these was written in 55, and therefore belongs to the period of Cicero
’
spolitical impotence, during which he wrote the
De Republica
and someof the
De Legibus
. It is the most important of the three for an under-standing of Cicero
’
s philosophy. The
Brutus
(written in 46) is valuablefor Cicero
’
s account of his own philosophical development and for hiscriticism of the Stoic, Academic and Peripatetic schools in so far asthey concern the orator.
175
The work is chiefly important as a criticalreview of Roman orators, while the
Orator
, also from 46), is princi-pally a rhetorical work, although it, too, stresses the link between phi-losophy and rhetoric.
176
Cicero had focused on this link in his earliest rhetorical work,
Rhetorici Libri
(
“
Books on Rhetoric
”
, usually referred to as
De Inven-tione
), which he does not name in the
De Divinatione
list. It was writ-ten in the late 80s, that is, before Cicero made his journey to Athensand the east (probably before 84). Cicero dismisses it as being theunpolished product of a very young man,
“
not worthy of this age [i.e.Cicero
’
s maturity] and of the experience that I have gained in so manyimportant cases
”
.
177
Yet the
De Inventione
announces Cicero
’
s convic-tion that philosophy and rhetoric are interdependent.
178
He says that
“
wisdom is the guide (
moderatrix
) in everything
”
, and he shows in theintroduction to the work how political leaders who have eloquencewithout wisdom are demagogues who ruin the state.
179
These are fun-damental themes in the
De Oratore
and the
De Republica
, and it is inorder to boost the mature works that Cicero depreciates his early work.The
De Oratore
is one of Cicero
’
s most original works, although itslength (three long books) has limited its popularity in modern times. Itis a dialogue taking place over two days, set in the grounds of the Tus-culan villa of M.Antonius (consul in 99) during the
Ludi Romani
of September 91. Five of the seven participants are Roman senior states-men, and two are younger politicians of great promise. Except for C.Aurelius Cotta (exiled in 90 but recalled in 82: consul in 75) all diedwithin a short time of the dramatic date of the dialogue, four of themmurdered or driven to suicide by the supporters of Marius in the early80s. The principal speakers are L.Licinius Crassus (consul in 95), thegreatest orator of his day and revered by Cicero, whose opinions areclosest to those of Cicero. He died ten days after the dramatic date of the dialogue, which honours his memory. The introduction to Book 3is a deeply felt tribute to him and a lament for the fate of the other par-ticipants who died violently shortly afterwards. The second principalspeaker is M.Antonius, consul in 99, and the closest rival to Crassus as
76THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
an orator. He was murdered by the Marians in 87. In the dialogue hetakes a pragmatic view of oratory and defines the ideal orator in nar-rower terms than Crassus.
180
The older generation is represented by Q.Mucius Scaevola, consul in 117 and known as
“
the Augur
”
, who partic-ipates only in Book 1, the first day
’
s conversation.
181
Two other seniorstatesmen participate in the second day
’
s conversations (Books 2 and3), Q.Lutatius Catulus (consul in 102 and father-in-law of Cicero
’
sfriend and rival, Hortensius), and C.Julius Caesar Strabo, aedile in 90,the year following the dialogue. Both of these men died in the Mariantroubles
—
Catulus driven to suicide and Strabo murdered.
182
Closer inage to Cicero were P. Sulpicius (tribune in 88), who was murdered bythe Marians, and Cotta (the only one of the seven participants to sur-vive for any length of time), whom Cicero made the principal speakerin the
De Natura Deorum
. He is represented as the source for the con-versations of the
De Oratore
.
183
Cicero
’
s choice of participants is significant. Writing in 55 andobserving the collapse of constitutional processes, he looks back toanother year, 91, when the principled statesmanship of leaders such asCrassus and Antonius was about to give way to the violence of the fol-lowing decade, in which so many of the participants perished. The mes-sage is clear: only if political leaders (who are, by definition, orators)are men of principle and versed in philosophy, can constitutional gov-ernment survive. On a personal level, Cicero pays homage to the lead-ing orators of his early days, several of whom had been associates of Scipio Aemilianus and his friends.In the introduction to Book 1, Cicero calls philosophy
“
the motherof all the praiseworthy arts
”
(
§
9). Later, Crassus repeats that leaderswho were both philosophers and orators unified scattered communitiesand organized them into states with stable constitutions.
184
Crassusrecalls his visit to Athens twenty years earlier, where he had associatedwith philosophers who had themselves been students of Panaetius orCritolaus or Carneades, all of whom segregated philosophy from pub-lic life.
185
As Crassus goes on to say, Plato himself, in pouring scornon orators, showed himself to be a supreme orator.Antonius replies to Crassus
’
description of the orator and his train-ing. He defines the political leader
“
as the man who maintains and usesthose things which result in the advantage and growth of the state
”
.
186
He then gives his definition of the philosopher:
187
he who studies to know the power, the nature and the causes of all things divine and human, and to obtain and pursue everyrational precept for the good life.
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES77
In amplifying his definitions (which extend also to the jurist and theorator) Antonius is forthright on the limits of the orator
’
s training: heneeds to be clever in discerning the expectations and psychology of thepeople he seeks to persuade.
188
As for philosophy:
189
let him reserve the philosophers
’
books for himself for a holidaylike the one we are enjoying to-day at Tusculum, when we arenot being active in politics, so that if he does ever have to make aspeech about justice and good faith, he will not need to borrowfrom Plato.And, as Antonius continues to point out, Plato
’
s republic had little todo with the politics and ethics of real cities.Cicero resolves the debate between Crassus and Antonius in Book 3,where Crassus introduces a long digression on philosophy into his dis-cussion of style.
190
He shows that the greatest leaders in Greece andRome were also
sapientes
(
§
56), and he shows that even in the heroicage those who were tutors in living well were also teachers of oratory
—
Homer
’
s Phoenix taught Achilles how to speak and how to act (
§
57).So philosophy was not segregated from rhetoric, for
“
she was the mis-tress both of right actions and right words
”
: once again the allusion isto Cato
’
s definition of the orator. Crassus ends his argument for theunion of philosophy and rhetoric by modifying and uniting the defini-tions of Antonius:
191
Now if anyone wishes to define the philosopher who provides uswith a supply of subject-matter and words, as far as I am con-cerned he can call him an orator. And if he prefers to call theorator, who (I say) combines wisdom and eloquence, a philoso-pher, I won
’
t stop him
…
If I do have to choose [between a knowl-edgeable but incompetent speaker and one who is ignorant butloquacious], I would prefer tongue-tied wisdom to eloquentfoolishness.Crassus speaks here for Cicero. In good Academic fashion, he hasexamined all sides of the question (a type of argument that he refers toat 3. 107), and he has reached the most probable conclusion. It is onethat is best for the state, and, for Cicero writing in 55 BCE, one thatbest prepares him for writing
De Republica
and
De Legibus
.In the
De Divinatione
list Cicero mentions his work
De Senectute
(
“
On Old Age
”
). It is one of three shorter treatises that he wrote in 44BCE and the only one that preceded the
De Divinatione
. The others
78THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
were the
De Gloria
and the
De Amicitia
, both completed before the
DeOfficiis
. The
De Gloria
is lost, but from Cicero
’
s letters and the
DeOfficiis
we know that it was in two books, and that Cicero was pleasedwith it.
192
From the introduction to Valerius Maximus
’
chapter
De Glo-ria
we can guess that Cicero dealt with the origins and definition of glory, and its relationship to virtue.
193
The
De Senetute,
also known as
Cato Maior
from the name of itsprincipal speaker, is perhaps the most attractive of Cicero
’
s philosophi-cal works, and it is one of very few that has kept a regular place inschool and undergraduate curricula. It appeals to the young, who havefound in its atmosphere of friendship and self-fulfilment an attractiveinvitation to consider the inevitable experience of old age. This may bea distant prospect to the young, but to Cicero (and to Atticus, to whomthe work is dedicated) it was more immediate (Cicero was sixty-twoyears old at the time of writing, and Atticus was sixty-six). Thus thework is not only a review of the life of the elder Cato, but also of Cicero
’
s own life and career. He found in it comfort for his own situa-tion in 44 BCE (
§
2), and he rightly chose to make a historical Romanfigure (Cato) the speaker, rather than to set the discussion in a mythicalcontext, as Ariston had done.
194
Cato
’
s listeners are Laelius and Scipio Aemilianus, and the setting isCato
’
s house in 150 BCE, a few months before his death. Cicero takesus to the world of the
De Republica
and its ideals. Just as he (in 44BCE) is reviewing his life for the benefit of the young, so Cato is por-trayed with two prominent leaders of the next generation. His speech,then, is a legacy for them. Cicero himself admits that Cato is made toargue more eruditely than he ever did in reality, but he also points outthat in his old age Cato was a serious student of Greek books (
§
3).Cicero does not address the problem that strikes modern readers, thatis, how to reconcile Cato
’
s mellow persona in this work with his well-known austerity and frequent inhumanity.
195
Rather than try to defendCato, it is better to admit that Cicero overlooked this unattractive sideof him in the interests of portraying him as a patriot and defender of the republic.Laelius proposes the topic (
§
4):
“
old age is a hateful burden to mostold men
”
. Cato, after some preliminary dialogue, replies with anunbroken speech (
§§
8
–
85). He identifies four reasons to supportLaelius
’
thesis: that old age compels one to retire from activity; that itresults in physical weakness; that it removes physical pleasures; that itis close to death. Each of these he refutes in turn, often with referenceto his own life and with a wealth of examples from Roman history.One remarkable passage is his praise of the pleasures of farming
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES79
(
§§
51
–
60), Cicero
’
s special tribute to the author of the
De Agri Cul-tura
, but also a statement of the traditional prejudice of the Roman sen-atorial class for income from landowning rather than business activi-ties. Cato cites as an example of the political leader who serves hiscountry selflessly L.Quinctius Cincinnatus, the historical icon of theleader
—
farmer.
196
He was called from the plough to serve as Dictatorin the crisis of 458 BCE and laid down his office within sixteen dayson completion of his task. At the end of his speech Cato puts his owncareer in a perspective that we have already met in the
De Repub-lica
.
197
The reward of a virtuous life spent in service of the state is thefame of posterity and reunion with the souls of the virtuous after death:No one will ever persuade me, Scipio, that your father, Paullus,or your grandfathers, Paullus and Africanus,
…
would haveattempted such great deeds
…
if they did not think that posterityhad a direct connection with them. Or
…
do you think that Iwould have undertaken such huge tasks night and day, in peaceand in war, if I had thought my glory was to be limited to theterm of my life? Would it not have been much better for me tohave lived a peaceful and retired life, without any labour andcompetition? Yet somehow my soul was alert and always hadposterity in view, as if it would then finally be alive once it hadleft this life. And if it were not the case that the soul is immortal,the souls of the best men would not strive most of all to winimmortal glory.The line from the
De Republica
through the
De Senectute
to the
DeOfficiis
is unbroken. Virtue in the service of the state is for Cicero thehighest calling and brings the greatest reward.The third of the shorter treatises is the
De Amicitia
(
“
OnFriendship
”
). Here Cicero makes Q.Mucius Scaevola (the Augur) thefirst speaker. He had taken part in the first book of the
De Oratore
andCicero brings him on stage here as the son-in-law of Laelius, who isthe principal speaker: the dialogue is often referred to as
Laelius
.Laelius himself, as the friend of Scipio Aemilianus, was a paragon of friendship. The dramatic date of the conversation that Scaevola reportsto his student, the young Cicero, is 129 BCE, a few days after the deathof Scipio Aemilianus. Cicero returns, then, to the contemporaries of Scipio for his evocation of virtuous relationships in public life.Laelius
’
main speech extends from
§
16 to
§
104, with interruptionsfrom Fannius (consul in 122), the third participant, at
§
25 and
§
32.Fannius defines the subject at
§
16:
“
Tell us, Laelius, your views on the
80THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
nature of friendship and give us precepts for it.
”
Laelius gives afamous definition (
§
20):The great power of friendship can be realised from this, thatfrom the unbounded community of the human race (ties thatnature herself has established) friendship has been so concen-trated that all affection is between two, or a few, persons.Friendship was of great importance in Greek life, as Aristotle
’
s treat-ment of it in Books 8 and 9 of the
Nicomachean Ethics
shows, and forthe Romans it was important not only in personal relationships but alsoin public life. The stresses caused in friendships by political differ-ences are vividly displayed in Cicero
’
s exchange of letters with hisfriend, Matius, in August of 44.
198
Matius had been an intimate friend,confidant and adviser of Caesar. He had been loyal to Caesar
’
s mem-ory after the Ides of March, and Cicero had been critical of this and of Matius
’
closeness to Caesar when he was alive. Cicero
’
s criticisms hadreached Matius, who asked their mutual friend, Trebatius, to complainto Cicero. Cicero then wrote to Matius to answer his complaint andreassure him of his unshaken friendship, and Matius, in his turn,accepted Cicero
’
s defence but still held to his own views of his friend-ship with Caesar. These letters illuminate some of the arguments madein the
De Amicitia
, notably the precepts on candour in
§§
44 and 65,and they show the practical side of the theoretical discussion in thedialogue.Friendship was problematic for all the chief philosophical schools.For the Stoics it was inconsistent with the ideal of self-sufficiency, andthey based their theory of friendship on virtue, saying that friendshipcould exist only between virtuous people.
199
Laelius, indeed, says(
§
18) that
“
friendship can only exist between good people
”
, but hepoints out also that the Stoic ideal of friendship between wise men isimpractical, because the Stoic
sapiens
is an impossible ideal. Thereforehe gives his precepts in practical terms: his examples are drawn fromRoman history, and his precepts are attainable. He ends with a glowingtestimony to Scipio
’
s friendship (
§§
102
–
04): it was the greatest of allblessings in his life, and his memory of Scipio will never perish,because their friendship was founded on virtue. So Laelius concludeswith this advice for his younger hearers:I encourage you so to value virtue (without which friendship isnot possible) that you think that nothing, except virtue, can bepreferred to friendship.
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES81
The Stoics, then, were closer to the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle.Plato saw friendship as an effort, based on reason, to achieve an idealrelationship in this temporal life, while Aristotle saw friendship in thecontext of the life of the community
—
a doctrine consistent with theStoic ideal of public service. Epicurus took quite a different approach,for he based his theory on the usefulness of friendship as a meanstowards a tranquil life of pleasure. Cicero expounds the Epicurean the-ory in Torquatus
’
speech in Book 1 of
De Finibus,
refuting it himself in the next book.
200
The difference between the Stoic and Ciceronianviews and that of the Epicureans has some bearing on the
De Amicitia
,in that the work was dedicated to Atticus, who was an Epicurean.
201
Itseems that Atticus enjoyed friendship for its own sake, whatever thetheory behind it, and he would have approved of Laelius
’
statement at
De Amicitia
27 BCE:friendship seems to me to spring from nature, not from need;from the attachment of the soul together with a feeling of love,more than from calculation of how useful it will be.Before we turn to the
De Officiis
, we should briefly mention two otherphilosophical works. The first is the
Topica
, which Cicero says hewrote for his friend, Trebatius, during the sea voyage between Veliaand Rhegium (towns on the south-western coast of Italy about 225kilometers apart by sea), on his abortive journey to Athens in July of 44. He wrote it without access to books, and his purpose was to helpTrebatius study Aristotle
’
s
Topica
, which he had begun to read inCicero
’
s library.
202
Cicero
’
s
Topica
, however, is nothing likeAristotle
’
s
Topica
, which he probably had not read.
203
The work isboth rhetorical and philosophical. Cicero divides rhetorical theory(
ratio disserendi
) into two parts,
inventio
(devising of arguments) and
iudtcandum
(evaluating their validity), and he says that Aristotle wasthe major figure in discussing them. The Stoics, he says, elaborated thelatter in their dialectic, but they ignored the former (
inventio
, Greek
topike
), which is to be his primary subject.
204
The work, then, derivesultimately from Aristotle, although there can be no certainty about theextent and depth of Cicero
’
s reading of Aristotle. In the discussion of consequences and antecedents (
§§
53
–
57), which Cicero describes as
“
atopic appropriate to dialectic
”
, and the following discussion of causes(
§§
58
–
67), Cicero shows that he is master of logical argument, forexample, in his use of the syllogism in
§§
53
–
55.
205
Boethius (
c
.520CE) certainly took the
Topica
seriously as a philosophical work and
82THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
wrote a commentary in seven books, of which five and a part of thesixth survive, covering seventy-six of the 100 chapters.
206
The second work still to be mentioned is Cicero
’
s translation of partof Plato
’
s
Timaeus,
of which only part of the preface and the transla-tion of
Timaeus
5
–
16 are extant. Cicero made the translation after thedeath in 45 of his friend Nigidius Figulus, said to be the most learnedof Romans after Varro. Nigidius was a Pythagorean (as Cicero says inthe first chapter of the
Timaeus
), who wrote works on the natural worldand the cosmos, as well as on grammar. He was especially interested indivination and astrology, which we will discuss later in connectionwith Manilius. He was a senator (Praetor in 58) and a supporter of Pompey, and he went into exile after Caesar
’
s victory at Pharsalus. InAugust of 46 Cicero wrote a moving consolation to him to comforthim in exile.
207
To Cicero he was
“
the most learned and the purest of men
”
, whose friendship had been shown in his support when Cicerohad been in despair.
208
The
Timaeus
is a memorial to Nigidius. In itspreface Cicero describes how Nigidius had met him at Ephesus, incompany with the Peripatetic philosopher, Cratippus, when he wastravelling to take up his post as governor of Cilicia in 51. Nigidiuswould have been Cicero
’
s interlocutor in the missing parts of the intro-duction to the translation. It was appropriate for Cicero to associatePlato
’
s dialogue on cosmology with the scholar who, of all his contem-poraries, was most interested in the stars and the cosmos.Cicero
’
s last philosophical work has also proved to be the mostinfluential. The
De Officiis
(usually translated as
On Duties
) was writ-ten in the later part of 44, the period when Cicero had resumed politi-cal activity as the most outspoken opponent of Mark Antony. He firstmentions the work in a letter to Atticus of 25 October, and less thantwo weeks later (5 November) he reports that he has finished the firsttwo books.
209
The third book seems to have been completed before 9December. Thus the work was written in a very short time indeed(even supposing that Cicero had been reflecting on it as early as July of 44), and it is both more personal and less carefully written than thedialogues. We do not know when it was published: Horace
’
s poem onRegulus probably echoes Cicero
’
s discussion of Regulus.
210
The poemwas published in 23 BCE, giving a possible
terminus ante quem
forpublication.The work is addressed to Cicero
’
s son, Marcus, at the time a studentin Athens under the Peripatetic philosopher, Cratippus. Cicero hadknown Cratippus since at least 51, when he joined Nigidius Figulus atEphesus, and Cicero had used his influence with Caesar to obtainRoman citizenship for him. Marcus (the son) was neither diligent nor
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES83
disciplined, and Cicero was sufficiently anxious about him to contem-plate (and begin) a voyage to Athens in July, 44. The political newsfrom Rome, however, made him turn back, and the
De Officiis
took theplace of his visit.
211
Thus the work is in the form of a letter, and eachof the three books has a preface addressed to Marcus. It is more thanlikely that Cicero had in mind Cato the Elder, who in his old ageaddressed a hortatory work,
Ad Marcum
, to his son.
212
Ciceroaddresses Marcus 32 times directly: when he uses the formal addressof
“
Marcus, my son
”
(
Marce fili
), he is speaking with full paternalauthority, a powerful concept in Roman society. Thus at 1. 78, he says:I have the right, Marcus, my son, to boast to you, for yours is thelegacy of my glory and the [duty of] imitating my deeds.We are inescapably reminded of the Roman funeral in Polybius (6. 53
–
54), with its focus on the dead man
’
s moral legacy to the next genera-tion. Thus, the work is both an exhortation to Marcus and Cicero
’
s tes-tament. In tone it is personal and urgent, yet in style discursive. Cicerohimself was proud of the work. Writing to Atticus, while the work wasin progress, he says,
“
my exposition is splendid
”
,
213
and in the finalparagraph of the work, addressing Marcus, he says:
214
Marcus, my son, here is my gift
—
in my view a great one, but itsvalue will depend on your reception of it
…
Since my voice hastravelled to you in these books, give them as much time as youcan
…
Farewell, my Cicero, and be assured that you are indeedmost dear to me
—
much more dear, however, if you take plea-sure in such advice and rules [as these].The work is in three books: Book 1 concerns moral goodness (
hones-tum
); Book 2, expediency (
utile,
translated by Atkins as
“
beneficial
”
);Book 3, cases where
honestum
and
utile
are in conflict.
215
For the firsttwo books Cicero
’
s principal source was Panaetius, who wrote a trea-tise in three books
Peri tou Kathekontos
, which Cicero translated as
DeOfficiis
. The word
officium
is troublesome, and Atticus criticizedCicero
’
s use of it to translate the Greek
kathekon
, which literallymeans
“
coming down
”
and then, in the philosophical sense,
“
fitting orproper
”
. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, used the word in an ethicalsense, evidently in the sense of
“
an action in accordance with reason
”
,and this seems to have been the basic sense of the term in Panaetius
’
title.
216
But
officium
in Latin meant (in Cicero
’
s time)
“
that whichought to be done
”
, with the specifically Roman connotation of one
’
s
84THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
duty towards others in a particular social context. As Atticus pointedout, it would be difficult to speak of a citizen
’
s
officium
towards thestate, as opposed to his
officium
towards an individual or a socialgroup.
217
Cicero clearly wanted to extend the term to the political con-text, particularly the preservation of the established order, and he didnot accept Atticus
’
criticism.
“
Give me a better word
”
(
da melius
) washis reply, and so the title remained
De Officiis
. Although Andrew Dyck persuasively argues for
“
appropriate action
”
as the closest Englishequivalent for
officium
, I have kept the translation,
“
duty
”
, which isboth more familiar and less cumbersome.
218
Cicero compressed the three books of Panaetius
’
work into two.
219
But his work was not just a translation of Panaetius: we remember hisinsistence in the
De Legibus
that he intends to be
“
his own person
”
,and he says here of Panaetius,
“
I have followed him to a great extentbut have not translated him
”
.
220
He gives a Roman cast to Panaetius
’
philosophy, and the
officia
are actions appropriate for a member of theRoman senatorial class. He uses Roman examples, most notably that of Regulus in Book 3.
221
Panaetius, however, only went so far. He didnot, as Cicero complains, fulfil his promise of dealing with caseswhere the good (
kalon
, Latin
honestum
) and the expedient (
sympheron
,Latin,
utile
) were in conflict. Cicero did consult a version of the
PeriKathekontos
of Posidonius, but he found its usefulness very limited.Therefore he was left largely on his own for Book 3, although he mayhave had some help from the Stoic Athenodorus (Sandon), who hadprocured at least a summary of Posidonius
’
work for him.
222
Ciceroshould be believed when he says:
223
I shall fill out this gap [i.e. in Panaetius
’
work] without any sup-port, but, as they say, under my own auspices (
Marte nostro
).The first book is the most varied and the most interesting. After theintroduction, Cicero starts with a definition of
officia
, which he classi-fies as those which concern the
“
end of the good
”
and those which
“
consist of rules to which every part of our experience of life couldconform
”
.
224
Thus the first class is theoretical, the second practical,and it is this that is the subject of the work. Cicero then subdivides histopic into the good, the expedient, and cases where the two are in con-flict. To these categories he adds two of his own, comparisons, respec-tively, between good actions and expedient actions.
225
Then he turns todiscuss
honestum,
which he bases on four cardinal virtues: justice, wis-dom, greatness of spirit (
magnitudo animi
, Greek
megalopsychia
), andmoderation.
226
These are then analysed and discussed: wisdom very
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES85
briefly, justice more fully, as we would expect from the social and civilcontext of Cicero
’
s
officia
227
The second part of the discussion of jus-tice extends to liberality, an appropriate attribute for aristocrats.Cicero
’
s treatment of one of the most prominent of Roman social rela-tionships, that between patron and client, is at best superficial.
228
Whenhe turns to greatness of spirit he argues for the superiority of civilcourage (
domesticae fortitudines
) over military courage, putting at thecentre his own career and achievements.
229
In general, however, thissection develops themes familiar from the
De Republica
and politicalspeeches, arguing for patriotic loyalty and subordination of the ambi-tions of the individual to the needs of the state. Finally, Cicero dis-cusses moderation.
230
Here the notion of what is
“
seemly
”
(decorum)
predominates, allowing Cicero to expand on behaviour appropriate to aperson of his son
’
s rank.Cicero ends the first book with a comparison of virtues, answeringthe first of the two questions that he had added to Panaetius
’
topics.
231
He gives the first place to wisdom, which he defines as
“
knowledge of things divine and human
”
. But since
officium
is exercised in a socialcontext, the virtue that is based on community (i.e. justice) must be thegreatest. Therefore justice must be ranked ahead of
“
mere knowledge
”
,so that wisdom, the
“
foremost virtue
”
, is wisdom exercised for thegood of the community. (Cicero
’
s argument here is confusing andapparently inconsistent.) The best
officium
, then, is that which is basedon life in a community. Cicero adds his own definition of the hierarchyof
officia
, a variation of Panaetius
’
definition which he had quoted ear-lier:
232
In our life as members of a community there are priorities induties, so that it is easy to understand which duty takes prece-dence in each case. Thus our primary duties are owed to theimmortal gods; secondly, to our country; thirdly, to our parents,and then the rest in descending order of priority.Thus Cicero ends the book with a reaffirmation of the moral, socialand political perspectives that had inspired the
Dream of Scipio
.In Book 2 Cicero turns to
utile
, that is, what is expedient or benefi-cial. Here his subject is
“
the things that concern a civilized way of lifeand the means of getting those things that are useful, and that concerninfluence and wealth
”
.
233
In the first book he had followed Stoic doc-trine mostly,
“
using my own judgement
”
, and here also he announcesthat he will follow the conclusions that he finds most probable.
234
Hedeplores the general custom of separating the good (
honestum
) from
86THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
the useful, and he will show that the good (part of which is the just)and the expedient cannot be separated.
235
Cicero
’
s focus, however, in this book is exclusively on the thingsthat are useful for pursuing a political career. Since the
officia
are exer-cised in a community, the support of other human beings is the firstexpedient thing, and the first goal of the
utile
is to persuade otherhuman beings to support our own interests, which some people in pub-lic life do through immoral methods such as bribery.
236
The personwho seeks support by virtuous methods will be loved rather thanfeared: he will acquire glory through good will and friendship, exercis-ing the virtues of good faith and honour.
237
In the pursuit of glory, jus-tice will be an essential virtue, and the young man ambitious for glorywill always act with integrity.
238
Cicero refers to his previous works onglory (
De Gloria
) and on friendship (
De Amicitia
) to excuse thebrevity of his discussion of these subjects: he does have plenty to sayabout friendship, however, in Book 3.
239
Cicero then turns to liberality and beneficence, that is, doing good toothers, whether by giving them money or doing good deeds on theirbehalf. In discussing the former he criticizes extravagance in courtingpublic favour, for example in the games given by aediles.
240
He ismore interested, however, in liberality shown through service to indi-viduals and to the state. Here, as mentioned above, he deals very gin-gerly with the client
—
patron relationship, and Miriam Griffin rightlydraws attention to
“
his lack of interest in relations with socialinferiors
”
.
241
The importance of the subject is shown by its extensivetreatment in the
Satires
and
Epistles
of Horace, in the
Satires
of Juve-nal, and in Seneca and Pliny the Younger.
242
Since legal representationwas a common duty of the patron towards his client, Cicero could havespoken with authority, beyond the jejune remarks that he makes here.He is more interested in service to the state.
243
The first principle, hesays, that public officials must observe is the inviolability of propertyrights, and, after discussing the moral integrity needed for public ser-vice, he returns to this subject at the end:Guardians of the republic will avoid the type of gift-giving bywhich things are taken away from one group and given toanother. Above all they will work to see that each person keepswhat is his by means of the fairness of justice and the lawcourts.Cicero develops this economic conservatism as a justification forincreasing the Roman empire, for such imperialism will increase thewealth of the state, and the military leaders who benefit the state in this
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES87
way will win great glory for themselves. The book ends with a perfunc-tory comparison of things that are useful and expedient and an anec-dote about Cato the Elder, which Cicero tells to indicate his preferencefor income gained from farming rather than from money-lending.
244
Book 2, although it is founded ostensibly on Panaetius, clearly hasCicero
’
s stamp upon it. The examples are mostly Roman, and thesocial and economic values are those that Cicero himself proclaimedthroughout his career, those of a conservative politician concernedwith the stability of a social and economic order in which his affluenceis assured. Those who have seen the
De Officiis
as the work of an
anima naturaliter Christiana
will have a hard time reconciling theirview with those expressed by Cicero.In Book 3 Cicero is left without Panaetius to fight his own battle.The subject of the book is both necessary and interesting: what pre-cepts are to be followed when the good and the expedient are in appar-ent conflict? Here again Cicero
’
s focus is largely political: the contextsof his dilemmas are mostly Roman, as are the examples.
245
His viewsare conditioned by the pessimism that he felt at his own political impo-tence, and his disgust at the corruption of political life under the mili-tary leaders who had destroyed the republic.
246
In the most politicalpassage of the book he attacks Marius, Pompey and Caesar.
247
Although these examples are brought in to support the conclusion that
“
nothing can be expedient that is not good
”
, the intensity of Cicero
’
shatred is the most striking feature of the passage.The major ethical principle in Book 3 is that where there is apparentconflict, the good must prevail over the expedient. To act otherwise iscontrary to nature and destroys the bonds of society and of humanityitself.
248
Cicero illustrates this from a series of historical and hypotheti-cal examples, in which he makes it clear that the interests of the stateoutweigh those of the individual. Thus, as Andrew Dyck observes,
“
the
utilttas reipublicae
tends to become
…
a criterion of conduct almost
…
equal to the
honestum
itself
’
.
249
At 3. 96 Cicero reveals that he has been discussing moral conflictswithin the framework of the four virtues established in Book 1. In fact,from 3. 40 onwards, he has been using wisdom and justice as his crite-ria, and now he turns to the other two virtues
—
greatness of spirit andtemperance. For the former he cites the Stoic mythical example of Ulysses, just as he had used another favourite Stoic exemplar, Her-cules, as an example of virtuous labour for the good of humankind.The mythical Ulysses soon yields to an example of virtue (not merelygreatness of spirit) drawn from Roman history
—
M.Atilius Regulus,consul in 267 and 256, who was captured by the Carthaginians in
88THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
255.
250
In Cicero
’
s narrative Regulus was sent back to Rome underoath to negotiate for the return of high-ranking Carthaginian prisonersin exchange for his freedom. At Rome he argued against the exchangeand returned to Carthage, where he was executed slowly and horribly.The story fits the context
—
Regulus knew what was
utile
but chosewhat was
honestum
. But Cicero goes much further: it is a perversion of nature to choose expediency over the good (
§
101); Regulus exempli-fied justice in keeping his oath (
§
102), a topic that Cicero develops forthe rest of the episode, with other supporting examples from Romanhistory. The conflict between
uttle
and
honestum
is resolved in termsof the virtues analysed in Book 1, but Cicero adds a wholly Romanperspective to the discussion. Thus the virtue of justice is identifiedwith the supremely Roman virtue of
fides
(good faith, including specif-ically the observance of one
’
s oath); Regulus
’
actions at Rome were inaccordance with the Roman law and constitution; his personal bearingwas dignified, worthy of a Roman, a senator and an exconsul. To haveacted otherwise would have been shameful (the Latin word is
turpe
,with wider moral connotations than
“
shameful
”
). Cicero sums up Regu-lus
’
dilemma elegantly:
251
he was in better condition when he was being executed by beingkept awake, than if he had stayed at home as an old man
—
but aprisoner of war, and as an ex-consul
—
but one who had brokenhis oath.Finally Cicero turns to the fourth virtue, temperance.
252
Here he doesnot use historical examples, taking pleasure as the antithesis of temper-ance and using it as the basis for attacking the Epicureans. He repeatsin summary form many of the arguments of Book 2 of the
De Finibus
,and concludes by emphasizing his basic principle, that nothing can be
utile
that is in conflict with
honestum
. Therefore, since pleasure is con-trary to the good, and nothing that is truly
utile
conflicts with the good,pleasure can never be
utile
. And so the work ends (3. 121) with thepersonal farewell to young Marcus quoted above.The
De Officiis
is in the view of many scholars the most influentialof Cicero
’
s philosophical works. In late antiquity it was read andadmired by Christians and pagans: Ambrose, for example, used andadapted Cicero for his work (written
c
.390 CE),
De Officiis Ministro-rum
. In the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance it was widely readand admired. Over 700 manuscripts were copied in the period from thetwelfth to the fifteenth centuries, and it was the first work printed inItaly, at Subiaco in 1465, and the first classical book ever printed (at
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES89
Mainz, also in 1465).
253
The high point of its popularity was in theeighteenth century, most notably in England and France, whereVoltaire was moved to call it
“
the best work of moral philosophy thatever has been, or ever will be, written
”
. Yet there have been othervoices. Wilhelm Suss confesses that he has
“
the greatest difficulty inestablishing a lively relationship with the
De Officiis
”
, and he quotesMontaigne:
254
Cicero
’
s discussions are good for the school, the court-room andthe pulpit, where we have the leisure to snooze and, a quarter of an hour later, enough time to pick up the thread.The fact is that Cicero
’
s work is rhetorical, and therefore political aswell as ethical. It presents unambiguous political and social prejudicesthat will appeal to those who are conservative, comfortable and com-placent, like the eighteenth-century snob, Lord Chesterfield. ButCicero, although conservative, was neither comfortable nor compla-cent. His work was overshadowed by the collapse of the Roman repub-lic, and his views were coloured by the disappointment of seeing the
“
tyrant
”
(Caesar) replaced by something worse. This gives his ethicalprinciples dignity and often nobility: each reader must decide whetherthese attributes outweigh the limitations of his political and socialviews.This chapter began with the dogmatic statement that
“
Cicero is themost influential of Roman philosophers
”
. Each reader of Cicero mustdecide whether this is justified. The statement was accepted as trueuntil the middle of the nineteenth century, when Theodor Mommsen(following W. Drumann) with gleeful ferocity demolished Cicero as apolitician, philosopher, orator and human being.
255
Mommsen
’
s author-ity guaranteed that Cicero
’
s philosophical writings would be underval-ued for more than a century, as they were in Germany, the UK andNorth America (at least) until less than 20 years ago. Except for the
DeOratore
and
Topica
, the standard English series of classical texts, the
Oxford Classical Texts
, did not include a single philosophical work of Cicero until 1994, and only the works on Old Age and Friendship wereregularly included in school and undergraduate reading.
256
Even as lateas 1982, the authoritative
Cambridge History of Classical Literature
isat best patronizing, although the author does admit that
“
the
De Officiis
laid the foundations of liberal humanism for Europe and the world
”
.
257
Writing in 1995, J.C.A.Gaskin sadly remarks that
“
Cicero is over-annotated by classicists and underestimated by recent philosophers
”
.
258
Not all of this can be laid at the door of Mommsen. We have seen
90THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
that Cicero
’
s political and social views were conservative and
laissez- faire
, and that the
De Officiis
appealed especially to readers whoshared these views
—
hence Cicero
’
s popularity in the eighteenth cen-tury. In times when strong leaders are admired or perceived to be desir-able, milder politicians such as Cicero are out of fashion. Mommsenpreferred
“
men of iron
”
, and the most influential of twentieth-centuryancient historians, Ronald Syme, had little use for Cicero
’
s philosophi-cal writing in the face of autocrats such as Caesar (in Cicero
’
s time)and Hitler (in Syme
’
s time
—
his
Roman Revolution
was published in1939). In times when political, social and economic change is needed,there will be little sympathy for Cicero
’
s conservatism: such timeshave existed in the Western world ever since the end of World War I.Cicero himself is also to blame. Not only have his political andsocial views been found to be unacceptable to opinion-makers, but hisstyle
—
rich, rhetorical and orotund
—
has fallen out of favour, when thesententious angularity of Sallust and Tacitus has been more popular.His efforts to make philosophy intelligible to non-philosophers natu-rally have degraded his value to professional philosophers, who findthe
De Fato
and the
Academica
more enjoyable than the
“
easy
”
works.For a long time the school of
Quellenforschung
(the search for sources)dominated among scholars, so that Cicero tended to be diminished as amere reporter or compiler of the works of Greek philosophers.So much for the negatives. The fact remains that from his own dayuntil the nineteenth century the philosophical works of Cicero weregenerally admired and at least respected. The record is clear in lateantiquity, including the Church Fathers. Boethius thought him worth acommentary, and many of his works were read and copied in the Car-olingian age. From the twelfth century his popularity and influenceincreased, as the huge number of manuscripts of several of his worksattest. His readers were not concerned whether or not he was an origi-nal thinker, but rather with the worth of what he actually had to say. Ina world where few could read (and fewer understand) Greek, Cicero
’
sLatin was priceless, and continued to be so even after the Renaissancerediscovery in the West of Greek works. Even in our day, he still is animportant source for our knowledge of many Hellenistic philosophers.The antithesis between the Greeks as philosophers and the Romansas practical men of action is especially false where Cicero is con-cerned. He interpreted Greek philosophy for his contemporaries in alanguage that he himself developed and enlarged. He did this throughthe filter of Roman society and politics, in effect creating new works.He developed a new Latin literary form in his dialogues (based on themodel of Aristotle rather than Plato), which was appropriate for his
CICERO AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES91
Academic scepticism, while being less negative in its methods andresults than the Socratic dialogue. His philosophical doctrines were tosome extent original in the political dialogues and in the Roman colour-ing of the
De Officiis
. The names of authors and thinkers influenced byhim are impressive.
259
Other Roman philosophers
—
Seneca, Augus-tine, Boethius
—
may dispute the title of
“
most influential
”
, butCicero
’
s achievement simply in terms of language and range of thought is indisputable. As for originality, the author of the
De Repub-lica
(especially Laelius
’
speech in Book 3 and the
Somnium
) and the
De Oratore
, and even the more obviously derivative third book of the
De Finibus
, needs no apology. Finally
—
and most importantly
—
Ciceroexpressed the loftiest ideals of human moral attainment. To define thenature and express the meaning of
humanity
is a supreme achievement.
92THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
4LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS
The poem of Lucretius (
De Rerum Natura
:
“
On the Nature of Things
”
)is the most powerful work in all of Roman philosophy. Yet hardly any-thing is known of its author beyond his name, Titus Lucretius Carus,and the approximate dates of his life, c.95
–
54 BCE. Only one of hiscontemporaries, Cicero, mentions him:
1
The poetry of Lucretius (as you say in your letter) is illuminatedby many flashes of genius (
ingenium
), yet it also shows muchcraftsmanship (
ars
). But when you come, I shall think you a heroif you have read the
Empedoclea
of Sallustius, but hardly ahuman being.Cicero, then, had read the poem
—
indeed, Jerome, writing about 400CE, says that Cicero edited it (
emendavit
), which may mean no morethan that he corrected it for copying before publication. Given Cicero
’
shostility to Epicurean doctrine and his own pretensions as a poet, hisrecognition of Lucretius
’
excellence in the two essential areas of poetry (inspiration and technique) is significant. Nothing is known of Sallustius, but the title of his work suggests that his
Empedoclea
was atranslation of the poem (or poems) of Empedocles, just as Cicero hadcalled his translation of Aratus
Aratea
. Evidently Sallustius
’
poemrequired superhuman endurance of its readers.Lucretius worked alone, and no other contemporary mentions him.He seems to have had little or no contact with other Epicureans andtheir schools in Italy. Cicero tells us that two authors, Amafinius andRabirius, had written popular works explaining Epicurean philosophyin non-technical terms.
2
The speaker in this passage, Varro, says thatRomans cannot study philosophy without knowledge of Greek lan-guage and doctrines. Amafinius, he says, had written on all three
93
branches of Epicurean philosophy (logic, physics, ethics) withoutusing any Greek methods of argument, while in his ethics he equatedhuman good with the good of cattle. But, as Cicero complains,Amafinius
’
works found a large audience: they were the best of a badbunch, for they were easy reading, and their focus on the Epicureanideal of pleasure was attractive. After him, says Cicero, many otherauthors wrote Epicurean works, so that
“
they filled the whole of Italy
”
.These works (now all lost), according to Cicero, made no intellec-tual demands, misleading their readers into thinking that they provideda firm foundation for the student of Epicureanism. It is clear that theEpicureans shared in the vigorous revival of philosophy in Rome andItaly which Cicero describes in the
Brutus
. Alone of the four majorphilosophical schools the Epicureans did not join in the Athenianembassy of 155, in accordance with the Epicurean doctrine of
lathebiosas
(
“
live unobtrusively
”
), which involved non-participation in poli-tics, unless there were an overriding reason to participate.
3
Neverthe-less, Cicero shows that Epicureanism did take root in Italy. The idealof pleasure and the superficial intelligibility of the school
’
s doctrineswere attractive just because they were not austere and impossible toachieve (as were the ideals of the Stoics), or full of intellectual sub-tleties (as were those of the Academics and Peripatetics). Yet Cicero
’
sEpicurean speaker, Torquatus, with more truth describes the school as
“
serious, disciplined, austere
”
, epithets that apply to Lucretius, if not toAmafinius and his imitators.
4
Cicero himself was at first attracted to the Epicureans by Phaedrus,but he turned to the Academic doctrines of Philo and Antiochus. Hisclose friend and confidant, Atticus, was an Epicurean, and he kept upfriendship with Caesar
’
s murderer, Cassius, who was converted to Epi-cureanism in 46.
5
Writing to Cassius in January 45, Cicero jokes aboutthe Latin terminology of Cassius
’
“
new friends
”
. In his reply Cassiuspoints out that Epicurean pleasure and freedom from mental distur-bance cannot be achieved without justice and virtue, but he agrees thatpeople like Amafinius have misinterpreted the words of Epicurus him-self.
6
Cicero had only contempt for the bad Latin of popularizers suchas Amafinius, but with serious Epicureans like Atticus and Cassius hediscussed Epicurean doctrine, for differences in philosophy did notstand in the way of friendship. Cicero is, nevertheless, almost uni-formly critical of the school. He devoted the first dialogue of the
DeFinibus
to an exposition and demolition of its ethics, and he did thesame with its theology in the first book of the
De Natura Deorum
. Thechief target of his criticism in the former was the Epicurean doctrine of pleasure, and in the latter the doctrine that the gods do not concern
94THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
themselves with human affairs. He spent less effort in criticizing Epi-curean epistemology and physics, both prominent in Lucretius
’
work.Epicureanism flourished particularly in Campania (i.e. the areaaround Naples), where Philodemus (
c
.110
–
40) headed a school at Her-culaneum.
