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between 146 and 129. Laelius, consul in 140, can perhaps be called thefirst
Roman philosopher. The century after the embassy of 155 wasessentially a period
of
philosophia togata
, for it was Greeks whotaught the Romans
at Rome and in Greece, especially at Athens andRhodes. Even discounting the
biases of Cicero
’
s idealized picture of Scipio and Laelius, we
can say that in this period the Romans broughtabout adaptations in Greek
philosophy that were needed to make itacceptable in Roman culture. Here the
readiness of Panaetius to adjustthe rigid doctrines of Stoicism is significant,
and from his time thereemerges a distinctively Roman philosophy with a strong
focus onethics, particularly the duty of Roman leaders towards the state and
itsgods, towards humankind, and towards their families and dependants.Thus Greek
philosophy in the Roman world was split, for its ethics hadpractical effects on
Roman life and culture, while its logic and physicsvery largely continued to be
studied and discussed, but with fewer prac-tical consequences. The leading Greek
figures of middle Stoicism,Panaetius and Posidonius, were crucial in the
development of Romanphilosophy.Important also were the consequences of the sack
of Athens by Sullain 86 BCE.
12
Like Aemilius Paullus after
Pydna, Sulla brought back toRome Greek cultural treasures, including the library
of Apellicon,which
“
included most of the works of Aristotle and
Theophrastus
”
.
13
How this library was
acquired, and its relationship to Aristotle
’
s ownlibrary, is a
tangled story involving insoluble problems. JonathanBarnes, however, has shown
that the standard picture in modern liter-ary histories, of a sudden appearance
of Aristotle
’
s works in Romeafter 86, is
false.
14
While Plutarch (and before him, Strabo) may havebeen
factually accurate in saying that Aristotle
’
s works reached
Romein this way, it is pressing their evidence too far to say that
Cicero
’
sfreedman and friend, Tyrannio, and the Peripatetic
scholar, Andronicusof Rhodes, revolutionized Aristotelian studies. Barnes has
shown thatAristotle was already known in some form to Cicero, and that he
hadcontinuously been known to the Greek Peripatetics in the period afterhis
death (322 BCE), when, according to Strabo, his texts were unavail-able. The
famous edition of Aristotle by Andronicus has been shownby Barnes to be little
more than
“
amateur tinkering
”
, and his
majorcontribution to Aristotelian studies at Rome was a catalogue
(Greek,
Pinakes
) of Aristotle
’
s works. As
Cicero showed, the Peripateticschool continued to be active in Athens, although
the Lyceum (whereAristotle had taught) was destroyed by Sulla in
86.
15
Cicero himself makes the Academic Piso say
that
“
with the exception of Plato, onemight rightly call
Aristotle the chief of philosophers
”
,
16
which
implies
4THE ROMAN
PHILOSOPHERS
that Aristotle was known and read at Rome before the edition of Andronicus
appeared, probably after the death of Cicero in 43 BCEand before 30
BCE.
