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[final version prior to type-setting]

Philosophy comes to Rome

Tobias Reinhardt

There is an ancient Roman text which tells a story of how philosophy came to Rome and

what Romans have to gain from it. While it is written by someone who has a vested interest

in the matter - Cicero -, it provides a good starting point in a number of ways. It is assertive

in the way in which it distinguishes the Roman appropriation of Greek culture generally and

philosophy in particular from a simple form of Hellenization. Its format, the dialogue, is itself

inherited from the Greeks, but arguably used in a way which is distinctly Roman. Its main

protagonists are leading statesmen of the Republican period, men who can be seen to embody

Roman traditional virtue, and yet articulate en passant what Greek thought has to offer them.

The text is the De re publica, written between 54 and 51 BC (see Zetzel 1995; Powell

and North 2001). The fictional date is 129 BC, the main interlocutor P. Cornelius Scipio

Aemilianus Africanus, who was to die suddenly later in the same year under mysterious

circumstances. The dialogue is set on his country estate. Its guiding questions are: what is the

best state, and who is the best citizen or the best leading man? The beginning of book 1 is

lost, and the text begins with reflections on the expectations Roman aristocrats have to meet.

The elder Cato is cited (§1) as a man who preferred the political stage and the storm of public

life to a well-earned retirement. Human beings are said to have a natural inclination towards

virtue and public engagement. Virtue, though, must be enacted, which is precisely what those

merely talking about the subject in lecture rooms (Greek philosophers, we assume) do not do

(§2). It is then made clear that statesmen alone have any opportunity at all to enact virtue. Is

   

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it to be understood that only the Romans are in a position to do this since they hold the power

over the known world? A quotation from the poet Ennius in §3, to the effect that great and

dominant cities are more significant than small villages, would seem to suggest that it is.

Eventually the arrival of other characters begins to punctuate the discussion. The

interlocutor Tubero's interest in scientific matters turns the discussion towards a “typically

Greek”, i.e. slightly contrived and highly theoretical issue (the recent alleged appearance of a

second sun). The introduction of this topic is self-referential in the context of the discussion:

what is at issue is, among other things, the question where the serious business of the state

ends and intelligent but inconsequential conversation begins. Scipio praises Socrates' interest

in moral questions and his refusal to engage in reflection on unsolvable scientific problems

(§15), to which Tubero replies that for Socrates, on the evidence of Plato's dialogues,

engagement with moral questions includes attention to matters of arithmetic, geometry, and

music (§16). When the discussion returns to the double sun (§19), Laelius asks if matters of

the household and the state had already been dealt with, given that his friends spend time

discussing obscure celestial phenomena, a question which reflects the traditional Roman

view. The interlocutor Philus, in an argumentative move which is inspired by Stoic thinking,

replies by questioning the underlying distinction, arguing that our house is the whole world

the gods have provided us with. But rather than restricting himself to introducing an alien,

Hellenizing viewpoint, Philus then follows up with a Roman example (§§21-2). The

conqueror of Syracuse in 212 BC, M. Marcellus, claimed only one item after the sacking of

the city for himself - a model of the spheres of the planets, previously owned or even

manufactured by Archimedes; the same Marcellus donated a model of the spheres to the

temple of Virtue. A generation later, we are told (§23), just before the battle of Pydna in 168

BC, the legate Sulpicius Gallus, who was interested in astronomy, was able to provide a

   

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rational explanation for an eclipse which terrified his army and was thereby able to avoid a

panic among his troops, who went on to win the battle.

It is tempting to read this story against the earlier claim that only the powerful can

enact virtue. Greeks excel at theorizing about virtue or at working out the movements of the

planets, but by themselves these insights and scientific achievements are inert. In order to put

theory into practice, one needs opportunity. Opportunity is afforded by power. And power

resides with the Romans, for now. Before we feel a trifle disappointed over the lack of

profundity in this story, we should appreciate that Cicero implicitly rejects other models of

interpreting the Roman engagement with Greek philosophy. Studying Greek astronomy,

traditionally a branch of philosophy, and by extension reading philosophical treatises, and

talking to Greek philosophers is not in some sense equivalent to the contemporary fashion of

filling one's house with Greek artworks, i.e. a kind of surface appropriation of a culture

perceived to be superior. And through his use of the dialogue format, Cicero is able to weave

in another point: philosophy should not be consigned to leisure time, the (small) amount of

time Roman aristocrats are left with after attending to the important matters of the state or

their duties as a patron. Rather, or so Cicero implies, philosophy can help Romans be better

Romans.