7
Cicero says that Philodemus and Siro (another leading Epi-curean in Campania) were his personal friends (
familiares
). Philode-mus was a Syrian, born at Gadara (near the Sea of Galilee), and hecame to Rome probably in the 70s, under the patronage of L.Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, consul in 58 and censor in 50. Piso wasthe father of Caesar
’
s wife, Calpurnia and in 55 the target of Cicero
’
sspeech
In Pisonem
.
8
He owned a splendid villa at Herculaneum,known best to the modern world through its replica, which used tohouse the Getty Museum at Malibu in California. Since 1754 a largenumber of Epicurean papyri have been discovered and unrolled in thevilla at Herculaneum.
9
It is very likely that they were part of the libraryof the school of Philodemus. Philodemus himself was best known as apoet: Virgil was his friend and a pupil of Siro, although he was not anEpicurean. As a student in Athens Philodemus had studied under theEpicurean, Zeno of Sidon, whom Cicero had heard
“
as a very sharp oldman
”
and whose teaching on Epicurean pleasure he reports with disap-proval.
10
Zeno was Philodemus
’
guiding light, justly so in that he wasthe most creative Epicurean philosopher of his time. Philodemus wroteon music, rhetoric and poetry, and the Herculaneum papyri containfragments of many of his prose philosophical works, among them ahistory of philosophy (including the lists of philosophers and theirworks in the
Index Stoicorum
and the
Index Academicorum
), andworks on Epicurean logic, physics and ethics, and on the gods. Someof these probably post-date Lucretius
’
death, and they show that therewere differences between Philodemus and Lucretius on topics commonto both. For example, in his work on
Phenomena and Inferences
(usu-ally known by its Latin title,
De Signis
), Philodemus reports Zeno
’
steaching on induction and inferences from phenomena, which differsfrom the deductive method of Lucretius. Again, Philodemus wrote awork on Death, part of the fourth book of which survives in the Hercu-laneum papyri, which is
“
gentle and sympathetic, free of the abrasive-ness of Lucretius
’
account
”
.
11
He shows sympathy and understandingfor those who die young, since those who die old have been able toreach harbour after a life well lived; for the bereaved; for those whodie in a foreign country.
12
He thinks it madness (
apoplexia
) to want todie a heroic death in war, since heroes and ordinary people are in thesame predicament,
“
for we all live in a city that has no walls againstdeath
”
.
13
The teaching of Philodemus is, like that of Lucretius, full of
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS95
poetic colour and energized by personal feeling, but he shows greatersympathy for human weakness than Lucretius.Indeed, there is no evidence that Lucretius read the work of Philodemus or knew him, and there is strong evidence that he was notinfluenced by him.
14
The four heroes of early Epicureanism wereknown as
“
The Men
”
(
Hoi Andres
): these were Epicurus, Metrodorus,Hermarchus and Polyaenus. They were revered by Philodemus andEpicureans of his time
—
except for Lucretius. He alone revered Epicu-rus exclusively, as man, father and god.Lucretius, then, stood apart from contemporary Epicureans. He doesnot seem to have been concerned with the philosophical debates of histime.
15
When he does attack other schools, his targets are the Aca-demics and Sceptics, but in terms of debates that predated Epicurus.David Sedley (1998) has called him a
“
fundamentalist
”
, that is, onewho revered the texts of the founder of the school.
16
The principal sources for Lucretius
’
Epicurean philosophy, there-fore, are to be found in Epicurus
’
sayings and writings. Until veryrecently it has been assumed that these are the works reproduced byDiogenes Laertius in Book 10 of his
Lives of the Philosophers
. Sedley,however, has argued convincingly for the work
On Nature
(
Peri Phy-seos
) as Lucretius
’
only Epicurean source.
17
This work survives onlyin fragments in the Herculaneum papyri, and Sedley has brilliantlyreconstructed the contents and their relationship to Lucretius
’
poem,which he believes was closely based on the first fifteen of the thirty-seven books of Epicurus
’
work. His second chart (p. 136), shows howLucretius incorporated the doctrines of Epicurus, where he changedtheir order, and where he brought in arguments that do not appear in
On Nature
. The advantages of Sedley
’
s thesis are that Lucretius
’
work appears to be more coherent and consistent, and that the obvious differ-ences between
De Rerum Natura
and the texts given by Diogenes Laer-tius are no longer problematic.Nevertheless, these texts are complete and available to readers of this book, and a review of them will be the most efficient procedure forunderstanding the relationship of Lucretius
’
philosophy to that of Epi-curus. Epicurean doctrine was organized into three categories:
kanon-ike
(logic and epistemology),
physike
(observation of the world andnature), and
ethike
(morality). Diogenes Laertius transcribes three let-ters of Epicurus to his disciples. The
Letter to Herodotus
deals withphysics, and therefore is closest in its material to Lucretius.
18
It con-tains doctrine on atoms and void, the subjects of the first two books of Lucretius and Books 1
–
2 and 5 of
On Nature
;
19
on images and sense-perception, treated in Book 4 of Lucretius and Books 3
–
4 of
On
96THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Nature
;
20
on the nature and mortality of the soul, dealt with in Book 3of Lucretius and Books 6
–
9 of
On Nature
.
21
Lucretius does not dealwith time, the subject of
§§
72
–
73a of the
Letter to Herodotus
andtreated in Book 10 of
On Nature
. (Time does not seem to have been aproblem for Roman philosophers except in so far as they were con-cerned with the immortality of the soul and its relationship to the mor-tal body. The first extended discussion in Latin appears to be in Book 11 of Augustine
’
s
Confessions
.) Epicurus
’
doctrine on properties(colour, etc.) appears in Book 4 of Lucretius and in Book 10 of
On Nature
.
22
The doctrine on other worlds does not appear in Book 5 of Lucretius with the other teachings of Book 12 of
On Nature
, but inBook 2 (corresponding to the
Letter to Herodotus
, 45) as part of thediscussion of atoms and their properties.
23
The doctrine on the originsof civilization takes up the last half of Book 5 of Lucretius andappeared in Book 12 of
On Nature
.
24
The
Letter to Herodotus
focuseson the origins of language, whereas Lucretius
’
discussion is farbroader. Finally, the
Letter to Herodotus
discusses the correct attitudeto the heavenly bodies, showing that inner peace (
ataraxia
) will beachieved if one has knowledge of their physical nature and does notthink or fear that they can affect one
’
s life.
25
The
Letter to Herodotus
closes (
§
83) with an exhortation to Herodotus to learn its doctrines byheart so as to attain calm of mind. This attitude underlies Lucretius
’
discussion of celestial phenomena in Book 6, corresponding to Book 13 of
On Nature
.The
Letter to Herodotus
, then, contains many of the doctrines of Lucretius in summary form, and often in a different order (e.g. the dis-cussions of other worlds in
§§
45 and 73
–
74).
26
Sedley has demon-strated (pp. 138
–
44) why Lucretius went back to the full text of
On Nature
rather than the summary in the
Letter to Herodotus
, which, asEpicurus himself said (
§
83), was to be learned by heart, an impossibil-ity (at least for ordinary human beings) for the reader of the 37 booksof
On Nature
.
27
The second document recorded by Diogenes Laertius is Epicurus
’
Letter to Pythocles
, which deals with celestial phenomena (in Greek,
tameteora
)
28
This material appears in the first half of Book 5 and inBook 6 of Lucretius, corresponding to material in Books 11
–
13 of
On Nature
. Notable is the doctrine on the size of the sun, that it is
“
as greatas it appears to us
”
. This was also the view of Democritus, and it wasridiculed by Cicero.
29
More important is Epicurus
’
reason for studyingcelestial phenomena.
30
Like Herodotus, Pythocles is urged to memo-rize Epicurus
’
doctrine, so as to achieve calm of mind. Here (
§
85) Epi-curus refers to the
Letter to Herodotus
as
“
the short summary
”
(which
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS97
Pythocles is commanded also to learn by heart), a clear indication thatthe full text of
On Nature
was the source of the letters
’
doctrines andtherefore more likely to be the source for Lucretius.The physical doctrines of the first two letters (including elements of the Epicurean theory of knowledge, which belongs properly in the cat-egory of
kanonike
) are means to the ethical goal of happiness achievedthrough peace of mind. This goal is implicit throughout Lucretius
’
poem and it is made explicit in many passages. Thus the ideal of free-dom from anxiety, gained through knowledge of the physical world, iswoven into the texture of the poem. It is not surprising, then, that Epi-curus
’
Letter to Menoeceus
, which deals with ethics, has fewer exactcorrespondences with
De Rerum Natura
than the first two letters, forthere was no need for Lucretius to include a specific segment corre-sponding with the Epicurean category of ethics.
31
The letter beginswith an urgent invitation to study philosophy:Let no one who is young put off studying philosophy, nor let onewho is old be weary of it. For no one is too young or too old forthe health of the soul
…
Therefore both the young and the oldshould study philosophy
…
So it is necessary to give our attentionto the things that bring happiness, since when it is present wehave everything, and when it is absent the goal of all our actionsis to attain it.The spirit of this statement drives Lucretius
’
poem.Epicurus continues with doctrine about the gods, that they exist butthat the common beliefs about them are false. This doctrine isexpanded by Lucretius (perhaps from Book 13 of
On Nature
) in a beau-tiful passage in the introduction to Book 6. Here the gods are happyand good, and the pious human being will perceive the
“
likenesses
”
(
simulacra
) of atoms that flow from them, and so be able to share intheir tranquillity. But if human beings ascribe anger and other humanemotional disturbances to the gods, they will increase their own fearand hinder the attainment of peace of mind.
32
Next, the
Letter to Menoeceus
turns to Epicurean doctrine on death,that it is nothing to us, and that fear of death diminishes the quality of life and the attainment of happiness.
33
Lucretius expands this in thelast part of Book 3, starting with this resounding declaration:Death therefore is nothing to us and concerns us not at all, sincethe nature of the soul is held to be mortal.
98THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The logic of the arguments of Epicurus and Lucretius is consistent withtheir ethical doctrine, for fear of death will lessen pleasure and there-fore be an obstacle to happiness. Yet some Epicureans found this doc-trine too austere, and Philodemus is more sensitive in his recognitionof the human emotions involved in death and bereavement.The
Letter to Menoeceus
then discusses the Epicurean doctrine of desire and pleasure.
34
Epicurus says bluntly:We recognize pleasure as our primary and innate good, and it isthe beginning of every choice and aversion that we make. To itwe return, judging every good with feeling as our criterion.But Epicurus goes on to set limits to pleasure, which is truly the bal-ance between extremes of pain and excess of pleasure, achievedthrough reason (
phronesis
), which he calls
“
more valuable even thanphilosophy
”
(
§
132). Thus the truly pleasurable life is one of modera-tion and virtue. And so the letter concludes with the picture of the vir-tuous man, who honours the gods, does not fear death, and achieveshappiness through reason and virtue, while avoiding pain and mentaldisturbance.
35
If Menoeceus learns these precepts and practises them,he too will be such a man, for, Epicurus concludes:you will live as a god among men. For the man who lives amongimmortal good things is nothing like a mortal being.Lucretius expresses this doctrine in his praises of Epicurus, whoascends from man in Book 1 to god in Book 5.The three Epicurean letters were summaries of Epicurus
’
doctrine,for Epicurus wanted his students to learn his precepts by heart. Moresummary yet are the 40 principles, known as the
Principal Doctrines
(in Greek,
Kyriai Doxai
and abbreviated here as
KD
), which DiogenesLaertius quotes as the
“
colophon
”
(literally,
“
the finishing touch
”
) of his book on Epicurus.
36
The first four of the
KD
are:1that which is blessed and eternal has no troubles and brings notrouble upon others: it is free from anger and favour;2death is nothing to us;3pleasure reaches its full limit in the removal of pain;4pain in the flesh does not last long, and the time when it exceedspleasure is limited.
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS99
These four doctrines were summarized in the famous
“
fourfold rem-edy
”
(
tetrapharmakos
), quoted by Philodemus:
37
God is not to be feared, death is free from anxiety. The good iseasy to attain, the terrible is easy to endure.The
tetrapharmakos
is the basic formula for Epicurean ethics. WhileLucretius does not quote it explicitly, the first pair of maxims is thebasis of his poem: he explains
“
the nature of things
”
in order to provethat the gods should not be feared and that death is nothing to us.Knowledge of the physical world will make attainable the good life,that is, a life free from mental disturbance. Lucretius does not developan argument based on the fourth maxim, but Book 6, which is incom-plete, ends with the terrors of the plague at Athens. He could well haveended by showing that even such a great evil could have been enduredby those who knew Epicurean doctrine, whereas in fact the people of Athens, not being Epicureans, were subject to the fear, terror, panicand divisiveness that he describes.
38
Epicurus next focuses on the individual
’
s relations with society: hesays that one cannot live a pleasant life without being just and virtu-ous.
39
Yet justice is part of the social compact, not an absolute princi-ple.
40
Again, if one can achieve personal security, then the best life isone that is peaceful and withdrawn from the multitude.
41
The mostimportant means to individual security is friendship.
42
These principles are based on the doctrine of
“
living unobtrusively
”
(in Greek,
lathe biosas
, a phrase known from the title of an anti-Epicurean treatise of Plutarch), which obviously conflicts with theStoic ideal of participation in public life and with the Roman ideal of duty to the state (as expressed in Cicero
’
s
Dream of Scipio
and
DeSenectute
). In his account of the development of civilization Lucretiussays:
43
But [i.e. in contrast to the simple life] men wished to be famousand powerful, so that their good fortune might rest on a firmfoundation and that they might be wealthy and lead a peacefullife. In vain! For in the competition to reach the heights of suc-cess they made their journey dangerous, and envy cast themdown from the top
…
So that it is much better to live in peace andobey orders than to wish to control affairs by giving orders andholding supreme power.Lucretius looks more unsparingly at Roman politics of his own time:
44
100THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
How sweet it is, when the winds stir up the sea, to look from theland upon another
’
s struggles! Not because it is a pleasure thatanother should be in distress, but because it is pleasant toobserve from what evils you are free. Sweet it is also to watchthe mighty battles of war, armies drawn up on the battlefields,without yourself sharing in the danger. But nothing is sweeterthan to live in calm and lofty precincts protected by the teachingsof wise men. From them you can look down on others and seehow they wander here and there, aimlessly trying to find a paththrough life. They compete with their abilities, they contend innoble birth, and night and day they struggle to climb to theheights of wealth and power. O unhappy minds of men! O blindhearts! How great the darkness of life and how great the dangerin which you spend your span of life, whatever it is! Do you notsee how nature proclaims that she demands no more than this
—
that pain be kept separate from the body, and that the mind, freefrom fear and anxiety, enjoy the sensation of pleasure?This attitude is not irresponsible hedonism, but rather a reasoned reac-tion to the inhumanities of political life, both at Rome and (in Epicu-rus
’
case) in the Greek city-state. Even the Stoic Zeno, in his
Republic
,had proposed the abolition of the basic institutions of the Greek cityand the establishment of a community of virtuous men and women,who alone were capable of friendship, political association and free-dom.
45
Epicurus suggested that instead of political competition and theenvy, resentment and failure that it involves, society should adopt dif-ferent customs
—
friendship, justice and mutual support. Lucretius rec-ognizes that the Romans of the senatorial class will not withdraw fromexisting political institutions (such as elections, magistracies and otherpublic offices), and so he falls back on the ethical doctrines of Epicu-rus, particularly the principle of pleasure (and its corollary, the avoid-ance of pain). To participate in political life is to invite disturbance of the mind: power is an illusory goal, for it is followed by envy and(often) failure. Much better, then, to seek to attain calm of mindthrough the avoidance of pain, and to seek a place in society throughfriendship.
46
The doctrine of
lathe biosas
undercuts the very foundations of theGreek city-state and of Roman political life. Yet, in Rome, Epicureanssuch as Cicero
’
s friend, Atticus, took a prominent and productive partin the life of the community without seeking political office. Some,like Cassius, reasoned that it was necessary to participate in the politi-cal struggle, because refusal to participate would be a greater evil for
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS101
the community and would bring greater mental pain to the individualthan involvement.
47
L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus was obligated byfamily tradition and noble ancestry to take a prominent part in publiclife, without abandoning Epicurean principles.
48
Moreover, friendship,in both the Greek and Roman worlds, had political connotations. Here,for example, is part of the introduction to Aristotle
’
s discussion of friendship.
49
Friendship seems also to keep cities together, and lawgivers aremore concerned about it than about justice. For harmony(
homonoia
) appears to be like friendship in some way, and thelawgivers make it their chief goal and most of all they drive outdiscord, as bringing enmity. And those who are friends do notneed justice, while those who are just need friendship.Friendship (
amicitia
) was a feature of Roman political life and,through the institution of clientship, it was an important element inameliorating the inequalities of class distinctions. Lucretius, then, forall the potency of his satire, is following Epicurus (who himself mighthave known Aristotle
’
s
Nicomachean Ethics
) in suggesting not merelyindividual quietism, but rather an alternative way of interacting withsociety.The
Kyriai Doxai
focus also on celestial phenomena (Greek,
mete-ora
, the subject of the
Letter to Pythocles
). These are listed as objectsof fear (along with death and pain), which can be removed by the studyof the physical world.
50
If one knows the nature of the universe, thenone can be rid of fear and enjoy pleasure; similarly, individual securityis unattainable if one is afraid because of
“
things that exist above ourheads and under the earth and in the whole infinite [universe]
”
.
51
These doctrines are especially prominent in Books 3 and 6 of Lucretius, and the principle of
“
knowing the nature of the universe
”
isthe foundation of his poem.Epicurus lays down criteria for pleasure and desire and their oppo-sites, pain and aversion.
52
These principles were expressed more fullyin the
Letter to Menoeceus
(127b
–
32), where
phronesis
(reason) isgiven a higher place than philosophy in establishing the equilibriumbetween pleasure and pain. Epicurus shows in both the
Kyriai Doxai
and the
Letter to Menoeceus
that the greatest pleasure is achievedthrough reason and by living a simple life. In technical terms, suchpleasure is
“
static
”
, whereas physical experiences that stimulate plea-sure (eating, sexual activity and other sensual experiences) involvemovement.
53
Epicurus says that some desires are physical and neces-
102THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
sary (for example, for food and clothing); some are physical and unnec-essary (for example, for luxury or sexual pleasure); some neither physi-cal nor necessary.
54
The third category should be suppressed; the first,being necessary, must be satisfied, but simply, and the second requiresthe exercise of reason. Epicurus clearly subordinates
“
kinetic
”
to
“
static
”
pleasure, following the lead of Plato
’
s satirical discussion of pleasure in the
Gorgias
. There Socrates likens a life in which pleasureshave to be continuously renewed to filling a jar that is full of holes.
55
So Lucretius uses the myth of the Danaids as a parable for those
“
whocan never be filled with the joys of life
”
.
56
Elsewhere he says that Epi-curus
“
understood that the container [i.e. the human body] was leakyand full of holes, so that it never could be filled
”
, and so
“
he set a limitto desire
”
.
57
Lucretius expounds this doctrine in several other passages,for example:
58
But if anyone would guide his life by true reason, [he wouldlearn that] it is great riches for a man to live sparingly and withmind untroubled, for never can one be poor for lack of a little.Thus the principle of pleasure (the most controversial element of Epi-curean philosophy) is found rather to involve reason and moderation,the same qualities as those taught by other philosophies.Our survey of Epicurean doctrines has been a long but necessarypreparation for discussion of the text of Lucretius
’
poem. The poem isa little over 7,400 lines long and its six books are arranged in threepairs. The first two books deal with atoms and void; the next pair dealwith the soul and death (Book 3) and thought and sense-perception,ending with a diatribe on sexual passion (Book 4). Books 5 and 6 dealwith the universe, first the mortality of the world, then the origins of the world and celestial bodies, followed by the origins of civilizationand its progress (Book 5). Book 6 is concerned with celestial and mete-orological phenomena and ends with a description of the plague of 431
–
429 BCE in Athens, which is based on Thucydides.
59
The poemmay be complete as it stands, but it is probable that Lucretius wouldhave drawn the moral from the human despair caused by the plague.
60
He would have needed to add a few lines saying that if the Athenianshad been able to follow the doctrines of Epicurus (praised at the begin-ning of Book 6 as the greatest gift of Athens to human beings), theywould not have been troubled and would not have behaved as they did.But the plague struck nearly a century before the birth of Epicurus, andso the Athenians then were trapped in the moral and mental darknessthat Epicurus dispelled by his philosophy.
61
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS103
If we suppose that the poem as we have it is complete, it ends withfunerals, just as the
Iliad
had ended with the funeral of Hector. In addi-tion, the abrupt ending, with disease, death and cremation, is a power-ful contrast with the opening hymn to Venus. These arguments are,however, literary, and the thesis that the poem is incomplete is moreconsistent with the focus on Epicurus and his doctrine.There are two other places where there is evidence of lack of revi-sion or incompleteness. The proem to Book 4 contains two versions of the programmatic introduction to the discussion of
“
images of things
”
(
rerum simulacra
), that is the effluences of atoms that stream off thesurface of objects and are perceived by us. In the first version (4. 45
–
53) Lucretius is trying to find the right Latin term for the Greek word
eidola
: he uses
simulacra
(likenesses),
membranae
and
cortex
(bark).In the second passage (4. 26
–
44) he keeps
simulacra
, and the efflu-ences are now
“
like membranes
”
, which then are developed into a sim-ile. He no longer uses
“
bark
”
as an equivalent of
eidolon
, instead keep-ing it as the outer surface of an object from which the effluencesflow.
62
Thus we can see him refining his language from the first ver-sion, which would have been removed in the final revision.The second piece of evidence for incompleteness is at 5. 155, whereLucretius promises that he will discuss the homes and bodies of thegods
“
at great length
”
, a promise that he did not fulfil. Here, as in theproem to Book 4, the inconsistency is hardly important in consideringthe poem as a whole.The structure of the poem proceeds from the microcosm, through thehuman experience, to the macrocosm, although the ending returns tothe human experience, appropriately, given the underlying purpose of the poem, which is to remove the fear of death. Within each pair of books there is a movement from the general (atoms and void in Book 1; the soul and mortality in Book 3; the world in Book 5) to particularphenomena (properties of atoms in Book 2; perception and sensation inBook 4; celestial phenomena and the plague in Book 6). If we dividethe poem into two halves of three books each, then death is the climac-tic subject of each half: a resounding denial of its power over the fol-lowers of Epicurus in Book 3, and in Book 6 a dramatic portrayal of citizens rendered divided and dysfunctional by death in the absence of the doctrines of Epicurus.To have organized the teachings of Epicurus into a coherent epicpoem (for the epithet
“
didactic
”
totally fails to do justice to the lofti-ness and power of the poem) was in itself a great achievement.Lucretius, however, changed the traditional Epicurean method simplyby returning to poetry, the medium of several of the pre-Socratic Greek
104THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
philosophers. This meant that he had to take material written in Greek prose (that was more often than not difficult) and present it in the hex-ameter, a medium more appropriate for the Greek epic language of Homer and Apollonius or the philosophical poems of Empedocles andParmenides, than for the less flexible Latin language. This he had to dowith a vocabulary that was at best limited and more often non-existent.We have just seen how he set about finding the right word for theGreek
eidola
, and he is as inventive as Cicero in developing a vocabu-lary, as he does, for example, with the Greek
atoma
(
“
things whichcannot be cut
”
). Five Latin equivalents occur in an early passage.
63
I shall begin to teach you about the highest system of the heav-ens and the gods, and I shall explain beginnings of things (
rerun primordia
)
…
which in giving our account we call matter (
mater-ies
) and creative bodies for things (
genitalia corpora
), and weusually call them the seeds of things (
semina rerum
), and we usethe term
“
first bodies
”
(
corpora prima
), because from them asthe first things all things are constituted.Lucretius did not underestimate the problem of vocabulary. In theintroduction to the first book he says:
64
I know full well how hard it is to bring into light in Latin poetrythe dark discoveries of the Greeks, especially when I mustexplain many things in new words, because of the poverty of thelanguage and the novelty of the subject.But by the beginning of the second half of the poem he exults in hispioneering achievement:
65
I journey through the trackless regions of the Muses, neverbefore trodden by human feet. I delight in approachinguntouched springs and drinking from them. I delight in pickingnew flowers and gathering for my head a glorious wreath fromflowers that the Muses have never before used to garland [apoet
’
s] head. First, because I teach about great matters and my journey
’
s goal is to untie the tight knots of superstition. Second,because my poem, bathed in light, illuminates so dark a theme,and I touch everything with the Muses
’
charm.The joy and confidence of the passage is largely expressed through itspoetic metaphors (eight in nine lines), and it leads to an extended sim-
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS105
ile (lines 11
–
25) likening his poetry to the honey that parents smear onthe cup to help their children drink nasty-tasting medicine, while it isimplied that Memmius will be healed (another metaphor) once helearns the nature of things.Vocabulary and metaphor were not simply literary matters. In the
Letter to Herodotus
38, Epicurus says that Herodotus must primarily
“
understand the underlying meaning of words
”
, so as to have a crite-rion by which to test opinions and impressions. For, he says, he mustconsider the first meaning (Greek,
ennoema
) of each word, which mustbe clear and need no proof. This doctrine is closely connected with thedoctrine of sense-perceptions (explained in the next lines of
§
38),which for the Epicureans are true.
66
Lucretius says,
67
“
therefore whatis perceived by the senses at any time is true
”
. Just as we perceive theeffluences of atoms flowing from the surface of an object, so the efflu-ences of atoms of words (spoken or written) give the reader or hearerthe true meaning.
68
Therefore precise vocabulary and accuratemetaphorical writing are essential for the teacher. If we apply this doc-trine to Lucretius, we can see that his vocabulary, and, still more, hismarvellously vivid metaphors and similes, are essential elements bothin his poetry and in his philosophy. Don Fowler has explained the mat-ter admirably.
69
Poet and philosopher must make the reader
see
…
The effect is arecontextualization of both the traditional devices of poetry andthe basic elements of Epicurean epistemology, particularly the
“
first image
”
(
prolepsis
) associated with each word, the basis forlive metaphor. The complexity and precision of Lucretius
’
imagery
…
is thus also an aspect of his role as philosopher andscientist.Sedley points out that
“
[Lucretius] floods his poem with Greek words,but avoids them in the course of doctrinal exposition
”
.
70
This, too, isanother facet of the importance of the first impression of a word. If thedoctrines of Epicurus are to be rightly understood by a Roman audi-ence, then the vocabulary must be precise and Roman. Lucretius usesGreek words to refer to Greek ideas that he rejects. Thus at 1. 884 (asingularly unpoetic line) he says:
“
now let us examine the
homoeome-ria
of Anaxagoras
”
. Anaxagoras
’
theory that
“
parts are similar to thewhole
”
is left with its Greek term, because it and the theory that itdenotes are inconsistent with both Latin language and Epicurean doc-trine. Often Lucretius deliberately uses a Greek word precisely becauseof its difference from Latin. In the description of the Trojan War there
106THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
are five Greek names, one non-Latin portmanteau-word for
“
sons of the Greeks
”
(
Graiugenarum
), and one Greek epithet for the woodenhorse,
durateus
. Although there is a Latin word for
“
wooden
”
(
ligneus
), Lucretius chose to transliterate the Greek word, preciselybecause it was Greek and was part of a Greek myth.
71
Again, in argu-ing for the universality of innate powers in animals, he uses the phrase
catuli pantherarum scymnique leonum
(
“
panther kittens and lioncubs
”
).
72
The word
catuli
is Latin, but the Greek word
pantherarum
refers to animals from distant parts of the world, strange to Italy. Hecould have used the regular word for lion-cubs (
catuli
) but instead hedeliberately uses the Greek word
skymnoi
(Latinized as
scymni
). Thebilingual vocabulary confirms his point, that the phenomenon of innatepowers is universal. Finally, in comparing himself to Epicurus, hesays:
73
Why should the swallow (
hirundo
) compete with swans (
cycnis
),or what power would kids (
haedi
) have with their tremblinglimbs in running compared with the mighty strength of the horse(
fortis equi vis
)?He himself in these similes is signified by Latin words (
hirundo
,
haedi
), but Epicurus by a Greek word (
cycnus
: the Latin word for aswan is
olor
) and a Greek epic expression (
“
strength of a horse
”
for
“
horse
”
). So the point is made, that Lucretius, the Latin poet, is bring-ing Greek doctrine into Latin poetry.We return now to the structure of the poem. Each book is precededby an introductory passage. The first proem is both the longest and themost complex. It begins with an epic invocation, addressing Venus as
Aeneadum genetrix hominum divumque voluptas
(
“
Mother of the sonsof Aeneas, the pleasure of men and gods
”
). The vocabulary is Greek (
Aeneadum
) and Latin; the content is political (Venus, through her sonAeneas, as origin of the Roman race) and philosophical (
voluptas
, anallusion to Epicurean
hedone
) and allusive (invocation of a divine fig-ure, as in the first lines of the Homeric epics and the
Annales
of Ennius). This leads to a hymn and prayer to Venus as the origin of lifeand of the variety of the universe and its powers of procreation; Venus,too, as the bringer of peace, the lover and tamer of Mars, god of war.Venus, therefore, is the appropriate source for Lucretius
’
poem on
“
thebeginnings of things, from which nature creates all things
”
.
74
Theproem then continues with praise of Epicurus; an attack on the evils of religion and superstition; and warnings to Memmius (Lucretius
’
patron
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS107
and dedicatee) against trusting in religious stories; finally, the poet
’
scomplaint about the difficulty of expressing himself in Latin poetry.
75
This splendid introduction is problematic. Why should a poet whowill demolish traditional myths and beliefs about the gods begin with ahymn to one of those very gods? How can he ask for the interventionof a god in human affairs, when Epicurean theology expressly deniedthis possibility? The most persuasive answer is that of Sedley, that
“
theproem
…
is, and is meant to be recognized as, an imitation of the proemto Empedocles
’
physical poem
”
.
76
Just as Empedocles had been thegreat Greek poet
—
philosopher of Nature (his major
—
or only
—
poemwas titled
On Nature
), so Lucretius will be the Roman philosopher
—
poet of Nature. Just as Empedocles had appealed to Aphrodite (compa-rable to the Roman Venus), so Lucretius will appeal to Venus. Empe-docles had based his theory of cosmic cycles on the conflict betweenLove and Strife, so Lucretius will bring about a resolution of the con-flicts caused by mental and psychological distress through the philoso-phy of Epicurus. Not that Lucretius follows Empedocles uncritically.He says that Sicily produced no one more distinguished, and that hispoetry came from a
“
god-like heart
”
and made him seem to be
“
hardlyborn of human stock
”
, yet Lucretius attacks him for his pluralism.
77
Whatever solutions scholars have proposed for the problems raisedby the proem, the power of this opening has struck its readers in allages.
78
As the proem to an epic poem on philosophy, it announcesLucretius
’
philosophical and literary allegiances: Epicurus is thesource of his philosophy; Empedocles is his guide for a poem on thenature of things.Four of Lucretius
’
six proems sing the praises of Epicurus, and thosefor Books 1, 3 and 5 each preface a two-book segment. In the first (1.62
–
79) Epicurus is
“
a Man of Greece
”
, whose intellect passed beyondthe bounds of the universe and, through knowledge, gave men thepower to crush religion and make them equal to the gods. Poetry andphilosophy are wonderfully interwoven in this passage:
79
When human life lay on the ground in full view, a nasty sight,crushed by the weight of Religion, which showed her face fromheaven, fearsome to see, threatening mortals
—
then first a Manof Greece dared to raise mortal eyes in defiance and to resist her.Him neither tales of the gods nor lightning nor the sky withthreatening thunder could keep down. Instead, all the more didthey stimulate the keen courage of his spirit to be eager to burstthrough the confining bars of the gates of nature. Therefore thelively power of his mind triumphed, and he passed far beyond
108THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
the fiery walls of the universe (
flammantia moenia mundi
) andtravelled through the whole of boundless space in mind and intel-lect. Thence as victor he brings us report of what can come intobeing and what cannot, what are the limits to the power of eachthing and where is its deep-fixed boundary marker. Thus Reli-gion in its turn is crushed beneath our feet, and his victory makesus equal to heaven.Lucretius later shows how the tranquillity of the gods can be shared bythe human being who correctly perceives their nature.
80
Epicurus wassaid to have been exceptionally pious and not at all an atheist, andLucretius directs his criticism at false impressions of the gods, spreadby the traditional tales of mythology and perpetuated by human fearand superstition. As an example of this he tells the story of Iphigenia, acentral myth of the human dilemma between personal obligations andambitions, between personal preferences and the demands of societyand religion. The daughter,
“
sinfully butchered by her father
—
all forthe happy and auspicious departure of the fleet
”
, is the tragic exampleof the evils of religion. Lucretius concludes (1. 101):
“
such were theevils which religion had the power to suggest
”
.
81
Lucretius then turns to address Memmius, for he, too, may feel
“
ter-ror and darkness of the mind
”
, which Lucretius will dispel by
“
a sur-vey and reasoned discussion of nature
”
.
82
And this leads into his epic(a suitable term for
this
didactic poem), which he places in the traditionof the great epic teachers of Greece and Rome, Homer and Ennius.
83
The poet
’
s first lesson will be about the first beginnings, and the firstprinciple is
“
nothing can ever come into being from nothing by thegods
’
agency
”
. Second, that nothing can dissipate into nothing, andnothing can be destroyed. Third, the nature of things consists of atomsand void.
84
These three lessons are basic to Lucretius
’
doctrine, which derivesfrom Epicurus and ultimately from the fifth-century BCE Greek atom-ists, Leucippus and Democritus. He presents each lesson briefly anddogmatically, and then supports the argument with examples, fromwhich he deduces the inevitability of his conclusions. An understand-ing of the structure of the physical world will lead to an understandingof the true nature of the fears, superstitions and psychological distur-bances that make life unnecessarily difficult for those who are ignorantof the teachings of Epicurus. Lucretius punctuates his discussion withthe proem to Book 2 (quoted above). Acting on the principle of
“
smear-ing honey on the cup
”
(4. 10
–
13), he keeps before Memmius the ethi-cal purpose of his teaching, which he relates to the political and social
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS109
world of Memmius. He then returns to atomic doctrine. First heteaches about the forming of material objects from atoms and their dis-solution, about their motion, their shapes and compounds, their lack of colour and other secondary qualities.
85
A famous variation from Epicu-rus
’
extant teaching on the movements of atoms is the passage on the
“
swerve
”
(
clinamen
) of atoms in their downward progress, which mayhave been part (now lost) of Epicurus
’
On Nature
. It is a third causefor the movement of atoms, the first two being
“
blows
”
(i.e. impact of other atoms) and the second
“
weight
”
(i.e. gravity). The
“
swerve
”
isneeded to account for the conjunction of atoms to form objects:for if they did not usually swerve, all things would fall down-wards through the deep void, like drops of rain. No collisionwould be brought into being and no blow would come into beingfor atoms. Thus Nature would never have created anything.Lucretius extends this to the freedom of the human will. If there wereno
“
swerve
”
, then the chain of causation would extend inexorablywithout variation. But the
clinamen
allows the human will to go wherepleasure leads it, and allows human beings to proceed
“
where our mindcarries us
”
. This is possible in Epicurean doctrine, because of the mate-rialist explanation of all things, including motions of the mind.Lucretius concludes:But that the mind in itself may not have some interior compul-sion in all actions, that it may not be compelled, like somethingthat has been conquered, to bear and to suffer
—
this is achievedby the tiny swerve of first things in no pre-ordained place at nopre-ordained time.After the discussion of motion and properties of atoms, Lucretius com-pletes Book 2 by considering the infinite possibilities of unions of atoms when their present formations are dissipated, since matter can-not be destroyed.
86
For there is no limit to the void, and therefore thereneed be no limit to the creation of worlds other than our own.Lucretius ends his two books on physics with the old farmer, worn outby a lifetime
’
s labour, facing death and grumbling,
“
for he does notremember that all things gradually waste away and go to the grave (
ad capulum
) wearied by old ages long extent of life
”
. Thus the way is pre-pared for Book 3 and its climactic discussion of death.Noticeable also is the way in which Lucretius introduces the discus-sion on the infinity of worlds by returning to the ideas of creative
110THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Nature that so brightly coloured the Hymn to Venus at the beginningof the poem.
87
The component atoms in nature go through their cycleof creation and decay: so, too, human beings, and the world of natureand other worlds, must expect that the constitution of their materialatoms must in time be dissipated to form new individuals and newworlds.The proem to Book 3 begins with praise of Epicurus, expressed withgratitude, reverence and awe, in sublime poetry.
88
The theme of thebook is darkness and light
—
the darkness of ignorance and superstition,the light of knowledge and freedom from fear. So Epicurus is the firstto bring such light: he is
“
the glory of the Greek race
”
, and Lucretiuswill follow him, being as a swallow to a swan, or a kid to a horse. Epi-curus, who in Book 1 was
“
a Man of Greece
”
, is now
“
father, the dis-coverer of things, the giver of a father
’
s precepts
”
, and Lucretius willfeed on his
“
golden sayings
”
as bees feed on flowers. Lucretius
’
lineson the effect of Epicurus
’
teaching are central to an understanding of the nature of his poem and his own inspiration:For as soon as your philosophy, springing from your godlikemind, began to proclaim the nature of things, the terrors of themind disperse, the walls of the universe are parted, I see theworkings of the world throughout the void. I see the majesty of the gods in their tranquil homes
…
Nature, indeed, supplies[them] with everything, nor does anything diminish their peaceof mind at any time. On the other hand, the regions of Acheron[the Underworld] cannot be seen
…
At these things [i.e. the teach-ings of Epicurus] a godlike pleasure and a shudder of awe takeshold of me, because through your power nature is revealed soclearly and unveiled in every part.This is the heart of the matter. Not only does Lucretius revere Epicurusas a father, but he experiences a religious transformation, whichreveals to him the truth about the nature of the universe and of humanlife and death, and leads him to follow with an enthusiasm that is likethe
“
holy rapture
”
(the phrase is E.J.Kenney
’
s) of a devotee of thegods. But the Epicurean gods are tranquil and their peace of mind iscomplete. Lucretius
’
readers, too, will experience such tranquillity if they understand his teachings.The primary purpose of the poet
’
s teaching is to remove the fear of death from the minds of human beings. Such fear is the opposite of theinner and outer peace that the doctrines of Epicurus have revealed. Therest of the proem (31
–
93), therefore, turns directly to the fear of death.
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS111
Lucretius shows how this fear motivates men
’
s attitudes to life, in par-ticular their superstitions, their ambitions, crimes and envy, which leadthem to disregard morality in their relations with other human beings.They are like children in the dark (87
–
88), and Lucretius concludeswith a return to the opening theme of darkness and light (91
–
93):Therefore this terror of the mind and darkness must be dispelled,not by the rays of the sun nor by the bright shafts of daylight, butby observing nature and by reason.This elaborate proem encompasses and anticipates the themes of Book 3. Lucretius will show why death should not be feared. He has alreadyexplained the atomic composition of the exterior world; now he willexplain the composition of the human mind (
animus
) and soul, or moreaccurately
“
spirit
”
(
amnia
), which are material, consisting of atoms.
89
The distinction between
animus
and
anima
(Greek
nous
and
psyche
respectively), which is clear in Greek, was blurred by Democritus andEpicurus. Democritus, according to Aristotle, said that
“
they are thesame
”
, referring (so later authors show) to their atomic composition.Both he and Epicurus said that the soul consisted of two parts, respec-tively reasoning and unreasoning, which were structurally identical. Atany rate, it is the union of mind and spirit with the body that makeshuman life possible. Since they came into being with the body, theywill dissipate when the body dies: they, therefore, are mortal.
90
If theydie, then our existence comes to an end with their dissolution. Death,therefore, is nothing to fear; the myths of the Underworld and its tor-ments hold no terrors for us, and we can achieve happiness by accept-ing our mortality.
91
This bald summary does not do justice to the impassioned rhetoricof the poet. After giving twenty-nine proofs of the mortality of thesoul, he begins his conclusion, that death is not to be feared, by quot-ing Epicurus:
“
Death therefore is nothing to us.
”
He continues:
92
[Death] does not concern us at all, since the nature of the mind(
animus
) is considered to be mortal. And just as in times past weperceived no ill when the Carthaginians came from all sides tofight, when all things, shuddering in the trembling tumult of war,shook beneath the lofty realms of the upper air, and it was doubt-ful under which of the two [namely, Carthaginians or Romans]all things would be subjected on land and sea
—
so, when we nolonger exist, when the dissolution of body and soul (from whoseunion we are brought into existence), nothing, I say, will be able
112THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
to happen to us at all, for we will not then exist, nothing will beable to affect our senses
—
not even if earth were mixed with seaand sea with sky.I quote this splendid passage without changing Lucretius
’
punctuation,remembering how the
“
first impression
”
of the spoken or written wordis important in Epicurean theory. The enormous period builds up tooverwhelm the hearer with the certainty that no mass of historical orcosmic calamities can affect us after our death. The recall of the crisisof the second Punic war
—
the most traumatic historical event in theRoman people
’
s collective psyche in Lucretius
’
time
—
gives the pas-sage an immediacy for Roman hearers that would have been lackinghad Lucretius followed Epicurus in every word. The rest of the book ishardly necessary after this ringing affirmation. Nevertheless, in theremaining lines Lucretius proves the foolishness of clinging to life outof fear of death, and the folly of believing the myths of the Underworldand its punishments.Yet we must ask if his rigorously logical demonstration is adequateto parry the reality of untimely death and bereavement. We rememberthe humane sympathy of Philodemus, which we contrast withLucretius
’
satirical mockery of those who mourn the dead:
93
No more, no more will your happy home welcome you, nor yourexcellent wife, nor your lovely children running to get your kissfirst and touching your heart with silent pleasure. You will not beable to prosper by your deeds and protect your family.
“
Miser-able man
”
, they say,
“
one hateful day has taken from you miser-ably all the rewards of life
”
.Lucretius drily points out that none of this matters to the dead man,who can feel nothing. Yet even Epicurus said that
“
the wise man willgrieve
”
.
94
We all must die: Epicurus himself died. How then can wehesitate to face death?In a way Lucretius has completed his task by proving that knowl-edge of the
“
nature of things
”
will rid people of the fear of death. Nev-ertheless, he still has not expounded Epicurean doctrine on sensationand thought, or on cosmic and meteorological matters. While they arenot now essential for dispelling the fear of death
—
for Lucretius hasalready completed this task
—
they are a necessary part of a completeexposition of the nature of things. So in Book 4 Lucretius turns fromthe universal human experience of death to the particular experiencesof sensation: vision (26
–
521), the other senses (522
–
721), thought and
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS113
dreams (722
–
822). Before starting on this part of the book he pauses toproclaim his poetic mission in the service of philosophy.
