True to the ancient belief that politics and ethics were part of a single philosophical whole, Cicero’s morality was by no means limited to the relationship between governments and subjects. ‘If the man lives,’ he declared, ‘who would belittle the study of philosophy, I quite fail to see what in the world he would see fit to praise.’ For all his passion for public life, he is said to have expressed the hope that his friends would describe him not as an orator but as a philosopher. He had felt this devotion from boyhood, encouraged by his father in spite of their anti Greek municipal background. And by philosophy – in spite of his immense contributions to European epistemology, logic, and theology -Cicero primarily meant moral philosophy.
He enthusiastically accepted the belief of the Greek Stoics1 that high moral standards, the determination to live up to them, and the emotional self-restraint needed to do so (which Romans so admired, and Cicero knew well to be hard of achievement) were the most important things in the world – probably the only important things: this being the imperative command of a Law of Nature, identical with divine Providence – which is universally applicable to human relations, because a spark of this divinity is universally distributed among mankind. And that is why, according to Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, virtue joins man to God. From this belief two things follow: first, all human beings, however humble, must count for something, must have some inherent value in themselves – the basic assumption in that humanism which is so fundamental to western thought – and secondly, this spark of divinity supplies an unbreakable bond of kinship between one man and another, irrespective of state, race, or caste, in a universal Brotherhood of Man; and it is right and necessary that brothers should receive decent treatment from one another.2
This conception, so far from being the meaningless platitude which debasement has often made it in later centuries, was fundamental to Cicero’s attitude and runs continuously through the writings in which he endeavours to explain the human condition and, simultaneously, to guide human behaviour (Chapter 4). In the works of the later Greek philosophers he found material to reinforce his conviction that one of the first impulses in man is affection for his kind: this is natural, nature is good, and accordingly man’s first rule must be regard for his fellow men, and the avoidance of any personal gain when this can only be acquired by harming another.
In his presentation of this view Cicero stands about halfway between the agnostic who asserts that man can be truly good without wholehearted adherence to a clearly defined religion, and the Christian who denies it. He is concerned first and foremost with men, he throws moral responsibility upon man’s shoulders, and he believes that man can make decisions without detailed interference by gods or Providence. And yet he denies complete self-sufficiency for human beings, since he assumes the existence of this supreme power – belief in the gods being established by almost universal consent – which endows all men with the divine spark, and makes them brothers. His essential belief was that, because of the presence of this divine element in every human being equally, ‘it is by helping others that man approaches closest to divinity’. Such interest in theology as he possesses, then, is related and even subordinated to his prime concern, which is human cooperation: his specific contribution is the idea of humanity.
Since, however, this idea is based on the divine spark which humanity shares, theology has its place: and it is the subject of the treatise On the Nature of the Gods. In this, after the Epicurean and Stoic systems have been described, the Academic spokesman Gaius Aurelius Cotta1 is careful to say that he upholds the traditional religion of Rome, and that his philosophical standpoint, for all the apparent contradiction, does not infringe on this. In the same way Cicero’s own religion varies between the patriotic godliness of the Forum and the more detached philosophizing of the study. The former is an interest in religion because this is applicable to national politics; the latter is none the less profound because it never reaches a solution. That is because, true to his distaste for dogmatic assertion, Cicero refrains from definite conclusions concerning the nature of the divinity. Likewise, when he speculates about the life beyond the grave – as he does with increasing intensity after the death of his daughter Tullia – he still qualifies by reserves, with Cato the Censor as his spokesman, an evident inclination to believe that the soul is immortal (Chapter 5).
His interest in the human cooperation which was his principal concern is eminently practical. He is writing for educated Romans, and the way of life and method of cooperation which he proposes were deliberately designed to be adjustable to their potentialities and circumstances. They were not temperamentally suited for contemplation; they were public men – following the careers of statesman and soldier, which, whatever the future of the soul might be, could bring a man immortal fame – and Cicero, reacting against the ‘ivory tower’ ideal of the later Greek world, was the last person to suggest that they should cease to be public men. So the contemplative or mystic virtues were clearly beyond them. That does not mean that Cicero wants them, or himself, to aim low. On the contrary, the target he sets them is at the very limit of their capabilities. But it is not beyond that limit. And this confers a special and modern interest upon his discussions of such subjects. Both we and Cicero live in times of ludicrous or tragic disparity between the standards which the great religions demand from their adherents and the infinitely smaller degree of goodness which most of those adherents, individually or banded together in governments or other associations, are able to achieve. Noting this the Stoic Panaetius, in mitigation of the austerities of his predecessors, had tried in the second century B.C. to bring their creed within reach of human and Roman possibilities. Cicero drew upon and adopted his writings, as well as upon the practical experiences of Scipio Aemilianus’s circle to which Panaetius had belonged, in order to present a way of life which, although fine and idealistic, was nevertheless (in contrast to many of his aims in the political sphere) possible: for example for orators, to whose exalted art or science he believed – with some partiality, owing to his own interest – that philosophy, as well as law and history, was of the utmost assistance. ‘One should know’, he tells his son,’ what philosophy teaches, but one should live civiliter’ - and this untranslatable word means: like a citizen, like an educated Roman, like a civilized man living as a member of his community. Among those of the world’s codes of behaviour which are within the bounds of practicability, few if any deserve more careful consideration than Cicero’s.