Another point to note is the use of exempla, examples of great men from history.

Arguing from and thinking in such examples is often seen as a typically Roman habit. Some

examples which we find in Roman philosophical texts, like that of the Roman commander

Regulus, who preferred to die in Carthaginian captivity rather than to help facilitate an

exchange of prisoners, exist in multiple versions, in different authors, writing in different

genres, thereby allowing us to glimpse their adaptability to the different aims of the

respective authors. The explanation of the eclipse before the battle of Pydna, apart from

showing how handy a basic grasp of astronomy can be, conveys that “already our ancestors”

   

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were clever enough to avail themselves of supposedly useless theoretical knowledge, thus

pointedly appealing to the Roman sense of tradition which might otherwise militate against

things Greek. At that point in the text Cicero goes on to tell a similar story of Pericles (§25),

thereby achieving what one might call an image transfer from one great man (a Greek) to the

other (a Roman). Not all Roman philosophical writers use exempla in this way, but Cicero

and, to a slightly lesser degree, Seneca do.

The use of astronomical knowledge raises another set of issues, one which is close to

the concerns of modern scholars. How should one measure the impact philosophy made at

Rome? Of course we can point to the writings of people like Cicero, Lucretius and Seneca,

but what about actual influence on real and significant events - can we show that someone,

for instance a politician or an advocate, adopted a course of action or made a successful

argument which he would not have made if he had not been exposed to Greek philosophy?

Obviously the kind of evidence we would be looking for cannot consist in the rationalization

of a course of action after the event, quite possibly couched in the specialist terminology of

Greek ethics, suitably rendered into Latin. Moreover, we are brought up against another

question - is knowledge of other branches of philosophy, for instance ethics, relevantly like

knowledge of astronomy? Cicero glosses over these problems by selecting an example which

involves a demonstrable effect of Greek wisdom, and by placing it in the context of a wider

argument for what Greek learning has to offer.

One final point can be derived from the passage in the De re publica. Given the way

in which the topic of astronomy is introduced, the reader is invited to make a connection

between the eve of the battle of Pydna and M. Marcellus' interest in models of spheres. If the

latter had not sacked Syracuse, the two spheres would not have found their way to Rome. It

was, on this account, initially an individual who was intrigued by a manifestation of Greek

learning.

   

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Let us review briefly and sequentially some of the evidence for the influence of Greek

philosophy in Rome.

The earliest Roman writer of whom there are substantial if fragmentary remains is Q.

Ennius (239-169 BC). A native of Rudiae in Calabria and thus steeped in the culture of

Magna Graecia, Ennius spoke Greek, Latin, and Oscan, an italic language which was

eventually superseded by Latin. He came to Rome initially, it would appear, as a teacher, but

eventually gained Roman citizenship and a patron in M. Fulvius Nobilior, whom he

accompanied on various campaigns. Several works of Ennius, who wrote epic poetry,

tragedies, as well as smaller pieces in verse and prose, show an influence of Greek thought

broadly speaking. One of them is Pythagoreanism, which existed in some form in southern

Italy continuously from the sixth century BC onwards (see Kahn 2001: 86-93). Pliny (HN

34.26) reports that during the Samnite war (298-90 BC) a statue of Pythagoras was erected on

the Roman forum in response to a Delphic oracle. The statue, according to Pliny, remained

there for two centuries. The Annals, Ennius' substantial historical epic ranging from the

beginnings of Rome to some point in the second century BC, began with an account of how

Homer, the main literary model, appeared to Ennius in a dream and told him that he, Ennius,

was in fact Homer reincarnate, thus relying on the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration

of souls (see Skutsch 1985: 147-62). In the smaller poetic work Epicharmus, the title

character explained to Ennius, who, while dreaming, pictures himself dead in the underworld

(the myth of Er in Plato, Republic book 10 is often assumed to be an influence), the doctrine

of the four elements and their equation with Roman deities; the Epicharmus is thus the

earliest certain example of cosmological didactic poetry in Latin (see Courtney 1993: 30-38).