95
The poetleads his hearers through trackless places and his poetry will grip theirminds, enabling them
“
to perceive the whole nature of things and beaware of its usefulness
”
.With this reminder he returns to the human mind
(animus),
whosecomposition and mortality had been such a large part of the doctrine of the third book. In the later preface (4. 26
–
44), which replaced the origi-nal one, he says:
96
now I will begin to discuss for you a subject that strongly con-cerns these matters [i.e. the nature of the
animus
], that there existthings that we call the
“
likenesses
”
of things (
rerum simulacra
).The
simulacra
are the underlying concept of the first part of thebook.
97
We have seen how in the original preface Lucretius tried differ-ent equivalents for the Greek word
eidola
, finally settling on
simulacra
(likenesses) as the best Latin equivalent. The discussion is in partabout physics, that is, the physical nature of the atoms that form
simu-lacra
, but it even more concerns the processes of knowledge, belong-ing to the Epicurean category of
kanonike
. The
simulacra
are films oreffluences of very fine atoms flowing from the surface of objects andresulting in the perceiver
’
s sense-perception. Although Lucretiusdevotes most space to the sense of sight (26
–
521), the doctrine isequally valid for the other senses (522
–
721). Thus the atomic physicsof the first two books are proved to be valid also for individual humanexperience, and sense-perception is shown to have a material basis.Lucretius then turns to processes of thought (722
–
822), for which hegives the same materialist explanation. Like Gilbert Ryle in the twenti-eth century, he dismisses the notion of
“
the mind in the machine
”
.Thought is caused by exceedingly fine
simulacra
, whether of thingsperceived that become the objects of thought, or of things imagined(for example, centaurs). Even dreams can be explained in this way, apassage where Lucretius
’
doctrine of the
“
latent image
”
uncannilyanticipates Freud
’
s theories of the unconscious.
98
Lucretius next turns to the effect of the
simulacra
on the perceiver,thinker or dreamer. First, he refutes teleological explanations of func-tions of parts of the human body (i.e. that they were created for a pur-pose), since to suppose, for example, that the eyes were created for thepurpose of seeing, is to suppose an intelligent creator (823
–
57). Thenhe shows how desire and will are motivated by sense-impressions,including those perceived in sleep (877
–
1036). The final example,
114THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
erotic dreams (1030
–
36), leads into the last topic of the book, the stimu-lation of love and sexual desire by
simulacra
(1037
–
1287). In thisextraordinary diatribe Lucretius moves beyond his primary task of expounding Epicurean doctrine, for his descriptions of lust, love andthe physical aspect of sexual activity are as satirical as they are philo-sophical. Nevertheless, their purpose is consistent with Epicurus
’
doc-trine that pleasure is best experienced in moderation.
99
Lucretiusreturns to this theme in Book 5 and in his praise of Epicurus at 6. 25,where Epicurus
“
set a limit to desire
”
.
100
It is left now for Lucretius to turn to the world, the origins anddevelopment of life and human civilization, and cosmic phenomena,which occupy the rest of the poem as far as 6. 1089. Like Books 1 and3, Book 5 opens with praise of Epicurus, now honoured as a god:
101
For if we must speak as the majesty of the subject
…
requires, hewas a god, Memmius, a god, who first discovered the philosophyof life, which now we call wisdom, and who through his skillraised life from such great waves and such deep darkness, andset it in so tranquil and so bright a light.Epicurus is a greater benefactor of human beings than the gods whotaught them skills of agriculture, greater then Hercules, who rid theworld of so many terrifying monsters. Monsters, says Lucretius, stillare numerous in the forests and mountains, and we are able to avoidthem. But how can we avoid the equally terrifying monsters of ourinner disturbances? Only the doctrines of Epicurus can conquerdesires, anxieties, fears and the other things that prevent a tranquil life.That is why he should be numbered with the gods.This extraordinary proem looks back to the mental disturbances of lust and love exposed in Book 4, and forward to discussion of the Epi-curean gods, promised (but not realized) at 5. 155. Lucretius, however,now will turn to the world and prove its mortality, for that which isborn must perish (5. 64
–
66). He shows that it is composed of atomsand not created by the gods (91
–
508), and then he turns to the heav-enly bodies, the motions of the stars and the planets and their relation-ship to the earth (509
–
770). As Bailey observes,
“
the astronomical sec-tion is difficult to understand and to follow
”
, and it interrupts thesequence of discussion of the world and of life on earth. Sedley hasplausibly suggested that Lucretius was following the order of topics inEpicurus
’
On Nature
and that he would in a final revision have trans-ferred this section to the end of Book 5, where it would lead naturallyto the discussion of celestial phenomena in Book 6. Certainly the gods
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS115
are more prominent in the programmatic lines of Book 5, and Sedleyagain is plausible in suggesting that
“
the final pair [of books] was des-tined to have
…
the function of dispelling the fear of god
”
.
102
At any rate, the astronomical section is followed by the history of life on earth: first, the origin of life and evolution and survival orextinction of species of animals.
103
The doctrine of the survival of species (855
–
77) is again a remarkable anticipation of modern theo-ries, and the joyously poetical account of the origin of life (783
–
820)recalls the hymn to Venus in the proem to Book 1. Lucretius, even if he says that Earth is rightly called
“
Mother Earth
”
(821
–
22), is stillfollowing Epicurean doctrine in denying any role to a creator or to thefigures of traditional mythology.The rest of the book is taken up with a history of human society,which Kenney has called
“
Lucretius
’
greatest intellectual and imagina-tive achievement
”
.
104
Epicurus spends very little time on this subject inthe
Letter to Herodotus
(
§§
75
–
76), and it is likely that Lucretius
’
source was book 12 of
On Nature
. He proceeds methodically from thelife of primitive human beings (925
–
1010), to the development of civi-lization (the origins of family and community life and law, 1011
–
27;of language, 1028
–
90; of fire, 1091
–
1104; the rise of kings and thedesire for wealth, 1105
–
60; the rise of religion and superstition, 1161
–
1240; warfare, 1241
–
1349; the arts of peace
—
clothing, agriculture,music, 1350
–
1411; finally, the progress of civilization, 1412
–
57).This is an extraordinary passage. Its broad yet detailed treatment of history recalls Posidonius, but in its poetic intensity it is unique.Lucretius keeps before us the purpose of his poem, to bring tranquillityof mind through knowledge. Thus he comments on the futility of politi-cal ambition;
105
and he attacks wrong religion and superstition:
106
O unhappy race of human beings! To assign such deeds to thegods and add to them their bitter anger! What groans did those[early mortals] bring to birth for themselves then, what woundsfor us, what tears for our descendants! It is not piety at all to beseen often turning with veiled head to a stone, or to approachevery altar, or to lie prostrate on the ground and stretch out one
’
shands before the shrines of the gods, or to shower the altars withthe blood of four-footed animals, or to make a linked chain of prayers. No! [Piety is] rather to be able to look on everythingwith a mind at peace.Or again, on the death of primitive human beings, Lucretius shows that
116THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
the pain and horror were real enough for beings who were ignorant of the consolations of philosophy:
107
For one by one they would be caught and become living food forwild beasts to chew. Each [victim] would fill the forests andmountains and woods with his groans, as he saw his livingentrails buried in a living tomb [i.e. the wild beast]. But thosewho escaped with mutilated body would later hold their trem-bling hands over the cruel wounds and call on Death with fright-ening shrieks, until the savage agony robbed them of life, help-less and not knowing what their wounds needed.The horrifying description of primitive death has its counterpart in thedeaths by plague that end the sixth book.Book 6 begins with praise of Athens and its greatest gift tohumankind, Epicurus.
108
The proem is linked to the history of the riseof civilization at the end of Book 5, for Lucretius says that Epicurussaw that, even after civilization had advanced to its highest level inAthens, human beings were still afflicted with anxiety. And so his doc-trine purified their minds, put an end to their mental disturbances, andshowed the way to the highest good.Lucretius then turns to the first main theme of the book, celestial andmeteorological phenomena, followed by the second theme, terrestrialphenomena.
109
In the preliminary sketch of his subject (43
–
95) heespecially warns his readers against attributing celestial phenomena tothe gods. Thunder, lightning and storms can be explained rationally,without recourse to the gods. Here the poet takes aim not only at super-stition in general but specifically at Roman religious practice, in whichthe rituals for divining or exorcizing violent meteorological eventswere precisely prescribed:
110
I must come to grips with the system in the heavens and on earth,and I must tell in my poetry of storms and bright lightning. Imust tell how they act and what cause brings them into being,lest you hurry in fear mindlessly to quarter the sky and ask fromwhich quarter flying came the lightning flash, or to which quar-ter it turned as it left, or how it passed through walled enclosuresand how it passed from them after taking possession.Lucretius uses the technical vocabulary of augury. The Roman ritualwas inherited from the Etruscans, who divided the sky into sixteenparts (a number obtained by twice doubling the four original quarters)
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS117
so as to have a factual basis on which to make their divination.Lucretius develops his argument later in the book.
111
It is similar toCicero
’
s attack on the Stoics
’
support for divination from lightning,where Cicero explicitly approves of Epicurean doctrine.
112
The matterwas not just theoretical, for it had practical political consequences:political processes (e.g. elections or legislation) could be postponed orcancelled if lightning was observed. In a celebrated abuse of religiousritual, Bibulus, Julius Caesar
’
s opponent and colleague in the consul-ship of 59, perpetually
“
observed the heavens
”
to obstruct Caesar
’
slegislation. Lucretius exploits the ironies: experts on divination areconsidered to be knowledgeable, but their knowledge is based on thefalse premises that the gods exist and that the lightning is an expres-sion of their will, which must be divined by the experts. Of course,only Epicurus had true knowledge, which Lucretius expounds so as torid his Roman hearers of their fear of the power of the gods:
113
This is how to understand the real nature of fiery lightning and tosee with what energy it acts, and not, by reading in vain the rollsof Etruscan formulae, [attempt to] learn the will of the gods.The second major section of Book 6, on terrestrial phenomena, con-sists of a series of disconnected subjects (including earthquakes, theNile
’
s annual flood, magnets, epidemics), linked solely by Lucretius
’
goal of proclaiming true knowledge. The subject of epidemics does notoccur in the extant Epicurean letters or fragments, and even Sedley ishesitant in assigning it to Book 13 of
On Nature.
114
Others have sug-gested that Lucretius may be drawing on Hippocratic writings, forexample, the treatise
On Airs
,
Waters and Places
, which was written inthe later part of the fifth century BCE.
115
Lucretius teaches that thereare healthful atoms in the air, and others that cause disease and death(6. 1093
–
97).
116
The latter fly about so that
“
the air becomes full of disease
”
. The air, then, is the source of disease, and it was the sourceof the great plague at Athens, an account of which forms the last partof the book.
117
Lucretius is following the famous description of the plague inThucydides, which he emulates in descriptive horror. Most important,however, is the effect of the disease on the minds and emotions of thesurvivors, for no longer did religious beliefs count for anything (1276
–
77), neither were the traditional funeral customs observed (1278
–
79).And so
De Rerum Natura
ends with the distressed Athenians cremat-ing their dead in a disorderly fashion and fighting among themselves toclaim the corpses of their relatives (1283
–
86).
118THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The ending is abrupt. We have suggested earlier that the poem isalmost complete, except for lines drawing the lesson that if the Atheni-ans had known the doctrines of Epicurus they would have been able tounderstand the cause of the disaster and treat it with equanimity. Cer-tainly, the focus on death at the end contrasts with that on life in theproem to Book 1. The mental and physical distress of the Athenianscontrasts with the calm doctrines of Epicurus praised in the proem toBook 6. The wildly emotional funeral scenes recall the ending of the
Iliad
, with Hector
’
s funeral and the passionate utterances of his widow,his mother, and his sister-in-law. Finally, the focus on death at the endof the poem reinforces the focus on death at the end of its first half.There, Lucretius proclaimed the triumph of Epicurean doctrine overdeath; here, the victory of death over the Athenians who lived and diedmany years before the coming of Epicurus. Lucretius is true to his over-riding principle: those who have knowledge of
“
the nature of things
”
can achieve calm of mind and freedom from fear of death.Lucretius
’
poem does not seem to have had the influence that itdeserved. Within a decade of its composition the Roman republic hadcollapsed, Julius Caesar was dead, and fresh violence overwhelmed thequiet practice of philosophy. Cicero
’
s murder in December of 43 BCEwas symptomatic. Yet some Epicureans survived the civil wars suc-cessfully, for example, Cicero
’
s friend, Atticus, at the price of friend-ship with people whose political acts were the opposite of Epicurean.
118
More significant is the fact that Lucretius was read and admired bythe leading Augustan poets, Horace and Virgil, both of whom began topublish about fifteen years after his death. Horace (an Epicurean)quotes him at
Satires
1. 5. 101, and alludes to the opening of Book 2 of the
De Rerum Natura
in
Epistles
1. 11. 10. The last part of the sameletter (lines 22
–
30) is Lucretian in tone. Virgil explicitly admiredLucretius, whom he does not name. In the second
Georgic
, completedbefore 29 BCE, he contrasts his pastoral poetry with that of Lucretius:
119
Happy is he who could discover the causes of things and trampleunderfoot all fears and inexorable fate and the sound of greedyAcheron. Blessed also is he who knows the gods of thecountryside
…
This passage follows lines in which Virgil was clearly alluding to themeteorological and cosmological themes of Lucretius. A few yearsearlier he had echoed Lucretius in his sixth
Eclogue
, where the song of Silenus alludes to the cosmogony of Lucretius. Later, in the
Aeneid
(written in the 20s BCE), the song of the Punic bard, lopas, at the ban-
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS119
quet of Dido echoes the meteorological themes both of the sixth
Eclogue
and of Book 6 of Lucretius
’
poem.
120
Yet one of the most orig-inal and powerful parts of the
Aeneid
is the sixth book, where Aeneasvisits the Underworld and sees for himself Acheron and the fate of thedead
—
things that Lucretius says Epicurus had
“
trampled underfoot
”
.In the first and second centuries CE, several authors show thatLucretius was still being read. Statius, in a poem celebrating the birth-day of the dead poetic genius, Lucan (d. 65 CE), refers to
“
the austeremadness of learned Lucretius
”
, and his contemporary, Quintilian,includes Lucretius rather grudgingly in his reading list for students of oratory.
121
The Stoic satirist Persius (d. 62 CE), agrees with Quintilian that
De Rerum Natura
was too difficult for the ordinary reader, but he is moresympathetic. He imagines a
“
hairy centurion
”
poking fun at philoso-phers, with their mannerisms and their doctrines that are intelligibleonly to other philosophers. He paraphrases Lucretius:
“
nothing cancome from nothing, nothing can return to nothing
”
.
122
The target of this witty passage is the self-satisfied and ignorant
“
common man
”
, notthe philosophical poet.Seneca
’
s attitude is more complex. Although a Stoic, he oftenquotes Epicurus (particularly in the first thirty of his letters), and occa-sionally Lucretius. In letter 95, in which he debates the ability of phi-losophy to bring about the good life, he quotes Lucretius to illustratethe scope of philosophical enquiry, extending to cosmology and thecreation of the world.
123
He quotes Lucretius again in letter 106 toshow that the study of philosophical doctrine is
“
mere child
’
s play
”
,for it will make a student learned, but will not help live the good life:
“
our learning is for school, not for life
”
.
124
In letter 110 he quotesLucretius on groundless fears and improves on him: Lucretius said thatwe are afraid in daylight, but, says Seneca,
“
we make everything dark-ness
”
.
125
Finally, in
De Tranquillitate
Seneca quotes Lucretius in sup-port of the commonplace doctrine that
“
a human being cannot run fromhimself
”
, which is found in writers from Aristotle to Juvenal.
126
About a century after Seneca, Aulus Gellius (b. 125 CE) quotesLucretius on a literary, rather than philosophical, matter.
127
The poem,then, was still being read two centuries after Lucretius
’
death, but, itseems, only by a few readers and apparently without any widespreadinfluence. While this is regrettable, it is hardly surprising. Lucretiuswas too austere and his Latin too difficult for the kind of reader forwhom Cicero or Seneca was writing. He was read by the Christianfathers, and Lactantius (
c
.240
–
320 CE) quotes him frequently, both tocriticize him and to use him to support his own arguments. Augustine
120THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
also alludes to him in several passages, although he prefers Cicero as asource for attacks on Epicureanism.Epicureanism continued to have a vigorous existence in the 150years after the death of Lucretius, for which the criticisms of Plutarch(
c.
50
–
120 CE), who was himself a Platonist, are good evidence.
128
Thetitles are known of nine works by Plutarch in which he criticizes Epicu-rus and his followers. Three of these are extant:
That Epicurus Makes aPleasant Life Impossible
(usually referred to by the first two words of its Latin title,
Non Posse
);
Against Colotes
;
Whether Lathe Biosas Is Rightly Said
(Latin,
An Recte Dictum
). The second of these is paradoxi-cal, since it attacks a book (no longer extant) written by Colotes, a dis-ciple of Epicurus at Lampsacus, where Epicurus taught from 310 to306 BCE. Colotes had criticized other philosophers (including Dem-ocritus and Plato), and perhaps Plutarch attacks him because of hishostility to Plato. On the other hand
An Recte Dictum
attacks Epi-curean quietism, which, as we have seen, directly opposed the Romanethos of public service and desire for fame. Plutarch says (
An Recte Dictum
6):
129
I think that to be alive and generally to be born and become ahuman being are a gift from god to make a person known
…
Buthe who hurls himself into obscurity is cloaked in darkness andburies his life in an empty tomb.In
Non Posse
Plutarch (through participants in the dialogue, Theon andAristodemus) attacks Epicurean doctrines, first, on pleasure and
“
liv-ing unobtrusively
”
, and then on the gods and the absence of an after-life. Plutarch was a pious man, and for the last decades of his life heheld a priesthood at Delphi (which was comparatively close to hishome town of Chaeronea), an honour which he prized. His attack onEpicurean theology is therefore coloured by his own experience.Towards the end of the second century Epicureanism continued tobe strong, in part because of its opposition to superstition and falseprophets, as Lucian (born
c
.120) shows in his essay on
Alexander or the False Prophet
. There he says (
§
61) that people turned to Epicurusbecause he was:truly a holy man with a divine nature, who alone knew trulywhat was good. He passed his knowledge on and was a liberatorof those who associated with him.But during the third century CE Epicureanism declined noticeably,
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS121
although it was still vigorous enough to attract the hostility of Chris-tian authors. By the middle of the next century it was dying, and it wasdead by the time that Justinian closed the schools of philosophy atAthens in 529.
130
Early in the third century Diogenes Laertius compiled (in Greek) his
Lives of Eminent Philosophers
. Book 10 of this work is devoted solelyto Epicurus, and it is exceptionally valuable for its preservation of theprincipal texts of Epicurean doctrine (which have been summarizedabove, pp. 101
–
105, as well as a catalogue of Epicurus
’
works.
131
The last extensive evidence for vigorous devotion to Epicureanismcomes from the city of Oenoanda, high on a mountain in northernLycia (modern south-western Turkey). There, some time probably latein the second century CE, Diogenes, a prominent citizen, in his old ageset up a huge inscription on a wall of a stoa (a colonnade for publicuse) recording his own Epicureanism and various Epicurean texts. Theheight of the inscription is 2.37 metres, and its length was more than50m, perhaps even close to 100m. It was discovered in 1884 byGeorges Cousin, who published sixty-four fragments in 1892. Sincethen more fragments have been published, most notably by MartinSmith, in a series of articles beginning in 1969, bringing the total num-ber discovered to 212 as of 1990, perhaps a quarter of the whole.
132
We have seen how greatly our knowledge of Hellenistic philosophydepends on fragmentary texts, and in the inscription of Diogenes weare sadly reminded of the vagaries of destruction and survival in aremote place, subject to the damage wrought by earthquakes andbuilders (who used stones from the inscription) and to the ravages of neglect.Diogenes published his inscription because he was moved, likeLucretius, by the miserable spiritual state of his fellow human beings,whose inner disturbances he likened to a plague (frag. 1.2 and 2.4). In
“
the sunset of life
”
he wished to help humankind by telling them thetrue nature of things and healing their pains by
“
cutting them down tosomething small and making their intensity very small indeed
”
(frag.2.6). Thirteen (or more) of the
Kyriai Doxai
were inscribed along thelowest course of the wall; above them, in a parallel course, Diogenesinscribed a treatise on ethics; above that was a treatise on physics. Inthe top course was a treatise on old age. To the right of the treatise onethics were three letters of Diogenes to his friends, and various philo-sophical maxims. To the right of the treatise on old age was a letter of Epicurus to his mother, on the subject of dreams, and two other lettersof Epicurus.Diogenes is the author of the three treatises. Most interesting is the
122THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
part of the treatise on physics, which (like Epicurus
’
letter to hismother) dealt with dreams and has many parallels in Lucretius.
133
Thetreatise on ethics was given additional authority by the
Kyriai Doxai
of Epicurus, inscribed immediately below. Diogenes focused on the ques-tion,
“
How can our life give us pleasure?
”
, which he answered by thedoctrine that if the passions are removed then pleasure will replacethem. The passions he categorized as fear of the gods, of death, and of pain: these he discussed before dealing with desires, pleasures andactions. The treatise on old age is addressed to young readers. Fromwhat little remains, it appears to have been a defence of old age againstthe jibes and comments of the young. Probably this, too, goes back totexts of Epicurus, whose views on old age were harshly criticized byPlutarch.
134
Diskin Clay has shown the extent to which Diogenes follows, imi-tates and emulates Epicurus.
135
The Epicurean community in southernAsia Minor, late in Roman imperial times, still followed the custom of the early Epicureans, revering the founder and learning his doctrinesby heart. Like Epicurus, Diogenes wished to help human beings,whether those who read his inscription, or those in the wider world,including posterity. In his treatise on old age he says that he will leavelife with a joyful hymn (Greek,
paean
), having enjoyed a good life. Heis referring to words of Epicurus
’
close friend Metrodorus, or possiblyeven of Epicurus himself, and they are a fitting ending to this chapter:
136
I have beaten you first, O Fortune, and I have blocked every oneof your approaches. Never will we give ourselves up to you or toany other circumstance. But when necessity drives us out, we,greatly despising life and those who vainly cling to it, will departfrom it with a beautiful hymn of victory, singing that our life hasbeen well lived.
LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS123
5PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THEAUGUSTAN AGE
Lucretius and Cicero represent the zenith of intellectual activity in theRoman republic. The murder of Cicero in December, 43 BCE, and thedefeat of Brutus and Cassius at the battles of Philippi in October, 42BCE, introduced a new political and intellectual age. For Cicero, phi-losophy was closely bound up with public life. Its study had practicalconsequences in the political activity of free men competing with eachother in the public arena and mindful of their duty of service to thestate. Lucretius explicitly advised against public service, yet it is theconstant and contrasting background to his Epicurean system. In themilitary and political turmoil of the decade after Philippi the Romanworld was deaf to the voices of Cicero and Lucretius. When peace andstability were restored, after the victory of Octavian at Actium in 31BCE and the death of Mark Antony in Alexandria the following year,the Republic was dead, alive only in the brilliant use of the term
res publica
by Octavian, whose restoration of constitutional government inJanuary, 27 BCE, inaugurated his tenure of power as the leading citi-zen (
princeps
), but
de facto
the first emperor, of Rome.
1
He took thetitle
of Augustus,
the Latin equivalent of the Greek term
sebastos
(rev-erend), an honorific title frequently bestowed on Roman grandees inthe Greek east in republican times. As Tacitus rightly observed, thetitles of public officials were the same as before, but the free republichad perished, never to be revived.
2
The consequences for intellectual life and freedom of expressionwere predictable and profound. Tacitus (putting the words in the mouthof the poet, Maternus, who had written a drama on the theme of theyounger Cato) asked:
3
What greater evidence [for the curbing of oratory] could befound than that
…
peace, the prolonged passivity of the people,
124
and, above all, the discipline imposed by the
princeps
, had paci-fied eloquence itself just as much as everything else?These words were published in 102 CE, but they accurately describe aprocess begun after Cicero
’
s death, irreversibly advanced by the tri-umph of Augustus, and perpetually confirmed by the accident of hislong life, for he died in 14 CE, 41 years after the transfer of power tothe senate and people. Tacitus began his history of the period from 14to 68 CE, with the death of Augustus, for that was the first (and, asevents showed, the only) time that the republican constitution couldpossibly have been restored.
4
With the transfer of power to Tiberiusthe principate was confirmed, the monarchy assured. The world of Seneca (born in 4 BCE) was totally different from that of Cicero.In this world, true freedom of speech was rare and dangerous, foroutspoken criticism of those who held political and military powercould bring exile or even death. And if free speech is curbed, then theprocess of limiting freedom of thought will begin, however insidi-ously. Thus, philosophical doctrines came to focus on private con-cerns, above all, ethical problems. The bearing of philosophy on publiclife became restricted to problems of coexistence with a political sys-tem in which the ruler held the power of life and death, while his fel-low-citizens had the choice of cooperation, acquiescence, or retirement(often through death or exile) from the public arena. Not surprisingly,one of the most prominent problems discussed by Roman philosophersin the early empire was that of
otium
, retirement from public activity.The period of the second Triumvirate (43
–
31 BCE) and the reign of Augustus (27 BCE to 14 CE) was transitional between a manifestlydysfunctional political system and a new system based on militarypower, in which the monarch needed the support of many people, whothemselves had considerable powers, subsumed under the power andprestige of the monarch. It was a period of political ambiguities: amonarchy was dressed in the forms and words of the Republic; politi-cians and military men wielded great power, yet were at the mercy of the monarch if they encroached on his power and prestige; people of ability owed their political or social advancement to the monarch andhis close friends; finally, a citizenry courted by the monarch (whodated his tenure of power by the annual renewal of the powers of theTribune of the People,
tribunicia potestas
) was powerless to vote himout of office.The goal of philosophers was still the good life, and the traditionalgoals of the Stoics and Epicureans were outwardly unchanged
—
theachievement of tranquillity and freedom from mental disturbance
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE125
through reason and virtue. But the political and social context was sochanged that the philosophers focused almost exclusively on problemsthat concerned individuals.Even in the triumviral period, philosophy continued to be practised,and a Roman school of philosophy came into existence, led by QuintusSextius, the details of whose life have to be gleaned mostly from refer-ences in Seneca
’
s letters.
5
He probably died early in the first centuryCE (Jerome says that he flourished around 1 CE), and Seneca, writingin 62
–
64 CE, lists his school among those which had become defunctby his time. Indeed, the last chapter of Seneca
’
s
Naturales Quaestiones
laments the distressing state of philosophy in his time:
6
Who enters on the path to wisdom? Who thinks it worthy [of study] except in so far as he has a passing acquaintance with it?Who pays any attention to a philosopher or to any liberal studyexcept when the games are suspended, or there is a rainy daywhich can be wasted? And so many schools of philosophy havecome to an end without a new leader. Both the Old and NewAcademies have left us without a Principal; who is there to teachthe doctrines of Pyrrho [the Sceptic]? The Pythagorean school(unpopular with the common people) has no Professor; the newschool of the Sextii, which showed Roman strength in its earlystages, began with great energy and now is dead.Sextius (who was succeeded as head of the school by his son) refusedthe invitation of Julius Caesar to enter on an active political career inthe senate. He studied in Athens, and, back in Rome, wrote philosophi-cal works
“
in Greek words but with Roman character
”
. Seneca callshim a
de facto
Stoic and quotes his use of the military metaphor for thewise man, who must advance like an army prepared for battle and onguard against the enemy. The wise man will deploy his virtues to pro-tect himself from fear, grief, poverty, disgrace and any other adver-sity.
7
Seneca describes a reading with his friends of
“
the fifth book of Quintus Sextius the father
”
, which he found vigorous and courageous,not anaemic and pedantic.
“
When you read Sextius,
”
says Seneca,
“
you will say,
‘
this man is alive, he is vigorous, he is free, he is super-human, he sends me away full of immense confidence
’
.
”
8
Sextius, itseems, had no use for the subtleties of Greek dialectic: his ethical doc-trines were appropriate for hard times, when courage and constancywere needed, but their virile independence was dangerous under anestablished principate.Sextius also taught the Pythagorean doctrine of vegetarianism,
126THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
which Seneca practiced for about a year, early in the reign of Tiberius.He seems also to have taught that the soul was incorporeal.
9
But moreimportant was his influence on the Alexandrian philosopher, Sotion,and the Roman rhetorician, Papirius Fabianus, both teachers of Seneca,who said that the latter
“
wrote more books of philosophy thanCicero
”
.
10
Among the followers of Sextius also was Cornelius Celsus,who wrote an encyclopedic work on the
Artes
, of which eight books
De Medicina
survive.
11
Sextius
’
son may have been the Sextius Nigerwho wrote a book in Greek on
materia medica
that the elder Pliny usedin his
Natural History
.The most durable survivor among the intellectuals of Cicero
’
s timewas Varro, to whom Cicero dedicated the second version of his
Aca-demica
. Varro (d. 27 BCE), seems to have kept up his scholarly activ-ity despite proscription by Mark Antony and the destruction of hislibrary at Casinum. His late work,
Disciplinae
, was a survey of theintellectual disciplines necessary for an educated person, and he usedas a principal source the Greek work of A
ë
tius, known by its Latintitle,
Placita
. This was a collection of the doctrines of Greek philoso-phers (known from fragments in later compilers), which has been vari-ously dated as late as the first century CE or as early as the third cen-tury BCE.
12
Jaap Mansfeld has shown that the earliest version of thework was compiled before the time of Chrysippus (
c
.280
–
207 BCE),and that Varro used a version updated in the first century BCE. Fromthis we learn that compilations of philosophers
’
doctrines, for whichthe technical term is
doxographies
, were being made and used in theperiod after the death of Cicero
—
significant evidence for continuingstudy of philosophy in the turbulent times of the second triumvirate.Less shadowy, but still controversial, was the doxographer AriusDidymus, whose ethical compilation is largely preserved in the Greek anthology (
Eclogae
) of Johannes Stobaeus (John of Stobi, the modernSkopje).
13
Stobaeus made his anthology (much of which is extant) forhis son, Septimius, early in the fifth century CE. Divided into fourbooks of extracts from a host of authors, it is
“
a textbook
…
aiming pri-marily at moral improvement and instruction in practical living
”
.
14
Chapter 2. 7 is the first chapter to be focused on ethics, Stobaeus
’
pri-mary interest for the rest of the work.
15
The chapter consists of threedoxographies, which anthologize respectively the doctrines of variousphilosophers, Zeno and the Stoics, and Aristotle and the Peripatetics.David Hahm has shown that Arius Didymus is the author of all threeparts of the chapter, and that he is the same person as the Arius (orAreus) mentioned by Plutarch and Suetonius as a friend and adviser of Augustus.
16
Suetonius (who had access to the imperial archives) says
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE127
that Areus [
sic
.] and his sons
“
filled Augustus with varied erudition byliving with him
”
. Plutarch describes Augustus entering Alexandria in30 BCE,
“
conversing with the philosopher Arius and giving him hisright hand
”
. Augustus (says Plutarch) then made a public speech in theGymnasium from a specially prepared dais, in which he announcedthat he would spare Alexandria for three reasons, one of which was hiswish to gratify
“
his friend
”
, Arius. The historian Cassius Dio (died
c
.230 CE) says that Augustus and Arius enjoyed many philosophicalconversations. Consistent with this, Seneca calls Arius
“
[Augustus
’
]philosopher
”
, and Marcus Aurelius names him, with Maecenas, as amember of the court.
17
In 9 BCE Arius addressed a
Consolatio
toAugustus
’
wife, Li via, on the death of her son, Drusus, which isquoted extensively by Seneca.
18
Besides showing that, 20 years afterthe entry into Alexandria, Arius was still a trusted member of Augus-tus
’
inner circle, the Consolation is Stoic in tenor, for example in itsadvice to Livia to remain outwardly calm and inwardly self-controlledin the face of bereavement:Remember that it is not a great thing to behave courageously inprosperity, when the course of life is favourable. A calm sea anda following wind do not call for a show of the helmsman
’
s skill.But when they are contrary, he must prove his courage. Then donot submit: on the contrary, walk firmly
…
Nothing is more hos-tile to Fortune than a calm mind.Opposition to Fortune is one of the most prominent elements in Stoicethics of the early Roman empire. Moreover, Arius emphasizes theprominent public position of Livia, in this continuing the Ciceronianemphasis on the duty of the public leader. Seneca
’
s Consolation forMarcia was probably written in 39
–
40 CE, nearly half a century afterArius
’
Consolation, yet Seneca can still say to Marcia (6. 1),
“
Arius issitting beside you
”
.Arius was not an out-and-out Stoic, however. The doxography of Stobaeus 2. 7 shows him to be concerned with the history of philoso-phy, organized in such a way as to bring harmony to the dissonance of competing schools and of different voices within single schools. Inparticular he seems to have attempted to reconcile dogmatists (whobelieved that knowledge was possible) with Pyrrhonian Sceptics, whohad been reinvigorated by Aenesidemus, probably in the decades after50 BCE.
19
Aenesidemus had left the Academic school, dismayed bythe quarrel between Antiochus and Philo, returning to the thoroughgo-ing scepticism of Pyrrho, to which his original contribution was the ten
128THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
modes of suspension of judgement (recorded by Sextus Empiricus inthe late second century CE). Arius, a dogmatist, sought to show thatharmony between Sceptics and dogmatists was possible, in that bothwere seeking the truth: the sceptics potentially could find it in thefuture, whereas the dogmatists had already found it.For our purpose, however, what is important is that Augustusfavoured a philosopher who took a positive view of the power of rea-son. Given Augustus
’
policy of preserving the past in order to build hisrevolutionary political system, a philosophy that suspended judgementin all matters was unacceptable. In giving Arius a place in hisentourage, Augustus was continuing the custom among the republicansenatorial class of maintaining a house philosopher, as, for example,Cicero did with Diodotus. Augustus in principle maintained the fictionof being
princeps
, chief among peers. Arius was valuable as an adviserwhere Greek matters (political or philosophical) were concerned, asSuetonius and Plutarch made clear. His presence in the inner circle of Augustus meant that the study of philosophy was still possible, indeedencouraged, under the new regime, so long as it was not politicallysubversive.The ambiguities faced by the philosophers are especially obvious inthe works of the great Augustan poets. Two of them, Horace and Vir-gil, were themselves close to Augustus through the patronage of hisprincipal adviser, Maecenas. A third, Ovid, was exiled in 8 CE forunspecified literary and political indiscretions, and died in exile threeyears after the death of Augustus. A fourth, Manilius, outlived Augus-tus and steered a safe course through the politically dangerous subjectof astrology by advocating the continuation of the principate.Horace (65
–
8 BCE) is both the most philosophical and the mostambiguous of these poets. His father, a freedman (i.e. ex-slave), wassufficiently prosperous to be able to take Horace to Rome for his educa-tion, and to send him to Athens to study philosophy, the traditionalfinal stage of a Roman upper-class education in the Republic.
20
Horacetells us that he studied in the Academy
—“
Athens added something tomy education, that is, that I would be disposed to distinguish thecrooked from the straight, and to seek the truth in the groves of theAcademy
”
.
21
But he soon was attracted to the cause of Brutus, also anAcademic, and so he fought as an officer (
tribunus militum
) at Philippi.After the defeat he returned to Italy to find his family property confis-cated. He turned to poetry as his sole way of making a living, althoughhe soon received a salaried position in the imperial civil service as atreasury official. Through his early poems he came to the notice of Vir-gil and his friend, Varius Rufus, who introduced him to their patron,
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE129
Maecenas, in 38 BCE. Maecenas provided Horace with the patronageand economic independence (most notably through the gift of a villa inthe Sabine hills) which allowed him to spend his time writing poetryand to be independent socially. Through Maecenas he came to theattention of Augustus, whose invitation to be his secretary for his pri-vate correspondence he declined, apparently without giving offence.Horace
’
s position was indeed ambiguous. Socially, he was an out-sider, even if his father (as is likely) was an Italian, enslaved after theSocial War of the 90s BCE. Politically, he had supported the losingside, and he was fortunate even to be able to return to Italy, let alone beaccepted as a friend of Maecenas and Augustus. Economically, hewould have been destitute if it had not been for his poetry, and it wasthe excellence of his early poems that guaranteed his friendship withVirgil and the circle of Maecenas. Nearly all these poems were writtenbefore Actium:
22
after the triumph of Augustus, Horace had no choicebut to support the new regime, and to respond to Augustus
’
requestsfor a poem on an occasion of state, as he did in 17 BCE with the
Car-men Saeculare
celebrating the Secular Games that inaugurated a newage.Eduard Fraenkel rightly reminds us that
“
in approaching a real poetit should be our main concern to try to understand his poetry
”
.
23
Animportant part of Horace
’
s poetic technique is self-irony: like any goodsatirist he wears a mask (Latin,
persona
), even in his non-satiricalpoems, and the mask is most concealing when he speaks of himself.Thus in his letter to the poet Albius Tibullus, published in 20 BCE, hedescribes himself as
“
a pig from the herd of Epicurus
”
, saying,
“
whenyou want a good laugh, you will see me, fat, sleek and with skin wellgroomed
”—
physical results one would expect from one who makespleasure his primary principle.
24
The self-irony does not invalidate theprevious lines (12
–
14), with their advice to keep a calm mind in themidst of hope and anxiety, fear and anger, and to live each day as if itwere one
’
s last.The Epicurean
lathe biosas
,
“
live unobtrusively
”
, is the most signifi-cant element in Horace
’
s philosophy of life, which we can best exam-ine by studying his later poems, when he had achieved the tranquillitythat earlier he had had to share with obligations in the city. In the firstepistle to Maecenas, Horace replies to Maecenas
’
invitation that hecontinue writing poetry, three years after the publication of the firstthree books of his
Odes
in 23.
25
He complains that he has given uppoetry to concentrate entirely on philosophy, building up philosophicalcapital, as it were, with which to meet the problems of old age:
130THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
And so now I have given up poetry and other amusements. I amconcerned with what is true and fitting. This is my enquiry,which occupies me totally. I am storing [philosophical precepts]and arranging them to draw from my store in the future. And, toanticipate your question about who is my leader and householdgod, I have sworn allegiance to no master.As an instance of his lack of rigidity, he says that sometimes he is asaustere
“
as any servant of true virtue
”
, at other times he relapses intothe attitude of Socrates
’
associate, the elder Aristippus of Gyrene(early fourth century BCE), who justified material and sensual enjoy-ment and defended his life with a female companion in this way:
26
I possess La
ï
s, but she does not possess me. For to be the masterof pleasures is best, rather than never to enjoy them.The middle way between Stoic rigidity and Epicurean pleasure has along history. Long before Zeno and Epicurus, Socrates was said tohave quoted Prodicus
’
parable of the Choice of Heracles for the benefitof Aristippus, and long after Horace
’
s time Seneca used Aristippus
’
argument in defence of his own enjoyment of material possessions.
27
Horace himself, later in the letter to Maecenas, says that
“
virtue is theavoidance of vice
”
, and he concludes with an ironic parody of the Stoicparadoxes:
28
In sum: the wise man is less only than Jupiter. He is wealthy,free, honoured, beautiful, king, finally, of kings, exceptionallyhealthy [
sanus
, punning on the double meaning of the word,
“
healthy
”
and
“
sane
”
]
—
unless he is suffering from a cold.With the last phrase he undercuts the extreme position of the Stoicsand affirms his own philosophy of life, that he will take life as itcomes, with its pleasures and pains
—
in other words, his way is themiddle way.Closely related to this letter is the next, addressed to a young friend,Lollius Maximus, who, like Maecenas, is the recipient of a second let-ter in this book. Horace begins with Homer and the Trojan War.Homer, he says, speaks more clearly and better than Chrysippus andGrantor on ethical questions,
“
what is beautiful or disgraceful; what isadvantageous and what is not
”
.
29
These are the same questions as thosethat concerned Horace in the previous letter, and he advises Lollius to
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE131
heed their lessons well, for
“
if a jar is not clean, whatever you pourinto it turns sour
”
.In the second letter to Lollius (written perhaps two years later),Horace both amplifies his earlier advice and distils his own philosophyof life.
30
Since this is his most important statement it should be quotedat length:In the midst of everything you will read, and you will ask yourteachers by what system you may pass your life gently. Ask whether desire (that always needs more) should trouble and dis-turb you; whether fear and hope for things that are not advanta-geous; whether philosophy or nature will give you virtue; whatwill lessen anxiety, what will make you a friend to yourself,what will bring you simple tranquillity
—
whether it is public hon-ours or the pleasure of profits or the secret way and the path of alife hidden from others. As for me, when I am refreshed by thecold stream of Digentia, which Mandela drinks, a village fur-rowed with cold, what do you think is my opinion, my friend,what do you believe is my prayer?
“
Let me keep what I havenow, or even less, so that I can live out the rest of my life (if thegods wish me to live longer) for myself. Let me have a good sup-ply of books and a year
’
s supply of food, and may I not floathanging on the hopes of an uncertain hour.
”
Well, it is enough toask Jupiter for what he gives and takes away. He may grant melife, he may grant me wealth: I myself will provide a mind freefrom anxiety (
aequum animum
).These beautiful and famous lines are the final expression of Horace
’
sethics. Although they are only indirectly concerned with pleasure andalthough they suggest that prayer to the gods is efficacious, they arefundamentally Epicurean. They are based on the maxim,
“
live unobtru-sively
”
, and they suggest the moderate enjoyment of moderate plea-sures. Their goal is a life free from mental disturbance, the achieve-ment of
ataraxia
that is as much Stoic as Epicurean. Finally, they sug-gest that happiness is ours to achieve through control of our will, what-ever the gods may give, good or ill. Here Horace agrees with the Sto-ics, and this doctrine will prove to be the foundation of the ethics of Epictetus.The first Book of Horace
’
s
Epistles
was the first collection ever of poetic letters reflecting on problems in philosophy and, as Fraenkel hasremarked, it is
“
the most harmonious of Horace
’
s books
”
.