17
While there were Romans who fancied themselves as
philosophersin the first part of the first century BCE, Cicero was the first to
defineand systematize
philosophia togata
. His adaptation of
Greek philoso-phy stabilized Greek doctrines in ethics, epistemology and
theology forRoman readers. Even more significantly, he transmitted these
doctrinesin Latin, for which he developed a philosophical vocabulary. Despisedby
Mommsen and largely neglected as a philosopher by English schol-ars, he has been
in the last fifteen years (in the English-speaking world;somewhat earlier in
Germany and France) justly rehabilitated as aphilosopher and transmitter of
Greek philosophy. It is to him that weowe the Stoic emphasis on duty and control
of the passions, eventhough he was himself an Academic. His originality as a
philosopher isdebatable, and is chiefly to be found in his works on politics and
law,in particular the
De Re Publica
and
De
Legibus
, both surviving only infragments. But after Cicero we can for
the first time define a Romanphilosopher as a Roman student of Greek philosophy,
who has adaptedGreek doctrines for the needs of Roman society and politics, with
aprevailing focus on ethics.While Cicero and (if this picture is not totally
imaginary) the Romanleaders of the generation of Scipio Aemilianus emphasized
the publicduty of the aristocratic Roman philosopher, others, most notably
theEpicureans, sought happiness (the Greek
eudaimonia
) through
non-involvement in public life. Epicurean studies flourished particularly
inCampania, in the cities around the Bay of Naples, whose origins forthe most
part were Greek. Many Romans studied philosophy withPhilodemus
(
c
. 110
–
40 BCE) at Herculaneum. Through the
patronageof the aristocratic family of the Pisones, he had many friends in
theRoman upper classes, many of whose members were Epicureansdespite their
involvement in political life. The first truly originalRoman philosopher,
Lucretius, was Epicurean, and he seems to havesucceeded in living as a private
individual. His epic poem,
De Rerum Natura
, composed before 54
BCE, was inspired by Epicurus, whomLucretius praises consecutively as man,
father and god. Derivative asthis sounds, the exposition of Epicurean doctrine
in Latin hexameterverse called for an original genius, who created a new
language, appro-priate for the dignity of epic verse, that expounded
Epicurus
’
teachingwith power and intensity. Yet even Lucretius
was principally con-cerned with ethics, for the goal of his teaching was to
enable Romansto live a life free of the fear of death, and his exposition of
physics,
PHILOSOPHIA
TOGATA5
celestial phenomena and the development of civilization, was directedtowards
this goal.Lucretius remained outside the mainstream of Roman philosophy,admired
by later poets (Virgil, pre-eminently) but apparently notwidely read. In part
this may have been due to the political convulsionsin the twenty-five years
after his death, which, ironically, gave Cicerothe stimulus to produce a flood
of philosophical works in the last threeyears of his life. When the social and
political situation had been stabi-lized by Augustus, and the Principate had
been formally established in27 BCE, the contexts for leadership and patronage
had changed perma-nently. The philosophical poets of the Augustan
age
—
Virgil, Horace,Ovid and
Manilius
—
composed their poems against a background of power
and patronage concentrated in the person of the emperor or (asin the case of
Maecenas, patron of Virgil and Horace) his associates.Whatever the
poets
’
personal philosophies, the doctrines of theirpoems were
consistent with the ideology of the emperor. Thus theJupiter of the Epicurean
Virgil was assimilated to Stoic Fate, and thehero, Aeneas, was driven by a Stoic
sense of duty to the gods, to hisstate (present and future) and to human beings
(again, present andfuture). So the Epicurean Horace, most notably in his
six
“
Roman
”
odes (the first six odes of Book
3), advised young people to beinvolved in public duties. Ovid, whose attitude
towards Augustus wasequally complex, expounded a form of Pythagoreanism and a
largelyStoic cosmology without overt reference to the regime. The StoicManilius
was careful to avoid offending Augustus and Tiberius in hisaccount of astrology,
an exceptionally sensitive topic under the princi-pate. Even so, the custom of
maintaining a
“
house philosopher
”
contin-ued:
Augustus, for example, maintained the doxographer, Arius Didy-mus, in his home
as friend and confidant.The Cynics stayed outside the mainstream of Roman
philosophy andsociety, as would be expected from a group whose doctrines
disre-garded political and social conventions. The Cynics never were a
philo-sophical school like the Stoics, Academics and Epicureans, and
theirmovement is better described as a way of life. Although the early Cyn-ics
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 hardto
define.
18
Some features, however, can be clearly distinguished.
The first is thetraditional association of the early hero of Cynicism, Diogenes
of Sinope (
c
.412
–
324 BCE), with
Socrates.