His Euhemerus, in prose, drew on the rationalist writings of Euhemeros of Messene (c. 4

BC), who had written a fictional travelogue in which he described an island Panchaia where a

   

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publicly displayed inscription listed the achievements of the first kings of the island: Uranos,

Kronos, and Zeus. Unfortunately we know next to nothing about the reactions these works

provoked in their first audience (see Courtney 1999: 27-30).

Some evidence for the reception of Greek philosophy in literary texts comes from

comedy and satire. Terence, whose plays date from the 160s BC, based his play Adelphoe on

a comedy of the same name by the Greek playwright Menander. According to Diogenes

Laertius, Menander was a pupil of Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor as head of the

Peripatos. The way in which the characters' behavior exhibits extremes rather than hitting the

mean between them has often been linked with the Peripatetic conception of virtue. But even

if these aspects of characterization in Terence are down to philosophical influences on his

source material, they are not in any way marked as philosophical in the plays themselves (see

Martin 1976: 20-3).

Unlike Terence, who, if we can trust his biographer Suetonius, came to Rome as a

slave from Carthage, Lucilius (born c. 180 BC, died near the end of the century) came from a

senatorial family and commented in his satires on the foibles of his class with the ease and

self-confidence of someone who was writing about his peers. In his second book of Satires

(2.88ff. Marx) he describes a trial which the Epicurean Titus Albucius tried to bring against

the Stoic Q. Mucius Scaevola Augur, whom Lucilius probably knew personally. The trial

failed, and at the end Scaevola named the real reason for Albucius' hostility. When Scaevola,

then propraetor and on his way to take up post in Asia, came across Albucius in Athens in

119, where the latter lived in the style of an Epicurean, he greeted him with the words chaere

Tite (“Hello Titus”, whereby chaere is a Greek word and form of greeting), repeated by the

lictors and other attendants who were with Scaevola. The reason why Albucius was from then

on an “enemy” of Scaevola, as the punchline of the story has it, was that the pretentiousness

of a self-styled Epicurean, his Philhellenism which amounted to abandonment of his Roman

   

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identity, had been punctured. If we look back the the story from the De re publica with which

we started, which made a point of showing how Greek philosophy had been engaged with

and put to work as it were, we see here a mode of appropriation of culture satirized which

was probably closer to reality in most cases.

Another major event in the second century, described in various sources (Plut. Cat.

Mai. 22; Cic. Luc. 137; Gell. NA 6.14.8-10; Pliny, HN 7.112), was the famous embassy by

the heads of the Stoa (Diogenes of Babylon), the Academy (Carneades), and the Peripatos

(Critolaus) from Athens to Rome in 155 BC, in order to renegotiate a fine which had been

imposed on Athens. The official duties apparently left the ambassadors enough time to give

lectures, and Carneades famously lectured for and against justice in international affairs on

two consecutive days. The practice of arguing for and against a given thesis, and its rationale,

is explained elsewhere in this volume (see chapter 34). Carneades seems to have been such a

powerful speaker that the whole effort did not create the impression of a set of anodyne

academic lectures, and traditional Romans were sufficiently concerned that the elder Cato's

demand for a speedy return of the philosophers to Athens was met. It must have amused

Carneades that the grounds which were implied by Cato for a swift end to the embassy - that

Carneades was corrupting the young men of Rome - were rather similar to some of those for

which Socrates had been put on trial in Athens 250 years earlier.

Several other individuals are important for the influence philosophy exercised in

Rome over the next century, down to the time when Lucretius, Cicero, and Varro wrote. One

of them is the Stoic Panaetius (app. 185–109 BC), who was one of the pupils of the Diogenes

of Babylon. He also heard his successor as head of the Stoa, Antipater of Tarsus. Panaetius

became close to P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus and lived in Rome for a while before

returning to Athens, where he died. His work On Duties was used as a source for two of the

three books of Cicero's De officiis. Panaetius' approach to ethics is often characterized as

   

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more pragmatic and less attached to the extreme ideal of the Stoic wise man than that of some

earlier Stoics, although there is no reason to assume that he was not an orthodox Stoic (see

Dyck 1996: 17-29).