31
The har-mony is not only literary and poetic: it is also the harmony of one who
132THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
has synthesized successfully the many facets of his search for happi-ness. Although there is much wisdom in his later poems, the lines thatwe have just quoted should stand as his final statement of a philosophyof life.Horace was consistent throughout his search in maintaining the Epi-curean doctrine of
lathe biosas
. It was a necessity in the fragile periodafter Philippi, when Octavian and his party could have destroyed him.When he became prominent through his poetry and his friendship withMaecenas and, later, Augustus, it became even more of a necessity.Thanks to his double life, as a friend of the great and a busy man atRome, and as the owner of a villa deep in the Sabine Hills (referred toin the passage from
Epistle
18 by its river and neighbouring village),he was able to achieve the synthesis without compromising Epicureanprinciples.At the beginning of his literary career Horace
’
s attitude to ethicalquestions was one of simple morality: his father trained him as a boy totell right from wrong, in keeping with archaic Roman morality:
“
I willbe satisfied if I can preserve the traditional morality of the ancient[Romans]
”
.
32
Thus his ethical philosophy, however much it owes tothe Greeks, is that of the conservative Roman, without the harsh auster-ity of the elder and younger Cato. Indeed, Horace satirizes the Stoicsfor their extremism and their insistence that only the
sapiens
of theStoic paradoxes can achieve happiness. Thus at
Satire
1.3. 96
–
98 hesays that the Stoic insistence that all delicts are equal flies in the faceof common sense and the facts.
33
He ridicules the Stoic paradox that
“
only the wise man can be a skilled craftsman or a king
”
. The Stoic
“
king
”
is teased by a crowd of boys, and has hardly any friends, whileHorace is truly happy, his peccadilloes forgiven by his friends andtheirs in turn forgiven by him.Horace returns to the Stoic paradoxes in Book 2 of the
Satires.
Thethird satire expounds and implicitly criticizes the Stoic paradox that
“
only the wise man is sane
”
(lines 43
–
46). In the second satire aRoman peasant, Ofellus (a simple Roman with archaic values), lecturesHorace on the virtues of living simply and not being attached to one
’
spossessions. In the seventh satire a slave, Davus, begins by criticizingHorace for moral inconsistency (it is the time of the Saturnalia, whenslaves can speak freely), and he shows that Horace is a slave to his pas-sions, which jerk him around like a puppet (lines 81
–
82). The wiseman alone is truly free (lines 83
–
88):Who then is free? The wise man, who gives commands to him-self; whom neither poverty nor death nor imprisonment can
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE133
frighten; who has the courage to challenge his desires, to despisehonours. He is complete in himself, smooth and round (
teresatque rotundus
), so that nothing external can stick on his smoothsurface. Fortune always is hobbled when she rushes at him.This satire expounds the Stoic paradox more successfully than
Satire
2.3, and it appears to give a positive definition of the wise man in thelines just quoted. Horace is his counterfoil, so it seems, but then wemust pause and consider: is not Horace implicitly criticizing the spheri-cal perfection of the Stoic wise man? Such perfection is still unattain-able, and Horace, with his failings, emerges as the real human being.The
“
black companion
”
of desire may constantly thwart his efforts toescape his slavery (7. 115), but in the end, it is Horace who is real, andthe Stoic wise man who is an unattainable ideal.Horace expounds his ideal most memorably in the sixth satire of thisbook, published a few years after he had taken possession of his Sabinevilla. The poem celebrates and contrasts the two sides of his life, thebusy friend of Maecenas in Rome and the independent poet in the coun-try. He begins (lines 1
–
23a), with a prayer fulfilled: he is at his villa,with its nearby spring of water and woods. The focus is on moderationand limits, and he asks for no more, beyond the security of continuedownership
—
this is his prayer to Mercury. Suddenly he is back inRome. He prays to Janus (god of beginnings), who sends him off earlyfor the long day
’
s grind. The tone is still Epicurean despite the prayersto the gods, for Epicurus, too, was a pious man. Horace
’
s prayersreturn with longing to the Sabine villa in line 59, as he endures thetime-consuming busyness of life in the city. At the centre of hisprayers is philosophy: he prays for a life that is
“
the pleasure of forget-ting the harried life
”
(line 62), a memorable summary of Epicureanfreedom from mental disturbance, and for the enjoyment with hisfriends of a simple meal, with as little or as much wine as each personwishes. An evening spent in this way is
“
a night of the gods
”
(line 65),for had not Epicurus himself said that the man who followed his pre-cepts
“
would live as a god among men
”
?
34
Above all, the conversationof Horace and his friends is about things that matter
—
not gossip aboutgames or other people
’
s possessions, but about the good life (lines72
–
76):we discuss subjects that concern us directly, ignorance of whichis harmful: is it wealth or virtue than makes men happy? Is itvirtuous character or self-interest that draws us into friendship?What is the nature of the good and what is the highest good?
134THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
These subjects, of course, were not exclusive to the Epicureans: Aristo-tle had discussed the importance of self-interest for friendship inBooks 8 and 9 of the
Nicomachean Ethics
; Cicero sought out the
sum-mum bonum
in the
De Finibus
, and the basic problem for Plato and theAcademy was the relationship of the universal, virtue, to the particu-lars of daily life. By setting the discussion in the context of friendshipand moderate pleasures, Horace gives all these things an Epicureanperspective. Like Plato, he illustrates his philosophy with a myth, herethe fable of the two mice (lines 77
–
117).The animal fable was a device of popular moralizing, the tradition inwhich Horace worked as a satirist. He called his satires
Sermones
, thatis,
“
Talks
”
, and
Sermones Bionaei
, a reference to Bion of Borysthenes,a Greek popular philosopher of the third century BCE.
35
Bion
’
s infor-mal talks were lectures couched in terms intelligible to ordinary hear-ers.
36
Works in this tradition required a light touch
—
a fable about twomice rather than a lecture comparing luxury to simplicity, self-ironyrather than self-importance, generalities rather than precise definition,the easy conversation of friends rather than a formal lecture or the con-trived setting of Platonic or Ciceronian dialogue. Horace himself instructed with a smile,
“
telling the truth with a laugh
”
, and heincluded his hearer in his ironic self-criticism
—“
you
are the subject of my story
”
.
37
Horace shares with the Cynic philosophers the attributesof wit, irony and candour, but he did not approve of the Cynics
’
shame-lessness and personal squalor.
38
An ironic persona suited the poet of the
Satires
, but a different onewas needed for the poet of the
Odes
. The eighty-eight poems that com-prise Books 1
–
3 of the
Odes
(the Latin title is
Carmina
,
“
Poems
”
)were published in 23 BCE. In them Horace is the bard (
vates
), theteacher of the community, that is, of Augustan Rome. The first fourodes are addressed to public figures, respectively Maecenas, Augustus,Virgil, and Sestius, consul in 23 CE. In the last ode (3. 30) Horaceassociates his achievement in lyric poetry with the greatest of Romanpublic occasions, the celebration of a triumph by a victorious general.Horace, therefore, steps forth as the teacher of society, expressing thepolitical and moral ideals of the renewed Republic. No longer does hewrite for Maecenas alone, or just for his friends, but for Augustus andthe Roman public.
39
The Epicurean principle of
lathe biosas
was inap-propriate for the
vates
, and so Horace
’
s philosophy in the
Odes
is morecomplex. Horace, the private individual, is still Epicurean, but the hori-zons of his public doctrine are as wide as those of the policies of Augustus and the responsibilities of the renewed republic and its citi-zens. There are Stoic elements as well as Epicurean, the gods of
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE135
Roman public religion (vigorously promoted by Augustus) appear fre-quently, and traditional Roman virtues are proclaimed as if the philo-sophical developments of the previous 150 years had not taken place.
40
The
Odes
needed a new technique for conveying moral doctrine. Inthe
Satires
Horace
’
s method had been
“
to tell the truth with a smile
”
,well described by Alexander Pope:
41
Horace still charms with graceful negligence,And without method talks us into sense,Will, like a friend, familiarly conveyThe truest notions in the easiest way.The
vates
, in contrast, spoke with authority appropriate to the dignityof the institutions of the state, especially the temples and gods of thestate religion. Yet the private individual, Horace, speaks as an Epi-curean, sometimes in poems of great complexity. In
Odes
3. 1, Horace,as a priest (
sacerdos
) of the Muses, solemnly announces to boys andgirls a new doctrine (lines 1
–
4). He recognizes that wealth, politicalpower and luxurious living are a necessary part of Roman life, but alsowith them come fear, anxiety, danger, failure and death
—“
behind thehorseman sits black Care
”
(line 40). He ends with a question:
“
Whyshould I exchange my Sabine valley for wealth that brings more trou-ble?
”
(lines 45
–
46). Privately he will live in the poet
’
s world, whichwe have seen described in
Satire
2. 6, but he must also teach the futurestatesmen, fathers and mothers of Rome, that their duty may be toleave such a world for public responsibility, and that they must be pre-pared to pay the price. The implication, however, is that they can doso, if (as he shows in the subsequent odes) they control the emotionsand temptations that he has described. In the next ode (3. 2), his doc-trine is consistent with the archaic Roman virtues of the elder Cato
—
alife poor in material things, rich in virtues, above all military courage,and, in private life, discretion and integrity. Here the notion of plea-sure, signalled by the word
dulce
(line 13), is transferred to dying forone
’
s country:
“
it is pleasurable and proper to die for one
’
s country
”
(
duke et decorum est pro patria mori
). Again, in the third ode, Horacepraises the man who is
“
just and holds fast to his principles
”
, whichwill make him equal to the gods. Here again, as in 3. 1, Horace ends bycontrasting his position as a lyric poet with those who are concernedwith high policies of state. In the fifth ode he uses the story of Regulus(as Cicero had done in
De Officiis
) to focus on the citizen
’
s duty to thestate, at whatever cost. Finally, in the sixth and last of these Roman
136THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Odes Horace calls for the rebuilding of temples, because neglect of thestate
’
s gods results in moral degeneration.These odes display the complex relationship between the philosophyof the individual poet and public policy and morality. Their doctrine isproclaimed in general terms. In the so-called Maecenas Ode (3. 29)Horace narrows the focus to two persons, the poet and Maecenas. Heinvites Maecenas to leave the
“
smoke and wealth and noise of Rome
”
and enjoy the pleasure of dinner with him in his villa (1
–
16). He imag-ines the cares of state and the anxieties involved in conducting foreignpolicy (25
–
28), and this leads to reflections on knowledge of thefuture, which the god has concealed (29
–
30). The prudent course is tobe sure of the present and to let the river of events flow as it will (it iscompared to the Tiber in flood, 33
–
41). Thus the prudent person cansay at the end of each day,
vixi
,
“
I have lived
”
, untroubled by thevagaries of Fortune. For Fortune
“
plays her insolent play
”—
and nowHorace directs attention to himself
—
and, whatever she does, he cloakshimself in virtue and takes poverty as his wife (41
–
56). In the finalallegory, he compares a merchant-captain anxious for his cargo on thestormtossed sea, and himself, safe in mid-ocean, bobbing along in adinghy under the protection of Castor and Pollux (57
–
64).This complex poem defies brief analysis, and it is, perhaps, the bestplace in which to study the poet
’
s philosophy in the
Odes
. The contrastbetween the city and the Sabine villa continues the themes
of Satire
2.6, as does the contrast between personal interactions in the city and theconversation of friends in the country. The Epicurean principle of plea-sure is implied by the doctrine (equally Epicurean) of living for thepresent (stated in
Odes
1. 11, as
carpe diem
,
“
seize the day
”
). The con-trast (familiar from
Satire
1. 6) between the senior minister of state,described by the historian Velleius Paterculus as
“
virtually sleepless,when affairs demanded it
”
, and the poet is elaborated by the simile of the river, and especially by the reference to Fortune.
42
This allowsHorace to end the poem, as he had begun, with the contrast betweenMaecenas
’
circumstances in Rome and his own in the villa, ironicallypictured by the allegory of the two boats, the laden merchant vesseland the carefree dinghy. Thus the proper distance between Horace andhis patron is maintained, and he avoids the appearance of lecturingMaecenas. Horace
’
s Epicurean philosophy, to be sure, is unchanged asfar as his way of life is concerned. But he takes from the Stoics thenotion of defying Fortune, and, from popular moralizing, the idea of the wise man married to poverty and wearing virtue as his cloak.
43
Horace appropriates Stoic doctrine in his defiance of Fortune. Healso appears to deviate from Epicurean orthodoxy in some of his atti-
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE137
tudes towards the gods. The gods of the state have their place when hespeaks as
vates
, but his piety towards the gods in a public context doesnot contradict his Epicurean views on the gods. The validity of thisstatement is best tested by
Odes
1. 34, where he begins as a
“
niggardlyworshipper of the gods
”
, confident in his stability as an
“
expert in phi-losophy
”
. But lightning appears in a clear sky, and he appears to gothrough a conversion
—“
now I am forced to sail backwards
”
. In fact,nothing of the sort occurs. Lucretius had shown that the phenomenoncould not and did not occur, and Horace is not here contradictinghim.
44
He gives an ironic and comic picture of himself in a moment of superstitious weakness, followed (lines 12
–
16) by an entirely seriousstatement about the divine power that
can
affect human lives. This
“
god
”
is Fortune, to whom the next poem (1. 35) is addressed. Theacknowledgement of the power of the abstract concept, Fortune, doesnot contradict Epicurean doctrine.
45
More difficult to evaluate is Horace
’
s attitude to death, a topic thatoccurs frequently in lyric poetry. Two poems especially focus on it,linking it with the renewal of springtime. In
Odes
1. 4 Horace invokesthe inevitability of death to encourage Sestius to enjoy the present andnot to hope that his pleasures will last for long. While the notion of
“
seizing the day
”
is Epicurean, Horace
’
s picture of regrets for the plea-sures ended by death recalls the satirical lines in Lucretius arguingagainst precisely such regrets.
46
In the second poem (4. 7) the attitudeof resignation to death is more consistent. It is springtime, and weknow that spring has its place in the cycle of the seasons, each of which must give way to its successor. So with human beings, for eventhe best of us is no more than
“
dust and shadow
”
.
47
In this poem,Horace is consistently Epicurean
—
death is inevitable but not to befeared.Our survey of the
Odes
has necessarily been selective, for manyother poems illustrate Horace
’
s philosophy of life. Yet we can nowinclude the
Odes
with the (earlier)
Satires
and (later)
Epistles
toattempt a synthesis. Horace is Epicurean, and there is no ground forsaying that he
“
moved away from Epicureanism
”
.
48
His philosophy isalmost entirely ethical, extended to politics and theology in the morepublic contexts of the
Odes
. He does not announce pleasure as thebasic principle, but he makes clear that a life free from pain and anxi-ety is his ideal. He addresses the gods formally (as did Lucretius at thebeginning of his poem),
49
and he accepts their importance in the reli-gion and morality of the state. As a public figure, and as a friend of Augustus and Maecenas, he accepts the religious, social, political andmoral principles of their policies. In his private life he was guided by
138THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
the Epicurean doctrine of
“
living unobtrusively
”
, and by the principleof the middle way, memorably epitomized in the
“
golden mean
”
.
50
TheEpicurean principles of moderate enjoyment of pleasures, privacy,friendship and the avoidance of pain, were essential to his life as apoet. But poetry involved obligations to Maecenas and Augustus andto Rome, which could only be fulfilled at the cost of some compromisewith non-Epicurean principles. The individualism of Horace
’
s philoso-phy is hardly surprising
—
after all, he himself said that he belonged tono particular school
—
and it suits well this most ironic and complex of Roman poets.
51
Virgil (70
–
19 BCE), like Horace, saw the world into which he wasborn collapse into civil war and political chaos; he probably lost hisfamily property in the land redistributions after Philippi, regaining itthrough the intervention of the historian and politician, Asinius Pollio.Soon after 40 BCE he gained the friendship and patronage of Maece-nas, and through him he became close to Augustus, to whom he readthe
Georgics
and part of the
Aeneid
. Unlike Horace, he did not takepart in the civil war after the death of Julius Caesar, and his social sta-tus as the son of free-born Italians was higher than that of Horace.Ancient sources say that he studied in Campania under the Epicurean,Siro, and that he had intended to devote his life to the study of philoso-phy after the completion of the
Aeneid
(he died before he could finishhis final revision of the poem).
52
Like Horace, Virgil is too complex a thinker to be identified withany one school of thought. Certainly he sought to
“
live unobtrusively
”
as far as possible, whether in Rome or in Campania, where he seems tohave spent most of his time. His
Eclogues
(ten
“
bucolic
”
poems pub-lished soon after 40 BCE) are ostensibly in the tradition of the Greek pastoral poetry of Theocritus (
c
.270 BCE), but their subject matter ismore complex and includes philosophy. In the sixth
Eclogue
, Silenus,captured by two shepherds, sings a song so enchanting that all naturelistens, for Silenus was even more bewitching than Orpheus, whosesong in the epic
Argonautica
of Apollonius Rhodius (mid-third centuryBCE) was one of his models.
53
Like Orpheus, Silenus begins with acosmogony (lines 31
–
40), the creation of the four elements, of earth
’
sglobe and of all the natural and meteorological features of the world.While these lines are full of Lucretian vocabulary, they are not espe-cially Epicurean. Silenus then turns to the history of humankind, toldthrough the myths of Deucalion and Pyrrha and Prometheus (lines 41
–
42), and myths of metamorphosis and love (lines 43
–
63), ending withpraise of Virgil
’
s friend, the poet Gallus (lines 64
–
73). The song endsat line 73, and, for the remainder of the poem, Virgil reports other tales
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE139
of love and metamorphosis (lines 74
–
86). Clearly the song is as muchabout poetry as it is about philosophy, and the literary allusions are asprominent as the philosophical allusions to Empedocles and Lucretius.Virgil returned to the theme of cosmogony with the song of lopas atthe end of Book 1 of the
Aeneid
, but by then his poetry was the vehiclefor a different philosophy.
54
Nevertheless, his admiration for Lucretius was still apparent in hisnext poem, the
Georgics
(completed in 29 BCE). In the second book Virgil expresses his hopes for his poetic career with two alternatives.
55
In the first he prays that the Muses will teach him:May they show me the paths of heaven and the stars, the eclipsesof the sun and the labours [i.e. phases] of the moon; may theyteach me the source of earthquakes, the force that makes the seasburst their bonds and swell high and fall back again into them-selves; may they teach me why the winter sun hurries to plungehimself into Ocean or why the slow [winter] nights delay.These are to some extent themes that Lucretius dealt with in Books 5and 6 of his poem, but, as the Song of Silenus has shown, Virgil
’
s allu-sions extend beyond Lucretius. For the second alternative he prays thatif cosmology and meteorology are beyond his poetic capacity, thenmay he live in and write poetry about the countryside.
56
Such a life,indeed, brings no fame, yet the poet who
“
knows the rustic gods
”
isblessed no less than the poet who
“
knew the causes of things
”
and ridhuman kind of the fear of death.
57
Here again the reference is certainlyto Lucretius, as well as to Aristotle. There follow lines that againallude to Lucretius but go beyond him, as Virgil contrasts the toil of the farmer
’
s life with the stress and anxiety of the life of the politician,statesman, merchant or warrior.
58
Virgil applies the farmer
’
s life to theideals of archaic Rome
—
a society based on the family, whose farmersworked hard and celebrated their holidays with athletic contests. Thusthe tough early Romans built their society and their city, a golden agebefore the coming of warfare.
59
Virgil chose bucolic poetry for himself, admitting that he could notequal the high achievement of Lucretius. But he saw that the Epicureanideals of pleasure and
“
living unobtrusively
”
were inappropriate forRoman society. He was feeling his way towards a philosophy that com-bined Epicurean quietism with the duty of involvement in the leader-ship of the state that Cicero and the Stoics had advocated. He knewalready that he could not limit himself to pastoral poetry, and in thevery next passage (the opening of Book 3 of the
Georgics
) he debated
140THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
his choice of epic themes, turning from the worn-out themes of mythol-ogy.
60
He knew that he would compose an epic in which Augustuswould be a constant (if not explicit) presence, and that this would callfor a different philosophical position. His view already extendedbeyond the horizon of the
Georgics
.In the fourth
Georgic
Virgil quotes the view (not necessarily hisown) that the bees, whose altruism and social coherence he has justdescribed, share in a kind of divine world-soul:
61
Some people, on this evidence and following these examples,have said that the bees share in the divine mind and have drunk deeply from ethereal sources. For (they say) god proceedsthrough all lands and all areas of the sea and of the lofty heavens.They say that from this source [i.e. god] sheep, cattle, humanbeings, every type of wild animal
—
each for itself summons itsfragile life at birth. They say, evidently, that to it everythingreturns and is brought back at the dissolution [of the body], andthat there is no place for death, but that everything flies in num-ber as the stars and ascends to the heavens.Virgil is careful to report these views as those of
“
some people
”
. Theyare largely those of the Stoics (the reunion of the soul
’
s divine spark with the divine fire) and the Pythagoreans (the immortality of the souland its rebirth). Virgil himself returns to the subject in Book 6 of the
Aeneid
, where Anchises is the speaker (probably expressing Virgil
’
sown views) and where the theory is combined with patriotic andRoman themes.The
Georgics
, of course, contain many other philosophical doc-trines, but in our present context we must consider the poem as a stagein Virgil
’
s development, that reaches its maturity in the
Aeneid
. At theend of the
Georgics
he added a
sphragis
(poetic epilogue), taking hisleave of the world of bucolic poetry and contrasting his life at Napleswith the military successes of Octavian.
62
He says,
“
at that time pleas-ant Parthenope [Naples] nurtured me, Virgil, as I flourished studyingin inglorious retirement
”
. This seems to be a description of the Epi-curean life, for the epithet for Naples (
dulcis
) implies pleasure, and
“
inglorious retirement
”
is consistent with the doctrine of livingunobtrusively.Virgil emerged from this Epicurean life, at least in the literary sense,in composing his epic. Its crucial scenes are in Book 6, which marksboth the end of the wanderings of Aeneas prior to his warfare in Italy,and the passing of authority from Anchises, representing the past, to
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE141
Aeneas, the leader of the future. Virgil chose to revive the Underworldmythology of Homer and Plato as the symbolic setting for the transi-tion, whose climax is the meeting of father and son in the Elysianfields. Anchises explains who are the souls that Aeneas sees crowdingthe fields and woods along the banks of Lethe, the river of forgetful-ness.
63
They are souls waiting to enter new bodies and a new life onearth, like the souls in Plato
’
s myth of Er. Anchises explains that allliving creatures share in the world soul that is immanent in the uni-verse. This is the source of their vitality and their emotions, and, whentheir bodies die, the corruption that has infected their souls in their cor-poreal life must be purified in the Underworld. Some then are allowedto enter Elysium, but the rest must undergo another cycle of corporealexistence.Thus Anchises uses the Pythagorean doctrine of rebirth, adaptingPlato
’
s myth. But Virgil now takes the doctrine further in a bold andoriginal invention. He relates the cycle of death and rebirth to Romanhistory, for Aeneas next sees his descendants, the leaders who willmake Rome great.
64
When Anchises comes to Augustus, he describesthe extent of his empire, likening his rule to a renewed golden age, andcalling his achievements greater than those of Hercules himself. Thenhe asks (lines 806
–
07):
“
and do we still hesitate to extend our virtue(
virtus
) by our deeds?
”
Thus Virgil takes the traditional furniture of theUnderworld, where mythological heroes had symbolically conquereddeath, and unites it with Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine to support aphilosophy of dying and renewal that is completely subsumed intoRoman history and Augustan imperial ideals. And these are stated inthe final and famous lines (851
–
53) stating Rome
’
s political, militaryand moral mission:You, O Roman, remember to rule peoples with your power (thiswill be your skill), to unite justice with peace, to spare those whohave submitted and to fight the arrogant to the end.Cicero had looked to the past to develop his philosophy of the justRoman state, and he had based it on the virtuous character of its lead-ers, seen especially in their sense of duty. Virgil looked to the future(Aeneas stands at the threshold of history, so that we, who look back tothe past, may with him see the future), and he identifies (from hisstandpoint in time) the Roman future with the virtues of Augustus.Thus, like Cicero, he identifies moral and political doctrines with thegreatness of Rome and its leaders.Ancient epic was defined by Aristotle
’
s successor, Theophrastus, as
142THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
“
the comprehensive narrative of the deeds of gods, heroes, andmortals
”
. Thus the philosophy of the
Aeneid
includes the gods, as wellas the heroic leader, Aeneas, and the countless people (born andunborn) whose lives depend on his leadership. His story is intertwinedwith the actions and passions of the gods. Except for Jupiter, Virgil
’
sgods are partial and passionate, and the opposition of Juno to Aeneasand his destiny is one of the sources of the poem
’
s energy.
65
Jupiter,however, is both the supreme cosmic power and the high god of theRoman state. In his former capacity he embodies the Stoic idea of Fate,an inexorable power, to whose will human beings must willingly con-form, yet also a power that leaves human beings with the freedom tochoose. Aeneas can choose to refuse the destiny that is revealed to himthrough the course of the first half of the poem, and in Book 4 he verynearly does choose to let love for Dido overwhelm his mission tofound a new state. Only the repeated visions of Mercury, Jupiter
’
sdivine messenger, compel him to renounce his choice and leaveCarthage. In repeated prophecies Jupiter tells us (Virgil
’
s audience) of the destiny that awaits Aeneas and his descendants
—
the founding of Rome and the deeds of Romans that will not be limited by time orplace, for
“
I have given [them] rule without limits
”
.
66
To end a bitterdebate between Venus and Juno, favouring respectively Aeneas or hisenemies, Jupiter reaffirms,
“
the fates will find [their] way
”
.
67
Thus thepoem is teleological, working towards a destined goal, the success of Aeneas and the greatness of his descendants.Yet Fate cannot be fulfilled without the moral excellence of humanleaders. Aeneas, who first appears ocean-tossed and wishing that hehad died at Troy, comes to realize fully, after the revelations of Book 6, what is his duty. He is distinguished by the virtue of
pietas
. We haveseen how Cicero had extolled
pietas
as the mark of the Roman leader(especially in Scipio
’
s dream), and we remember his treatise on duty,
De Officiis
. Virgil takes the virtue of dutifulness (
pietas
) and makes ita moral imperative: Aeneas knows that he must choose the course of duty, at whatever cost to his private wishes and to those people, likeDido, who will be hurt by his choice.The first word in Greek epic is
“
anger
”
,
68
and the final action of the
Aemid
is the killing of Turnus by Aeneas, who, Virgil emphasizes, ismotivated by anger,
“
set on fire by furies and terrible with anger
”
.
69
Our view of Virgil
’
s philosophy must be affected by our interpretationof the end of the poem. On one view, Aeneas is overcome by the mad-ness of anger (
furor
), the very passion that distinguished his enemy,Turnus. On this view Aeneas fails to observe Anchises
’
injunction
“
tospare those who have submitted
”
and Virgil, by presenting his hero as
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE143
morally flawed in this supreme moment, is himself despairing of thehuman condition.
70
Opponents of this view point out that Turnus him-self had repeatedly displayed
furor
and extreme cruelty, not least inkilling Pallas and spoiling his corpse; he had broken a treaty, and hetherefore deserved no mercy. It was a historical necessity that heshould be killed so that the will of Jupiter could be fulfilled. Finally,on this view, Aeneas
’
anger was justified: it was the anger of the justman punishing a crime (the breaking of a treaty), of the man whosefriend and prot
é
g
é
(Pallas) had been killed and despoiled against thenorms of heroic warfare.The most vigorous proponent of this view is Karl Galinsky, who intwo astringent articles has argued that the killing of Turnus was justand consistent with the expectations of Virgil
’
s hearers.
71
He reviewsthe philosophical debate about anger in Virgil
’
s time, and it is worthour while here to consider these conflicting doctrines. At one extremeis the Stoic view of the passions, according to which anger is againstnature and should be suppressed by reason.
72
Against this is the Epi-curean view, that anger is natural and is of two kinds,
“
empty
”
(whichthe wise person will suppress) and
“
natural
”
, which the wise personwill try to suppress as far as possible by means of reason.
73
In the Peri-patetic view, anger is natural and is just if moderated by reason,whereas excessive anger or passivity (where anger would be justified)are both bad.
74
Elsewhere Aristotle defines anger as
“
a painful appeti-tion towards punishment, because of a perceived slight against oneself or something concerning oneself, when the slight was notappropriate
”
.
75
While Aeneas
’
action could be seen to be consistentwith the Peripatetic definition, Virgil did not propose such a simple useof a Peripatetic template, for Philodemus had argued against the Peri-patetic position.
76
He said that anger of both sorts (empty and natural)was painful and therefore to be avoided. Nevertheless, if a person
’
sdisposition (
diathesis
) was such that his [natural] anger resulted from acorrect estimate of the circumstances, then to that extent it could becalled good. Now, we must ask, what was the disposition of Aeneas atthe moment when he saw Pallas
’
sword-belt? Virgil quite clearly sayshe was
“
set on fire by furies
”
, reminding us in that phrase of others(Dido and Amata) who had acted from
furor
, no one can deny that
furor
was Aeneas
’
motivation at this moment. Horace defines anger as
“
a brief madness
”
, and I have no doubt but that Virgil agreed.
77
But heis careful not to reveal what his view is: he leaves us, as a great poetshould, to ponder the meaning of Aeneas
’
action and to resolve (if wecan!) its ambiguity. Philip Hardie
’
s warning is well taken:
78
144THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
those who seek a philosophical solution run the risk of interpret-ing the end of the
Aeneid
into an unresolved dispute betweenancient philosophical schools.Virgil, it seems, like Horace, as a private individual preferred the Epi-curean unobtrusive life. His philosophical interests to begin with werecosmological and physical, as well as ethical. But in the
Aeneid
hedeveloped his own complex philosophy, in which Stoic and other doc-trines were interwoven with the ideology of Augustus and the ideals of Roman leadership, extended to the hopes and failures, and the idealsand passions, of human beings in all ages.The third of the great Augustan poets was Ovid (43 BCE to 17 CE),the only one of the three not to have experienced the free Republic (forin the twelve years of his life before Actium the Republic was at themercy of military and political leaders competing for extra-constitutional power). In his autobiography, he tells us that from hisearliest years poetry was his vocation.
79
In dealing with his exile in 8CE to the Black Sea city of Tomis, he says:my mind thought it unworthy to give way to misfortune, and itused its own resources to stand unconquered.This is certainly Stoic doctrine. Elsewhere in this poem Ovid refers toa life spent in retirement (
otium
) from public activity, in this being sim-ilar to Horace.
80
In fact, Ovid does not reveal a consistent philosophy,yet his most important poem, the
Metamorphoses
(completed in 8BCE, the year of his exile), is framed by two philosophical disquisi-tions which clearly engage with the doctrines of Lucretius.
81
Ovid,then, after his fashion, claims a place in the philosophical debates of the time.The
Metamorphoses
is an epic poem, which Ovid composed withexplicit reference to his predecessors in Latin epic, Ennius, Lucretiusand Virgil, for
aemulatio
(recognition of and competition with one
’
spredecessors in a literary genre) was a recognized element in Romanpoetry. Of these three, Lucretius is especially relevant to a discussionof Ovid
’
s philosophy. The poem begins with a prayer to the gods:I am moved to tell of bodies changed into new forms. Gods (foryou also changed those forms), inspire what I have begun andextend my continuous poem from the first beginning of the uni-verse to my own times!
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE145
Ovid
’
s poem, then, is epic (
“
continuous
”
) and historical (extendingfrom the beginning of the world to the present day), and its subject ischange. Lucretius
’
poem was epic and dealt with change, that is, thechange from unconnected atoms to the shapes of things formed bytheir union. It was also historical in its account of the development of human society in Book 5 and the plague in Book 6. While there areother poems to which Ovid is referring (notably the
Theogony
of Hes-iod and the sixth
Eclogue
of Virgil), Lucretius is the most importantcanon against which he measures himself. After the brief introductoryprayer Ovid moves immediately into a cosmogony, an account of thecreation of the world and its physical and meteorological features(lines 5
–
68). Next, the stars are created in the heavens, the fishes in theseas, wild animals on the earth, and birds in the air (lines 69
–
75)
—
Ovid
’
s way of pointing to the four elements of fire (the substance of the stars), water, earth and air. The climax to the process of creation isthe creation of humankind (lines 76
–
89), for which Ovid gives alterna-tive explanations: either humans were created by a divine creator from
“
divine seed
”
, or they were created from earth, which retained ele-ments of air and
“
heavenly seed
”
(i.e. fire). This Prometheus mixedwith water to form humankind, the first great metamorphosis of thepoem.Ovid goes on to describe the progression of the four ages of humankind, from gold to iron (in this differing from the progress of civilization described by Lucretius), ending with the flood. The twohuman survivors, Deucalion and Pyrrha, create a new human race from
“
the bones of their mother
”
(i.e. stones, lines 398
–
415), while a newanimal creation is formed from the heat and water in the earth (lines430
–
33).There are Stoic elements in Ovid
’
s cosmogony (e.g. the five zonesof the earth in lines 45
–
51) and features that go back at least to Empe-docles
’
system of creative strife (e.g. the
concordia discors
of line433). But most obvious is the response to Lucretius. While Ovid usessome Lucretian terminology (e.g.
semina
, seeds, for the constituentparticles of matter), his creation is controlled by an intelligent creator(whether an unnamed god or Prometheus) and the precise account of the formation of objects from atoms is avoided. Ovid retains the tradi-tional notion of the empty void (
Chaos
) out of which the universe wascreated, and he retains the creation myths of Prometheus and Deu-calion. His cosmogony, then, although it has philosophical features andallusions to earlier philosophers, affirms the supremacy of myth, andhis philosophical exposition is more narrative than dogmatic.This conclusion is supported by the quasi-scientific exposition of the
146THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
power of the wind spoken by Boreas, the north wind.
82
With suitablevigour, Boreas indignantly describes his violent functions in the heav-ens, on earth and in the sea, and under the earth. His speech explainsthe origin of thunder, lightning and earthquakes, all within five lines(lines 695
–
99). Ovid does not conceal his knowledge of Epicurean the-ory about these natural phenomena, but his purpose is to characterizeBoreas, frustrated in his efforts to win Orithyia, as he determines totake her by force.
83
The second philosophical exposition in the
Metamorphoses
is thespeech of Pythagoras addressed to Numa, the second king of Rome,who has gone to visit him at Croton in southern Italy.
84
Numa was tra-ditionally the founder of Roman religious ritual, but Ovid says that hisintellectual goals were greater than this, for he enquired into the natureof things.
85
This was the reason for his visit to Pythagoras. The refer-ence to the
De Rerum Natura
of Lucretius is confirmed by the introduc-tion of Pythagoras (who is never named) as
“
a man of Samos
”
, similarto Lucretius
’
,
“
a man of Greece
”
for Epicurus.
86
Ovid
’
s summary of Pythagoras
’
philosophical speculation again recalls Lucretius
’
Epicu-rus:
87
He approached the gods with his mind, far apart in the distantparts of heaven though they be. Things that nature denied tohuman sight he looked deeply into with the eyes of his intellect.Ovid then surveys the range of his speculations in physics, theology,cosmology, meteorology and astronomy:
88
When he had thoroughly surveyed everything in his mind withwatchful care, he gave it out for all to learn. He taught crowds of silent admirers of his words the origins of the mighty world andthe causes of things. He taught what nature and the gods are,what is the source of snow and the origin of lightning; whetherJupiter or the winds cause thunder by shattering the clouds; whatcauses earthquakes, what is the law governing the movement of the planets, and whatever is hidden.These are not the contents of his speech, but they do refer to the doc-trines of Book 6 of Lucretius, in preparation for an exposition that isquite different in content and purpose. In this way, Ovid once againdisplays his knowledge of Lucretius, only to expound a different wayof looking at the world.The speech begins and ends with the doctrine of vegetarianism,
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE147
which (as we have seen) was taught in Ovid
’
s time by the school of Sextius.
89
The central doctrines of the speech are introduced byPythagoras
’
claim to divine inspiration and oracular authority,attributes which Lucretius had specifically said were incompatible withphilosophical truth.
90
The first doctrine starts out in a Lucretian man-ner:
91
O humankind, stunned by the fear of cold death! Why do youfear the dead and empty names
—
a subject for poets (
vates
)
—
andthe dangers of an imaginary world? You should think that bodies
—
whether the flames of the pyre or the decay of time destroysthem
—
cannot suffer any evils.But the reason not to fear death is the opposite of that given byLucretius, for, in Pythagorean doctrine, the soul (
anima
) cannot dieand continues its life in a new body (lines 158
–
64). The idea of changeof body leads to the central theme of the speech
—
and, indeed, of thewhole of the
Metamorphoses
—
the mutability of everything.
“
Every-thing changes,
”
says Pythagoras,
“
and nothing perishes
”
(line 165),and therefore in eating animal flesh one risks eating the flesh of a for-mer human being (lines 173
–
75). He returns next to the theme of change:
cuncta fluunt,
“
everything is in a state of flux
”
(line 178),which he illustrates with many examples from the natural world, inwhich nature herself,
“
the renewer of things
”
, brings about change.Like Ovid, he begins his narrative of change with the flood, and hecontinues with a catalogue of natural wonders, including many meta-morphoses narrated earlier by Ovid. He ends the list with historicalchanges, the rise and fall of cities and peoples, among which the storyof Aeneas and the founding and growth of Rome again refer to Ovid
’
snarrative.
92
Ovid introduces Pythagoras as a kind of proto-Epicurus, a fearlessresearcher into the secrets of nature, a teacher of humankind, whosedoctrine sought to remove the fear of death and join humankind withanimals in the harmony of nature. Yet the doctrine of Pythagoras con-flicts repeatedly with Lucretius, even while recalling him in theme andterminology. At the same time Pythagoras recalls many of Ovid
’
sthemes and narratives, seen now from the philosopher
’
s point of view,which he defines in Lucretian terms:
93
I delight in travelling among the lofty stars, to leave behind theearth and its unmoving places and be borne on the clouds andstand upon the shoulders of Atlas, to look down from afar on
148THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
humankind wandering without direction, lacking reason and fear-ing death
—
thus to encourage them and unwind the scroll of fate.But the philosopher looking down on the purposeless lives of humanbeings is not the sole source of authority for those who wish
“
toenquire into the nature of things
”
. Ovid
’
s whole poem, and much of Pythagoras
’
speech, has focused on the wonders of change in nature,recorded in mythical narrative. Myth, therefore, also has authority inexplaining the workings of nature. Ovid recognizes the doctrines of philosophy (in particular those of Lucretius), but beside them he setsthe myths, which, he suggests, are equally valid for the enquirer intothe nature of things. The speech of Pythagoras, then, as Sara Myers hasrightly said,
“
mirror[s] Ovid
’
s own practice
…
of juxtaposing, but notthereby necessarily opposing, science and myth
”
.
94
The philosopherand the mythographer unite in the poet, who alone at the end of thepoem ascends beyond the stars, immortal and imperishable.
95
Virtually nothing is known of the life of Marcus Manilius, the fourthAugustan philosopher
—
poet. He dedicates his poem,
Astronomica
, toAugustus and mentions events late in the reign. Later he implies thatTiberius is emperor.
96
The poem, then, was begun under Augustus andcompleted under Tiberius, who became emperor in 14 CE. It is in fivebooks (about 4,250 hexameter lines), and is the earliest Latin treatiseon astrology and the first in any language in verse, as Maniliusboasts.
97
As a didactic poet Manilius emulates Virgil (in the
Georgics
)and Lucretius, whose philosophy he often criticizes, most notablywhere he argues for a divine governor of the universe and its constella-tions.
98
He was influenced also by the
Phaenomena
of Aratus, which atthis very time was being translated into Latin by Germanicus Caesar,who died in 19 CE.Astrology, which seeks to relate astronomical observations to humanaffairs and so to predict human fortunes, is said by Cicero to have beenthe particular skill of the Babylonians, who were the mathematiciansand astronomers
par excellence
of the ancient world.
99
Divination (theart of discovering the will of the gods) was an important feature of Roman religion, inherited from the Etruscans. The philosophical basisof astrology is the doctrine of the harmony of the universe, in whichhuman lives and the constellations are, to use Milton
’
s phrase,
“
in per-fect diapason
”
. The doctrine of the celestial origin of the soul madeastrology, which linked celestial and human events, acceptable, espe-cially to the Stoics. Cicero argued strenuously against astrology in the
De Divinatione
, and he mentions the fundamental arguments of Carneades against divination.
100
He also mentions that the only Stoic
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE149
philosopher not to accept the efficacy of astrology was Panaetius.Manilius is a Stoic, and it is the Stoic doctrines in his poem, rather thanthe technical exposition of astrology, that are relevant to our discussion.Manilius
’
Stoicism rests on two foundations
—
reason and the divinenature of the human soul. In Book 1 he surveys the development of human intellect, with obvious reference to Lucretius
’
survey of humanprogress.
101
He describes humankind as at first lacking reason but intime developing the powers of reason to achieve progress in civiliza-tion. Human beings then used reason to study celestial phenomena:Nor did reason set a limit and boundary to things before it hadclimbed the heavens and understood the deepest nature of thingsfrom their causes, and had seen whatever exists anywhere.In Book 4 Manilius argues that human reason can penetrate the utmostsecrets of the skies and
“
rise to the stars, from whom we are born
”
.
102
His conclusion is that through reason human beings share in the natureof god, who is their origin and exemplar:Can we doubt that god dwells in our breasts, that our souls comefrom heaven and return there? Can we doubt that, just as the uni-verse, made up of every element of air and fire that rises andearth and water, is the home of an immanent intelligence thatgoverns it, so in our bodies of earthly flesh and our life-givingblood there dwells a mind that governs everything and controlshuman life? Can we be surprised if human beings can understandthe universe, when the universe is within us and each humanbeing is an example of god writ small? Or is it right to believethat human beings have their origin in anything other than heaven?Manilius proceeds to his triumphant conclusion:
“
Reason conquersall.
”
103
Manilius and Lucretius draw opposite conclusions from the sameevidence. For Lucretius, the liberating force of the intellect of Epicurusproves that human beings, through knowledge of the physical world,can understand the finality of death and the irrelevance of the gods. ForManilius this same knowledge proves the identity of the human soulwith god, and proves therefore that the soul is immortal, reunited withthe divine at death. God, therefore, pervades the universe, which is
“
governed by the divine power of the soul
”
.