He would not have minded our calling attention to a note of vagueness, and even inconsistency, in his interpretation of the ultimate sanction- or of anything else. For the dogmatic creeds such as Stoicism had, by his day, become overlaid by a certain element of suspended judgement or scepticism, and that was particularly apparent in the New Academy (the descendant of Plato’s Academy) of which Cicero regarded himself as a disciple. Accordingly, in spite of his admiration for the Stoics (an admiration regarded as legitimate by the New Academicians) he refused to subscribe wholeheartedly to dogmatic statements of their case. Cicero did not venture to claim certainty: the highest that he aspired to achieve was the most probable opinion. This could best be reached by considering and criticizing current theories in a spirit of free inquiry which should pursue the argument wherever it led. Let us not, certainly, lose our tempers; but ‘let each man defend what he believes: judgement is free’.
Cicero – herein resembling all other Romans – was not a philosophical thinker of any marked originality. He, himself, dismisses his treatises as mere copies, but this modesty, which presents a notable contrast to his political self-estimates, does not do him justice. It is true that works such as On the Greatest Degree of Good and Evil (De Finibus) only aim at being impartial expositions of doctrine, but On the State and On Laws have some claim to be regarded as original works, and in On Duties, III (Chapter 4) his varied reading enables him to strike out some distance on his own. In general Cicero may be inscribed as an acute reader of a wide range of Greek philosophers, well equipped to extract from them what suited him, adding shifts of emphasis appropriate to his character, nation, and environment. In his capacity to do this, and to transform his conclusions into words (with astonishing rapidity), he is very much a figure for the twentieth century, the effective popularizer of knowledge and doctrine – a popularizer so skilful and successful as to leave modern portents such as H. G. Wells’ Outline of History far behind: though the comparison is of limited application, because Cicero’s popularizing was conducted with that great regard for tradition which was not a component in the brilliance of Wells, admirer though he was of Cicero’s speeches and letters.1
Cicero’s task was not an easy one; the Greek philosophies to which, with the added infusion of his own personality, he gave eloquent expression – far more eloquent than that of their original authors – contain much that was complicated and difficult, especially to unphilosophical Romans. Besides, Cicero wanted to present them accurately, for he had a keen regard for the truth. Though humanly eager to present his political actions as favourably as he could, in matters of the spirit he knew that no such concessions were possible, and in one of his lost works, the Hortensius, he praised the pursuit of truth as the worthiest aim of mankind and the source of real happiness.
There is no reason to doubt his own assertions of a lofty motive. One of its elements was a vigorous patriotism which helped to direct all his activities.’ Tully1 taketh much paynes,’ said Sir Philip Sidney,’ and many times not without poetical helpes, to make us knowe the force love of country hath in us.’ The wealth of illustrations from Roman history in Cicero’s treatises recalls his conscious mission to make available to Rome the best and most applicable of Greek thought, and particularly the guidance to living designed by the Stoics and other later Greek schools. That, and his public life, were his principal contributions to the human cooperation in which he believed. It is true that there were also more private and personal motives impelling him to write. One, at the peak period of his production (45–44 B.C.), was insomnia; ‘the amount I write’, he says, ‘is beyond belief, because I work in the night as well since I cannot sleep.’ Moreover at that same time he was working to distract his thoughts from the recent loss of his beloved daughter – and, in addition, to compensate for his enforced exclusion from politics.’ Could I have kept alive’, he says, ‘if I’had not lived with my books?’ But as in other authors the personal and the idealistic motives were interfused and reinforced each other.