Posidonius (c. 135–51 BC) is another influential Stoic philosopher (see Sedley 2003:

20-4). There was a period, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century and

extending well into the first half of the twentieth, when Posidonius' influence was suspected

to have been vast. His interests were encyclopedic, and his views at times seemingly

unorthodox. It is easy to see why both his suggestions in the field of moral psychology and

his interest in a wide range of areas of knowledge have been put down to an Aristotelian

influence. And Posidonius' Peripatetic readiness to accumulate empirical truths for the sake

of it is not normally something which one finds repeated in Stoicism. It had become

fashionable among young members of the Roman elite to go to Greece and rounds off one's

education with philosophical study. Among the Romans who came to Rhodes to hear

Posidonius lecture were men like Pompey and Cicero. The latter, perhaps encouraged by

Posidonius' interest in historiography, asked the philosopher to write an account of his

consulship. The request was respectfully turned down.

Around the bay of Naples there arose, in the first half of the first century, an extended

Epicurean culture, which involved Epicurean philosophers as well as members of the Roman

elite. Two, for all we know, were particularly influential, Philodemus of Gadara (on whom

see Gigante 2002) and Siron. Of the latter we know very little; the young Virgil was

associated with him. Philodemus' powerful friend was L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the

owner of the so-called villa dei papiri at Herculaneum and a target of Cicero's vicious

invective In Pisonem, which is a treasure house of anti-Epicurean commonplaces and a rich

source for Latin abusive terminology generally. Philodemus' prose treatises, some of which

are transmitted to us on charred papyrus scrolls kept in the library of the said villa and are

   

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being painstakingly reconstructed by papyrologists, have been suspected as influences, with

varying degrees of probability, in works of Cicero (see Dyck 2003: 8), Horace's Ars Poetica

(see Armstrong 1993), and Virgil's Aeneid (see the papers collected in Armstrong 2004). His

epigrams, whose influence can be detected in most of the major Roman poets of the first

century, put Lucretius into context, in that they represent the only other example of poetry

written by an Epicurean. In some ways, they are closer to the kind of poetry one would

expect an Epicurean to write, given that the activity had been discouraged by Epicurus

himself: short, concerned with private, often erotic themes, or expressions and stylized

gestures of friendship (see Sider 1997; a collection of texts which use Philodemus is to be

found on p. 227-34).

One large gap in our knowledge of the impact philosophy made in the first century is

due to the fact that only a few works by Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 BC) survive (see

Rawson 1985: 282-4). We know the titles of many others, and there is a very large number of

often very small and tantalizing fragments. Many a complex edifice of a theory on what

Varro did and did not do has been built on these uncertain foundations. We know that one of

Varro's teachers was Antiochus of Ascalon, whose philosophical stance Varro adopted and

retained throughout his life. The De lingua Latina, originally in 25 books, of which we have

parts of 5-10, is heavily influenced by Hellenistic linguistic theory, a field on which the

Stoics were very active. Fragments of the Menippean Satires, which combine prose and verse

and are often cited as an influence on Petronius' novel Satyrica, touch on philosophical topics

while commenting on and observing contemporary events. In format they imitate the Cynic

philosopher Menippus of Gadara.

Lucretius' didactic poem De rerum natura, which is dated by some to the 50s BC, by

others to the early 40s, is one of the uniquely original creations of Roman culture. Its

declared purpose is to rid man of the two anxieties which blight the human condition, the fear

   

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of death and the fear of the gods. It was immediately highly influential as a literary text and

eventually became a target for the fathers of the church who wrote in Latin, but made a

significant impact as a philosophical text only in the early modern period (see Wilson 2009).

As has been argued very plausibly by David Sedley (Sedley 1998: 94-165), its main source is

not the extant letters of Epicurus transmitted by Diogenes Laertius, a historian of philosophy

of the imperial period, but Epicurus' major work On Nature, from which Lucretius selected

material, arranged it, and turned it into Latin hexameters. However, the process was anything

but a simple versification. Lucretius adopts a style of writing which is modeled on that of

Ennius' Annals, the historical epic mentioned earlier, which had become a foundational text

read by school children by the time of Lucretius. In the Annals exemplary behavior of

Republican leaders and great dangers overcome collectively, esp. the threat from the