104
Manilius introduces each of the first four books of his poem with apassage of literary and philosophical interest. Those to Books 2 and 4
150THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
rise to heights of passion and even beauty. In Book 2. 1
–
136 he putshimself in the tradition of Homer and Hesiod, which, he says, hasbecome degraded (lines 51
–
52). He claims that he is renewing thepurity of the tradition and that his work is original (lines 57
–
59), pre-cisely because his theme is
“
god immanent in sky, earth and sea
”
(line61). In lines of great power, he describes the divine government of theuniverse and its creatures as proof of the interaction of celestial andhuman activity. Therefore, he concludes:
105
Who could understand the heavens except by the gift of heaven?Who could find god, unless he were himself part of the gods?And it is reason that gives human beings this licence, reason that
“
can-not be deceived nor ever be deceiving
”
(line 131). Thus, he argues,reason, because of the link between the human and celestial spheres,can gain knowledge of Fate and human fortune (lines 132
–
35).Manilius appeals again to Stoic Fate in the preface to Book 4. LikeLucretius, he argues that human beings should not fear the future, buthe draws a different conclusion. For Lucretius, knowledge of the disso-lution of body and soul at death leads to freedom from fear. For Manil-ius, knowledge of Fate gives human beings the power to rid them-selves of fear, for (as the Stoics taught) the wise person will be recon-ciled to fate and so achieve freedom from anxiety. Manilius exhortsus:
106
Liberate your minds, O mortals, and lift the burden of anxiety!Empty your life of so many vain complaints! Fate rules theworld, everything stands firm by a fixed law, and the long agesare marked by predestined fortunes. In our birth we begin to die,and in our beginning is our end.Manilius then cites examples from history of human fortunes, focusingespecially on reversals, much as Ovid
’
s Pythagoras had focused on theparadoxical wonders of nature. As he says,
“
who can make suchchanges [namely, in human fortunes] without the divine power of fate?
”
(line 56). Reason, then, can know human destiny and reconcilethe human will to it. Further, it supports virtue, for the virtuous personwill be ruled by reason:
107
This reason does not persist in defending crime, nor does itdeprive virtue of the gifts of her rewards
…
So let the glory of
PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE151
human beings won by their virtuous actions be all the greaterbecause they owe their reputation to the heavens.Manilius builds his defence of astrology on the foundations of Stoicdoctrine
—
reason, virtue, acceptance of Fate, unity of god and thehuman soul, divine governance of the universe. His poem has gener-ally been underrated, largely because its subject is technical and histreatment of it falls short of the passion and power of Lucretius. Yet ithas attracted the best labours of two of the greatest classical scholars,Joseph Scaliger and A.E.Housman, who saw in it, as we should too,the majesty of Stoic doctrine capable of lifting human beings above thelimitations of earthly existence.
152THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
6SENECA AND HISCONTEMPORARIES
With the accession of Tiberius in 14 CE the continuation of the monar-chy was assured. Tiberius himself soon found that the senate, althoughit kept the title and forms of the Republican institution, was
de facto
powerless, and for the most part unwilling, to oppose his will in anysignificant matter. The schools of philosophy continued to exist inRome, Athens and Alexandria, but the decline of free speechinevitably led to restrictions on freedom of thought. The process accel-erated after 23 CE, with the ascendancy of the Praetorian Prefect,Sejanus, and especially after his fall seven years later. The fate of thehistorian, Cremutius Cordus, prosecuted and driven to suicide in 25,was exemplary, as Tacitus showed in his account of the trial and theburning of Cremutius
’
books.
1
Under Tiberius
’
successors, Gaius (37
–
41), Claudius (41
–
54) and Nero (54
–
68), free thought and free speechwere increasingly dangerous. All three were constantly suspicious of claimants to the throne, and the crisis of the Pisonian conspiracy in 65was devastating to Roman intellectuals. Both Seneca and his nephew,Lucan, were executed in its aftermath, and the Stoics Thrasea andBarea Soranus followed in the next year. The philosopher MusoniusRufus had joined the Stoic senator, Rubellius Plautus, in exile in 60 inAsia: he returned to Rome after the execution of Rubellius in 62 andwas exiled to the prison island of Gyaros in 65.The number of the Neronian Stoics (to whom we will return later) isthe best evidence for the continuing study of philosophy at Rome. Nev-ertheless, Seneca
’
s pessimistic summary of the state of the philosophi-cal schools in the 60s is largely accurate.
2
The only purely Romanschool, that of the Sextii, had died out with the son and successor of itsfounder. The Pythagoreans produced no leader at Rome of the statureof Nigidius Figulus, who is prominent in Book 1 of Lucan
’
s
BellumCivile
, where Lucan portrays him using his astrological knowledge to
153
prophesy the disastrous consequences of the Civil War.
3
This, with theunderground basilica near the Porta Praenestina in Rome, is evidence,however weak, for the continued interest in Pythagoreanism in thecity.
4
A Pythagorean, Sotion, was Seneca
’
s teacher.
5
He encouragedvegetarianism, since in Pythagorean doctrine the human soul mightmigrate to an animal body after death. Seneca practised vegetarianismfor a year, but gave it up at the request of his father, who
“
hated philos-ophy
”
. Seneca says that at this time foreign cults were being banned,and that the emperor, Tiberius, viewed refusal to eat certain animals asevidence for the practice of superstition.
6
Two other Neopythagoreans active in the first century CE aremarginal to a discussion of the Roman philosophers. Moderatus of Gades (active towards the end of the century) wrote eleven books of
Pythagorean Lectures
, focusing, it seems, particularly on Pythagoreannumerology. Apollonius of Tyana (in Cappadocia, part of Asia Minor),known from the biography of Philostratus (early third century), was aPythagorean, whose philosophy was obscured by his reputation as awandering holy man. Neither of these colourful personages is men-tioned by Seneca. Among philosophers of other schools, Philo of Alexandria (who as an old man joined in an embassy to the emperorGaius in 40 CE), is more important for his influence on later Neopla-tonism and as a prominent author of the Jewish-Greek tradition.Also on the margins of Roman philosophy was Chaeremon of Alexandria, a scholar on Egyptian matters and a Stoic, who was sum-moned to Rome, probably during the years 49
–
51, to be tutor to Nero(born in 37).
7
(
Seneca, it should be noted, was Nero
’
s tutor in rhetoricand politics, but not in philosophy.) Michael Frede has shown thatChaeremon
’
s Stoicism was practical, ascetic and theological, and hebelieves that traces of his doctrine appear in Seneca
’
s 90th letter, in theview of Posidonius (criticized by Seneca) that philosophy contributedto improvements in human dwellings.
8
Since Seneca never mentionsChaeremon by name, we may conclude that his influence on philoso-phy in Rome was minimal.Other schools of philosophy were still active in Rome, although lessthan in the Greek world. The Cynic Demetrius was prominent inSeneca
’
s time and irritated Nero and Vespasian, who exiled him to anunnamed island in 71. Given the closeness of Cynic and Stoic ethicaldoctrines, it is not surprising that Demetrius was a friend of Seneca andof the Stoic politician and martyr, Thrasea Paetus. His name is the lastword in the extant text of Tacitus
’
Annals
, which break off as Thraseacommits suicide on the orders of Nero. Thrasea had been discussing
“
the nature of the soul and the separation of soul from body
”
with
154THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Demetrius when the centurion brought the order for his execution, andhe withdrew to his bedroom with his son-in-law, Helvidius Priscus,and Demetrius. The nature of Stoic constancy, exhibited in the pres-ence of the Cynic philosopher, is dramatically expressed in Thrasea
’
swords as reported by Tacitus:
9
We are making a libation to Jupiter the Liberator. Watch, youngman [namely, Helvidius]. And may the gods keep the omenaway, but you have been born into a time when it is useful toconfirm your courage by examples of constancy.Like Seneca in the previous year, Thrasea compares his death to that of Socrates, while exemplifying the Stoic paradox that only the wise manis free, even if his freedom is obtained at the expense of his life. Thatthe Cynic philosopher should be present at such a moment speaks forthe common ground between Stoics and Cynics in their indifference tothe incidents of life (including death itself) and readiness to accept will-ingly the decrees of Fate.Demetrius was himself exiled later the same year (66), and was back in Rome before the end of 69. Tacitus says that at that time, before thesenate, he defended the disgraced Stoic, Egnatius Celer, who in 66 hadbetrayed his patron and friend, the Stoic Barea Soranus.
10
Somemonths later Demetrius was exiled by Vespasian, who dismissed hisdisobedience and free speech with the words,
“
I do not execute a bark-ing dog
”
.
11
Seneca admired Demetrius, calling him a great man and the best of men.
12
He quotes him at length in the first chapter of Book 7 of the
De Beneficiis
, a diatribe that shows how close Cynic and Stoic doctrineswere. Demetrius advocates economy in thought and life: only a fewphilosophical maxims are needed, he says, as guides to life; unneces-sary knowledge is superfluous; one should despise the chance happen-ings of life; death is the end of many evils and not in itself evil; thewise person consecrates his mind to Virtue; human beings are part of acommunity dwelling in a universe shared by human beings and gods;the wise person is free from the storms of life, standing beneath anunclouded sky and on firm ground. All these maxims are Stoic and canbe found elsewhere in Seneca
’
s writings. Seneca says:
13
I carry Demetrius around with me; I converse with that half-naked man and I admire him
—
and why not? I have seen that helacks nothing.
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES155
Demetrius represented an ideal of the simple life that Seneca tried topractise in his last years.From the fragmentary evidence it appears that the four majorschools of philosophy were still active in the first century CE but that,with the exception of the Stoics, they lacked significant leadership.The Academics and Peripatetics were in something of an eclipse, butthey remained strong enough to join the Stoics and Epicureans in thenext century, when professorial chairs were inaugurated at Athens byMarcus Aurelius in 176 CE for the four schools.
14
Their true revivalcame in the following century with the emergence of Neoplatonism.Epicureanism, likewise, seems to have been practised privately in thefirst century, especially in Campania, but there was no significant fig-ure to energize its doctrines. The Epicurean doctrine of a simple lifefree from anxiety was congenial to the Stoics, and Seneca frequentlyquotes Epicurus with approval. But the Epicurean principle of livingunobtrusively was inconsistent with the demands of public life, espe-cially for senators below the age of sixty-five, for whom attendance atmeetings of the senate was compulsory.The Stoics were the only school truly to flourish at Rome in thisperiod, in some measure because they encouraged participation in polit-ical activity, and because their doctrines provided comfort and supportwhen participation became morally intolerable and the individualfound himself at odds with those who held power. While the names of many Stoics of this period are known, that of Lucius Annaeus Senecais uniquely important. He was born between 4 BCE and 1 CE, and hedied in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy, in 65 CE. His family,from the Spanish city of Corduba (modern Cordoba), was wealthy.Seneca came to Rome as a small boy, and his education focused espe-cially on rhetoric. His father, Annaeus Seneca, was a considerableauthor, who wrote a History of Rome from the start of the Civil Wars,now lost, and two extant volumes of quotations from, and commentaryon, declaimers whom he had heard.
15
The cumbersome title is informa-tive:
Oratorum et Rhetorum Sententiae Divisiones Colores
, that is,examples of the epigrammatic sayings (
sententiae
), the arrangementsof arguments (
divisiones
)
,
and the way of shading those arguments(
colores
) adopted by declaimers addressing various set themes. Thesemight have the appearance of a case at law (
Controversiae
), or theymight be speeches advising a historical figure (for example, Alexanderthe Great or Cicero) at a decisive moment (
Suasoriae
). Although theelder Seneca compiled these works towards the end of his life, after hisson
’
s reputation as an orator was established, it shows how importantfor the latter
’
s style was the epigrammatic style of the declaimers.
156THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The elder Seneca hated philosophy, according to his son, yet theyounger Seneca studied with philosophers. We have mentioned theimportance of the Neopythagorean Sotion and the Cynic Demetrius.Among the most important of his teachers was Papirius Fabianus (
c
.35BCE to 35 CE), who was a prominent declaimer and a philosopher, afollower of the Sextii. The elder Seneca says that Fabianus
’
philosophi-cal writing was obscure, but that his rhetoric was flowing, epigram-matic, and especially inspired when he wished to censure contempo-rary morals.
16
In an extended quotation, Fabianus attacks homicide,luxury, wealth, fine buildings and artificial lakes.
17
His apostrophe toPoverty,
0 paupertas
,
quam ignotum bonum es!
(
“
Oh Poverty, what anunknown good thing you are!
”
) anticipates a frequent topic in Seneca
’
sdiatribes.
18
Fabianus was a prolific philosophical writer (he was saidby Seneca to have written more works than Cicero), but his works arenot extant and Seneca only once discusses them at any length (in letter100), while he refers to a work on natural history in connection withthe final flood at the end of the world.
19
Elsewhere Seneca severaltimes mentions both the moral integrity and fluent rhetoric of Fabianus.An equally important teacher was the Stoic, Attalus, who probablylaid the foundations of Seneca
’
s Stoicism. In the 108th letter Senecadescribes how as a young man he was the first to arrive at the lecturesof Attalus and the last to leave, and he implies that what Attalus taughthim was of permanent value. Attalus was exiled from Rome during thedomination of Sejanus (23
–
31 CE), presumably after Seneca hadattended his lectures. The elder Seneca calls him
“
a most eloquentman, and the most subtle and fluent philosopher of your [the youngerSeneca
’
s] generation
”
.
20
Attalus, like Fabianus, was both an orator anda philosopher. From Seneca
’
s many quotations we can get a sense of his colourful style, pointed and rich in imagery, and we learn of hisminimalist philosophy of life and his asceticism, principles that Senecahimself tried to imitate. In an extended quotation Seneca reports a dia-tribe of Attalus against wealth, illustrated by vignettes of contemporarydisplays of wealth.
21
These he contrasts with the life of one who is sat-isfied with very little (
“
bread and barley-cakes
”
). The ideal is a lifepared down to the minimum:
“
turn your minds to true wealth: learn tobe contented with a little
’
. Attalus
’
epigrams anticipate Seneca
’
spointed style:
“
Hunger puts an end to hunger
”
(i.e. death by starvationwill be the end of need), or
“
that man over whom fortune has limitedpower is not free: he is free over whom fortune has no power at all
”
.Seneca approves of this, commenting that
“
Attalus said this to us [hisstudents]: Nature has said it to everyone.
”
These contrasts
—
wealth andpoverty, luxury and bare necessity, death and the tyranny of creature
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES157
comforts
—
are very common in Seneca
’
s teaching, and they wererooted in the teachings of Attalus.Like Cicero, Seneca developed a new prose style for his philosophi-cal works. Except in Renaissance Europe, readers have always beenambivalent about it. Seneca strives after brevity and
“
point
”
to presenthis doctrine vividly, but this very virtue palls with familiarity.Macaulay complained that reading Seneca
“
is like living on nothingbut anchovy sauce
”
. Seneca
’
s words flow smoothly and inevitably:Lipsius likened Cicero
’
s philosophical style to a pond, but Seneca waslike
“
a fast-flowing river that carries the reader along with it
”
. Suchvirtuosity invites hostile criticism. When Seneca was still quite young,the Emperor Gaius dismissed his oratory as
“
sand without mortar
”
, andfifty years later Quintilian wrote a hostile critique of Seneca
’
s style,which he believed was corrupt and corrupted the young.
22
He recog-nized Seneca
’
s range of writing and excellence in rhetoric and poetry,but he found his philosophy careless, his moral criticisms tiresome,and the idiosyncrasies of his style dangerously attractive. He thoughtthat Seneca was a narcissist and unable to practise self-criticism. Thiscelebrated criticism has been echoed down the ages, including ourown. Even after the recent modest revival of his fortunes among Latin-ists and philosophers, he still is little read in universities and hardly atall in schools, and his philosophy is still underrated. F.H.Sandbachdismisses Seneca as
“
a spare-time amateur philosopher
”
and states that
“
It is hard for the Englishman of to-day [1975] to approach Senecawith sympathy.
”
23
Others take refuge in psychology, and as an exam-ple of biased judgement by otherwise intelligent scholars we may takethe following statement from the article (now suppressed) on Seneca inthe first edition of the
Oxford Classical Dictionary
by E.P.Barker:In the tragedies we meet
…
the primitive thought-forms
…
andnightmares risen out of a tortured egoist
’
s unconscious mind.Everywhere are traceable the erratic ability and the limitationswhich are common stigmata of paranoiac abnormality.Much the same sort of thing has been said of Seneca
’
s prose works, yetin his own time his influence was palpable, and in the Renaissance hewas the Roman philosopher
par excellence
, to whom Erasmus and Lip-sius devoted some of their best work. Their editions (along with thoseof Muretus and Gruter) guaranteed that Seneca was the ancientphilosopher to whom readers turned for comfort and guidance in harshand unpredictable times, when violence and torture could suddenlyextinguish one
’
s possessions or even one
’
s life.
24
158THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
The fairest estimate of Seneca
’
s style has been made by Anne-MarieGuillemin in two articles whose titles are significant:
“
S
é
n
è
que,directeur d
’â
mes
”
and
“
S
é
n
è
que, second fondateur de la proseLatine
”
.
25
In the mid-first century CE the Roman audience for philoso-phy had changed since the time of Cicero, the founder of Latin philo-sophical prose. Cicero
’
s audience, like many of the participants in hisdialogues, was homogeneous, drawn from the circle of senatorial andequestrian intellectuals who had for the most part been active politi-cians and had all grown up under the Republic. Even though thatRepublic had collapsed by the time of Cicero
’
s greatest philosophicalactivity, its ideals remained alive in this circle, whose members legiti-mately looked back to the idealized politics of the second century,when (so skilfully did Cicero set his scenes) leaders such as ScipioAemilianus and Laelius were portrayed as conducting their lives andtheir politics according to philosophical principles. Little of this wastrue for Seneca and his readers, born into a Roman world where, asTacitus remarked, few had ever seen the free Republic.
26
The leisurelypace of Ciceronian prose, appropriate for the exposition of unchangingmoral and political principles, was inappropriate for a world of moraland political ambiguity. The glorious vision of the
Dream of Scipio
was refracted into prismatic slivers of an ever-shifting political andmoral scene. In such circumstances an urgent, colourful and pointedstyle was needed. As Lipsius said, Seneca
’
s
sententiae
(pithy sayings)were pointed, lucid and penetrating (
acres
,
argutae
,
penetrantes
),reaching their audience with an immediacy that was all the moreinsightful in times when exile and death could be inflicted by theemperor or his agents suddenly and arbitrarily. Seneca was indeed
“
thesecond founder of Latin prose
”
, and it was his style, rather than theCiceronian style of Quintilian and Pliny, that proved to be the vehiclefor the doctrines of the Latin church fathers.The description of Seneca as
“
Director of Souls
”
is again accurate,reflecting the ever-changing dilemmas of individuals trapped in politi-cal and moral ambiguities. Cicero had recorded the doctrines of theGreeks, which he adapted and expanded to meet the circumstances of Roman society and politics. The foundation of his philosophy was afirm belief in Roman ideals, Roman history and Roman political prin-ciples. Whatever the public rhetoric, little of this remained in the timeof the emperors Claudius and Nero. Seneca
’
s philosophy is predomi-nantly ethical, focusing on the needs of the individual. Even the mostpolitical of his philosophical works,
De Clementia
, was addressed tothe individual, Nero
—
a mirror in which Nero would see himself reflected.
27
Most of Seneca
’
s prose works give moral advice to individ-
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES159
uals, or they discuss the individuals response to moral, social or (morerarely) political situations. This is most obvious in the case of Lucilius,to whom the
Epistles
are addressed. From the very first sentence Lucil-ius is urged to study philosophy under Seneca
’
s guidance: in letter 19Seneca rejoices that he has made such moral progress, and letter 75,which begins with remarks about the nature of Seneca
’
s letter-writing,focuses on the question of moral progress. The very last sentence of the last letter, 124, offers Lucilius a
“
formula
”
for measuring hisprogress towards moral perfection. Seneca, then, adopts the persona of the moral guide,
“
Director of Souls
”
.Seneca was exceptionally prolific, and I will be compelled to setsome limits to the range of my survey. Although there is a great deal of Stoic doctrine in his tragedies, I will not here discuss their philosophy,beyond pointing out that Seneca
’
s understanding of human psychol-ogy, allied to his knowledge of the workings of ambition and power,gives a uniquely powerful dramatic setting for the principles of philos-ophy. The conflict between private desire and public responsibilitymotivates the
Phaedra
. The unquenchable anger of a tyrant and awronged brother energizes the
Thyestes
, where a world devoid of moral and religious principles is the result of emotion unrestrained byphilosophy.Seneca
’
s philosophical treatises fall into four groups. First are the
Dialogues
(which deserve this title even less than the dialogues of Cicero), twelve books of medium length, of which nine discuss spe-cific ethical topics. These are works on Providence, Constancy, Anger(in three books), the Happy Life, Retirement from Public Life (largelylost), Tranquillity, and Shortness of Life. The remaining three booksare Consolations, two of which (those addressed to Marcia and toHelvia, Seneca
’
s mother) are true consolations, while the third,addressed to Claudius
’
powerful freedman, Polybius, contains moreflattery and special pleading than philosophy.The second group of writings consists of two extended works onspecific ethical topics, the
De Clementia
and the
De Beneficiis
. Theformer, of which only the first book and part of the second are extant,was written at the beginning of Nero
’
s reign (54 CE), when theemperor was seventeen years old, to advise him on how to be a merci-ful king. The latter, in seven books, concerned a topic of great impor-tance in Roman society, the correct relationship of giver and receiverof benefits. Seneca returned to this topic more concisely in his 81stletter.The third
—
and best-known
—
group consists of the 124
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium
, divided into twenty books. These are not letters
160THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
like Cicero
’
s correspondence with Atticus, in which he expressed hisstate of mind from day to day and discussed his doubts, worries andhopes. They are really a course on ethics, self-contained disquisitionson specific topics, leading Lucilius from his former non-Stoic ways of thought to Stoic progress, not towards the perfection of the wise man,but as close to perfection as ordinary people may come, which is hap-piness based on reason and virtue.Finally, and forming a fourth group by itself, is Seneca
’
s sole surviv-ing work on physics,
Quaestiones Naturales
. Although the text hasbeen disordered, six of the eight books survive more or less complete,and two (numbered IVA and IVB in modern editions) are mutilated.While the work deals with specific natural phenomena (fire, thunderand lightning, water, the Nile, clouds, wind, earthquake, comets), italso contains moral disquisitions, like that at the end of the first book,that takes mirrors as its starting point.
28
In the following discussion, wewill focus on some of the
Dialogues
and the
Epistles
.The first two dialogues in the traditional order,
De Providentia
and
De Constantia Sapientis
, display Seneca
’
s attitude towards the humanpredicament clearly and forthrightly, often with a noble simplicity,equally often with wearying dogmatism. The subtitle of each of theseworks is significant. That to the
De Providentia
is:
“
Why some badthings happen to good people, although Providence exists.
”
The subti-tle of the
De Constantia
is:
“
The wise man cannot be affected by insultor injury.
”
From these sentences we can deduce the lineaments of Seneca
’
s ethical universe. Over all human beings is Providence, whichis the same as Fate or God. The etymology of
Providence
, literally
“
seeing in advance
”
, indicates a power that has already foreseenhuman destinies, but not in such a way that human beings are its slavesor victims. On the contrary, they are free to choose whether to harmo-nize their individual wills with that of Fate, or whether to resist and tryto change their destiny. The former choice leads to happiness and tran-quillity, the latter to frustration, anger and discontent. Thus these subti-tles show that the wise person will indeed be prepared for Fate to dealsome harsh blows
—
bad things
will
happen to good people. If the wiseperson recognizes the overall power of Fate, which includes divinewisdom and concern for the well-being of human beings, then he (andhere I use
“
he
”
and
“
his
”
inclusively) brings his will into conformitywith the divine will. Thus he will understand why bad things happen,he will accept them, and endure adversity with constancy: indeed, hewill be contented with it, not seeking to avoid or change the decrees of Fate. This is a challenge that requires reason and virtue
—
the attributesof the wise person
—
to be accepted successfully. Thus the wise person
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES161
is pre-eminent: those who have not achieved such wisdom will allowthemselves to be affected by bad things
—
death, disease, poverty andso forth, or insults and hostility from one
’
s fellow human-beings. InSeneca
’
s moral universe, then, the wise person is exceptional, and hiswill is in harmony with the divine will, his emotions (grief, anger, fearand frustration, for example) controlled or suppressed to the extent thathe can call himself truly happy, even in the midst of suffering andadversity. The rest of humanity will strive to reach that level of wis-dom, hard
—
indeed, impossible
—
as it is, and individual human beingswill be found at different stages of progress towards the perfection of the wise person.Let us see now how these austere outlines are filled out in Seneca
’
sprose writings. In the very first sentence of the
De Providentia
Senecasays:You have asked me, Lucilius, why so many bad things happen togood men if providence rules the world. This could be moreappropriately discussed in the context of this work if we provethat providence presides over the whole universe and that god isconcerned with us.Seneca then goes on to prove the existence of god from the order andregularity of the universe, and to assert that god is not the source of evil, rather that god loves good people. What appear to be evils, then,are not so for the good person, who recognizes that they are morallyimproving, like a parent
’
s punishment of a child or medicine for thesick. And over all is the irrevocable progress of Destiny (
§
7):Fate leads us on and the first hour of our birth has ordained therest of each person
’
s life. Cause depends on cause, the longseries of things lengthens [the chain of] public and privateevents. Therefore we must endure everything courageously.Elsewhere Seneca briefly doubts whether events are preordained byFate or an all-wise god, or simply by chance.
29
His conclusion is thesame in all cases:
“
one must be a philosopher
”
, for philosophy willexhort us
“
to obey god willingly, to obey Fortune defiantly
”
. Theexhortation is not new, but Seneca
’
s brisk and sententious style is,along with its memorable images and poetic colouring. Thus he bringsphilosophy to the level of the ordinary person. With Seneca it becomesthe teacher and comforter for people caught in the human predicament,and from him this style of philosophical encouragement for the individ-
162THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
ual enters into the still-unfolding tradition of Roman ethics, pagan andChristian.In a late letter Seneca returns to the theme of conforming one
’
s willto Fate. He sees natural phenomena as a metaphor for human life:
30
Clouds give way to clear weather; the calm sea grows rough; thewinds blow from different quarters; day follows night; somestars rise while others set. Eternity exists through opposites. Thehuman spirit must adapt itself to this law; it must follow it; itmust obey it. Whatever happens we must think happens throughnecessity, nor may we wish to blame Nature. It is best to acqui-esce when you cannot change something for the better; to followgod without complaint, for god is the origin of everything thathappens. That man is a bad soldier who follows his commanderwith a groan.The metaphors follow thick and fast, but it is impossible for a reader toignore the urgency of Seneca
’
s doctrine. Finally he addresses Jupiterhimself, translating the
Hymn to Zeus
of Cleanthes:
31
Lead me, O Father, ruler of the lofty heavens, wherever youwish: readily I will obey. Here am I, eager to follow. If I amunwilling, I shall follow groaning, and suffer myself to do withill grace what I could have done happily. Fate leads on the will-ing, and drags the unwilling.Thus Seneca associates himself with the great early Stoic master. Butthe doctrine is appropriate for individuals in the early Roman empire,especially under a weak and cruel ruler with arbitrary power over thelives of those who might disagree with him.We have seen that the figure of the wise man is prominent inSeneca
’
s philosophical universe. While Seneca admits that such a per-son is rare and morally far superior to ordinary human beings, he main-tains that
“
at great intervals of the ages
”
such a person will exist.
32
From Roman history the younger Cato is the closest example, althoughSeneca is not always consistent about him.
33
He uses Cato to make theideal
“
wise person
”
more real. At the beginning of the
De Constantia
Cato is the historical example of the dialogue
’
s subtitle,
“
the wise man[who] cannot be affected by insult or injury
”
. Seneca draws a vividpicture of Cato having his toga torn by a mob in the Forum, being vio-lently manhandled
“
from the Rostra to the Arch of Fabius
”
(i.e. thelength of the Roman Forum), being spat upon. Seneca concludes:
34
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES163
The immortal gods have given Cato to us as a more reliableexample of the wise man than Ulysses and Hercules from earliertimes, whom our Stoic philosophers have named as wise men,[heroes] unconquered by labours, who despised pleasure andwere victors over every sort of terror. Cato did not wrestle withwild beasts (the opponents of hunters and farmers); he did notpursue monsters with fire and iron weapons; he did not live intimes when it was possible to believe that the heavens could becarried on the shoulders of one man. Shaking off the credulity of ancient times
…
he fought with corruption
…
, with unlimited lustfor power
…
Against the vices of a state in decline and collapsingfrom its own weight he stood alone. He held up the republic, asfar as it could be held back by one man
’
s hand alone, until,dragged off, he shared in a collapse that he had long held off
…
For Cato did not outlive Liberty, nor did Liberty outlive Cato.This brilliant parable is a perfect example of Seneca
’
s method. Theconcrete example of Cato makes the abstract notion of
“
the wise man
”
real. The labours of the great heroes of myth are contrasted with thelabours of a Roman politician, less glamorous than the labours of Her-cules, yet involving the disappointments and humiliations of politicallife. Thus the point is made: the wise man need not be a hero, for hecan overcome adversity through reason and constancy. Only the wiseman is free, according to the Stoic paradox: Cato, faced with the reali-ties of an autocracy and the futilities of a dying republic, chose in life ahopeless but morally good cause and in death the way to preserve hisfreedom. Seneca exploits the paradox (of being free through death) byconfusing the two denotations of the word
“
liberty
”
. The one is moral,for the wise man does not become a slave to the emotions that motivatethe autocrat
’
s followers. The other is political, for the wise man willdie rather than compromise with tyranny. In a Roman context, Cato,rather than the heroes of mythology, exemplifies the heroic status of the wise man.Seneca admits that Cato
“
may be too lofty an example for us
”
,
35
andin letters 41 and 75 he shows how ordinary human beings may admirethe wise man from a distance, yet in themselves have the potential forsharing in such perfection. Since the Stoics maintained that only thewise man could be sane, virtuous, free, etc. (and the non-wise wouldall be imperfect, however close to or far from perfection they mightbe), Seneca
’
s admission of grades of progress towards virtue was realis-tic. The idea, prominent in letter 41, that all human beings have thepotential to share in divine perfection, seems to have much in common
164THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
with the doctrines of Cicero
’
s
Somnium Scipionis
. Yet, here again,Seneca brings a lofty ideal down from Cicero
’
s aristocratic milieu tothe level of all human beings, who are endowed with reason and capa-ble of using reason to live according to nature. His approach wasappropriate for the social and political realities of his time. In letter 41Seneca joins two ideas
—
the divine nature dwelling in human beings,and the perfect example of the wise man
—
to show that the attributesof the wise man can be within the reach of ordinary people. He beginswith the divinity immanent in human beings (
§§
1
–
2):We do not have to lift up our hands to heaven or get the temple-keeper to let us in to speak into the ear of the god
’
s statue, as if that could make us more audible. God is close to you, he is withyou, he is in you. Yes, Lucilius: the divine spirit has his homewithin us, he is our guardian and watches over us in good andbad times alike.Then Seneca describes natural objects that inspire awe: an old tree, avast cave, a river
’
s source, a deep and dark lake. These he compares toa virtuous person (
§§
4
–
5):If you see a man who is not frightened by danger, who isuntouched by desires, who is happy in adversity and calm in themidst of storms, who looks at human beings from above and atthe gods eye to eye
—
do you not feel in awe of him? Will younot say,
“
This is something greater and loftier than I can believe,out of all proportion to the little body in which it dwells?
”
Adivine force has descended into that body. A divine energydrives that extraordinary spirit, which is disciplined and superiorto all that it experiences, laughing at all our hopes and fears. Sogreat a thing cannot exist without the support of the divine.Seneca considers the nature of this spirit. It does not consist in externalthings
—“
golden reins do not make a horse better
”
(
§
6). No, whatshould be praised in a human being is the human nature which is pecu-liar to each individual (
§
8):
“
What is this?
”
, you ask. It is his spirit, and Reason that dwellsperfected in his spirit. For a human being is a living creatureendowed with Reason (
rationale animal
)
…
What, then, does thisReason demand of a human being? Something very easy
—
tolive according to his own nature.
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES165
Lipsius rightly exclaims in his commentary on this letter:
“
O what abeautiful and lofty letter!
”
The ideals are noble, the examples of human excellence inspiring; the moral advice is sensible, its goalattainable (even if we may disagree with Seneca
’
s description of ourtask as
“
something very easy
”
). The link between the Stoic god and themorally perfect human being is made more immediate by the vividexamples from the familiar world of nature. Awe-inspiring objects innature are used as metaphors for awe-inspiring virtue. Seneca easilyidentifies the essential attributes of such a nature, and shows that we,too, possess such attributes, if we choose to employ them. And so thefamiliar bases of Stoic ethics
—
Reason, Nature and Virtue
—
reappearas our means of union with the divine, and, far from being discouragedby the perfection of the wise person, we are made to feel that we, too,have the potential to realize our divine nature and, through reason, toachieve virtue.But not many of us reach the goal, strive as we may. Here Senecabreaks with traditional Stoic severity and in letter 75 he develops theidea of stages of progress towards virtue, using the flexibility thatPanaetius had introduced into orthodox Stoicism. Cicero had said that
“
no one should be overlooked in whom some evidence of virtueappears
”
,
36
and from this Seneca develops the notion of the
proficiens
,the person who is progressing towards the perfection of the wise man.The letter begins in an artfully informal way, which prepares for theinformal and undogmatic theory of the
proficiens
. Seneca imaginesthat his letters are like informal conversation between friends
—“
I wantmy letters to be like my conversation if we were sitting or walkingtogether, easy and not artificial
”
. So the formal distinction between thewise man and everyone else becomes blurred (
§
8):
“
Are there no grades below the wise man? Is there a sheer dropbelow wisdom?
”
No, in my view. For the person who is makingprogress is, to be sure, in the class of
“
fools
”
, but already far dif-ferent from them. And between those who are making progressthere are great distinctions, and they can be divided into threeclasses, according to some people.Seneca then defines these three classes. Highest (and close to the wiseman) are those
“
who have not yet achieved wisdom, but stand close toit
”
. They have abandoned the emotions and vices, yet still are diffidentabout their wisdom. They are cured of the diseases (
morbi
) of themind, but still are liable to its moods (
adfectus
). Seneca defines theformer as
“
inveterate and hardened vices, such as avarice and ambi-
166THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
tion
”
, whereas the latter are
“
bad motions of the mind, sudden andswift
”
, but not permanent. In this analysis Seneca shows his interest inhuman psychology, which makes him a more humane teacher than thedogmatic Stoics.
37
Seneca
’
s second class (
§
13) includes those who are free of the great-est passions and troubles of the mind, yet still may relapse. The thirdclass (
§
14) consists of those who are free of many of the vices but stillare liable to some. They may not be liable to avarice, but they feelanger; they may be free of lust, but they are afflicted with ambition,and so on. Seneca says that most of us will be doing well to belong tothis class, and that only by exceptional effort will one reach the secondclass:
“
you will understand that we have made progress enough if weare not included with the worst people
”
(
§
15). We might object thatSeneca has set too low a standard for moral progress, yet his realisticassessment of human morality gives a gentler face to Stoic austerity.The usual Stoic classification of human beings into the wise man andthe rest is plainly impractical. Ordinary people need encouragement if they are to start along the road to virtue, and they need to know thatprogress is possible, that falling short of perfection is not total failure.The profound human dilemma between evil and unattainable good,has, of course, been basic to many religions and philosophies, and itssolutions range from the heroic humanism of Sophocles to the divinesaviour of Christianity. Seneca
’
s solution is undramatic and unheroic,but it provides the majority of human beings with a practical way toescape from hopeless passivity.The emotions are central to Seneca
’
s moral philosophy, as they werefor Chrysippus and Posidonius. He was especially concerned withanger, and
De Ira
in three books continues the debate between the Sto-ics, on the one hand, and the Peripatetics and Epicureans, on the other,that we have briefly discussed in connection with Virgil. It is an earlywork, completed possibly in 41 CE and certainly before 52. Like the
De Clementia
, which aimed to soften Nero
’
s cruelty,
De Ira
probablyhad a political context, in that the disposition to anger of Claudius(emperor 41
–
54 CE) was well known and even admitted by theemperor himself.
38
The distinction that Seneca draws between anger(
ira
) and an angry disposition (
iracundia
) in
De Ira
1. 4 was made byClaudius, when he promised that
“
his anger would be brief and harm-less, his angry disposition would not lead to injustice
”
. But the treatiseis far more important as a meditation upon the emotion that Senecaperhaps feared most. It is worth noting here that anger in the Senecantragedies is frequently the motivating and destructive emotion, reach-ing its climax in the character of Atreus in the late play,
Thyestes
.
39
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES167
“
Anger
”
is the first word in European literature (
Iliad
1.1), and, as wehave seen above, it is the crucial emotion in the
Aeneid
, the principalmotivation for Juno and her human prot
é
g
é
s, and the emotion thatdrives Aeneas to kill Turnus. Its importance in Roman ethics cannot beoverestimated. Seneca
’
s treatise is addressed to his older brother, Nova-tus (better known by his adopted name, Gallio), who had asked him towrite on the means of assuaging anger, the emotion that Novatusfeared above all others. In the first chapter, Seneca gives a horrifyingdescription of human and animal anger, and the rest of Book 1 is spentlargely in describing and defining anger. Seneca disagrees with one of Aristotle
’
s definitions (that anger is the desire for revenge), and hesays that the anger of animals is similar to human anger but not thatemotion itself, since animals do not have human emotions, whichrequire rational assent.
40
Therefore anger exists only where there isreason. The main doctrine of Book 1 is that anger is contrary to nature,and Seneca defends this against a number of hypothetical questions.
41
The book ends with a comparison of the meanness of anger with thesublimity of virtue.
42
The end recalls the beginning, where anger hadbeen defined as
“
brief insanity
”
, that is, a madness that deprives theangry person of reason that leads to virtue.In the second book Seneca further examines the sources of angerand at
§
18 he begins to answer Novatus
’
basic question,
“
What are theremedies for anger?
”
In one of the most interesting passages of thework, Seneca begins his remedies with the education of children,where he shows how important are parental example and early trainingin controlling the emotions.
43
Here he is following Plato, and he endsthe passage with an anecdote of the boy who returned home fromPlato
’
s class to see his father in a fit of anger and said,
“
I didn
’
t seethis at Plato
’
s school
”
.The antidotes to anger are continued throughout Book 3. HereSeneca takes issue particularly with Aristotle
’
s defence of anger as
“
the spur to virtue
”
, in particular the virtue of courage.
44
Seneca
’
sexamples support the Stoic doctrine that the wise man does not feelanger, which is contrary to nature and must be suppressed by reason.In contrast, the Epicureans said that anger was natural and could bemoderated by reason. The Peripatetics agreed, adding that anger couldbe just if so moderated. The work ends nobly with a meditation onhuman mortality, in which Seneca
’
s prose rises to loftiness:
45
Let each person say to himself and to another,
“
What is the pointfor those born
…
to eternity to make a declaration of anger andwaste their short span of life?
…
Why not rather put your short
168THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
life in order and make it peaceful for yourself and others?
…
Whydo you try to crush violently the man who barks at you, a low-class, contemptible person, yet one who is bitter and hostile tohis superiors? Why be angry with your slave, your master, yourruler, your client? Be patient for a little while: death, you cansee, is at hand, which will make you all equal
…
In the meantime,while we live, while we are among human beings, let us cultivatehumanity. Let us not be a source of fear or danger for anyone.Let us despise losses, wrongs, abuse, criticism. Let us be high-minded and put up with short-lived nuisances. While we look behind us, as the proverb goes, and turn our backs, death drawsnear.
”
The
De Ira
is the most successful of Seneca
’
s long treatises. While itdraws heavily on his Stoic predecessors, it is original in its vivid exam-ples, its realism (based on Seneca
’
s own experience), and its under-standing of human irrationality.
46
In contrast to the
De Providentia
and
De Constantia
, the work sets before us the attainable ideal of a peace-ful life, marked by respect for the feelings of others (this is one of theaspects of
humanitas
), rather than the distant austerity of the wise man.And here again, Seneca
’
s guiding principles are the fundamental Stoicattributes of virtue and reason, practised in a life lived according tonature.The
De Ira
focuses on interpersonal relationships, another aspect of which is the relationship between giver and recipient, the subject of Seneca
’
s longest treatise,
De Beneficiis
, in seven books, much of which is repeated in summary form in letter 81. The subject was impor-tant in Roman society, which was more contractual in its relationshipsthan modern Western societies. The prominence of duties in the philos-ophy of Panaetius and Cicero is evidence enough for this, while theRoman social institution of clientship rested on the proper understand-ing of the giving of benefits (
beneficia
) by the patron, superior inwealth, power and social status, and of the services of the client to thepatron in return. Seneca, however, does not discuss this aspect of Roman social relationships, and the exchange of benefits betweensocial equals is his primary focus.Ingratitude, or the failure to return a
beneficium
, is a cause of angeror mental perturbation in Seneca. It breaks the social contract, andtherefore it is harmful both for the individual and for society. There-fore he begins his treatise by saying that among the worst of humanerrors is that
“
we know neither how to give nor receive benefits
”
. Inthe first four books Seneca defines benefits and examines them from
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES169
every aspect. In Books 5
–
7 he examines particular topics, the mostinteresting passage being his praise of Demetrius the Cynic at thebeginning of Book 7.
47
He expresses his conclusions more concisely inletter 81, which begins by focusing on cases where the giver of a bene-fit later injures the beneficiary. Seneca expands this to affirm the Stoicparadox, that
“
only the wise man knows how to be grateful
”
. For thewise man will use reason to estimate the benefit, the giver, the reasonfor it, and so on, and he will come to a just and dispassionate estimateof the proper extent of gratitude.
48
And in the end such a rationalapproach will lead to happiness and a peaceful life. Thus both the trea-tise and letter 81 confirm the definition of
beneficium
with which thetreatise began.
49
It is a well-disposed action which gives joy and derives it fromthe action, when the giver is ready and willing. It is not theaction or the gift that is important, but the intention, because thebenefit consists, not in what is done or given, but in the mind of the doer or giver.Thus Seneca makes reason, not social convention or monetary value,the criterion for the giving and receiving of benefits.Seneca also considers whether a free man can receive a benefit froma slave.
50
This had been discussed by the Stoic philosopher Hecato of Rhodes, a pupil of Panaetius, whose work on Duties was quoted byCicero. Hecato asked whether in a shipwreck a valuable horse or acheap slave would deserve more to be saved.
51
Like Cicero, Senecarises above this bleak level of ethics. He says that the person whodenies that a slave can give a benefit to his master is
“
ignorant of therights of human beings
”
. A slave is as human as his master: it is hisbody that has been enslaved, not his mind, which is free. Since it is theintention that is decisive in the giving of a benefit, the slave is just asable to give a benefit as a free person. Seneca supports his statementwith a number of examples where slaves performed great benefits fortheir masters or mistresses, and he concludes that the free person canbe just as much enslaved by his vices as the slave by his master.Although Seneca has been vigorously criticized as being insincere inhis views on slavery, letter 47 is the most humane statement about theinstitution from the pagan world, a striking contrast to Aristotle
’
s viewthat a slave is
“
a living tool
”
and
“
by nature a slave
”
.