19
Even if Plato criticized Dio-genes
as
“
Socrates gone
mad
”
,
20
Diogenes shared with Socrates
the
6THE ROMAN
PHILOSOPHERS
need for an urban context for his teaching, disregard of physical com-fort,
and a capacity for making his interlocutors uncomfortable by can-dour and
rigorous interrogation. Second, there is a close relationshipbetween Stoic
ethics and Cynicism. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, wasa follower of the Cynic,
Crates (
c
.368
–
288 BCE). His treatise on
theideal republic,
Politeia
, shared with the Cynics a disregard
for conven-tional political, religious and social institutions, to such an
extent thatlater Stoics were embarrassed by it.
21
More
significant for the RomanStoics was Cynic asceticism, that is the practice of
physical hardship(Greek,
askesis
,
literally
“
training
”
) as a means towards
attainingvirtue. Stoic emphasis on the unimportance of physical comforts
anddiscomforts, relative to reason and virtue, has its origins in Cynic
prac-tice. 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. Yetthere is evidence for
Cynicism in Rome in the late Republic, althoughthis seems also to have been the
period of Cynicism
’
s lowest fortunesat Rome. Varro
(116
–
37 BCE), as quoted by Augustine, included Cyni-cism in
his list of 288 philosophical sects, but he distinguishedbetween the Cynics and
formal philosophical sects in that the
“
mannerand custom of the
Cynics
”
did not include an enquiry into the supremegood
(
finis boni
).
22
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.
Cicero was at pains todistinguish Stoic candour from the plain speaking of the
Cynics, whichoften was obscene.
23
Further, the Roman satiric
tradition owed a greatdeal to the popularizing Cynic diatribes of Bion of
Borysthenes (
c
.335
–
245 BCE) and his younger
contemporary, Teles of Megara. Horace,indeed, refers
to
“
diatribes in the style of
Bion
”
,
24
and the tradition of forthright
moral criticism, spiced with obscenity, is a prominent featurein the satires of
the four great Roman satirists, Lucilius, Horace, Per-sius and Juvenal.Cynicism
seems to have flourished in the Roman world during thefirst two centuries CE.
R.Bracht Branham defines the goal of Cynicismas
“
to live well
in order to be happy
”
.
25
This is consistent
with theStoic emphasis on virtue (i.e.
“
living
well
”
) in a period when individu-als turned to Stoicism for
answers to the problems of preserving moraland intellectual independence under a
monarchy. There are manyCynic expressions in Seneca
’
s letters
and dialogues, and Seneca him-self was a friend and admirer of the Cynic
philosopher, Demetrius. Themost explicit exposition of Cynic doctrine for a
Roman audience is that
PHILOSOPHIA
TOGATA7
of
Epictetus, and an important contemporary source for Cynicism isthe orator, Dio
Chrysostom (
c
.40
–
110 CE), who before his
exile fromRome had been a follower of the Stoic, Musonius
Rufus.
26
Nevertheless, there were strong objections to the
Cynics in Rome,and Cynicism was practised mostly in the Greek east of the
empire.
27
The basic objection stemmed from Cynic contempt for
social conven-tions. 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 manyRomans, especially Stoics, it
was displayed in public behaviour offen-sive to Roman ideas of
decorum
and
gravitas
, appropriate behaviourand
dignity.
28
Cynics made people uncomfortable, especially in
thedecorous (not to say, prudish) society described by Cicero, and
theirextremism in despising the comforts of life was unacceptable to those,like
Seneca, who preferred to compromise between wealth and philo-sophical
principles. Further, the Cynics
’
disregard of social and
politi-cal conventions inevitably encouraged non-participation in politics
anddevaluation of public reputation. For the Cynics the central
Romanaristocratic virtues of
officium
and
pietas
(i.e. duty in public and pri-vate contexts)
were irrelevant. Finally, the Cynics
’
exclusive focus onethics
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 princi-pally of Roman
philosophers) in the century between Cicero
’
s deathand his own
time. He records the rise and fall of the only completelyRoman school of
philosophy, that of the Sextii (father and son), whichbegan probably in the 40s
BCE, and he says that the established Greek schools suffered from absence of
leadership.