Carthaginian empire, were held up for later generations to admire. By casting the De rerum

natura in a format which resembled that of the Annals in terms of style and phraseology, and

by alluding to passages from Ennius directly, Lucretius entered into a competition with the

world view encapsulated in the Annals. For example, in book 3, where Lucretius is arguing

against the fear of death which on the Epicurean view blights the human existence and is

responsibly for a larger number of undesirable and misguided patterns of behavior, Lucretius

argues that we should not have any anxieties relating to the time following our death, because

momentous events which preceded our birth made no impact on our existence either (see

Warren 2001). The momentous event cited is the second Carthaginian war, where Rome

came close to total defeat at the hands of Hannibal, evoked in a direct verbal allusion to a

passage in Ennius' Annals. But in Ennius these events are truly earth-shattering, and Romans,

especially in the first century BC which had seen so much civil strife, did look back to them

as a time when the Romans together stood up to a powerful external enemy. The overall

effect of the Ennian stylization along with the subversion of and critical engagement with the

   

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views and attitudes conveyed and sustained by the Annals is that the De rerum natura

presents itself as the successor to and replacement of the Annals.

There is some reason to assume that on the level of detail Lucretius' poem is lacking

final revision. That its large scale arrangement into six books is as the author wanted it to be

is suggested by the way in which every book begins with a carefully crafted prologue, with

the first one being a fittingly grand opening to the work and the last one marking the final

book (6.92-5), as well as the plan which demonstrably underlies the whole. Book 1 is

concerned with the basic physical and metaphysical assumptions of Epicureanism, which is

then followed up by introduction to atomic theory in Book 2: that atoms come in different

shapes, that these shapes, their primary properties, partly determine how they interact with

each other, but that they also have secondary qualities: “accidents”. The book ends with a

description of the infinite number of worlds which are formed from atoms, and with a

comparison of our world to a living being, which is born, ages, and dies eventually. Book 3 is

concerned with psychology—the soul is made from atoms, too—and an extended series of

proofs that the soul is mortal; it ends in the vivid “diatribe against the fear of death”, from

which I have drawn my example of Lucretian interaction with Ennius above. Book 4 deals

with epistemological topics, explains the nature of perception, and addresses various puzzles

associated with perception; it concludes with another diatribe against loving attachment and

sexual passion, both of which impede the Epicurean's quest for happiness. Book 5 picks up

the theme of the mortality of the world which also features at the end of Book 2, and then

develops a theory of evolution and culture which does not presuppose an underlying

teleological plan and is not predicated on the involvement of divine powers or a god-like

intellect. Book 6 deals with various potentially terrifying natural phenomena which one might

put down to divine influence and provides rational explanations for them. It ends with a

graphic description of the great plague in Athens, a long-standing puzzle for interpreters in a

   

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poem which is supposed to help its readers find a way to ataraxia. The six books form three

pairs. The first two are concerned with atoms and atomic compounds, the next two with man,

the last two with the world as a whole.

Unlike the other major writer of philosophy in Rome in the first century, Cicero, who

is easily the individual from antiquity whom we know best, we know next to nothing about

Lucretius. What little biographical information there is comes from the fathers of the church

in late antiquity, who disapproved of Epicureanism very strongly and provide information

which is too outlandish and too similar to that provided on other perceived opponents to carry

much plausibility. The addressee of the work is a Roman aristocrat C. Memmius, who also

knew Catullus and whose political career ended in him being exiled to Athens. We have a

letter from Cicero to Memmius at Athens (Fam. 13.1), written in 51 BC, in which Cicero

asks him ensure that the remains of Epicurus' house should not be demolished, but it is

difficult to connect the externally known facts about Memmius with Lucretius' rather formal

addresses to him in the De rerum natura. This lack of independent information on Lucretius

is unfortunate, since his use of sources raises questions which we would like to put into

context. One is why Lucretius uses a text by Epicurus as his primary source when the

Epicurean philosophers had continued to produce substantial writings throughout the

Hellenistic period (see Sedley 1998: 62-93). One can of course speculate that Lucretius

viewed these writings as trifling footnotes to the only body of Epicurean writings which

mattered: Epicurus' own. Another question is why he chooses Empedocles as one of his main

models, e.g. as a reference text to the proem of Book 1. Again one can construct plausible

explanations, but a collection of letters in which Lucretius explains his choices to a friend

would be preferable. As far as literary models are concerned, there can be no suggestion that

Lucretius was isolated, unaware of developments and trends of which we would expect him

to be aware, although it is clear that there were many trends which he did not follow (see

   

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Fowler 2000). That he did not write in a style comparable to that of his contemporary

Catullus but made Ennius his closest model is not a sign of backwardness, as explained

above.