52
Seneca doesnot question the institution of slavery, to be sure, but he does admitthat a slave is a human being no different from his master and subjectto the same fortune. He cites examples from Roman history of Roman
170THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
citizens who have been enslaved (for example, after a military defeat),and he makes the point that all human beings are slaves to their vicesand their desires. Slaves, then, should be treated humanely and reason-ably, so that they will respect, not fear, their masters. We may rightlybe disappointed that Seneca goes no further than this in his criticism of Roman slavery: we will learn more about the meaning of slavery andfreedom from Epictetus, who was himself a former slave. Neverthe-less, Seneca
’
s doctrine is based on the Stoic idea that all human beingsshare in the same divine origin, to which they will return, and that allare endowed with reason, and thus with the potential to achieve virtue.The doctrine of the community of human beings is extremely impor-tant for Seneca, most interestingly in the dialogues
De Otio
and
DeTranquillitate
, written probably before his retirement from Nero
’
scourt in 62 CE. Whether or not these works are closely linked to eventsin Seneca
’
s life (as some scholars suppose), they address the problemof political participation, a central dilemma to the philosopher who wasalso a politician.
53
Important aspects of the problem are freedom andthe proper course of action for the virtuous person involved in politics.Stoic doctrine taught that the virtuous person will participate in thelife of the city, that is in political activity. In Roman history this isborne out in the careers of Cato the Younger, of Seneca, and of Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus. In Zeno
’
s ideal republic all citizens arevirtuous, so that there is no need for the laws and institutions of conven-tional cities.
54
But in states as they actually are, the virtuous personfaces an exquisite dilemma if the ruler is morally bad. Panaetius had justified the imperial mission of the senatorial class and encouraged itsmembers to undertake heavy political responsibilities on the groundsof the community of humankind and the assurance of their place in thedivinely ordered cosmos, a doctrine vindicated in Cicero
’
s
SomniumScipionis
. But under the Roman emperors political power flowed fromthe emperor, and the model of senators exercising power in competi-tion with their peers was distorted by the concentration of militarypower, political influence and social patronage in the person of theemperor. The leader under the Roman republic undertook his duties inthe context of service to the community of humankind, towards whomhe directed his
oikeiosis
, that is, his moral affinity or orientation.Cicero, through the Academic speaker, Piso, had shown how the affin-ity of human beings spread from parents and family, through friendsand fellow-citizens, to the whole of the human race.
55
The idea of
oikeiosis
towards all humankind, first articulated by Zeno, wasextended by Chrysippus, in his work
On Nature
, to the
“
community of all rational beings who are citizens of the universe
”
, including gods
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES171
and humankind.
56
Thus the possibility of dual citizenship was created:one was a citizen of Rome or Athens, but also of the community of allhuman and divine beings.For Seneca this was the solution to the dilemma of political participa-tion. The
De Tranquillitate
, which is addressed to Seneca
’
s friendAnnaeus Serenus (also a high official in Nero
’
s court, who died in orabout 62 CE), begins with Serenus consulting Seneca about themalaise that he feels
—
he wishes to continue in public life, yet he feelsthe attraction of retirement (
otium
). In reply, Seneca recommendsinvolvement in politics and he disagrees with the philosopher Athen-odorus of Tarsus who advised swift and complete retreat into
otium
when public life became too corrupt for a virtuous person to participatein.
57
Seneca advises a gradual retreat
“
with standards uncaptured andmilitary dignity unimpaired
”
. Here is the virtuous man
’
s gradual retreat:He may not serve in the army: let him run for political office. Hemust live as a private individual: let him be an orator. He is for-bidden to speak: let him help his fellow-citizens by means of hisprivate support. Even the Forum is dangerous for him to enter: inprivate houses, at public shows, at dinner parties, let him play therole of a good companion, a loyal friend, and a moderate fellow-guest. He has lost the duties of a citizen: let him perform those of a human being. Therefore with a generous spirit we have notshut ourselves inside the walls of one city, but we have sent our-selves to interact with the whole world. We have declared thatthe universe is our fatherland, so as to give ourselves a broaderfield for virtue.Thus the retreat from public life is defined by broadening circles of activity, which finally include
“
the community of the citizens of theuniverse
”
of Chrysippus. Seneca
’
s
otium
is active, in contrast to that of the philosophers criticized by Quintilian for shirking their duties ascitizens.
58
Elsewhere, returning to the military metaphor, Seneca tellsLucilius that
“
to be alive is to be on campaign
”
and that it is shamefulto be inactive while others labour. Wherever he is, the virtuous citizenwill consider that he is like a soldier assigned to a post (
statio
) whichhe may not desert.
59
This apparently neat theory, however, clashed with the rules for sena-tors, who were compelled to attend the senate until the age of 65 (or60). When Thrasea was put on trial, the charge was that he had with-drawn from the senate although he was an ex-consul, that he did notperform his duties as a priest, that he had not honoured his oath as a
172THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
citizen
—
in brief, that he had become a traitor and an enemy of thestate.
60
Some further justification was needed for withdrawal into
otium
. This Seneca provides in his
De Otio
(now incomplete) byappealing to the doctrine of the dual citizenship of the virtuous person.Denied public activity at Rome, he will still try to be actively useful tothe human community:
61
This surely is what is demanded of a human being
—
that he be of use to human beings, to many if that can be achieved; to few if itbe less possible; to those closest to him if it be still less possible;to himself if it be less still. For whenever he makes himself use-ful to others he is transacting the business of the wholecommunity.Finally, Seneca enunciates the doctrine of the two republics:
62
In our mind we embrace two republics. The first is large andtruly
“
public
”
and includes gods and human beings. In it we donot look at this or that corner, but we limit the boundaries of ourrepublic with the sun. The second republic is that in which thecircumstances of our birth have enrolled us. This will be Athensor Carthage or some other city which belongs not to all humanbeings but to a definite group
…
This former, greater, republic wecan serve even as private individuals
—
indeed, perhaps better inprivate so that we can enquire into the nature of Virtue.Thus Seneca adapts the doctrines of Zeno and Chrysippus to the con-stricting circumstances of public life under Nero. Like Cicero, he turnsfrom the constraints of contemporary politics to the wider universe of gods and human beings, using the doctrine of dual citizenship toencourage the virtuous person still to be active on behalf of humankind, even when political activity in his own community isrestricted. His theory was destined to have long-lasting influence, notleast in the history of early Christianity.Seneca recommends suicide as a way of withdrawing from publiclife only in the context of escaping from the cruelties of orientaltyrants.
63
He calls it in this passage
“
the road to liberty
”
, and it is lib-erty that is the basis of his frequent discussions of suicide.
64
Thraseahad modelled his death on that of Socrates, particularly in the libationof his blood to Jupiter the Liberator, and he also had in mind Seneca
’
ssuicide the previous year (65 CE), in which Socrates was again theexample and again the dying man with his last words offered a libation
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES173
to Jupiter the Liberator.
65
People of high social or political rank atRome who were condemned to death were allowed to commit suiciderather than wait for the executioners stroke. Both Seneca and Thraseawere condemned by Nero (the former suspected of participation in thePisonian conspiracy, the latter convicted of disloyalty for not perform-ing his public duties), and both used their suicides both as political actsand as assertions of individual liberty. They were, then, reasoned acts,worthy of the Stoic wise man.The basic Stoic doctrine on suicide was Zeno
’
s:
66
The wise man will make a reasonable exit from life, for the sakeof his country and his friends, and if he is in unyielding pain orsuffers loss of his limbs or incurable disease.Seneca was very clear that suicide was not justified by boredom withlife, or lust for, or even fear of, death.
67
He says,
“
the brave and wiseman ought not to run away from life but make his exit
”
. He admiredhis friend, the historian Aufidius Bassus, for enduring the infirmities of age rather than yielding to them by committing suicide.
68
Bassus
’
mindwas unimpaired, and therefore he used reason to continue his life, likethe captain of a damaged but still seaworthy ship. Like the wise man,he contemplated death rationally, and he would meet it gladly becausehe was mentally prepared.So much for reasons not to commit suicide. At the end of the
DeProvidentia
(
§
6) and in Letters 70 and 77 (along with many other inci-dental references) Seneca recommends it as a means to freedom, rely-ing on Zeno
’
s doctrine of the
“
reasonable exit
”
and the Stoic paradoxthat
“
only the wise man is free
”
. So in the passage from the
De Provi-dentia
he catalogues different methods of suicide as speedy ways toescape from the tyranny of intolerable evils. Death, in Stoic doctrine,belongs to the category of
“
indifferent
”
things, and therefore is not tobe feared. In letter 70 he attacks philosophers who say that one mustwait for a natural death (
§
14):he who says this does not see that he is closing the road to lib-erty: the eternal law has achieved nothing better than that it hasgiven us one entrance into life, but many ways out.One does not have to be a Cato to die by a noble suicide (
§
19), foreven criminals, prisoners and gladiators have achieved this (Senecagives a number of examples). How much more then should the personwho is guided by reason, and has meditated upon death for a long time,
174THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
be capable of a noble suicide! (
§§
27
–
28). What is important to Senecais how well one dies, for dying well is to escape from living disgrace-fully (
§
6). Later, in Letter 77, Seneca describes the suicide of TulliusMarcellinus, which is especially interesting because Marcellinus is aborderline case of justifiable suicide. He was
“
a peaceful young manwho quickly grew old
”
, and he suffered from a chronic disease thatwas curable, although troublesome (
§
5). He took the advice of
“
ourStoic friend
”
(who is not named), that death is not to be feared andnoble if one dies with honour, prudence and courage (
§
6). So Marcelli-nus fasted for three days and died (as he himself said) with a certainpleasure after being placed in a hot bath. Seneca
’
s point here, which hemakes with a series of historical examples, is that suicide is justified if it is based on reason, and that it is more virtuous to confirm one
’
s lib-erty through death than to be subject to the loss of freedom. He con-cludes that length of life is insignificant compared with its moral qual-ity:
“
what matters is not how long you live, but how well
”
(
§
20). Wemay deplore Seneca
’
s morbid interest in suicide, but his own death,even if it was as histrionic as Tacitus describes it, exemplified his prin-ciples.
69
In letter 89. 9 Seneca accepts the traditional Stoic division of philos-ophy into three parts, which he names in this order: moral (ethics), nat-ural (physics, including theology), and rational (logic, which hedefines as requiring accuracy in vocabulary, structure and argument).Like the Epicureans (
§
11), who, he says, got rid of the
“
rational
”
cate-gory, Seneca appears to have very little interest in logic and epistemol-ogy.
70
He does discuss these matters in several letters: for example, inthe 65th letter he discusses causes and material, including the Aris-totelian
“
form
”
(
eidos
) and the Platonic
“
ideas
”
(
§§
4
–
11), but hequickly dismisses them as
“
including either too little or too much
”
(
§
11), and he hurries to give his own definition of the original cause,which he says is
“
reason, that is, god
”
(
§
12). In letter 58. 26 he dis-misses Plato
’
s
“
ideas
”
by asking,
“
How can Plato
’
s
“
ideas
”
make me[morally] better?
”
While he can on occasion use Stoic logic (for exam-ple, the series of syllogisms in letter 87), his primary concern is withethics. The letters constitute a programme of moral improvement, andthe focus on Reason and Virtue is exclusively moral. Even the discus-sion of philosophical categories in letter 89 ends with a diatribe againstluxury and greed, in keeping with Seneca
’
s earlier remark (89. 8), that
“
Philosophy is the study of virtue.
”
Yet his attitude to logic is not simply hostile. As Jonathan Barneshas shown, he is hostile to the wrong uses of logic, for example, forintellectual showing-off or for raising logical problems that have no
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES175
ulterior purpose. His warnings to Lucilius about logic indicate concernthat Lucilius was too much involved in its study, for it is worthlessunless it is subordinated to the goal of moral improvement.
71
To him,then, logic is an instrument for leading a better life or for the study of physics, if such study will lead us to a better life.Seneca was deeply interested in natural philosophy: he wrote a work (now lost) on earthquakes, and the
Naturales Quaestiones
is anextended exposition of Stoic natural philosophy
—
the most completethat survives.
72
Towards the end of letter 65, after the discussion of causes, he imagines Lucilius criticizing him for wasting time in suchenquiries (
§
15) because they have no moral effect.
“
But
”
, repliesSeneca,
“
you cannot forbid me to study the nature of things (
rerumnatura
, perhaps an intentional reminiscence of Lucretius), or the originof the universe and its creator, the secrets of cosmology and the originof light and fire, or the home of the soul after the death of the body.These are lofty subjects worthy of the human mind, for they lift itabove its prison in the body to contemplation of the universe and of god
”
(
§§
19
–
24).Seneca believed that philosophy is the supreme activity of thehuman mind and that it alone will lead to the virtuous and happy life.Perhaps the most well-known of his letters is Letter 88, in which heattacks
“
liberal studies
”
for being at best introductory to the study of wisdom and generally morally inferior. He examines the conventionalstages of Roman education and asks (
§
3),
“
Which of these builds theroad to virtue?
”
He looks at the subjects which later became the medi-aeval
quadrivium
—
geometry, arithmetic, astronomy (to which he addsastrology,
§
14), and music
—
and finds that none of them teach virtue(
§
20). Even literature fails in this: Homer was not a philosopher (
§§
5
–
8)
—
does the
Odyssey
teach
“
how I may love my country, my wife, myfather, or how I may travel over the seas to reach these good thingseven if shipwrecked?
”
Posidonius is attacked for his fourfold divisionof
“
the arts
”
(in Greek,
technai
:
§§
21
–
23). The inferior categories,which concern the practical details of life or the increase of pleasure orthe elementary training of children, are easily dismissed; the highestPosidonian category,
artes liberales
, Seneca will admit only if the lib-eral arts are truly
“
free
”
(
liberae
: he plays on the words
libera
and
lib-eralis
), for only the wise person is free, and in education freedombelongs only to the study of virtue. At the end of the letter Seneca dis-misses Greek epistemology, reserving his greatest scorn for the Scep-tics, including the new Academy (
§§
43
–
46):for they have introduced a new kind of knowledge, knowing
176THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
nothing
…
[The earlier philosophers] do not shine a light to directmy sight towards the truth, while these [the Academic Sceptics]gouge out my eyes.Seneca returns to the attack in Letter 90, where he criticizes Posidoniusfor claiming for philosophy the invention of buildings and architecturalimprovements (
§§
7
–
10, 32). He denies the possibility of philosophy inthe early stages of human development, and
—
perhaps answering Book 5 of Lucretius
—
he sees the progress of human civilization as accompa-nied by vice. The primitive golden age was morally innocent becauseof ignorance, and virtues such as prudence, temperance and couragedid not exist, for they occur only
“
in a mind that is educated andtrained and brought to the heights [of virtue] by constant practice
”
(
§
46).Finally, in letter 108, Seneca recalls his early enthusiasm for philos-ophy under his teachers, Attalus and Sotion. He contrasts philosopherslike them with pedants who miss the philosophical importance of thewords that they read in their search for answers to trivial questions.And so, says Seneca (
§
23),
“
What had been philosophy became philol-ogy
”
. In this same letter (
§
1) Seneca refers to his intention of
“
settingout in order the whole of moral philosophy
”
, as if ethics were all thatconcerned him in philosophy. In reality, as we have seen, physics andlogic had their part in leading the student to reason and virtue.Thus in the
Naturales Quaestiones
the moral dimension is as impor-tant to Seneca as the physical. In the opening chapter he contrastsethics and physics: the former
“
teach what is to be done on earth, theother what is being done in the heavens
”
, for an enquiry into the natu-ral world concerns the gods and shows how far different their perspec-tive is from that of human beings. In the Preface to Book 3 (
§
18) hesays that study of
“
the nature of things
”
raises the mind above lowthings (
sordida
) and liberates it from the body. Here again Seneca isdebating Lucretius, who expounded the nature of things in order toprove that the gods do not concern themselves with human affairs andthat human beings will be liberated from fear by knowledge of thematerial composition of the universe and of the human soul.Seneca has always been a controversial figure. As a politician hehad learned to compromise, if only to survive. His passivity in Nero
’
smore egregious crimes cannot be reconciled with his ethical doc-trines.
73
His insistence on the
“
indifference
”
of money is inconsistentwith his own wealth, and he does defend himself on this charge in the
De Vita Beata
17
–
22, quoting his critics at some length.
“
You speak
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES177
one way and live another
”
, they said (
§
18). His defence is summarizedin
§
21.4:For the wise man does not think himself unworthy of chancegifts. He does not love wealth, but he prefers it. He admits it notinto his mind, but into his house. He does not reject the wealththat he has, but he knows its limits, and he wishes to make hisgreater means the servants of his virtue.Finally, Seneca says (
§
22. 4):
“
If my wealth disappeared, it would takeaway nothing except itself.
”
We must form our own opinions on the efficacy of this defence. Cer-tainly it did not impress Seneca
’
s contemporaries (as Tacitus reports innarrating the attack on Seneca by Suillius in 58 CE), or the third-century historian, Cassius Dio.
74
The charge of hypocrisy wasexpressed pithily by Milton:
“
Seneca, in his books a philosopher.
”
Yetit his books that are important. In his language he created a new vehi-cle for Roman philosophy, and he expressed truths about the humancondition and human aspirations that have been an inspiration to count-less readers in times of perplexity. Macaulay sneers at the impractical-ity of Seneca
’
s Stoic categories, for bereavement, grief, anger and lossare all too real to their sufferers. Is it helpful, he asks, to call thesethings
“
indifferent
”
? Contrasting the Stoicism of Seneca and Epictetuswith the
“
common-sense
”
practicality of Bacon, Macaulay says:
75
They (a Stoic and a Baconian) come to a village where the small-pox has just begun to rage
…
. The Stoic assures the dismayedpopulation that there is nothing bad in the smallpox, and that to awise man disease, deformity, death, the loss of friends, are notevils. The Baconian takes out a lancet and begins to vaccinate.To Macaulay, Seneca
’
s philosophy is
“
a philosophy of thorns
…
a phi-losophy of words
”
. Against the charge of barrenness and hypocrisy wecan and must set the very real achievement of Seneca in setting forth ina new Latin prose style a way of looking at the world that has broughtcomfort and inspiration to people through the ages in times of trouble.For Seneca understood the shortcomings, and especially the emotions,of human beings as they are, and he sought to heal them by settingbefore them an ideal to which every person might aspire, however dis-tant the goal. Let us end, then, by setting against the satire of Macaulaythe judgement of Justus Lipsius:
76
178THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
And so I boldly cast my vote for you, Seneca. In philosophy, andespecially in moral philosophy, you are the best.
SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES179
7STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THEFLAVIANS
Unshaken by the deaths of Seneca, Thrasea and Barea, the Stoics con-tinued to be the most vigorous philosophical sect in the Roman world,although Platonists and Epicureans remained active. In this chapter,which covers the period from the accession of Nero (54 CE) to the endof the reign of Domitian (96 CE), almost all the philosophers whom weshall discuss were Stoics. We shall need first to review the social andpolitical context of Stoicism in this period.The death of Nero in 68 CE brought to an end the Julio-Claudiandynasty, rulers who were descended either from Augustus (adoptedson of Julius Caesar) or Tiberius Claudius Nero (d. 33 BCE), first hus-band of Livia, the wife of Augustus, and father of the EmperorTiberius. Nero was descended from both, and with his suicide the fieldwas open for claimants to the throne, for no one seriously expected theRepublic to be restored. For over a year civil wars were fought by fourclaimants, each of whom became emperor in succession, until thefourth, Flavius Vespasianus, emerged to reign for a decade (69
–
79 CE)and found a new dynasty. These events affected the development of Roman philosophy in several ways.First, there was the weakening of the central position of Rome inpolitics, patronage and culture. Tacitus remarked that in 68
–
69 CE
“
asecret of empire had been revealed
—
that an emperor could be madeelsewhere than at Rome
”
.
1
In 68
–
69 the armies in Gaul, Germany andSyria chose, and fought amongst themselves for, Nero
’
s successors,and thereafter the central authority of the emperor and senate dependedon the armies in the provinces. Ambitious men from the provinces rosein the Roman hierarchy in greater numbers, and the first non-Italianemperor, Trajan (from Spain), succeeded in 98 CE. Other centres com-peted with Rome for intellectual and cultural leadership, and the impor-tance of centres in the provinces was increased by the foreign wars of
180
the emperors or their tours of inspection (true especially of Hadrian).Increasingly, the Roman philosophers did not have to teach at Rome,and neither did they necessarily depend on the patronage of aristocraticRomans, among whom the emperor was the dominant patron.
2
Second, Greek recovered its near-monopoly as the language of phi-losophy, even for Roman audiences. Cornutus (perhaps a native of Lepcis, in Libya), Musonius (a Roman knight of Etruscan descent),and Epictetus (from Phrygia in Asia Minor) all lectured in Greek.Plutarch spent nearly all his time in his home town of Chaeronea, visit-ing Rome twice, probably around 80 and 90 CE. He wrote exclusivelyin Greek and admits that he did not learn Latin thoroughly:
3
I live in a small city
…
When I was in Rome and staying in otherareas of Italy, I did not have the leisure to exercise myself in theRoman dialect because of my political duties and the numbers of people who came to hear me lecture on philosophy.Even the Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in Greek. Of the philoso-phers whom we shall consider in this chapter and the next, onlyApuleius wrote in Latin. The dissipation of political and militarypower in the century between Nero and Marcus Aurelius was accompa-nied by intellectual decentralization, which benefited the Greeks.Greek intellectual hegemony was recognized and symbolized by theestablishment of the four chairs of philosophy at Athens by MarcusAurelius in 176 CE.Nevertheless, philosophy was less prominent in the Greek worldthan rhetoric, and the period between the reign of Nero and that of Alexander Severus (d. 235 CE) is that of the Second Sophistic, a termcoined by the third-century writer, Philostratus (
fl
.
c
. 230 CE), authorof the biography of Apollonius of Tyana.
4
In this period Greek declaimers flourished, who, Philostratus believed, were the intellectualheirs of the early Greek Sophists. He wrote about 40
“
biographies
”
,which, with few exceptions, are no more than short sketches. Of thelonger ones, that on Herodes Atticus (2. 1) is exceptionally full andappears to be the central feature of the whole work. Philostratusincludes about ten of the early sophists (for example, Gorgias and Pro-tagoras) and orators, ending with the fourth-century BCE orator andopponent of Demosthenes, Aeschines (1. 18), whom he credits with thefounding of the second sophistic, although Aeschines died in about322 BCE. Rather surprisingly, Carneades is included with the sophists(1.4), because of the force of his oratory. After Aeschines, Philostratusnames an orator of Nero
’
s time, Nicetes of Smyrna (1. 19), who, he
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS181
says, revived the art of oratory in the Greco-Roman world, and so, weare led to assume, was really the initiator of the Second Sophistic. Thesophists after Nicetes, whose oratory brought them wealth and pres-tige, were prominent in the cultural and intellectual life of the Greek world in the second century. The emperors Antoninus Pius (138
–
61CE) and Marcus Aurelius (161
–
80 CE) had much to do with theseflamboyant polymaths, whose arrogance and egoism amused and irri-tated them. The rhetorical fireworks of the sophists contrast with thefocused intensity of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, who pointedlythanks his tutor in philosophy, Rusticus (Quintus Junius Rusticus, con-sul in 133 and 162 CE), for preventing him from
“
being diverted tosophistic exhibitionism
”
.
5
Some sophists did claim to be philosophers,but Rutherford is right to say of their philosophy that
“
in general theypeddled second-hand ideas and richly wrought trivialities
”
.
6
Therewere exceptions, such as the Academic Favorinus (
c
.85
–
165 CE) andGalen (
c
.129
–
200 CE), the great doctor, medical writer, and author of works in logic and psychology and commentaries on earlier philoso-phers. Favorinus came from Arelate (Aries) in southern Gaul, andGalen from Pergamum in Asia Minor, and both wrote in Greek forGreek and Roman audiences.
7
But they were exceptions: for the mostpart the serious philosophers pursued their studies apart from thesophists.In the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 CE, several Stoicpoliticians perished. Seneca, Thrasea, Barea and Lucan (Seneca
’
snephew), were executed, and Thrasea
’
s son-in-law, Helvidius Priscus,was
“
relegated
”
, that is, expelled from Italy but not exiled to a particu-lar place. These people were convicted on political grounds, althoughStoicism influenced their political decisions. Nevertheless, many schol-ars have believed that there was a
“
Stoic opposition
”
to the monarchy.This is unlikely: men like Barea, Rubellius and Thrasea opposed Neroor were thought to threaten his position for other reasons than Stoicideology, while Seneca was condemned, not for being a Stoic, butbecause he was believed to have been involved in the Pisonian conspir-acy. On the other hand, the Stoic veneration of the younger Cato wouldmake any ruler nervous, for Cato was the paragon of liberty, defined inthis context as the refusal to accept the rule of a tyrant. As the trial anddeath of Thrasea showed, the line between a morally acceptablemonarch and a tyrant was easily crossed. Thus the Stoic emphasis onliberty
—
political and intellectual
—
could and did lead to refusal tocooperate with a ruler and thus to a charge of treason. Philosophers, asopposed to philosophical politicians, were not executed,
8
but they wereexiled, as was the fate of the two most prominent Stoic philosophers of
182THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Nero
’
s reign. Cornutus was exiled, ostensibly for insulting commentson Nero
’
s plans for an epic poem.
9
More probably his exile was con-nected with that of Musonius, who was exiled after the Pisonian con-spiracy, recalled by Galba, and exiled again by Vespasian.Of the senators, Helvidius Priscus returned from his relegation andbecame praetor under Vespasian in 70 CE. He attacked Thrasea
’
saccuser, Eprius Marcellus, in the senate, and addressed Vespasian ashis peer, not as his inferior. Eventually his freedom of speech droveVespasian to relegate him a second time, and shortly after he was exe-cuted, almost certainly without the approval of Vespasian. Helvidiuswas relegated on political, not philosophical, grounds: it was his free-dom of speech, not his philosophy, that destroyed him.
10
Nevertheless,his words and actions made it easy for his enemies to confuse his Sto-icism with Cynic outspokenness and thus to accuse him of behaviourinappropriate for a senator.
11
Vespasian did expel philosophers fromItaly in or about 74 CE, with the exception of Musonius, no doubtbecause of their freedom of speech.
12
Vespasian
’
s younger son, Domitian (reigned 81
–
96 CE), was hostileto philosophers as a group and again expelled them from Italy in 93CE, the fourth such expulsion in Roman history.
13
Suetonius connectsthe expulsion with the executions of the Stoic politicians, the youngerHelvidius Priscus (son of Thrasea
’
s Helvidius), and Junius ArulenusRusticus, both of whom had held the consulship. To these Tacitus andPliny add the names of the senators Herennius Senecio, who was exe-cuted, and Junius Mauricus, brother of Rusticus, who was relegated.
14
Pliny recalled that seven of his friends were executed or relegated in93 CE (including the four named above), and Tacitus regretted his partas a senator in the condemnation of these men. Evidently Domitianlinked the philosophers to the speech and actions of the Stoic politi-cians. Pliny, in praising Thrasea
’
s widow, Arria, and her daughter,Fannia, showed that the independent spirit of Thrasea was still a threatto Domitian nearly thirty years after his death.
15
At the time of the Pisonian conspiracy the most prominent profes-sional philosophers in Rome were Cornutus and Musonius.Lucius Annaeus Cornutus was born in Lepcis, the chief city of Tripolitania, part of the Roman province of Africa. He lived and taughtin Rome, and his name, Annaeus, may be evidence for the patronage of Seneca
’
s family
—
for example, in helping him obtain Roman citizen-ship
—
but certainly not for his being a freedman of the Annaei. Verylittle is known of his life after his exile (there is a single literary refer-ence that dates to 84 CE), and for us his importance lies in his relationswith the two greatest poets of the Neronian age, Persius and Lucan,
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS183
and in the survival of a single work written in Greek, the
Epidrome
or
“
Summary
”
(the full title is
“
Summary of the Traditions of Greek The-ology
”
). Lost are works on Aristotle, while a few fragments exist of commentaries on Virgil and works on language and rhetoric. The
Epidrome
is a short prose work (about seventy-five small printedpages) addressed to a young student. It reviews Greek mythology,using etymology and allegory to explain the names and myths of theGreek gods.
16
Zeus, for example (chapter 2), is so called because he isthe cause of life (in Greek,
zen
); destiny, Aisa, is so called because it isthe unseen (
aistos
) cause of events (chapter 13); Atlas is namedbecause
“
without tiring
”
(
atalaiporos
)
“
he represents the events in themyths about him and in this way [i.e. without tiring] he holds up theheavens
”
(chapter 26). This kind of etymological interpretation has along history in Greek and Latin literature, going back at least to thefifth-century sophist, Gorgias, to whom Plato refers when he makesSocrates say that
“
I have heard a clever man say that our body is ourtomb
”
(
soma
, body, and
sema,
tomb).
17
The theory that the resem-blance in the sounds of two words corresponds to a factual relationshipis analogous to the idea that the attributes of a mythical figure may beallegories for human circumstances or attributes. At the beginning of Cornutus
’
Epidrome
we learn that
“
the heaven encircles the earth andthe sea and all that is upon the earth and in the sea
”
(1. 1). All theseentities constitute the cosmos, whose nature is fiery, while the gods areresponsible for
“
the changes in the air and the security of the whole
”
.Then Cornutus compares the order of the cosmos, whose existence isparallel to that of human beings, to the order of human nature (2. 1): just as we are governed by the soul, thus the cosmos has soulwhich holds it together, and this is called Zeus
…
and he is said torule over the whole just as in us our soul and nature are said torule.As A.D.Nock and Malcolm Lapidge have shown, Cornutus is expound-ing existing Stoic doctrine rather than developing new views, both inhis cosmology and in the other topics of the
Epidrome
.
18
The work isin fact a student textbook (unique in surviving classical literature),whose apparently naive use of traditional mythology rests on Stoicorthodoxy, much of which goes back to Chrysippus. In this way itthrows light on several places that the largely ethical Stoicism of Seneca had left in the dark.The teaching of Cornutus appears much more vividly in the poetryof his student and friend, the satirist Aules [
sic
] Persius Flaccus (34
–
62
184THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
CE). Persius was Etruscan in origin, a Roman of high social standingand connected with prominent Romans, including Thrasea, whoseclose friend he was for ten years. According to an ancient biography hewas 16 years old when he began his friendship with Cornutus
“
in sucha way that he never left his company
”
, and, according to the biogra-pher,
“
he made some progress in philosophy
”
. The
Life
further saysthat Cornutus was both his financial and literary executor, and its evi-dence is probably reliable for both the life of Persius and the teachingof Cornutus.The six satires of Persius (amounting to about 640 lines in all) are inthe tradition of Horace, but their philosophy is clearly Stoic.
19
In thefifth satire, Persius begins by showing how Cornutus criticized anddisciplined his style, teaching him to use Latin vocabulary (
verbatogae
) with striking collocation of words (
iunctura callidus acri
: line14). Cornutus is
“
a great part of Persius
’
soul
”
(lines 22
–
23) and as aresult Persius
’
poetry is sincere, the true representation of his inmostheart (lines 24
–
29). This is as much a philosophical theme as a literaryone, for Seneca
’
s 114th letter is on the theme of the similarity betweena person
’
s speech and character as shown in his way of life.
20
This isalso the main theme of Persius
’
first satire
—
a corrupt style, he says, isthe expression of a corrupt character, and the debased literary taste of the Romans is evidence for the moral debasement of Roman society.The importance of vocabulary and style for philosophy had beenshown by Cicero, Horace, Lucretius and Seneca, but Persius sees itmore as a criterion of morality.Next, in the fifth satire, Persius describes the close relationship thathe began with Cornutus in his
“
tender years
”
, when a youth on thethreshold of adulthood can make many wrong choices (lines 30
–
51).Cornutus received Persius in his
“
Socratic bosom
”
and became, likeSeneca, a
“
director of souls
”
, whose moral guidance was exercisednight and day in friendship and shared living. Indeed, Persius con-cludes, their horoscopes and the influence of the stars at their birthsbrought them together, an idea consistent with the astrological doc-trines of the Stoic Manilius.Other prominent themes of the fifth satire are freedom and slavery,familiar from the Stoic paradox that only the wise man is free. So Per-sius describes the many pursuits which enslave a human being
—
incontrast to the
“
harvest of Cleanthes
”
(i.e. Stoic doctrine: line 64) fromseed planted by Cornutus. He continues with many striking images andvivid examples, ending with a contrast between the philosophy of Cor-nutus and his poetry on the one hand, and the values of the commonman on the other (lines 189
–
91).
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS185
In the third satire Persius focuses on the paradox that only the wiseman is sane and healthy. In this poem the student (perhaps Persius him-self) reluctantly rises to study, and again his poetry is valued at nothingby the common man, here a
“
hairy centurion
”
and
“
muscular youths
”
(lines 77
–
87). But the critics do not know how morally sick they are:they do not think they are ill, but show them a pretty girl or money andthey behave like madmen (lines 88
–
119).Persius and Cornutus looked back to Socrates as the fountain-headof philosophy, and based their lives on Stoic freedom from the
pathe
and use of reason. In the second satire Persius addresses the theme of prayer (a reminder of the focus on theology in Cornutus
’
Epidrome
),and in the fourth the necessity for self-knowledge and morality if oneaspires to public office
—
perhaps the most Socratic of Persius
’
themes.As a critic of contemporary morals, Persius is less subtle than Horaceand less abrasive than Juvenal. While Horace is personally Epicureanand Juvenal expressly refuses any philosophical allegiance, he is explic-itly Stoic.
21
Seneca and Cornutus are directors of souls, but Persius isthe critic of society, and his unique style is the vehicle for Stoic doc-trine that criticizes and at the same time heals and liberates hiscontemporaries.The epic poet, Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (39
–
65 CE), stud-ied under Cornutus with Persius. Since he was seven years youngerthan Persius, their relationship would not have been one of equals, forwhen Lucan joined Cornutus (probably in 55 CE) Persius already hadmade progress in philosophy (as the
Life
tells us) and poetry. Lucanadmired Persius, whose poems, he said,
“
were true poems, while mineare child
’
s play (
ludos
)
”
. Lucan was not a modest man, and this remark must have been made before he composed his epic poem and while hewas still engaged with the study of philosophy. Unlike Persius, Lucanentered on an ambitious political career, helped by the fact that he wasthe nephew of Seneca. He was an official
“
friend
”
of Nero (two yearshis senior), a status which admitted him to the emperor
’
s inner circle,and Nero advanced him to the quaestorship and membership of thesenate. He and Nero certainly shared cultural and literary interests, butby 63 CE the friendship had soured, perhaps out of personal rivalry,but more likely for political reasons connected with the weakening of Seneca
’
s position after 62. Lucan was deeply involved in the Pisonianconspiracy and was forced to commit suicide in April of 65, evidentlyafter the death of Seneca. His father and his other uncle (Seneca
’
sbrothers) perished in the aftermath of the conspiracy, while his mother,Acilia, although implicated, was neither charged nor acquitted.Lucan
’
s epic in ten books,
De Bello Civili
(also known as
186THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Pharsalia
), was unfinished. It is the only Latin epic worthy to standbeside those of Virgil and Lucretius. It emulates Virgil in its epicthemes of war and political and moral disintegration (as opposed toVirgil
’
s narrative of war and political and moral renewal), and it emu-lates Lucretius in its contrasting view of the cosmos, in which thedestruction of Roman liberty is bound up with the fate of the cosmos.Its narrative focuses on the first two years of the civil war betweenCaesar and Pompey, with its climax at the battle of Pharsalus and thesubsequent murder of Pompey in Egypt. These events occur in Books7 and 8 of the poem, which extends its narrative to a wide range of political and philosophical speculation. Ren
é
Pichon
’
s catalogue of Lucan
’
s Stoic passages is still valuable, but his conclusion, that Lucanis
“
a sincere disciple of Seneca
”
, cannot be maintained.
22
There aremany similarities, but Lucan
’
s attitude towards the gods and fate
—
togive but one example
—
is quite different from that of Seneca.The account of the Nile given by the Egyptian priest, Acoreus, hasmuch in common with Seneca
’
s.
23
Lucan dismisses earlier explana-tions of the Nile
’
s annual flood, preferring to affirm the laws of Nature(10. 238) and the existence of underground springs created by theworld
’
s intelligent creator (10. 262
–
67). Here he adapts a theory of thefifth-century pre-Socratic philosopher, Diogenes of Apollonia, whobelieved that the sun was responsible for the underground stores of water. Seneca quotes Diogenes only to criticize him, and Lucan seemsto answer the criticism by supposing that the divine creator was respon-sible.
24
There are many other passages in which Lucan shows his interest inphysics, cosmology, astronomy and astrology. They are aspects of Lucan
’
s conviction that the macrocosm of the universe and microcosmof Rome are involved with each other. We have seen that Cornutusused allegory as a principal mode of interpretation of the myths of thegods, and this is the principle on which Lucan
’
s interpretation of human events rests. He sees the civil war not only in political terms
—
the loss of liberty with the collapse of the Roman republic
—
but as acosmic disaster. In the introduction to Book 1 he explicitly makes thecomparison, first listing the causes of the collapse:
25
[The causes were] the envious progress of Fate, the denial of along period of stability to the greatest [states], the collapse undertheir own weight of those that are too heavy
—
and Rome thatcould not bear its own weight. So when the world
’
s frame isloosened and the final hour gathers in so many ages of the uni-verse and original chaos returns, the fiery stars will join the sea,
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS187
the earth will be unwilling to extend its level shores and willshake off the waters of the ocean, the moon will travel contraryto her brother [the sun]; refusing to drive her chariot across thearch of heaven, she will demand daylight for herself, and thewhole discordant structure of the shattered universe will throwits laws into confusion.In this remarkable sentence, Lucan uses the Stoic doctrine of cyclicalcreation and destruction of the cosmos to describe a world where thedestruction of the laws of the Roman republic involves the destructionof the laws of nature. Again, Lucan invokes the Stoic
ekpyrosis
after avivid passage in which Caesar surveys the battlefield of Pharsalus theday after his victory, and denies the customary cremation to thecorpses of the Pompeian soldiers. Lucan addresses Caesar:
26
You achieve nothing by this anger of yours. It makes no differ-ence whether corpses perish through decay or the pyre. Naturetakes everything to her peaceful bosom, and corpses owe theirend to themselves. If, Caesar, fire will not burn these peoplesnow, it will burn them with the earth, with the ocean
’
s waters.The common pyre of the universe remains, which will mix thestars with [human] bones.The Roman civil war is a cosmic event, and the destruction wrought byCaesar
’
s anger anticipates the destruction of the final
ekpyrosis
.Lucan
’
s Stoic view of fate is orthodox, but his attitude to it is differ-ent from that of Seneca, and it is further complicated by his ambiguousviews on the gods. In 1. 70
–
80 (quoted above) Lucan refers to
“
theenvious progress of Fate
”
(
invida fatorum series
), where the word
series
denotes an inexorably linked chain of events through which fateis unfolded. But the word
invida
reveals pessimism towards fate, for itis jealous of human happiness, and in return Lucan refuses to accept itsdictates cheerfully. This is contrary to Seneca s doctrine in the
De Prov-identia
and the 107th letter (discussed in the previous chapter). Indeed,Lucan is driven by frustration and anger against fate. He is, as OttoSteen Due has remarked,
“
a Stoic who has lost his faith
”
.
27
Lucan speculates on foreknowledge, wondering if the intelligentcreator, at the start of the present cycle of the history of the cosmos,has fixed immutable destiny and set the inexorable course of futureages.
28
If this is so (and Lucan seems to accept it), while the chain of events cannot be changed, it can be revealed by divination or othermethods of prediction. Therefore Lucan devotes many lines to revela-
188THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
tions of the future, which arouse fear and foreboding in the actors inthe poem, and helplessness, anger and frustration in the poet and hisreaders.
29
Lucan himself says of his narrative:
30
When also future generations and our grandchildren
’
s descen-dants read of these wars
—
whether their own fame brings them tofuture ages, or whether my labours can help great names survive
—
then they [namely, these wars] will rouse hope and fear andvain prayers, and all [my readers] will be stunned as they read of destiny as if it were in the future, not in the past.Even the most powerful of Lucan
’
s agents of prophecy, the witch andnecromancer Erichtho, confesses that she has no power to change fate:
31
Once the chain of events descends from the beginning of the uni-verse, and if all fate will be disrupted should you wish to changeanything, and if the whole human race stands subject to one pow-erful stroke, then we, the Thessalian band [of witches], confessthat Fortune is more powerful.There are two exceptions to Lucan
’
s pessimism, the poor man and thewise man. The former is represented by the fisherman, Amyclas, whois the
“
captain of his boat
”
and
“
safe enjoying the life of a poorman
”
.
32
For Lucan and his readers this is ironical, for the world of Amyclas is as far distant from the facts of Lucan
’
s life as the Stoicindifference to wealth was from the life of Seneca. As for the wiseman, Lucan admits that he can respond to the dictates of fate as Senecawould have prescribed. Lucan portrays Cato as an ideal leader inepisodes in which historical facts are elaborated so as to show Cato
’
swisdom and virtue in splendid isolation and superiority.
33
In the firsttwo (2. 234
–
391) Cato advises Brutus on the correct attitude to civilwar and then takes back his former wife, Marcia (now the widow of Hortensius), exhibiting a moral perfection that pitilessly focuses on thegulf between himself and ordinary human beings.
34
After Pompey
’
sdeath, Cato assumes the leadership of Pompey
’
s forces, and then setsout across the Libyan desert in perhaps the most colourful episode of the whole poem.
35
Its crucial passage is Cato
’
s arrival at the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, where (as Lucan
’
s readers well knew), Alexander theGreat had been saluted as the Son of Zeus.
36
Labienus encourages Catoto consult the oracle and learn the future. Here is Cato
’
s reply:Cato, full of the god whom he carried in his calm mind, uttered
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS189
words from his heart that were worthy of the oracle.
“
What ques-tion do you suggest, Labienus? Should I ask if I should wish todie in battle a free man, rather than witness tyranny? Whether itmakes any difference if our life is long or short? Whether anyviolence can harm the good man? Whether Fortune can lose herterrors when faced with virtue?
…
I know, and Ammon will notplant knowledge any deeper in my heart. We all are one with thepowers above, and though the oracle be silent, we do nothingwithout the will of god. The divine power needs no [oracular]utterances, and our creator has told us at our birth whatever wemay know. Has he chosen desert sands to chant his oracles to afew [enquirers]? Has he buried the truth in this dust? Is the god
’
shome anywhere except in earth and sea and air and heaven
—
andvirtue? Why look for the gods any further? Jupiter is whateveryou see, whatever you do.