29
Yet individual Romanspursued philosophical
studies in Rome and in Greece, and the majorschools of Greek philosophy
continued to exist. The Stoics were themost successful survivors, and in Seneca
(d. 65 CE) they produced thesecond great Latin prose author of Roman philosophy.
Like Cicero,Seneca based his authority on a new Latin prose style, at once
rhetori-cal and dogmatic. But, unlike Cicero, the minister of Nero was
com-pelled by circumstances to distinguish between his public life and
hisprivate doctrines. The great division between his political actions
(hissupport of the murder of Nero
’
s mother, Agrippina, in 59
CE, beingperhaps the philosopher
’
s nadir) and his doctrine of
morally goodinvolvement in public affairs, between his wealth and his doctrine
of alife lived according to nature, have made Seneca, in his own time andever
since, a controversial figure. But of his importance as a Roman
8THE
ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS
philosopher there can be no doubt, and, for centuries, in Europe of
theRenaissance and the Enlightenment, he was the most influential of Roman
philosophers, surpassing even Plato and Aristotle in northernEurope towards the
end of the sixteenth and early in the seventeenthcenturies.
Seneca
’
s focus was almost exclusively ethical:
his
NaturalesQuaestiones
, his only surviving work in physics,
has never beenwidely read or admired.Seneca and his contemporaries were
compelled by their social andpolitical contexts to be very different in their
philosophical goals andstrategies from the Roman philosophers of
Cicero
’
s time. They werestill indebted to Greek philosophy and
Greek teachers, but their studieswere directed towards honourable survival under
a regime that wasintermittently immoral, led by a monarch who had the
de
facto
arbi-trary power of life and death over them. Roman politicians
whose phi-losophy led them into politically dangerous utterance did not
survive
—
the fate of Lucan, Thrasea and Seneca himself under
Nero, and of boththe Helvidii under the Flavians. All these men were executed on
politi-cal 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 Lucilius (a friend of ScipioAemilianus) had openly
criticized his political contemporaries andHorace had criticized the morals of
Roman society, Persius (d. 62 CE)adopted a more private mode of expression and
was saved from beingdrawn 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.
30
His
philosophical passages are not alignedwith any one school, and he never
supported imperial policy in the waythat Horace did.
31
He
preferred to continue the moralizing tradition of Roman satire by means of
rhetorical brilliance and sustained indigna-tion behind a mask of irony.The
period between the death of Seneca in 65 CE and the accessionof Hadrian in 118
brought change and occasional turbulence to intellec-tuals and philosophers in
the Roman world. Like Nero, the Flavianemperors (Vespasian, Titus and Domitian,
69
–
96) preferred to silencephilosophers if their doctrine and
speech were politically offensive, forexample, by expelling them from Italy in
74 and 93. This period alsosaw the rise of Greek orators who made some claim to
being philoso-phers. These are the orators of the Second Sophistic (so named
early inthe third century by Philostratus), few of whom deserved the title of
“
philosopher
”
: among these Favorinus of
Aries (
c
.85
–
165) is
perhapsunique.
32
The Second Sophistic was symptomatic of
developments in
PHILOSOPHIA
TOGATA9
Mark
Morford - Roman Philosophers -
Routledge
.
Sections
■PHILOSOPHIA
TOGATA
■THE ARRIVAL OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ROME
■CICERO AND HIS
CONTEMPORARIES
■LUCRETIUS AND THE EPICUREANS
■PHILOSOPHERS AND POETS IN
THE AUGUSTAN AGE
■SENECA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
■STOICISM UNDER NERO AND
THE FLAVIANS
■FROM EPICTETUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS
■BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
NOTE
■NOTES
■REFERENCES
■PHILOSOPHERS NAMED IN THE TEXT
■PASSAGES
DISCUSSED
■GENERAL INDEX
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