One respect in which Lucretius is topical is the representation of political activity and

the political process which can be observed in various levels in his work. The first century

BC was a period of political disillusionment for many highborn young men. The old

mechanisms of rising to high office had broken down, due to the emergence of powerful

individuals like Sulla, Pompey, and Caesar. Hence one could find oneself on the wrong side

of history, as Cicero did after the battle of Pharsalus in 48 or Horace after that at Philippi in

42. It thus seems no coincidence when Lucretius presents the would-be politician's futile

attempts to get elected as the real-life scenario which is allegorized in anxieties about the

horrors Sisyphus has to endure in the underworld (3.995-1002). On another level, although

Lucretius must be wary of endowing the atoms metaphorically with qualities properly at

home in the perceptible world, he can speak of atoms as if they are individuals entering into

and contributing to social institutions, and since no compound made of atoms is eternal in the

Epicurean view (apart from the gods), there is scope for presenting atoms as being in civil

war with each other. The lack of confidence into social institutions thus conveyed is

consistent with the political situation in the middle of the first century BC (see Fowler 1989).

An influential recent volume of articles on Cicero is entitled Cicero the Philosopher (Powell

1995), thus asserting confidently what has been questioned by many over time, that Cicero

can be called a philosopher. While it is true that he did not devise any doctrines of his own, it

is hoped that already the introduction above gave an indication that this is not a helpful way

to approach Cicero's philosophical works, since it is not appropriate to Cicero's own aims.

   

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Cicero was a writer of philosophical works and a leading political player of his time,

in that respect comparable to Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. The personal contact with

philosophers which sparked Cicero's lifelong interest in the subject dates from early in his

life, before his career as an advocate and politician began. These men were Philo of Larissa

and Antiochus of Ascalon. The idea that rhetoric and philosophy should be reunited is almost

proverbially associated with Cicero, and he is likely to have developed it on the basis of

Philo's teachings. It first occurs, somewhat out of context, in Cicero's earliest extant work, a

rather derivative treatise on how to find rhetorical arguments, the De inventione. Later in his

life he was to articulate and develop the idea further, very probably in a way which

represented an extension of the teachings of Philo, notably in his rhetorical opus magnum on

the perfect orator (De oratore, 55 BC), where he provides a lengthy digression in book 3 in

which he tells the story how historically rhetoric and philosophy became separated and need

to be reunited. This is significant for the purposes of the present chapter in that it represents

one important dimension of the impact philosophy made in Rome. Cicero became the leading

advocate of his time, the king of the courts as he himself put it (Fam. 9.18.2), so much so that

none of the speeches of his contemporaries have come down to us, and while there cannot

have been a shortage of critics who thought that the emphasis on philosophy was a

contrivance, irrelevant to the actual forensic practice, it must have made some impression on

young aspiring orators. The rhetorician Quintilian, at the end of the first century AD, would

later promote a neo-Ciceronianism, with an emphasis on philosophical training as a

component (see especially Inst. 2.15-21 and 12.1-2); however, he was immediately

challenged by contemporaries, notably Tacitus in his Dialogus de oratoribus, who no doubt

echoed criticisms already raised by Cicero's contemporaries. For Cicero, one particular

exercise represented the main channel through which philosophy could enter into rhetoric and

oratory. An influential rhetorician of the second century BC, Hermagoras of Temnos, had

   

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drawn a distinction between particular questions, which are the subject of trials (e.g. “Was it

right for x to kill y?”), and associated general questions which are devoid of references to

individuals, time, and place. Cicero suggests that both during training and in the courtroom

the orator should switch freely between general and particular question, and that especially

the handling of general questions would profit from philosophical expertise.