”
The wise man needs no external assurance, no divination or prophecy.The god is within him, and he proceeds through life unmoved by fearand other emotions, knowing one fact about the future
—
that he mustdie.
37
This is the obvious significance of the passage. Cato, however,also sees that divine power is immanent in the four
“
elements
”
of theuniverse (
“
heaven
”
standing for the fiery upper air of Stoic cosmology)and in virtue, meaning the virtue of all wise men rather than of a partic-ular individual. Lucan, then, follows Seneca in seeing the divineeverywhere in the universe and the wise man as being himself divine.
38
Thus it comes as no surprise when Lucan ends his eulogy of Cato byequating him with the gods:
39
See, then, the true father of his country, most worthy, Rome, of your altars! Never will you be ashamed to take your oaths byhim, for if ever you stand free from the yoke of slavery, him willyou make
—
now, in the future
—
a god.Lucan
’
s portrait of Cato as the s
apiens,
for all its bizarre features andexaggerations, is based on philosophical principle.For Lucan, Fortune is the dynamic and universal power, replacingJupiter and the Olympians. He dispenses with the gods of Homeric andVirgilian epic, except for Hercules, whose struggle with Antaeus isnarrated more as a parable of Roman success in Africa than as anaffirmation of the reality of the Olympian gods.
40
Nevertheless, theStoic god pervades the poem. Among mortals, only Cato is worthy of divine status and the deified Caesar and other emperors are worthy
190THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
only of scorn.
41
In passionate despair Lucan consoles himself for thevictory of Caesar with the hollowness of his divinity:
42
Still, we have this consolation for the disaster, as much as it isright for the divine power to give to mortals: the civil wars willcreate gods equal to the gods above. Rome will equip dead mor-tals with thunderbolts and radiate crowns and stars, and in tem-ples of the gods she will swear her oaths by dead ghosts.These words follow the surprising cry:Indeed we have no gods: since the ages are hurried along byblind chance, we lie when we say that Jupiter is king.A few lines later Lucan says
“
mortal affairs are of no interest to god
”
.Is he then being inconsistent with Stoic doctrine? I think not. Repeat-edly he appeals to the
“
chain of fate
”
, and emphasizes that fate isunkind to mortals
—
most particularly those who supported the republi-can cause against Caesar and their sympathizers in later ages. Theinconsistency lies, not so much in the nihilism evident in these lines,but in Lucan s refusal to accept the dictates of fate. If fate has dealtmortals such a terrible hand, then how can one accept it willingly? Theonly answer must be nihilism, he says. And this is consistent, for, aswe have seen, Lucan shows that the only person secure against suchdespair is the wise man
—
Cato
—
who is in a different category fromother human beings. For the rest of us the divine power
—
whether of the Olympian gods or the Stoic divinity
—
is irrelevant, for our world isdisintegrating.Lucan links Roman and cosmic disaster in another dynamic featureof the poem, Caesar
’
s anger. The governing principle in the greatstorm of Book 5 is the interaction of Caesar
’
s madness (
furor
) with theraging of the elements
—
and madness, as Seneca had taught, is part of anger.
43
At the climax of the storm, the universe itself collapses:then the vault of heaven trembles and the axis [of the world]thunders and the poles begin to collapse, their structure shaken.Nature fears chaos: the elements seem to have broken therestraints that held them in harmony and night seems to return, toconfuse the spirits of the dead with the gods.We see here once more Cornutus
’
principle of allegory
—
the raging of
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS191
the individual, Caesar, involves the raging of nature, and the destruc-tion to be wrought by Caesar finds its parallel in cosmic disruption.Lucan is a Stoic with a difference, a Stoic who cannot accept theinjustice of the Roman republic destroyed and liberty removed, exceptby seeing in these disasters the dismantling of the ordered cosmos. Hiswise man, Cato, points out the difference between the Stoic ideal(which Seneca taught was possibly attainable) and the cruel reality of the world of the
Bellum Civile
.Lucan
’
s attitude to the divine power, to fate and to the cosmos, isone of two essential aspects of his philosophy. The second is his atti-tude towards Roman history and its great disaster, the loss of republi-can liberty with the victory of Caesar at Pharsalus. Repeatedly hehammers at the theme of lost liberty. Caesar and Liberty are like a pairof gladiators; after Caesar
’
s victory
“
Liberty retreated beyond theTigris and the Rhine
”
, never to return to the Roman world.
44
Facedwith tyranny, how should the individual react? We have seen in Cato,the wise man, the ideal answer, but ordinary mortals, Lucan seems tosay, give way to their emotions. Occasionally there are exceptions:Cotta dissuades Metellus from opposing Caesar s efforts to plunder theRoman treasury by saying that
“
the people
’
s liberty, when suppressedby a tyrant, perishes through liberty
”
, that is, the person who tries tospeak freely under a tyranny discovers how much freedom he haslost.
45
The corollary is silence and a withdrawal into the freedom of themind, as the Roman people do, suppressing their grief at the loss of liberty even while outwardly celebrating the tyrant
’
s triumphs.
46
Equally pointedly, Caesars entourage openly rejoice at the sight of Pompey
’
s head, while Caesar appears to grieve.
“
This
”
, says the poet,
“
is good Liberty
—
to dare to be happy while Caesar weeps
”
. Liberty,then, is the victim of the civil war: as the Egyptian vizier, Pothinus,says to the young Ptolemy:
47
Let the man who wants to be morally good (
pius
) leave the court.Virtue and supreme power cannot coexist.Withdrawal into
otium
, Seneca
’
s solution for maintaining freedomunder a tyranny, is not an option for Lucan. He does, however, con-sider Seneca
’
s extreme solution, suicide. He seems to have been fasci-nated by death and modes of death, and his most elaborate portrayal of suicide in the cause of liberty is the episode of Vulteius and his men.
48
They are trapped on a raft, surrounded by the enemy, and Vulteiusurges them to die through mutual suicide rather than let the Pompeianskill them (lines 476
–
520). The first word of his speech is
“
Free
”
(
lib-
192THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
era
), and his theme is that to assert one
’
s freedom through death is todie happy (line 520). Yet Vulteius is hardly a rational man, for he isdriven by
“
madness, the goads of death
”
(line 517), and, in a finalirony, he is a Caesarian. Lucan reflects on his death:Yet even after these examples future generations will not seehow virtue is not difficult to attain, if one escapes slavery byone
’
s own hand. Yet tyrants are feared and peoples do not knowthat swords are given so that no one need be a slave.The last line (
ignorantque datos
,
ne quisquam serviat
,
enses
) has longbeen admired by patriots. While the sentiment may be disturbing, theexpression epitomizes the noblest aspirations of Lucan
’
s philosophy.One death, however, stands apart, the murder of Pompey.
49
Pompeyhas been at best a morally ambiguous figure throughout the poem, buthere Lucan portrays him as facing death with Stoic courage.
“
I am
”
, hesays,
“
happy, O gods
…
Death cannot make a man unhappy
”
(lines 630
–
32). At the beginning of Book 9 Pompey
’
s soul rejoins the divine firedwelling among the stars, where
“
the half-divine dead spirits dwell,those whom fiery virtue has allowed to endure without guilt the lifebelow
”
(lines 7
–
8). But Lucan diverges from the pattern of Cicero
’
s
Dream of Scipio
, for he imagines the soul returning to earth to exactvengeance on Caesar by taking up its residence in the
“
pure heart of Brutus
”
and
“
the unconquered mind of Cato
”
(lines 17
–
18). While thisseems to be a kind of Pythagorean transmigration of the soul, it shouldbe interpreted rather as an expression of Lucan
’
s unwillingness toleave the disembodied Pompey to enjoy the rewards of virtue when thevictory over the tyrant (Caesar) is still to be won.Like Virgil, Lucan is an epic poet whose philosophy is integral tohis poetry. It is basically Stoic, but his despair sets him apart fromother Stoics, and his tempestuous commitment to the ideal of republi-can liberty opens a gulf between his view of life and the
ataraxia
of the Stoics. He is closest to Seneca in his speculations on the cosmosand the physical world, and to Cornutus in his allegorical interpretationof events in human history. Whatever our judgement of his philosophi-cal views (and there is huge disagreement among his readers), they areexpressed with a vigour unique in classical literature. SamuelJohnson
’
s view is closest to the truth:
50
Lucan is distinguished by a kind of dictatorial or philosophicdignity
…
; full of ambitious morality and pointed sentences, com-prised in vigorous and animated lines.
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS193
The most distinguished Roman philosopher of the later part of the firstcentury was Gaius Musonius Rufus (
c
.30
–
101).
51
Like Persius, he wasEtruscan by descent and of equestrian rank (that is, he belonged to theupper socio-economic class of Roman society but was not a senator).He joined the exiled Rubellius Plautus in Asia and returned to Romeafter the execution of Rubellius in 62. He was exiled to the island of Gyaros in 65, and while there he discovered a spring of water whichbecame an object of pilgrimage for the students who came to Gyaros tohear him lecture. Musonius himself reflects on his exile in his 9th Dis-course. Clearly he endured it with courage and equanimity, for he prac-tised the Stoic belief that exile did not
“
deprive a man of things that aretruly good
”
, such as courage, justice, moderation or reason. He wasrecalled after the death of Nero, and Tacitus reports that when the armyof Vespasian
’
s general, Antonius Primus, was poised to capture Romein December of 69 CE, the emperor Vitellius included Musonius in amission sent out to attempt to find a peaceful solution to the war. Hisefforts to show the soldiers that peace was preferable to war were metwith derision and violence
—
philosophy and soldiers thirsting for battledo not mix.
52
After the death of Vitellius and the establishment of Vespasian
’
ssupporters in Rome, the senate began to settle old scores.
53
Musonius,although not a senator, addressed the senate as prosecutor of the Stoic,Egnatius Celer, who had gained the conviction and execution of histeacher, Barea Soranus, in 66. Although Egnatius was defended by theCynic philosopher, Demetrius, he was condemned and executed.About four years later Musonius was again exiled, although he had atfirst been exempted from Vespasian
’
s order expelling philosophers. Onthis occasion he seems to have travelled to Syria (for he lectured to
“
aSyrian king
”
in Discourse 8), and to have met Pliny
’
s close friend, thephilosopher Artemidorus, who became his son-in-law.
54
Musonius wasrecalled, perhaps in 81 (the year of Pliny
’
s military service in Syria),and seems to have spent the remaining twenty years of his life in Romestudying and lecturing.Among Musonius
’
students were Epictetus, Dio Cocceianus of Prusa (Dio Chrysostom), and the Stoic philosopher Euphrates, whomPliny met in Syria and greatly admired.
55
Pliny says that Euphratestaught that
“
the most beautiful part of philosophy is to transact publicbusiness
…
and to make practical use of the philosophers
’
doctrines
”
.Epictetus quotes a lecture of Euphrates defending his refusal to flaunthis philosophy openly, preferring to practise it privately (
“
everythingfor myself and God
”
) and to live publicly like other people.
56
Musonius taught in Greek, and in his time Roman intellectual life
194THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
was becoming more catholic, socially and geographically, as the fol-lowing examples show. Musonius himself spoke Greek and Latin, andArtemidorus, his son-in-law, was very probably a Greek citizen.Euphrates and Artemidorus conversed easily with Pliny in Syria and atRome. When Epictetus was driven from Rome he set up his school atNicopolis in western Greece, where many young Romans came to hearhim lecture in Greek. Dio Chrysostom, expelled from Italy by Domi-tian, travelled all over the Mediterranean world before returning to hisoriginal home at Prusa in Bithynia.Musonius seems to have left no written works. Twenty-one of hisdiscourses (short lectures addressed to non-specialist audiences) wererecorded by his student Lucius, perhaps not long after his death, andthere are thirty-two shorter fragments, of which six are quoted byEpictetus. The discourses and nineteen of the fragments were pre-served by the fifth-century scholar, John of Stobi (Stobaeus). Somescholars optimistically refer to Musonius as
“
the Roman Socrates
”
because of his high moral character (on which all ancient sources areunanimous) and because he committed nothing to writing, as far as canbe known.The twenty-one discourses fall into three groups: the first elevendeal with general philosophical questions; numbers 12
–
17 with socialquestions; and numbers 18
–
21 with questions concerning the minutiaeof daily life. Like Seneca and Epictetus, Musonius was not greatly con-cerned with logic, although Epictetus quotes an episode in whichMusonius criticized him for not understanding a syllogism.
57
UnlikeSeneca, he discouraged giving many examples to support a philosophi-cal point. The first discourse is on the subject
“
that there is no need formany proofs in dealing with one problem
”
, a statement he supportswith analogies from medicine
—
the doctor who can cure you is betterthan the one who prescribes many medicines. The medical analogy ismore than decorative, for underlying it is Musonius
’
belief that philos-ophy must lead to practical results in one s daily life. In Discourse 5 heargues that ethical behaviour in accordance with theory is the goal of the student of philosophy, and that therefore it is more important thantheory because it is practical. In Discourse 6 he says:
58
Virtue consists not only in theoretical knowledge but also in prac-tical [living], like medicine and music. Just as the doctor and themusician must learn not only the theories of each one
’
s art butalso train themselves to act in accordance with theory, so theman who will be morally good must not only learn the lessons
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS195
that lead to virtue but must also train himself in them with enthu-siasm and hard work.This doctrine is not entirely new: for example, Seneca said that
“
virtueonly touches a mind that is thoroughly educated and taught and hasreached the highest point through constant practice
”
. Socrates fre-quently used analogies from the practical arts (carpentry, shoe-makingand so on) to illustrate the process of acquiring virtue, but the profes-sional sophists who came after him went beyond analogy and claimedthat they could teach virtue as if it were a
techne
(that is, an art orskill). Musonius
’
focus is the moral excellence of the individual, whocan study it theoretically but acquire it and maintain it only throughconstant practice.In Musonius
’
moral scheme, the first stage is reason
(logos),
the sec-ond is virtuous action (
ethos
), and the key to virtuous behaviour is prac-tice (
askesis,
perhaps better translated as
“
training
”
). The sixth dis-course (the beginning of which is quoted above) is devoted to
askesis,
which seems to have been Musonius
’
particular contribution to Romanethics.
59
He says:One kind of training rightly concerns the soul alone; the other iscommon to the soul and the body. The kind common to both willoccur if we accustom ourselves to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, lim-ited food, hard beds, abstinence from pleasure and endurance of hard labour.Musonius says that this kind of training will harden the body and directthe soul to courage and self-control. The training for the soul aloneprepares the student to distinguish between good and evil, to knowwhat things are truly good or evil (as opposed to seeming to be so), andso to avoid the one and pursue the other. The focus on training thebody as part of philosophy appears in Cicero, as does the doctrine thatspecific virtues (for example, courage) will follow from training themind.
60
Seneca and Epictetus are more concerned with the mind, andfor the former, especially, virtuous behaviour will follow from theright exercise of reason.Musonius discusses the education of women and the proper relationsbetween husband and wife. In Discourse 3 he says that women shouldstudy philosophy, for they are endowed with reason no less than men,and they have the same disposition (
orexis
) towards and natural affin-ity (
oikeiosis
) for virtue as men. Seneca, it is true, had said that naturehad been as generous with virtues to women as to men, and he gives
196THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
examples of virtuous women from Roman history.
61
But Musonius ismore precise and works out the details of a woman
’
s virtuous activityin daily life. He concludes:Hence it is reasonable to expect that such a woman will be indus-trious and able to endure evil, a woman who will nurse her ownchildren at her breast and minister to her husband with her ownhands. Activities that some people think are appropriate forslaves she will do without shrinking. Is not such a woman a helpto her husband, an ornament to her family, and a good examplefor those who know her?While this picture of the woman who has studied philosophy is moreor less one of the ideal Roman matron, it is based on Musonius
’
doc-trine that right reason will be followed by right action, which will bemaintained through continuous practice. As part of his doctrine that theindividual must take responsibility for the moral quality of her life, heparticularly takes issue with the custom among Roman upper-classmothers of giving their babies to wet-nurse slaves and relying onslaves to perform all domestic chores. We may deplore Musonius
’
assumptions about the comparative roles of men and women in domes-tic activities, but we should at least give him credit for some practicaladvice on the proper role of slaves in the economy of a house, asopposed to the generalizations of Seneca
’
s 47th letter. And we shouldapplaud his pleas for the equal education of women, which he repeatsin the 4th discourse on
“
whether daughters should have equal educa-tion with sons
”
. He points out that
“
all human tasks are perhaps com-mon to men and women
”
, while education in virtue is equally appropri-ate for both sexes.
62
He concludes that since philosophy is training fornoble character, it cannot be limited just to boys and men.Musonius discusses sexual behaviour more than most Romanphilosophers. He believes that extramarital sexual relations are wrong,and that within marriage their purpose should be the procreation of children, not pleasure. Husband and wife should provide mutual com-panionship and share all things and offer mutual love, respect and sup-port. Neither should marriage hinder the study of philosophy, for theresult of such study is right action. Musonius seems to be answeringthe bleak picture of Stoic marriage given by Lucan in Cato
’
s remar-riage to Marcia, for, in place of the unbending priggishness of Cato, herecommends mutual support and love, with as much being given by thehusband as by the wife.
65
The Dutch scholar, A.C.van Geytenbeek, says that
“
If one judges
STOICISM UNDER NERO AND THE FLAVIANS197
Musonius as a philosopher, the judgement will have to be damning if one applies modern standards.
”
66
He is troubled by the gulf betweenthe high reputation of Musonius in his own time and the lack of philo-sophical originality or depth in the discourses. It is true that the dis-courses that deal with traditional Stoic topics (for example, luxury) areunoriginal, and van Geytenbeek rightly judges Musonius
’
treatment of equality of education for women and of sexual activity (along withother topics such as the exposure of infants and obedience of childrento their parents) to be superior. Musonius is important for his positionin Roman society as a teacher who successfully related Stoic doctrineto the problems of daily life, that is, one who preferred applied ethicsto theory. In this he is an interesting foil to Seneca, who constantlyseeks to apply Stoic doctrine to daily life, yet leaves the impressionthat there is a gulf between what he writes and how he lives his life.Thus Seneca
’
s readers, in his own time and ever since, have had con-flicting views about him. About Musonius, who was less ambitious asa stylist and philosopher, there seems to have been unanimity. EvenTacitus, so ironic in recording the tragicomedy of his mission to thesoldiers of Antonius Primus, says of him (in a passage written perhapstwo decades after his death), that he was exiled in 65 CE
“
because of his distinguished reputation
…
as a teacher of the young in the preceptsof wisdom
”
.
67
198THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
8FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUSAURELIUS
Epictetus was the most famous pupil of Musonius. He was a Phrygianfrom the town of Hierapolis (one of several with this name), situated inthe southern part of central Turkey. He was born in about 50 CE andprobably lived into the reign of Hadrian (117
–
38 CE). He was a slaveof Nero
’
s freedman, Epaphroditus, but we do not know how he becamea slave, or when was freed.
1
Epaphroditus himself was one of Nero
’
smost trusted ministers and was present at his suicide, in which he isreported to have assisted. He survived for nearly thirty years after this,but was executed by Domitian in 95, perhaps because of his part inNero
’
s death. Epictetus studied under Musonius while he was still aslave, and by 93 he was well enough established as a freedman atRome to be expelled along with the other philosophers that year. Hewent to the city of Nicopolis (on the western mainland of Greece, closeto the site of the battle of Actium) and there established his school,where many students came to hear him. He described his school as a
“
hospital
”
(
iatreion
), and he exhorted his students to leave it
“
in pain,not with feelings of pleasure
”
, because their souls were sick in the waythat one
’
s body might have a dislocated shoulder or a headache.
2
Epictetus focused largely on practical ethics, while allowing thatlogic was essential in the training of the philosopher. In
Disc
. 1.7, hismost important discussion of logic, he argues that it has a direct effecton morality and behaviour.
3
Right behaviour is the result of reason,and logic is essential in training for the proper use of reason. Thereforelogical errors lead to ethical errors, a point that Epictetus supports withan anecdote from his own training in logic under Musonius.
4
Among the students of Epictetus was the historian Arrian of Nico-media (in Bithynia), consul in 129 CE, whose name is attached to thefour extant books (out of eight originally published) of the discoursesof Epictetus, together with a digest with the title
Encheiridion
(
“
Hand-
199
book
”
).
5
Arrian says in his preface that he did not compose the dis-courses, and neither did he
“
bring them out to the public
”
, and thatthey were circulating without his knowledge before he published hisedition. Further, he says that he transcribed them word for word as heheard Epictetus deliver them. Thus the actual authorship of the
Dis-courses
and
Handbook
is uncertain, although there is no doubt thatthey reproduce the views of Epictetus himself. It is possible
—
but farfrom certain
—
that they were actually composed by Epictetus (forexample, their language is the
koine
, not Attic Greek, which Arrianused in his own writings), and circulated, as Arrian indicates, beforeArrian issued them in a definitive form. They were popular in antiq-uity, and the
Handbook
has been amongst the most widely admired of all philosophical books in any language.
6
The most important of Epictetus
’
doctrines concerns the freedom of the will, the subject of the first chapter of the
Discourses
and the firstchapter of the
Handbook
, quoted here:
7
Of things that exist some are in our control, and some are not inour control. In our control are thought, impulse (towards an end),desire, rejection (of desire)
—
in a word, everything that is
our
doing. Not in our control are our body, property, reputation, polit-ical power
—
in a word, everything that is not our doing. And thethings that are in our control are by nature free, without hin-drance, without impediment, but the things that are not in ourcontrol are weak, slavish, subject to hindrance, in the control of others. Remember, then, that if you think that the things that areby nature slavish are free, and that what is in another
’
s control isyours, you will be frustrated, you will be unhappy, you will bedisturbed, and you will find fault with gods and men. But if youthink that only what is under your control is yours (and that whatbelongs to another is another
’
s), no one can compel you, no onewill prevent you, you will not blame anyone, you will not accuseanyone. You will not do one single thing against your will, youwill not have enemies, no one will harm you, for you cannot suf-fer harm.Epictetus focuses on the concept of
“
what is in our control
”
repeatedly.It is closely linked to his doctrine of moral choice (
prohairesis
).
8
Thechief component of the Greek word is
“
choice
”
, and it was used in thissense by Aristotle, but extended by Aristotle
’
s contemporary, Demos-thenes, to mean
“
purpose
”
. Epictetus combines the two connotations,so that
prohairesis
means
“
moral choice leading to a practical end
”
, in
200THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
other words, moral purpose. Obviously, the category of
“
things that arein our control
”
implies
“
things about which we can make a choice
”
,which Epictetus divides into two categories, things to be chosen (
pro-haireta
) or rejected (
apoprohaireta
). He thinks that the physical bodyis unimportant compared to the human capacity for making moralchoices:
“
you are not flesh or hair, but moral choice
”
.
9
He teaches, fur-ther, that it is our impressions (
phantasiai
) about which choices haveto be made.
10
First you must make your governing principle (
hegemonikon
)pure and make this your attitude:
“
Thought is my material, justas wood is the carpenter
’
s material
…
My task is the right use of impressions. My little body is nothing to me
…
Death? Let itcome when it wishes.
”
Epictetus
’
moral scheme, then, requires the use of reason to evaluateimpressions, refusing to be affected by impressions of things that arenot in our control. For those that are in our control, we must use reasonto decide which are to be rejected and which accepted, and these deci-sions are our moral choices.Perhaps
Disc
. 3. 24 is Epictetus
’
most detailed exposition of the prac-tical effects of this doctrine. Its subject is
“
That we should not sufferby anticipating things that are not in our control
”
. Epictetus shows thatemotions such as grief or sorrow (for our own misfortunes or those of others) do us no good, for these misfortunes are not in our control.
“
Tolong for something that is impossible is slavish, foolish, the desire of astranger who fights against God
”
(
§
21). The mention of God intro-duces a new part of Epictetus
’
scheme, for, as Cleanthes and Senecahad taught, the wise person will make his will conform to the will of God, who controls all things. Epictetus uses the military metaphor,familiar to us from Seneca and Sextius, as in
§§
31
–
32:Do you not know that the matter [i.e. of right living] is a cam-paign? One man must be on guard duty, another on reconnais-sance patrol, another fighting in battle. All soldiers cannot be inthe same place
…
But you fail to carry out the general
’
s orders,and you complain when you are given a hard task.Epictetus draws another analogy from a ship
’
s crew, and he continues(
§
34):Life is a long and varied campaign for each individual. You must
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS201
observe the duties of a soldier and perform each task as the gen-eral orders.The parable here involves a double analogy, for
“
the general
”
is theStoic divine being, and the individual is a citizen of
“
no mean city
”
, areference to the universal Stoic community of gods and human beings.So in
Handbook 7
he says:Likewise on a voyage, if the ship is at anchor and you leave it tofind water, and on the way you find a sea-shell or an edible bulb,you must be attentive to the ship and continually turn round, lestthe captain call. If he does, you must drop them immediately, soas to avoid being trussed up like sheep and thrown on board. Soin life, if instead of a shell and a bulb, you are given a little wifeand a little child, well and good. But if the captain calls, givethem up and run to the ship
…
And if you are old, do not go toofar from the ship, in case you are absent when he calls.So Epictetus
’
doctrine of moral choice includes the disciplined life of one who is obedient to the commands of God and whose will conformsto the will of fate. In
Handbook
31, he says that one must have rightopinions about the gods, obey them and follow them willingly. Andthis one can only do by placing what is good and evil in the category of things under one
’
s control. Again and again, Epictetus emphasizes obe-dience to the divine will. Here, for example, he combines the metaphorof military discipline with obedience to the divine will:
11
The good and fine individual will remember who he is, fromwhere he came, and by whom he was created. He will focus onthis one thing, how he will fill his own [assigned] place in properorder, obedient to the god.More systematically than Seneca, Epictetus analyses the process of moral choice, and, like Musonius, he teaches that training (
askesis
) isessential for the person who will be disposed to make the right choices.He describes the philosopher
’
s
askesis
vividly with the analogy of anathlete training for the Olympic Games.
12
Elsewhere he is less austere:
13
Training should not be by means of activities contrary tonature
…
: not every difficult and dangerous thing is necessary fortraining
…
And what is the goal of our labours? To live one
’
s lifewithout obstacles to our desire (
orexis
) and aversion (
ekklisis
).
202THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
And what is this? Not to fail in achieving what we desire and notto experience that to which we are averse. This is the goal of ourtraining.Epictetus next analyses the attributes of each stage of moral choice,basing himself on the three
“
areas
”
(
topoi
) of training for the studentwhich he had discussed earlier:
14
There are three areas in which the future good and fine personmust be trained. First, concerning desire and aversion
…
Second,concerning impulse (
horme
) and refusal (
aphorme
)
—
in a word,concerning duty, that he may act with order and reason
…
Third,concerning avoidance of delusions and rashness
—
in a word, con-cerning assent (
synkatathesis
).The first
topos
concerns the emotions (
pathe
), and the second thedesires and aversion. Epictetus extends the latter to include duty, buthe takes a different line from Cicero
’
s
De Officiis
, for he focuses onthe student as an individual rather than on Cicero
’
s citizen as a mem-ber of society. Nevertheless, he keeps Cicero
’
s theory of the expandingcircles of the objects of duty. A person who has mastered the emotionsthrough practice in the first
topos
will use reason to act appropriately,that is, he will know what his duty is. But such a person must still be ahuman being, linked to other human and divine beings to whom heowes his duty:
15
I do not have to be unfeeling like a statue, but I must keep up myattitudes (
hexeis
) both towards those who are physically relatedto me and to those with whom I have come to have a relation-ship, in so far as I am pious, a son, a brother, a father, a citizen.The third
topos
concerns the training of the intellect through logic. It isfor the person who has made some progress in philosophy, so that theywill not be not liable to false judgements or rash actions. Their assentis based on reason, and thus they are assured of making the right moralchoices, even if they are impaired by wine or sadness or are actingunconsciously, as in a dream.
16
Here again Epictetus agrees withSeneca in allowing for the notion of stages of progress towards wis-dom, something that he has previously discussed.
17
He says, moreover,that the philosophers of his time have devoted themselves to the third
topos
, to the exclusion of the first two, whereas the good student of philosophy must study all three
topoi
, for logic is a necessary instru-
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS203
ment for success in studying the first two. Epictetus, then, is attackingthe fashionable and exclusive focus on logic among his contempo-raries, but he also finds a place for it in his system.
18
To return now to
Disc
. 3. 12, the discussion of
askesis
expands onthe doctrine of
topoi
set forth in 3. 2. To achieve the right choicesbetween desire and aversion one must train to counteract that which iswrong, one must
“
go to the opposite side of the rolling ship
”
.
19
Here,too, Epictetus is more understanding of human weakness than mostStoics. Like Persius he warns the young student against temptation:
20
A young beginning student in philosophy has an unequal battleagainst a smart girl. As the proverb goes,
“
the pot and the stonedo not match
”
.He shows that the second
topes
, that of duty, is governed by reason,which will lead the philosopher to choose actions that are appropriatefor the time, place and context. In commenting on the third
topos
, thatof assent, Epictetus appeals to Socrates, who said that
“
the unexaminedlife is not worth living
”
.
21
So the philosopher must be sceptical of hisimpressions: like the sentry who asks for the password, he must ask each impression,
“
Do you have Nature
’
s password?
”
Epictetus
’
doctrine of freedom of the will and its related topics is themost coherent exposition of the process of moral choice in Roman phi-losophy. Equally distinguished is his second principal doctrine, that of liberty. Here he speaks from unique experience, for alone of Romanphilosophers he had been a slave. The longest of his
Discourses
(4. 1)is also his most important discussion of liberty. Here is its opening:Free is the man who lives as he wishes. It is not possible to com-pel him or prevent him or force him. His impulses are not hin-dered, what he aims at he achieves, and what he tries to avoid hemisses. Who then wishes to live in error?
“
No one.
”
Who wishesto live being deceived, being hasty in his judgements, unjust,undisciplined, cantankerous, ignoble?
“
No one.
”
So no one whois bad lives as he wishes, and no bad person is free. And whowishes to live being subject to grief, fear, envy, pity, aiming forthings and missing, trying to avoid things and meeting withthem?
“
No one at all.
”
Can we point to any bad person who isfree from grief and fear, from meeting what he wishes to avoid,from failure to achieve his goal?
“
No one.
”
Then we cannotpoint to any bad person who is free.
204THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
This splendid passage brings to life the dry Stoic paradox,
“
Only thewise man is free
”
. As we read further in the discourse, we find familiardoctrines, themselves liberated from the ethical imperatives of the dis-cussions of
prohairesis
and
askesis
, to become part of a life truly freefrom moral slavery. The analogy with physical slavery is especiallyforceful in the light of Epictetus
’
experience. Yet he shows that humanslaves or caged animals are subject to other forms of slavery on theirrelease (
§§
24
–
40). The problems of life as a free man still enslave thefreedman, even if he rises to the highest posts of political power. Theirsolution lies in the Socratic principle of scepticism, asking
“
What eachthing that exists
is
”
(
§
41). And the result of such enquiry will be toknow the distinction between what is in our control and what is not(
§§
62
–
75). Then comes the hard part, which is to let go of things thatare dear to us but whose fate we cannot control
—
one
’
s body, one
’
swife, one
’
s children: since the body is like a donkey and the otherthings are accoutrements for the donkey, let them go! (
§
80). This, then,is the first way to freedom, summarized in a single, cumulative, sen-tence (
§
81):If you have prepared yourself with this preparation and havetrained yourself with this training
—
to distinguish between whatis your own from what is another
’
s, what is subject to hindrancefrom what is not, to think that the former is your concern and thelatter is not, to make your desire continually for the former andyour aversion from the latter, well, will you have anyone to fear?Yet there still remains a higher power to which the free person mustsubmit (
§
89):I have subordinated my impulse (
horme
) to God
…
He wants meto desire something
—
I want to desire it.The things we count most dear are but gifts from God, to whom wemust return them willingly, if he so wills (
§§
107
–
10). Like Seneca,Epictetus quotes Cleanthes
’
Hymn to Zeus
(
§
131) to prove that truefreedom consists in conforming one
’
s will to that of the divine power.Unlike Seneca, however, he admits that this is difficult: the Cynic, Dio-genes, and Socrates himself succeeded, but what of ordinary people?
“
Make the effort
”
, is his reply,
“
and you will know from experiencethat the philosophers speak the truth, even if it is contrary to generallyaccepted opinion
”
(
§§
173
–
74). He concludes (
§§
175
–
77):
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS205
Freedom is achieved not by fulfilling one
’
s desires, but by sup-pressing them. And so that you may know that this is true, just asyou laboured to fulfil those things [i.e. your desires], so transferyour labour to these. Endure sleeplessness to master a doctrinethat will make you free: pay court to a philosopher, not to a richold man
…
Try it! You need not be ashamed of trying.In
Handbook
14 the basic principle concerning
“
things that are underour control
”
is once more stated forcefully, a final reminder of itsessential part in the doctrine of liberty:So whoever wishes to be free, let him not wish for anything noravoid anything that is in the control of others. Otherwise he mustinevitably be a slave.A prominent feature of the
Discourses
is Epictetus
’
use of the Socraticdialogue, the subject of
Discourse
2. 12. Socrates, he says (
§
5),
“
com-pelled his interlocutor to be his witness
”
. Although relentless in hisdiscovery of the truth, Socrates was never angry with his interlocutors.As Epictetus points out, this was a lot easier in democratic Athens thanin the Rome of his time (
§
17), where Socratic interrogation of a socialsuperior (for example, an ex-consul) might end (and evidently did forEpictetus) in a beating (
§§
24
–
26). In his own school Epictetus musthave been a lively and demanding teacher, for there was constant giveand take with his students, who would have needed to concentrate hardto catch the stream of analogies and questions with which he enlivenedhis presentations. Arrian has left us a unique portrait of a philosophicalteacher, for Seneca and Cicero both had constructed artificial situationsfor dialogue or lecture, and Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius were writ-ing in very different circumstances from those of the classroom. Per-sius, however, does lift the curtain on the teaching of Cornutus, and itis likely that Musonius was also a forceful teacher.
22
Aulus Gellius,quoting Favorinus, reveals the integrity and passion of Epictetus
’
teach-ing.
23
Like the satirists (for example, Juvenal in his second satire)Epictetus could not endure a
“
philosopher
”
whose squalid life beliedhis fine words
—
this was, he said, like pouring a pure liquid into a dirty jar, where it turns into
“
urine or something worse
”
. In a second anec-dote, Favorinus reported that Epictetus was upset by two vices in par-ticular
—
inability to be patient when others harm us and lack of self-control when we are tempted by pleasure. The former calls forpatience, the latter for restraint. Hence, says Gellius, Epictetus
’
famousmaxim,
“
Bear and forbear
”
(
anechou kai apechou
).
206THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Epicurus shares with the Cynics a focus on training, endurance andconsistency in one
’
s way of life and one
’
s philosophy. As our brief discussion inChapter 1has shown, Stoic ethics had much in commonwith Cynicism, but the unconventional behaviour of individual Cynicswas offensive to most Romans. Epictetus attempted to resolve the con-flict between the good and unattractive aspects of Cynicism, and in sodoing he has left us the most comprehensive discussions of the Cynicsby a Stoic philosopher.Twice, Diogenes, the paragon of the Cynics, is described as a
“
scout
”
(
kataskopos
), that is, a soldier sent to find out the facts aboutthe enemy and to report the truth to those who sent him.
24
The militarymetaphor, as we have seen, was used by the Sextii and by Seneca forthe disciplined life of the philosopher, for the most dangerous of mili-tary assignments was that of the scout.
25
Epictetus had sent one of hisstudents from Nicopolis to Rome as a scout, to report on affairsthere.
26
In the same way, Diogenes had been sent into the world toreport to us, ordinary people and his hearers, the truth about the dan-gers among which a person trying to live a good life must live. ThusEpictetus meets the dangers of life in his Roman world with the time-less answers of Diogenes: death is not an evil; what men say about usis not worth our notice; the body needs only minimal clothing and com-fort to be satisfied. Diogenes could truly say that he was at peace, thathe had attained tranquillity and freedom.In this parable Epictetus summarizes the fundamental principles of the Cynics
—
control of the emotions (especially fear of death), disre-gard of physical comforts, contempt for reputation in the eyes of thecommunity, and the assurance that the person who lives according tothese principles will be tranquil and free. In
Disc
. 3. 22 and 4. 8 hedevelops these themes in such a way as to soften the features of Cyni-cism that the Romans found offensive, and to focus on those that wereconsistent with Stoic ethics.
Discourse
3. 22 begins with a warning
—
the student who is inclinedto Cynicism must know how great a challenge the Cynic
’
s callingpresents. Unconventional clothing and an ascetic life mean nothingunless they involve a conversion (
§§
13
–
15):First, in everything that concerns you your behaviour must notappear to be like your present way of life in any respect. Youmust not blame God nor human beings. You must eradicatedesire and change aversion towards only those things that con-cern moral purpose (
prohairetika
). You must not show anger orfury or envy or pity. No little boy or girl may seem attractive to
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS207
you, no bit of glory, no sweet little piece of cake. You mustknow that other men protect themselves with walls and housesand darkness when they act in this way
…
But the Cynics duty isto protect himself with the wall of integrity (
aidos
), otherwise hewill be behaving disgracefully [even if] he is scantily clad andhomeless.In this way Epictetus answers the commonest criticism against the Cyn-ics. The person who lives and acts unconventionally is a hypocriteunless his clothing and behaviour are the outward signs of an innermoral certainty, which can be achieved only through conviction thatthe divine being has called him to a life based on absolute moral andphysical discipline. Again, in
Disc
. 4. 8, Epictetus distinguishesbetween the true Cynic philosopher and the person who merely lookslike one. You do not become a musician, he says, just because youcarry a musical instrument; no more are you a philosopher just becauseyou have a long beard and coarse clothing (
§§
15
–
16). Socrates, hesays, was the example of the true philosopher, even if people failed torecognize him as one from his outward appearance, for he knew howsolid his principles were (
§§
22
–
23). Thus the true Cynic philosopherwill say to his listeners (
§§
30
–
31):Look at me, my [fellow] human beings, so that you can see thatyou are searching for happiness and tranquillity not where theyare, but where they are not. I am your example, sent by the god. Ihave neither possessions nor home nor wife nor children, noteven a mat or a garment or a cooking-pot. Yet see how healthy Iam. Test me, and if you find that I am free from disturbance, letme tell you the medicines that healed me.Like the Stoics, the Cynic exploits the medical metaphor, consistentwith the Stoic paradox that
“
only the wise man is healthy
”
. The picturegiven here of the sincere Cynic is at variance with the skin-deep would-be Cynic, with his beard, his coarse clothing, and his uncouth manners
—
all unsupported by the long training of the true philosopher (
§
34
–
35). Such
“
cardboard
”
philosophers are all show and no substance. Thetrue path to happiness is inner certainty and outward anonymity:
“
know yourself and do not attempt the Cynic way without the help of God.
27
And, as a corollary,
“
take care not to have your real characterbe known: spend a little time being a philosopher to yourself
”
.
28
So the true Cynic is assured of his philosophical calling and princi-ples, and he alone has a just pretext for unconventional behaviour.
208THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Epictetus, however, does not favour the shamelessness (
anaideia
) of the typical Cynic and prefers a more conventional appearance that willnot disgust those who meet him:
“
even his squalor should be pure
”
.
29
Epictetus again and again emphasizes the preparation (
paraskeue
)necessary for the true Cynic, for this will allow him to show his superi-ority to kings and other powerful leaders.
30
He may marry, but heshould not be distracted by the time-consuming chores of being a hus-band and a parent.
31
The Cynic philosopher contributes more to societythan the citizen who begets many children, and he cares for the com-munity like a father (
§§
81
–
82):All men are his children; he has [all] men for his sons, womenfor his daughters. This is his approach to all, this is how he caresfor all. Or do you think that he carelessly castigates those whomhe meets? He does it as a father, as a brother, as the servant of Zeus, his father and the father of his hearers.Another difficulty for a Roman Cynic is non-participation in politics,which puts him at odds, too, with Stoic principle. Epictetus has alreadycontrasted the Cynic with political and military leaders, in the dialoguewith Agamemnon (
§§
30
–
44). Now he shows that the Cynic
’
s activityon behalf of his fellow human beings is more noble than political activ-ity in a particular city working for particular short-term goals (
§§
84
–
85). Discussing the finances of Athens or Corinth is nothing comparedto the philosopher
’
s discussions of universal human issues:[his discussion is] about happiness and unhappiness, about goodand bad fortune, about slavery and freedom. How can you ask if a man who is involved in this sort of activity for the common-wealth will take part in politics? You can ask me further if hewill be elected to office. What a stupid question! What greateroffice is there than that which he holds?Epictetus is playing on the word
politeia
and its cognates: it meansboth
“
politics
”
and
“
republic
”
and he refers both to the
“
republic
”
of aparticular city and to the Stoic
“
commonwealth
”
shared by gods and allhumankind. The English translation lacks the economy of the Greek,but the point is clear enough
—
the philosopher is a citizen of a widercommunity than any one city or state, and his activity has infinitelywider scope than that of any politician or statesman. As Epictetus sayslater,
“
when he [the Cynic philosopher] oversees the affairs of humanbeings, he oversees his own
”
.
32
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS209
In his discussions Epictetus has done much more than
“
idealize
”
theCynics.
33
He has made an extended argument for including them in theRoman state and for reconciling their philosophy with Stoicism. Hehas sought to explain in what way their unconventional manners can beassimilated to conventional society, and he has justified their marginalstatus by reference to the universality of their concerns. He has shownwhere they march in step with the Stoics: his picture of the self-sufficient Cynic realizes the ideal wise man of the Stoic paradoxes,who alone is free, happy, a king. So Epictetus, far from sanitizing theuncomfortable figure of the Cynic, shows how such a philosopher fitsinto even such a conventional society as that of Rome, while hereminds his hearers of the roots of Stoic ethics in the philosophy of Zeno
’
s master, Crates the Cynic. He quotes the Stoic
Hymn
of Clean-thes in support of the Cynic
’
s unity with the divine will.
34
His pictureof the Cynic
’
s patience in the face of injustice and physical hardship isconsistent with Stoic constancy.