The task he set himself was particularly attractive to Cicero because of his heartfelt admiration for Greek thought. Admittedly, there was a certain difference, as in the case of his religious utterances, between what he said in the law-courts and what he wrote in the study. When prosecuting Verres before a Roman audience it was advisable to affect a certain philistine vagueness regarding the Greek sculptors whose works the proconsul had stolen (Cicero’s own grandfather had compared Romans to Syrian slaves: the better they knew Greek, the worse their characters). Yet even in speeches Cicero could drop this mask: his defence of the minor Greek poet Archias (though ostensibly concerned with the confirmation of his client’s Roman citizenship) includes sustained and heartfelt praise of the intellectual life and its nourishment on Greek literature. In this passage, it is true, he first of all characteristically praises these cultured activities because of their practical, character-building, and so career-building advantages. But then he goes on to say (Pro Archia, 16):
Yet even if these great benefits were not apparent, even if the object of these studies were pleasure only, even so you must agree, I believe, mat no other mental activity is so worthy of a civilized human being ‘humanus, liberalis’ All other pursuits depend on particular times or ages or places, but these studies are as stimulating for young people as they are a source of pleasure for old: they grace success, and they provide comfort and refuge in adversity. They are a delight in the home; they are no hindrance to public life; in the night watches, on our travels, on our holidays in the country, they give us companionship.
This was from a man whose naturally gregarious tastes, as well as his principles as a believer in human relations, made him unsympathetic to withdrawals from society. But he knew his practical debt to the superior culture of the Greeks; ‘whatever I have achieved’, he declares, ‘I have achieved by means of the studies and principles transmitted to us in Greek literature and schools of thought.’ This errs on the side of modesty, since the oratory to which he owed his public success, as barrister and statesmen, was largely due to his unequalled personal talent, developed within a Roman tradition of able speaking in a society where tremendous issues depended on oratory. Yet it is also true that he would never have scaled such heights without his training in Greek studies and particularly Greek rhetoric. He was not exceptional in this, seeing that the whole contemporary system of higher education was based on Greek theories of public speaking – the activity which was all-important to the Roman politician’s career. Some of Cicero’s finest works, particularly On the Orator, The Orator and the Brutus, are devoted to analyses of this institution and its history and techniques, which he approached with the liberal conviction that only the man of fine moral qualities could succeed as an orator and therefore as a statesman. As the Athenian Isocrates and the Roman Cato the Censor (p. 211) had already stressed, in this noblest of professions to have a well-stored mind was not enough.
A few notes on the principal reek philosophical schools to which he refers may be of assistance. Towards the end of his treatise on Old Age (Chapter 5), quoting Greek beliefs in the immortality of the soul, Cicero cites two philosophers, Pythagoras and Plato.
PYTHAGORAS of Samos (6th century B.C.), the quasi-mythical leader of a strictly disciplined religious community at Croton in South Italy, believed in the transmigration of souls. He interpreted the soul as a fallen divinity confined within the body as a tomb, and condemned to a cycle of reincarnation as man, animal, or plant, from which it can win release by purity. When the historian Herodotus (c. 480–425 B.C.) writes of certain Greeks, ’some in former times and some in later’, who believed in the immortality of the soul, it is thought that one of the earlier philosophers to whom he is referring is Pythagoras,
PLATO (c. 429–347 B.C.), disciple of Socrates (469–399 B.C.) and founder of the Academy, was influenced by this Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration. In the Republic, the Phaedrus, and especially the Phaedo, he deduces the immortality of the soul from his Doctrine of Ideal Forms. Dividing the soul into three parts – the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive – he regards the rational part (die soul in its true being as it is apart from mixture with the body) as immortal, i.e., existent both before birth and after death. Plato implies the eternity of reason, but it is doubtful to what extent he believed in what is now understood by’ personal immortality’. The Dream of Scipio1 in Cicero’s treatise On the State is a revelation of immortality adapted from Plato’s Republic and other sources.