After the De inventione, Cicero's published writings for the next three decades

consisted of speeches given in criminal and private courts, and on the political stage; they

include occasional references to philosophy and will be discussed briefly below. In the late

50s, during the so-called first Triumvirate when Cicero was largely marginalized politically,

he wrote the De re publica from which we started. There followed the Roman civil war,

during which Cicero sided with Pompey, who was eventually defeated, and the dictatorship

of Caesar until the latter's assassination in 44 BC. When Cicero returned to the writing of

philosophy in 45, he did so after another extended period of political irrelevance as well as

personal misfortune, the death of his beloved daughter and the divorce from his wife of thirty

years, Terentia. Within in a very short period of time, he produced a substantial cycle of

philosophical works. The first of these was the Hortensius, modeled on Aristotle's

Protreptikos, which argues for philosophy as a way to happiness and on the need for reason

to overcome the passions; St. Augustine, to whom it was still available in its entirety, cites it

as a key influence in his conversion to Christianity. Then came the Academica, concerned

with the epistemological debates between Stoics and skeptical Academics in the Hellenistic

period. The De finibus is concerned with ethical theory, the Tusculanae disputationes with

the application of ethical theory to real-life problems. In the area of physics, De natura

deorum, De divinatione, and De fato were completed. Two treatises on special issues within

the field of ethics (Cato maior on old age, Laelius on friendship) follow, before Cicero turns

once more to elementary ethical questions with the De officiis, mentioned already above. De

   

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officiis was to be a hugely influential work, serving as a model for a work by St. Ambrose

and achieving such a wide distribution in the middle ages that over seven hundred

manuscripts are extant. De officiis was the second book to be printed after the bible.

It is facile to explain Cicero's turn to philosophy as a displacement activity, but once

more he is his own commentator and provides explanations for his project. While he

acknowledges that time has become available to him which he did not have in the past, he

cites two other motivations. One is that before he got to work there had not been

philosophical writings in Latin prose with which the Romans could be satisfied, a claim

which we cannot verify but which is very plausible. The second one is the hope that fame for

himself and public benefits for his reading audience will accrue (Acad. Pr. 11ff.); the latter

point is naturally compatible with the suggestions about the value of philosophy which we

encountered earlier in connection with the De re publica.

Cicero's self-commentary does not end there. He gives various characterizations of his

philosophical writings which suggest that they are heavily derivative of Greek sources (Att.

12.53.2). Despite the fact that Cicero tends to be at his least convincing in his expressions of

modesty, for a long time scholars took these declarations at face value and mined Cicero's

works for Greek “source material”, which, or so was the assumption, could be made

accessible if one reversed the process of clothing it into Latin and identified the various

mistakes and misrepresentations which Cicero's ineptitude had introduced. It is only fairly

recently that this caricature of Cicero's production, and the tasks it poses, has been recognized

for what it is.

At the beginning of De finibus Cicero tells us a bit more about what he hopes to

achieve in his philosophical treatises; the passage also adds to our understanding of how

Cicero uses the format of the dialogue and of the contribution which Cicero's occupation as

an advocate makes. He says, speaking in his own voice (Fin. 1.6):

   

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“What of it, if I do not perform the role of a translator, but take charge of the

utterances of those whom I consider sound (tuemur ea, quae dicta sint ab iis, quos

probamus), while I contribute my own judgment and order of composition (eisque

nostrum iudicium et nostrum scribendi ordinem adiungimus)? What reason does

anyone have to prefer Greek writings to those which are brilliant in formulation and

not just rendered from the Greek?”

Cicero pointedly contrasts what he does with the activity of a translator, and he does this

using terminology which is appropriate to an advocate acting on behalf of a client and,

eventually, composing a speech on his behalf which serves his client's purpose. (It is a

separate question of course if we think that Cicero meets his own standard.) When Cicero

says that he acts on behalf of (tuemur ea) the statements of the philosophers whose views he

represents, that does not mean that he defends them by adopting them - he does not endorse

the views which he represents personally, and in any case Fin. contrasts opposing views.

When he says that those whose views he represents enjoy his approval (quos probamus), this

means that he respects them as serious contributors to a substantial debate. And when he

announces that he applies his “judgement” (iudicium) to the views in question, this is, as is

clear from the immediately following phrase (nostrum scribendi ordinem), the judgment of

the skilful and seasoned composer of speeches; in other words, iudicium is a term belonging

the sphere of rhetorical theory and literary criticism (so Patzig 1979: 308-9). Recent studies

have shown that the hermeneutical strategies which we employ when studying Cicero's

speeches do indeed yield richer and more plausible interpretations when applied to Cicero's

philosophical works than the rather sterile hunt for misunderstandings and distortions

introduced by the supposed Roman blunderer.