35
In this way Epictetus bridges the gapbetween the Stoic ideal and reality that is so disturbing to critics of Seneca
’
s lifestyle. His Cynic, in the context of real life, is an example,therefore, as much for Stoics as for would-be Cynics.It would be easy to quote Epictetus for pages on end, so lucid andattractive are his doctrines. Let us leave him, however, with his ownmoving self-portrait, which ends his discussion of divine providence. Itis consistent with all that we have seen of his teaching:
36
We must sing the greatest and most pious hymn [to God], that hehas given us the power to follow these things [i.e. the gifts of God] and to use his path [i.e. the path of reason]. What then?Since the majority of you have blinded yourselves, should notone person fill the gap and on behalf of all sing the hymn to thegod? I am a lame old man: what else do I have the power to doother than sing the hymn to the god? To be sure, if I were anightingale I would sing like a nightingale, and if I were a swan Iwould sing like a swan. But as it is I am endowed with reason: Iam compelled to sing the hymn to the god. This is my task: I per-form it and I will not leave this post that has been assigned tome, so long as it has been given to me. And I summon you tosing this same song with me.Epictetus probably lived into the reign of Hadrian (117
–
138 CE). Analmost exact contemporary was Plutarch, whose dates are usuallygiven as
c
.45
–
120. We have mentioned (at the beginning of the previ-ous chapter) that he chose to spend the greater part of his life in his
210THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
birthplace, Chaeronea, a strategically placed town in north-west Boeo-tia, the site of Philip of Macedon
’
s victory over the league of southernGreek states in 338 BCE and of Sulla
’
s victory over Mithradates in 86BCE. The town was about 30 km east of Delphi, where for the last partof his life Plutarch was a priest and honorary citizen. Many peopledeny that Plutarch is a philosopher (he is not listed, for example, in the
Oxford Companion to Philosophy
), still less that he is a
Roman
philosopher, for he made but two visits to Italy and himself admittedthat he was not expert in Latin. Certainly he was not a professionalphilosopher like Musonius or Epictetus, and his intense local loyaltylimited his impact on Roman thought. Nevertheless, he was trained inphilosophy and many of his essays are on philosophical subjects. Hehad many influential friends at Rome, including his patron L.MestriusFlorus (consul before 82 CE), whose name he took when he became aRoman citizen as L.Mestrius Plutarchus, and Q.Sosius Senecio, consulin 99 and 107 CE, to whom he dedicated several of the
Lives
, the essayon
Moral Progress
, and the
Quaestiones Convivales
(
“
Table Talk
”
).Further, he probably was given significant honorary titles by Trajanand Hadrian.His vast output makes it impossible to deal with him at any length inthis chapter. The ancient catalogue (under the name of Lamprias) of his works lists 227 titles: surviving are forty-eight
Lives
and about sev-enty-eight essays and dialogues, collectively called
“
ethical works
”
or
Moralia
. His claim to be a philosopher rests on many of the works inthe latter group. Significant also is the fact that his
Lives
, along withLivy
’
s history
Ab Urbe Condita
, have been the most important ancientprose works by which Renaissance and modern readers have formedtheir ideas of Roman moral character.Plutarch was an Academic, a follower of Plato, and in this respectgood evidence for the survival of Platonism in the early second cen-tury, anticipating its reinvigoration later in the century and its triumphin the third century.
37
We have seen that he was consistently critical of Epicureanism,
38
while his views on Stoicism were somewhat morecomplex, if on the whole hostile.
39
He wrote nine works against theStoics, only two of which survive, along with a prospectus for a third.Three other works criticizing the Stoics should be mentioned herebefore we examine the three openly anti-Stoic works. These are theessays on
Moral Virtue
(
De virtute morali
), on
Moral Progress
(
Quo-modo quis suos in virtute sentiat profectus
), and
Gryllus
(
Bruta ani-malia ratione uti
).Plutarch approaches these subjects as a common-sense enquirer.Much like Cicero in his satirical attack on Cato, he focuses on the rigid
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS211
definitions of Stoic ethics and their corollary paradoxes, which contra-dict the experience of ordinary people, especially warm-hearted empiri-cists like himself.
40
In both
Moral Virtue
and
Moral Progress
he isespecially critical of the Stoic paradox that all moral delicts are equaland its corollary, that all emotions (
pathe
) are equally bad.
41
The essayon
Moral Progress
, dedicated to Sosius Senecio, is especially lively,dealing with the topic of the person who makes progress in virtue,which was the subject of Seneca
’
s 75th letter and of several of the dis-courses of Epictetus. Plutarch asks,
“
How can a person suddenlybecome wise without perceiving that he has been making progress?
”
For the Stoics say that the wise man is one who
“
does not yet perceivethat he has become wise
”
, that is, that he is unaware of his progress.This, says Plutarch, is
“
to fit the line to the stone
”
, rather than
“
to fitthe stone to the line
”
, a proverb meaning that one
’
s doctrine should fitthe facts, not the other way around.
42
As an example of distorting theevidence of experience, Plutarch attacks a second Stoic doctrine, thatall moral delicts are equally bad.
43
If this is so, then how is moralprogress possible? Having set up these targets of his criticism, Plutarchthen shows that there
are
degrees of vice, so that moral progress is pos-sible. For the rest of the essay he produces examples of signs of moralprogress, enlivened by literary references, quotations and analogies, allresting on the foundation of common-sense experience as opposed tothe rigid and unreal dogmas of the Stoics. In fact, Plutarch does not do justice to the Stoic positions, for the Stoics did allow for moralprogress, as Seneca and Epictetus showed, even though all delicts,even the most innocuous, fell short of virtue. This essay is a goodexample of Plutarch
’
s philosophical method: focus on practical ethics,accurate (but incomplete) quotation of Stoic sources, and persuasiveuse of a vast array of literary allusions and rhetorical devices.The essay on the intelligence of animals,
Bruta animalia
, alsoknown by the name of its principal character,
Gryllus
, shows a differ-ent technique in attacking the Stoic doctrine that animals lack reasonand exist for the use of human beings.
44
The essay is in the form of adialogue between Odysseus and one of his men who has been turnedinto a pig by Circe. The pig, Gryllus (a common Greek name, but alsoa noun meaning
“
Porker
”
), eloquently declines the opportunity offeredhim by Odysseus and Circe of returning to human form: life in thepigsty is preferable to life on Ithaca, and a pig
’
s intelligence is morepure and moral than that of human beings, as Gryllus observes in hisopening argument (986F):I must begin with the virtues, in which I see you take great pride.
212THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
[You say that] you differ greatly from the animals in justice andreason, and in courage and the other virtues
…
[987B] Well, youagree already that the soul of animals is more suitably formed forthe birth of virtue and more perfect. For without orders and with-out instruction
…
it brings forth and increases in accordance withnature the virtue that is suitable for each animal.Odysseus, most intelligent of human beings, is defeated in argumentby a pig! Here Plutarch accurately sets up Chrysippus
’
doctrine of human superiority, to demolish it by brilliant literary and rhetoricalmethods, of which George Orwell would have been proud. The topicitself
—
the proper attitude towards animals
—
had had a long history inGreek philosophy, going back at least to Plato.
45
It was a matter of spe-cial importance to the Pythagoreans, although influences other thanPythagorean doctrine seem to have led to Plutarch
’
s vegetarianism, to judge from his dialogue
On the Intelligence of Animals
and the twofragmentary speeches
On Eating Flesh
(
De Esu Carnium
).
46
Plutarch
’
s three extant anti-Stoic works are
On Stoic Self-Contradictions
(
De Stoicorum Repugnantiis
),
The Stoics Talk MoreParadoxically than the Poets
(no more than a summary with the Latintitle,
Compendium argumenti Stoicos absurdiora poetis dicere
), and
On Common Conceptions
(
De Communibus Notitiis
). The treatise onself-contradictions is the most substantial of the three.
47
In it Plutarchtakes well-known Stoic doctrines, for example, that all delicts areequally bad, to show that they are self-contradictory, or that they are atvariance with the Stoics
’
actual lives. This is a long and intricate essay,which has been carefully analysed by Harold Cherniss: here it will beenough to say that once again Plutarch shows his knowledge of Stoicsources, even as he argues against them with the weapons of the skilledcontroversialist. He criticizes primarily the early Stoics, above allChrysippus. In other works of the
Moralia
and in the
Lives
he occa-sionally mentions Posidonius and Panaetius, but it is hard to know howfar he had read them. He never refers to current Stoic debates andnever names Seneca, Musonius or Epictetus. Probably this is not out of ignorance, but rather it is a way of arguing
a fortiori
—
if Chrysippuscan be proved wrong, then there is no need to criticize later Stoics.The treatise on
Common Conceptions
is ostensibly a dialogue, but infact a speech by an Academic philosopher, Diadoumenos, against theStoics, with an introductory dialogue and a few interruptions by anunnamed interlocutor.
48
Its basic topic is the Stoic doctrine best setforth by Diogenes Laertius.
49
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS213
[Chrysippus says that] virtue is a consistent disposition and oneto be chosen for itself, not because of some fear or hope or any-thing external. Happiness consists in virtue, since virtue is a soulthat has become consistent with regard to life as a whole. But arational being is perverted [from virtue], sometimes because of awrong belief in external matters, sometimes because of the influ-ence of other people. For nature gives starting-points that cannotbe perverted.Diadoumenos begins his speech by showing that the Stoic doctrines
—
that common conceptions agree with nature and that virtue consists of living in agreement with nature, and that living happily consists in liv-ing virtuously
—
contradict common experience and contain self-contradictions, for the Stoics sometimes reject the conceptions of ordi-nary people, and sometimes appeal to them for support.
50
As in thetreatise
On Stoic Self-Contradictions
, Plutarch exploits both theseweaknesses, ranging over the whole field of Stoic logic, physics(including theology) and ethics. Diadoumenos divides his speech atchapter 29 (1073D), where he turns to criticism of Stoic physics. Here,as for Epictetus, the three areas of philosophical enquiry are seen to beinterdependent, so that ethics is inseparable from logic and physics.
51
Plutarch was not consistently hostile to the Stoics.
52
While there arepassages in several treatises which appear to be based on Stoic doc-trine, his approval of Stoic ethics is undeniable in several of the
Lives
,for example, those of Phocion, Cato the Younger and Otho. The deathsof Cato and Otho are made to be consistent with Stoic doctrine, andPlutarch
’
s narrative is approving.
53
Phocion, the just man unjustly exe-cuted, is an example of Stoic virtue. His
Life
begins with a comparisonwith that of Cato, who
“
was involved in the great struggle with For-tune
”
.
54
Plutarch continues:The virtues of these men
…
exhibit one character and form, andtheir moral behaviour was dyed with the same colour, mixed, asit were, with a common measure with regard to their austere loveof humanity, their unshaken courage, their care for others andtheir lack of fear for themselves, their avoidance of shamefulacts, and the tension [of their souls] in harmony with justice.These are Stoic virtues, and the terminology of
“
tension
”
or being
“
intune with
”
virtue is Chrysippean.
55
When Phocion and his colleagues were led off to execution, theonlookers
“
wondered at his control of his emotions (
apatheia
) and his
214THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
noble spirit (
megalopsychia
)
”—
again Stoic virtues. The last sentenceof the
Life of Phocion
(38. 5) expressly compares him with Socrates:But what was done to Phocion reminded the Greeks of what hadbeen done to Socrates, for the injustice done to him was verysimilar to the case of Socrates, as was the misfortune that itbrought to the city.Plutarch, then, also recognized the excellence of Stoic virtue in thecontext of public life and political leadership.About the time of Plutarch
’
s death, a very different Platonist,Apuleius, was born at Madaurus in the Roman province of Africa,about 230 km south-west of Carthage.
56
He received his basic educa-tion at Carthage and lived there for the last decades of his life, dyingsome time after 170 CE. He went to Athens for his higher educationand there studied philosophy. Before returning to Africa he spent sometime in Rome. He spoke three languages
—
Latin (his principal lan-guage), Greek and Punic
—
and his surviving works are all in Latin.Like Plutarch, he combined philosophy and rhetoric, and he covered awide range of subjects.
57
While he was known as
philosophus Platoni-cus
, his rhetoric is at least as important as his philosophy, for his Latinprose is rich and colourful, often as magical as the stories that he tells.The hero of the
Metamorphoses
, Lucius, is called a descendant of Plutarch, and in the prologue Lucius says that he was first educated inGreek at Athens, Corinth and Sparta, and that later he learned Latin,self-taught, at Rome. While it is impossible to know how far Luciusrepresents Apuleius himself, Lucius
’
knowledge of Greek and Latinliterature, rhetoric and philosophy is similar to that of Apuleius. He isthe Latin equivalent of a sophist of the Greek Second Sophistic, flam-boyant and colourful in presentation, catholic in intellectual range, aserious but unoriginal philosopher.
58
In no. 7 of
Florida
(23 extracts from his speeches and lectures)Apuleius describes how Alexander the Great insisted on idealism andconformity in his statues, and he laments that philosophers have notdone the same.
59
Many so-called philosophers, he says, have, by theirsordid speech and way of life, degraded philosophy,
“
a royal disciplineinvented as much for good speech as for morally good living
”
. In alater extract he elaborates on the breadth of his philosophical educa-tion.
60
The more you drink of the cup of the Muses and the stronger itswine becomes, the closer you get to health of mind. The first
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS215
cup, that of the primary teacher, awakens the students with basiceducation; the second, that of the secondary school-teacher,instils disciplined learning; the third, that of the
rhetor
, arms thestudent with eloquence. These cups are drunk by most people.But 7 also drank other cups at Athens: the elegant cup of poetry,the clear cup of geometry, the sweet cup of music, the austerecup of dialectic, and finally the cup of universal philosophy thatcan never be filled. For Empedocles sings in poetry, Plato in dia-logues, Socrates in hymns, Epicharmus in verse, Xenophon inhistories, Crates in satire
—
your Apuleius cultivates all these andthe nine Muses with equal enthusiasm.Apuleius ends this tribute with praise of Carthage,
“
where the citizensare all most completely educated
…
, and the children study every intel-lectual discipline
”
, a city that is the
“
divine Muse of Africa, the Museof [Africa
’
s] Roman inhabitants
”
.
61
Apuleius the philosopher inhabits a very different world fromPlutarch. As with Seneca, rhetorical style is all-important to his dis-course: his medium is his message. His range is impressive. Extant aretreatises
On the God of Socrates
(
De Deo Socratis
),
On Plato and his Doctrine
(
De Platone et eius Dogmate
),
On the Universe
(
De Mundo
),and
On Interpretation
(
Peri Hermeneias
). The last of these may not beby Apuleius and is written in Latin, despite its Greek title. The otherthree works are authentic, while an
Asclepius
(a Latin translation of aGreek
“
hermetic
”
work, that is, one associated with the Egyptian cultof Hermes Trimegistus) is not by Apuleius.
62
The
De Deo Socratis
is especially interesting for its doctrine about
daimones,
intermediaries between the world of the gods and that of human beings.
63
There exist certain divine powers, intermediate between the high-est upper air (
aether
) and the lowest earth, situated in the spaceof the air (
aer
). By their means our desires and our deserts aremade known to the gods. These the Greeks call
daimones
.Apuleius is building on a passage from Plato
’
s
Symposium,
where Dio-tima says, in reply to Socrates
’
question:
64
Love (
Eros
) is intermediate between mortal and immortal. He isa great
daimon
, for all that concerns the
daimones
exists betweengod and mortal. [His power is] to be messenger and interpreterfor human beings to the gods, and from the gods to human
216THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
beings: for the prayers and sacrifices of mortals, and for thecommands of the gods and their rewards for sacrifices.Towards the end (
§
167) Apuleius urges his hearers to
“
follow theexample of Socrates
”
and study philosophy, and he concludes with theexample of Odysseus, whose constant companion was wisdom,through whom he was able to overcome all difficulties and temptations.The treatise
De Platone et eius Dogmate
, in two books, is compara-tively restrained in style, as befits a summary of Platonic physics,ethics and political doctrines. It is in fact closely related to an earlier
“
Handbook of Plato
’
s Teaching
”
or
Didaskalikos
by Alcinous (whichuntil recently was ascribed to Albinus).
65
Not all the doctrines in the
De Platone
are Platonic, for some come from later Academics, someeven from Stoics. The topic of Plato
’
s logic, missing from the
De Pla-tone
, is dealt with in
Peri Hermeneias
, which is one of the few sus-tained Latin treatments of logic, focusing on the syllogism, for whichthe author uses the Latin term
propositio
.Finally, the work on cosmology,
De Mundo
, is an adaptation of awork (still extant) spuriously ascribed to Aristotle but in fact datingfrom around 1 BCE.
66
This work deals first with cosmology (
§§
1
–
23)and then with theology (
§§
24
–
38), mostly concerning God as creatorand ruler (
rector
or
gubernator
) of the universe. Apuleius says that
“
although he is one, he is addressed by many names
”
, including theRoman
Jupiter
and the Greek
Zeus
(
§
37), whose all-embracing func-tions are quoted from an Orphic hymn. The work ends with Fate orNecessity, but the connection between Fate and the divine being is notworked out.The one god who
“
is addressed by many names
”
is important inApuleius
’
masterpiece,
Metamorphoses
(also known as
The Golden Ass
).
67
It is a novel in which the curiosity of the hero, Lucius, leads tohis metamorphosis into a donkey as the result of a magic ritual thatgoes wrong. After many adventures, he is saved from an act of publiccopulation at Corinth by the goddess, Isis. She appears to him and tellshim how he may recover his human form the next day at Cenchreae(the port of Corinth). He does this, and he becomes an initiate anddevotee of Isis.
68
There is great disagreement as to how far the finalscene is autobiographical
—
is the final metamorphosis that fromLucius into Apuleius?
—
and as to the significance of the centralepisode of the novel, the story of Cupid and Psyche, which on onelevel, at least, is an allegory of Love and the Soul, related in some wayto the final conversion. We can be quite sure, however, that theology isessential to Apuleius
’
philosophy. We have seen how in the
De Mundo
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS217
the one god has many names, a sign of the syncretism of second-century religious beliefs.
69
Lucius prays for help to Isis as
“
Queen of Heaven
”
, uncertain whether to address her as Ceres or Venus or Dianaor Proserpine (11. 2). Here is how Isis speaks at her epiphany (11. 5):Behold, Lucius, I am here, moved by your prayers. I am themother of nature, the mistress of all the elements, the first childof the ages, the highest of the gods, the queen of the dead, thefirst of the gods of heaven, the unchanging epiphany of the godsand goddesses. By my power I dispense the shining lights of thehighest heavens, the health-giving winds of the sea, the mourn-ing silences of the underworld. The whole world worships mydivine power, for it is one, yet with many aspects, many rituals,and many titles. [Isis then recites the names by which differentpeoples address her, finishing with the Egyptians], who
…
call meby my true name
—
Queen Isis.Lucius describes his conversion in mystical terms (11. 23):I approached the confines of death; I entered the realm of Proser-pine; I was carried through all the elements, and I returned. Atmidnight I saw the sun shining with brilliant light; I approachedthe gods below and the gods above, face to face, and I wor-shipped them in their presence. Behold, I have told you all, andyet
…
you cannot know it.How far we have come from the
Dream of Scipio
! The philosopher isalso the religious devotee, but his experience is ecstatic, leading to abetter individual life and better hope for the life after death, not to amoral imperative to improve the lot of human beings by duty and ser-vice. In his enthusiasm Lucius anticipates third-century Neoplatonismwith its focus upon union with the One.The last of the Roman philosophers in our survey is Marcus AnniusVerus, known to us as Marcus Aurelius (121
–
80 CE, emperor 161
–
80CE), a contemporary of Apuleius. His family came from Spain and,like the Spanish Annaei in the time of Claudius and Nero, climbed tothe top of the political ladder in Rome. Marcus was favoured by theemperor Hadrian, and was adopted, shortly before Hadrian
’
s death in138, by his successor, Antoninus Pius (emperor 138
–
61 CE), with thenames Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus.
70
His reign was marked by pres-sure on the northern and eastern frontiers of the empire. Marcus him-self campaigned against the Germanic tribes on and beyond the
218THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
Danube frontier in 170
–
74 and 178
–
80, and he died on campaign in theRoman province of Pannonia, either at Vindobona (modern Vienna inAustria) or at Sirmium (modern Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia). His col-leagues also campaigned against the Parthians beyond the eastern bor-ders of the empire in 162
–
66 (bringing the plague back with them toItaly), and Marcus himself was in the east in 175
–
76. His brother andcolleague as emperor, Lucius Verus, died in 169, and his wife,Faustina, died in Cappadocia in 176, the same year that he made hisson, Commodus, his colleague in place of Verus. His German cam-paigns are recorded on the Antonine Column (Column of Marcus Aure-lius), which still stands in Rome.All this is necessary background for an understanding of both thecontext and tone of Marcus
’
philosophy, recorded in his private diaryaddressed to himself: its proper title is
To Himself
(Greek,
Eis Heau-ton
), although it is usually referred to as
Meditations
.
71
The work is intwelve books, written in Greek, but the divisions into books and chap-ters were not made by Marcus. How it was preserved and copied we donot know. It was known in Byzantine times (the earliest reference to itdates from the later fourth century, but the next is not until the tenthcentury), and it was first published in Z
ü
rich in 1559 by Andreas Ges-ner, with a Latin translation by Xylander (Wilhelm Holtzmann). Themanuscript used by Xylander is lost. At the beginning of Books 2 and3 (or possibly the end of Books 1 and 2) are notes saying
“
[written]amongst the Quadi
”
(Book 2) and
“
[written] at Carnuntum
”
(Book 3),indications that Marcus was writing on campaign against the Germanictribes (one of which was the Quadi) or at the Roman military base atCarnuntum, a few kilometres below Vienna on the Danube, to thenorth of which was the territory of the Quadi. It seems, then, that the
Meditations
were written during the campaigns of the 170s, and thatthey were a personal record (Peter Brunt calls them
“
a spiritual diary
”
),addressed solely to Marcus himself. Books 2
–
12 contain the
Medita-tions
proper, while Book 1 is a catalogue of those to whom Marcuswas indebted for moral instruction and example. The overall tone isone of moral earnestness and pessimism. These are the meditations of a lonely ruler under the stress of heavy responsibilities, one who is con-cerned to be a morally good ruler, fulfilling his duties towards theRomans and their empire and towards the gods, or rather, the Stoicgod. His concerns, then, are first his place as a ruler in the world of histime, and second as a human being in the universal community of godsand human beings.Among the instructors to whom Marcus expresses his gratitude inBook 1 are six philosophers and a seventh, Severus, whom he calls
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS219
“
my brother
”
, since his son married Marcus Aurelius
’
daughter.
72
Fiveof these men were Stoics, one was a Platonist and one, Severus, a Peri-patetic, although Marcus credits him with introducing him to the Stoicheroes Thrasea, Helvidius and Cato. The most influential was Q.JuniusRusticus, the son (or grandson) of Domitian
’
s victim, Arulenus Rusti-cus, and consul in 133 and 162 CE. As city prefect (
praefectus urbi
) hecondemned the Christian, Justin the Martyr, to death in 166 CE. Mar-cus thanks him for practical advice towards becoming a philosopherwhose life matched his doctrine in its discipline and virtuousbehaviour. He says that Rusticus
“
gave me a copy from his own homeof the discourses of Epictetus
”
.
73
Of all earlier philosophers, Epictetuswas the most important influence on Marcus, for from him he learnedthe importance of developing a character in keeping with one
’
s philos-ophy. Like Epictetus, he gave high priority to the relationship betweenthe human and the divine, that is, to the proper place of human beingsin the universe of gods and mortals.Marcus
’
teacher in rhetoric was M.Cornelius Fronto (
c.
95
–
167; con-sul in 143 CE), with whom he corresponded in Latin until 166.
74
Mar-cus valued philosophy more than rhetoric (not that the
Meditations
aredevoid of rhetorical elements), and in his brief tribute to Fronto hethanks him, not for his rhetorical teaching, but for teaching him to bewary of the dissimulation that pervades life at court. It is worth noting,also, that he thanks Rusticus for saving him from being
“
diverted tosophistic exhibitionism
”
and for teaching him
“
to stand apart fromrhetoric
”
.
75
The longest tributes in Book 1 are those to his [adoptive] father,Antoninus Pius, whose virtues were those of the ideal Roman leader
—
including a sense of duty, thoroughness, constancy, clemency andintegrity.
76
The portrait of such a leader recalls Cicero
’
s
Dream of Sci- pio
and Virgil
’
s Aeneas, but in this tribute we have a unique statementfrom a Roman ruler of the ideals that he saw in his predecessor andwished himself to follow. This is quite different in quality and credibil-ity from public policy statements or political documents such as the
Res Gestae
of Augustus. For example, Marcus specifies:
77
Always to watch over the needs of the empire, to administer itsfinances, and to be patient with critics. Not to be superstitious asregards the gods, nor to curry favour with the people, nor to seek popularity or to become the favourite of the masses, but to besober in everything and steadfast.Later he exhorts himself
“
to do everything as a pupil of Antoninus
”
.
78
220THE ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
In the last chapter of Book 1 (1. 17) Marcus thanks the gods forthings belonging to Epictetus
’
categories of things under his controland out of it. From the latter category he was thankful for the fact thathe had good parents, brother, wife and children (
§§
1,4, 7); that he wasstrong enough to live as long as he had (
§
6); that he had friends likeRusticus and models to emulate like Antoninus Pius (
§§
3, 4). Marcusadds a
“
mixed
”
category between the two categories of Epictetus, incases where his will (under his control) was helped by something notunder his control. Thus his will to control his emotions (especially insexual matters) was helped by the removal of his grandfathers concu-bine (
§
2); his impulse to study philosophy was helped because
“
I didnot fall under the control of a sophist
…
nor did I resolve syllogisms orbecome an expert in celestial matters (
meteorologika
)
”
(
§
8). In the cat-egory of things under his control was his decision to be chaste (
§
2); tolive simply without detracting from the dignity of his position as theheir apparent to Antoninus (
§
3); to have clear perceptions of the mean-ing of
“
living according to nature
”
and not to be hindered in that (
§
5);to be generous to those in need (
§
7). In the last sentence of Book 1 (17.8) he says that
“
all these things need the help of the gods and fortune
”
,a significant difference from the doctrine of Epictetus, who taught thatone
’
s will was sufficient for making right moral choices.These two chapters (1. 16 and 17) outline the structure of Marcus
’
system of philosophy, for he did have a system, even if the
Meditations
are unstructured, informally written, sometimes ungrammatical andhard to follow. What else would one expect from a genuinely personaldiary, written without thought of publication? Yet Marcus
’
“
preoccupa-tions
”
(Brunt
’
s term) are clear
—
to be a virtuous ruler, to be a virtuoushuman being, and to understand the proper place of the good man inthe divinely ordered universe. The two chapters focus first on Antoni-nus as the good ruler, which he could not have been without the virtuesof the good man; second, they focus on the gods. Both categories reap-pear throughout the
Meditations
, so that here we will necessarily haveto base our review on many discrete passages. Marcus was almostexclusively concerned with ethics and very little with logic or physics(except in so far as theology was a part of physics): an exception is 8.13, where he exhorts himself to test his impressions against the
“
reason-ing of physics, ethics and logic
”
. His philosophy is Stoic, in spite of the many non-Stoic philosophers whom he quotes with approval.
79
Of these, the Platonists are the most important, with Socrates at their head.Socrates, however, was revered by the Stoics, and there is nothing inMarcus
’
references to him (more than to any other philosopher) that isinconsistent with Stoicism. Of the Stoics, he is closest to Epictetus. He
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS221
quotes him frequently, for example at 6. 41, where he reminds himself that,
“
if we judge good and evil by what is under our control and whatis not
”
, then we have no cause to blame the gods or other humanbeings for our misfortunes. At 5. 33 he quotes
“
bear and forbear
”—
thevirtues of patience and self-control
—
the rule for a life unaffected bythe injustice of human beings and the attractions of pleasure.As Marcus meditates on his moral duty as a ruler he often expressesdistaste for the people with whom he must deal:
Say to yourself in the morning:
“
I shall meet people who are offi-cious, ungracious, arrogant, deceitful, malicious and self-centred.They have all become like that because they are ignorant of goodand evil. But I have seen the nature of the good, that it is beauti-ful, and the nature of the evil, that it is ugly
…
and I cannot behurt by any of these people
…
I cannot be angry with my fellowhuman being and I cannot be his enemy. For we have come intoexistence in order to work together.Like Antoninus, he will be
“
sober and steadfast
”
as a ruler. For exam-ple:
81
Every hour be strong and think, as a Roman and a man should,how you can do your job meticulously and with genuine dignityand charity and independence and justice.He is concerned to be a human being among human beings while main-taining the dignity proper to his position:
82
See that you do not become
“
Caesarized
”
or dyed [in royalcolours]. For it does happen. Watch yourself: see that you aresincere, good, straightforward, dignified, modest, a lover of jus-tice, reverent towards the gods, approachable, sympathetic, andstrong in bearing your responsibilities. Strive to maintain thecharacter that Philosophy intended for you. Revere the gods, pro-tect human beings. Life is short. There is one fruit of life on earth
—
a pure character and deeds for the good of the community.The
“
community
”
to which Marcus refers extends beyond Rome to theuniverse (6. 44):
My city and my fatherland is Rome, in so far as I am Antoninus.
In so far as I am a human being, the universe is my city and myfatherland.Neither does he look for a return for his good deeds; his view of
benefi-cia
is less complex than that of Seneca:
One man, when he does a good deed for another, is ready tocredit it to his account, that he is owed a debt of gratitude.Another
…
thinks privately about the debt and knows what he hasdone. But another does not know
…
: he is like a vine which bearsgrapes and does not want anything else after it has once borne itsproper fruit
…
The man who has done good does not make anissue of it, but he turns to another task, just as the vine turns back again in due season to produce grapes.Marcus returns to this theme at 9. 42, where he says that it is his ownfault if he misreads the character of a man whom he has benefited andwho is ungrateful (
§
5):What more do you want if you do a good deed for someone? Is itnot enough that you have acted in accordance with your nature,but you still seek some reward for this?Marcus was especially worried by anger, which he discusses in hislongest and most systematic chapter.
85
We have seen how he tried notto be irritated by people he had to deal with every day. Here he consid-ers nine headings (
“
like gifts of the Muses
”
,
§
10) under which heshould analyse his feelings and control them. He must consider thecharacter of those who irritate him, realizing that it is
their
failure of reason that has caused them to act badly, and
his
failure of perceptionif he lets their actions cause him to be angry (
§§
2
–
3, 7). He mustexpect other people to be morally bad (this, he says, is
“
a tenth giftfrom the leader of the Muses [Apollo]
”
,
§
11). Only a tyrant wouldallow their bad actions to harm others, without trying to correct themby humane admonition given
“
not as if by a schoolmaster
”
(
§
9). As forhis own emotions, it is more manly to be gentle and mild, in thisbecoming closer to achieving Stoic
apatheia,
freedom from the pas-sions (
§
10). While many of these details are traditional to Stoic discus-sions of anger, Marcus is original in his focus on the moral conditionof the person causing anger, for a morally bad person harms himself and the community. His own anger must be controlled by looking athis attitude (Greek,
schesis
) towards all human beings (
§
1), for, as a
FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS223
ruler and a human being, he exists for the sake of other human beings.This
schesis
protects him from being resentful if he is slighted by oth-ers, an attitude which Plutarch, following Aristotle, had said was thechief cause of anger.
86
While Marcus does not mention this source of anger, he does follow Aristotle in trying to achieve that mildnesswhich Aristotle had defined as the
“
calming of anger
”
.Marcus
’
ethics are best expressed in the famous chapter where hesets his own emotions in the context of the divine nature of the humansoul:
If you find something in human life that is better than justice ortruth or self-control or courage or, in a word, self-sufficiency inyour mind
…—
if, as I say, you find something better than these,then turn to it with all your soul
…
But if there seems to be noth-ing better than the divine spirit that has been placed withinyou
…
, and if you find everything else smaller and more insignif-icant, then allow no room for anything else
…
Simply and freelychoose that which is better and hold on to it.The sense of the community of the human soul with the divine is thebasis of the second principal category in Marcus
’
philosophical sys-tem, the place of human beings in the divinely ordered cosmos.
In 1.3 he thanks the gods that his mother had taught him to be god-fearing,and in 1. 16. 3 that Antoninus had been an example to him of freedomfrom superstition. Like many Stoics he believes that the gods do com-municate with human beings, especially through dreams (1. 17. 6, 9)and in answer to prayer (9. 40), but their help is predicated upon hisown self-sufficiency. Thus his prayers should be for support in over-coming the
pathe
of fear or lust (9. 40), not for the fulfilling of someparticular desire. As a rational being he must willingly acquiesce inwhat happens to him (10. 28), for human beings alone are endowedwith reason that allows them to follow willingly the necessity of fate.Elsewhere he says:
What the gods bring about is full of Providence. What Fatebrings about is not separate from Nature nor from the closely-woven works of Providence.This belief in the texture of the universe, which cannot be unravelledby the desires or fears of an individual human being, is the foundationof Marcus
’
religious views, as it is of his ethics:
Everything is woven together with everything else, and the bind-ing together is sacred, and virtually nothing is alien to anythingelse. For all things have been arranged together and make up theorder of one universe. For the universe is one, made up of allthings, and god is one, existing in all things, and substance isone, and law is one, and reason is common to all intelligentbeings, and truth is one.
If
indeed there is one goal of perfection(
teleiotes
) for beings that have the same origin and share in thesame reason.Despite the doubt expressed in the final sentence, this is the dynamicsource of Marcus
’
striving for virtuous character and action, so power-ful that it does not need the precise definitions of a theologian. This isa sufficient explanation of the ambiguities in his views of the survivalof the soul after death. In 12. 5 he asks why good men should perish attheir death, and he answers that if this is so, then it has been soordained justly by the gods. In 4. 21 he ponders how there can be suffi-cient space in air and on earth for the souls of the dead
“
if
they con-tinue after death
”
. He does not pursue this question and, as Rutherfordhas said,
“
he maintains a firm agnosticism
”
.
Marcus therefore falls back on the unity of the cosmos as an answerto the question of 4. 21. He confesses:
Everything is in harmony with me, O Cosmos, that is in harmonywith you! Nothing is too early or too late for me that is at theright time for you. Everything is fruit for me, O Nature, that yourseasons bring. From you comes everything, in you is everything,to you everything [will return]. One man says,
“
I love the city of Cecrops [Athens]
”
, but will you [Marcus] not say,
“
I love thecity of Zeus
”
?Marcus
’
sense of citizenship in the universe energized his principles asa ruler, and it allows him to contemplate death more positively:
It makes no difference where you live, if one lives everywhere asif the universe were his city. Let others see, let them observeclosely, a man who is truly living according to nature.In the first chapter of Book 12 he exhorts himself
“
to let go of the pastand leave the future to Providence, and for the present keep to thestraight path of purity and justice
”
. Thus, he continues, he will beready for death:
If, when it is time for you to go, you leave everything else andhonour your guiding spirit (hegemonikon) and the divine elementin you, and you are not afraid of ceasing to live…, you will be ahuman being worthy of the universe that created you and nolonger will you be a stranger in your own country.Finally, in the last chapter of the Meditations (12. 36), he takes hisleave of a life well lived:O human being, you have been a citizen in this great city [i.e. theworld]. What difference does it make if you have been one forfive years or for one hundred? For all are equal under the law.Why should you be fearful, then, if he who sends you away isnot a tyrant nor an unjust judge, but Nature, which brought youthere? You are like an actor whom the presiding judge dismissesfrom the stage: “But I have not finished five acts, but onlythree!”Right! But in life three acts make up the whole play. Forhe who was the cause of the composition of your body is nowthe cause of its dissolution: he it is who sets the limit of yourcompleted life. You are not responsible for either. Depart, then,graciously, for he who dismisses you is gracious.Marcus Aurelius is an appropriate terminus for our survey of theRoman philosophers, even if we may rightly say,“We have finishedonly three acts!”
Philosophy continued to flourish in
the Romanempire for centuries after
his death, and the four schools of
philosophy at Athens, for whom he
had endowed professorial chairs in
176,continued to exist
until they were formally closed by
Giustiniano in 529.
Two of Marcus’contemporaries, both doctor-philosophers, should
still be mentioned,
although discussion of
their doctrines is beyond the
limits of the history of Ancient Roman philosophy.
The Asiatic Greek, Galeno of Pergamo
(c.129–199), who was physician to
Marcus, believed that the physician
must also be a philosopher, as
he showed in his vast output covering both
medicine and philosophy.
the Romanempire for centuries after
his death, and the four schools of
philosophy at Athens, for whom he
had endowed professorial chairs in
176,continued to exist
until they were formally closed by
Giustiniano in 529.
Two of Marcus’contemporaries, both doctor-philosophers, should
still be mentioned,
although discussion of
their doctrines is beyond the
limits of the history of Ancient Roman philosophy.
The Asiatic Greek, Galeno of Pergamo
(c.129–199), who was physician to
Marcus, believed that the physician
must also be a philosopher, as
he showed in his vast output covering both
medicine and philosophy.
The short treatise On MyOwn
Books (supplemented by the brief
On the Arrangement of MyOwn Books)
not only gives the titles of many of
his works, but also has valuable
details about Galen’s life, his relations
with Marcus Aurelius,and the effects of
the plague in Rome.
The title of another
short work,
That the Best Doctor is
also a Philosopher , is
self-explanatory.
Galen’s interest in
philosophical topics other than ethics appears
in the Introduction to Logic.
Books (supplemented by the brief
On the Arrangement of MyOwn Books)
not only gives the titles of many of
his works, but also has valuable
details about Galen’s life, his relations
with Marcus Aurelius,and the effects of
the plague in Rome.
The title of another
short work,
That the Best Doctor is
also a Philosopher , is
self-explanatory.
Galen’s interest in
philosophical topics other than ethics appears
in the Introduction to Logic.
His most important extant
philosophical work is
On the Doctrines of Hippocrates
and Plato (in nine books), a valuable
source for the doctrines of earlier
philosophers (for example, Posidonio) whose
works are no longer extant, with
much perceptive criticism.
Probably contemporary with
Galeno was another doctor—philosopher,
Sesto Empirico, about whose
life nothing is known.
philosophical work is
On the Doctrines of Hippocrates
and Plato (in nine books), a valuable
source for the doctrines of earlier
philosophers (for example, Posidonio) whose
works are no longer extant, with
much perceptive criticism.
Probably contemporary with
Galeno was another doctor—philosopher,
Sesto Empirico, about whose
life nothing is known.
Of his extant works, "Adversus Mathematicos", in eleven books, and
Outlines of
Pyrrhonism are
our most prolific ancient
source for the sceptical doctrines of
Pyrrhonism and criticism of
Stoic logic.
The obsessive concern
of second-century Roman philosophers
as a practical guide for daily life
comes to an end effectively with Marcus Aurelius,
for philosophy in the next century is
marked by other trends.
Outlines of
Pyrrhonism are
our most prolific ancient
source for the sceptical doctrines of
Pyrrhonism and criticism of
Stoic logic.
The obsessive concern
of second-century Roman philosophers
as a practical guide for daily life
comes to an end effectively with Marcus Aurelius,
for philosophy in the next century is
marked by other trends.
Doxographers such as Diogenes
Laertiusrecorded and excerpted
the doctrines of earlier philosophers,
while theprincipal
concerns of philosophy turned from
daily life to efforts toapprehend the divine, to understand
the relationship between the universal
intelligence of God and human beings.
While this quest had practical effects
on how people chose
to live their lives, its primary goalwas
not so much happiness (eudaimonia),
as personal fulfillment inunion with
the divine.
In their focus o
n the divine being, Epictetus,
Apuleius and Marcus to some
extent anticipate the doctrines of
Neoplatonism that flourished
from the third century onwards.
Much of Stoicethics was subsumed
into Christian doctrine, which grew
in the third
century and triumphed in the fourth.
The Church
Fathers both needed and
criticized Stoicism,
a tension that makes an early appearance in Clement of Al
exandria (c.150–215).
Even fourteen centuries later it reappears with the N
eostoic Justus Lipsius (1547–1606),
whose popular dialogue
De Constantia (first published
in 1584) and later dogmatic
works on Stoicism (published
in 1604) tried to reconcile Stoicism
and Christianity.
As a measure of the
vitality of Roman philosophy
we can look ahead from
Marcus Aurelius for more than three
centuries, to a Roman
ex-consul waiting in
prison at
Ticinum (modern Pavia) for unjust execution
on the orders of the Gothic King Theoderic.
The "Consolation of Philosophy" of
Boethius (480–524)
justifies divine providence
by
relying largely on Stoic and Neoplatonist doctrine,
and it ends with
Philosophy exhorting Boethius:
"Turn away from vice, cultivate virtue,
raise your mind to upright hopes,
offer your humble
prayers to the highest heavens."
"Great is
the necessity for virtuous
living that has been imposed on you, if you
are honest with yourself,
when you put
before your eyes the judge who sees all."
Cicerone, Seneca, Epitteto and Marc'Aurelio would
have agreed!
In the lonely voice
of Theoderic's victim
we can recognize the
vitality of the Roman philosophers and
perceive their continuity over a period of six centuries.
Laertiusrecorded and excerpted
the doctrines of earlier philosophers,
while theprincipal
concerns of philosophy turned from
daily life to efforts toapprehend the divine, to understand
the relationship between the universal
intelligence of God and human beings.
While this quest had practical effects
on how people chose
to live their lives, its primary goalwas
not so much happiness (eudaimonia),
as personal fulfillment inunion with
the divine.
In their focus o
n the divine being, Epictetus,
Apuleius and Marcus to some
extent anticipate the doctrines of
Neoplatonism that flourished
from the third century onwards.
Much of Stoicethics was subsumed
into Christian doctrine, which grew
in the third
century and triumphed in the fourth.
The Church
Fathers both needed and
criticized Stoicism,
a tension that makes an early appearance in Clement of Al
exandria (c.150–215).
Even fourteen centuries later it reappears with the N
eostoic Justus Lipsius (1547–1606),
whose popular dialogue
De Constantia (first published
in 1584) and later dogmatic
works on Stoicism (published
in 1604) tried to reconcile Stoicism
and Christianity.
As a measure of the
vitality of Roman philosophy
we can look ahead from
Marcus Aurelius for more than three
centuries, to a Roman
ex-consul waiting in
prison at
Ticinum (modern Pavia) for unjust execution
on the orders of the Gothic King Theoderic.
The "Consolation of Philosophy" of
Boethius (480–524)
justifies divine providence
by
relying largely on Stoic and Neoplatonist doctrine,
and it ends with
Philosophy exhorting Boethius:
"Turn away from vice, cultivate virtue,
raise your mind to upright hopes,
offer your humble
prayers to the highest heavens."
"Great is
the necessity for virtuous
living that has been imposed on you, if you
are honest with yourself,
when you put
before your eyes the judge who sees all."
Cicerone, Seneca, Epitteto and Marc'Aurelio would
have agreed!
In the lonely voice
of Theoderic's victim
we can recognize the
vitality of the Roman philosophers and
perceive their continuity over a period of six centuries.
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