In certain of his other works not translated here, Cicero devoted himself to those speculations about the universe which had comprised the characteristic activity of Greek philosophers before Socrates. But, in this typically Roman, he followed with particular keenness the ethical preoccupations which Hellenistic philosophers derived from Plato – the inheritor of Socrates’ interest in the human personality and from Aristotle (384–322 B.C.). What – the Hellenistic schools had asked- in this new world of great states in which people felt terrifyingly alone, would make a man impervious to the hazards of fortune? What, that is another way of saying, is the supreme Good? Diogenes the Cynic (c. 400–c. 325 B.C.) held that the answer was to renounce all material possessions; but this was a solution unlikely to find favour among Romans. In the third book of his treatise On Duties (Chapter 4) Cicero, who is our oldest and most considerable source of information on post-Aristotelian philosophy, mentions the following additional Hellenistic schools which sought to provide answers:
The Cyrenaics, led by Aristippus (the grandson of a companion of Socrates), taught that the only proper aim is immediate happiness. Another philosopher to whom reference is made, Anniceris, who was probably a contemporary of Alexander the Great, provided a link between the Cyrenaics and a further non-moral school which Cicero finds equally unattractive –
The Epicureans (‘The Garden’), founded by Epicurus of Samos (341–270 B.C.). Epicurus accepted the guidance of the senses, and believed that they indicate the supreme good to be happiness, which he mainly identified with the absence of pain and trouble. Cicero disagreed and also recoiled from Epicurus’ belief that, the world being composed of material atoms obeying their own laws, there is no evidence for divine intervention or interest in human affairs. As a boy, however, Cicero had admired the Epicurean professor Phaedrus; and Cicero’s close friend Atticus (p. 58) obeyed the Garden’s injunction to shun public life (though he conspicuously contravened their further instruction to ‘flee from all forms of culture’).
The Stoics (‘The Porch’), established in c. 300 B.C. by Zeno (335–263 B.C.), who since he came from Cyprus (Citium) may well have been at least partly Semitic in origin and culture. Zeno and his successors Cleanthes and Chrysippus taught belief in Divine Providence, and in Virtue as the Supreme Good – a creed of a new ethical urgency. Panaetius of Rhodes (c. 185–109 B.C.) of the ‘Middle Stoa’ modified the rigidity of this doctrine for Roman society by leaving room for imperfect virtue, ‘progression towards virtue’. A further Stoic idea, that of the Law of Nature (p. 12) which joins the human Brotherhood in the ‘world-state’ (cosmopolis), was adapted to Rome by Posidonius of Apamea in Syria (c. 135–50 B.C.). He identified the ‘world-state’ with the Roman empire; a summary of his book On Duties was in Cicero’s hands while he wrote the third book of his treatise with the same name.
Cicero had studied under Posidonius, and before that under another distinguished Stoic Diodotus. The moral emphasis of Stoicism (when its dogma was toned down) was very acceptable to him, and indeed the basis of a great deal of his thought and feeling on such problems. But he found Zeno too mystical, and he humanized Stoic morality; we do not know enough about the ‘Middle Stoa’ to decide how far he modified its doctrines, and it is not always clear whether the Romanization of Stoicism is taken straight from Panaetius or comes from Cicero’s adaptation of his views.
The Peripatetics (Peripatos – ‘Covered Arcade’), the followers of Aristotle, expounded their master’s science and philosophy and propagated his belief in ‘the Mean’, which Cicero, like Horace after him, admired as a doctrine of moderation. In admiring the Stoic view that virtue is the only Good, Cicero mentions, without entirely or finally rejecting it, the less urgent Peripatetic opinion – exemplified by his son‘s tutor Cratippus at Athens – that virtue is, if not the only Good, at least the best of Goods. But he scarcely recognizes the Peripatetics as a separate school, treating them as barely distinguishable, in some passages from the Stoics, and in others from the Middle and New Academy.
The Middle Academy. The Academy of the last three centuries B.C. claimed to be the heir of Plato’s Academy; but Cicero knew little about its development before the Middle Academy, of which the leaders were Arcesilaus of Pitane (315–241 B.C.) and Carneades of Cyrene (214–129 B.C.). Influenced, like Arcesilaus, by the Sceptics – who, claiming to go back to Socrates’ pupil Pyrrho (c. 368–270 B.C.), refused to admit that real knowledge could be acquired – Carneades introduced Rome to criticisms of Stoic and Epicurean dogmatism about life and philosophy; Cicero accepted this undogmatic approach.
The Fourth Academy of Philo of Larissa (c. 160–80 B.C.) and Fifth of Antiochus of Ascalon (c. 130–68 B.C.), teachers of Cicero, adopted a more positive attitude, seeking to select and blend together the good points of various schools. Their general aim was towards the modification of contemporary Stoicism in harmony with what was now regarded as the Academic tradition. This current tendency enabled Cicero, for all his enthusiasm for Stoic ethics, to claim that the Academy was nevertheless the school to which he belonged. It is sometimes suggested that Philo, as the less dogmatic of his two teachers, had the greater influence upon his thought.1