Within Cicero's wide-ranging philosophical writings, there is a core which is

concerned with moral and political questions. As someone who did not come from a family

   

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whose members had held public office for many generations but who embraced traditional

Roman values to a higher degree and in a more reflective way than many aristocrats, Cicero

interrogated Roman values, perceived them as in need of elucidation and justification, and

used the categories of thought and conceptual tools of Greek philosophy for that purpose esp.

in the De re publica, the De legibus, and the De officiis. It seems no coincidence that a

project which was in part driven by a sense of alienation and a commitment to traditionalism

was undertaken by a “new man”.

Philosophy plays a role in Cicero's other prose writings, his letters and his speeches,

and these help to put the philosophical works into perspective. Roman politicians and

advocates were very careful to avoid references to Greek culture generally in public

pronouncements, and Cicero would avoid Greek words in his speeches except in disparaging

contexts. Accordingly, references to Greek philosophy would only be made in particular

circumstances. In his invective against Piso (In Pisonem), who was mentioned above as a

patron of Philodemus, Cicero can be seen to appeal to Roman resentment against

philosophers and Epicureanism in particular, and misses no opportunity to use stereotypes

like that all Epicureans are gluttons, devoted solely to the pleasures of the flesh, unwilling to

contribute to the community and so on. The only instance of a use of philosophy which is

thorough-going but positive is Cicero's defense speech for Milo, of which we only have a

strongly revised version (the speech which Cicero delivered in court was unsuccessful).

During the politically very unstable period of the 50s BC, Clodius and Milo were mortal

enemies, both competing for high public office. In a violent encounter of Milo's and Clodius'

men on a country road in 53 BC, Clodius was killed, and Milo was subsequently put on trial.

On such occasions Roman orators frequently used the so-called cui bono argument in order to

establish or disestablish motive. Having argued that Clodius had every reason to want Milo

dead because he stood between him and electoral success, Cicero then argued that the reverse

   

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was not true. That was so because Milo was effectively like a Stoic sage, unmoved by the

kind of considerations which made Clodius want to kill him (see Dyck 1998). This daring

move, if it was actually performed in court, had the additional benefit of furnishing an

explanation why Milo was not as engaged as an accused in his precarious position would

usually be (viewing the whole trial as a charade, Milo was unwilling to play the game and

appears to have displayed a certain nonchalance). The peculiar nature of the extant speech,

however, does not allow for further inferences regarding the acceptability of such arguments

in a public court. The picture is completed by the various collections of Ciceronian letters

which are extant, including some which were sent to Cicero by other people. Cicero may

have written them with an eye to publication, but they are primarily private documents. In

them Cicero freely switches between Greek and Latin, as well as makes frequent

philosophical in-jokes which put the scene-setting 'frames' of his dialogues into context (see

Griffin 1999).

Some literary genres which were popular in first century Rome do not readily admit

philosophical content, love elegy for instance, in many cases first person poems written by a

man and addressed to a girl in an attempt to woo her and therefore turning on themes which

are conducive to that purpose. The situation is different for other genres. Aspects of Virgil's

Aeneid have been explained in terms of philosophical influences, for instance the notion of

fate which is invoked in a speech by Jupiter early in Book 1 where he seeks to assure his

daughter Venus, mother of Aeneas, that the Trojans are indeed destined to establish a new

empire. Homer's epic poems, in many respects Virgil's primary sources, did not use such a

notion of fate, and the main tenets of Stoicism enjoyed broad familiarity among the Roman

elite by the time Virgil wrote. Elsewhere in the Aeneid more localized influence of

philosophical thought is detectable. The depiction of the fall of Dido and the emotional

   

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unraveling of the queen of Carthage when she realizes that Aeneas will leave her to continue

his journey to Italy has been linked to philosophical ways of understanding emotions (see

Gill 2004). Book 6, describing Aeneas' descent into the underworld, is famously a pastiche of

so many sources that it becomes difficult to demonstrate the presence of any particular

influence. Yet apart from Platonic underworld descriptions as they feature in the myths which

conclude the Gorgias and the Republic, which must have been used, a passage where

Anchises suggests that there are rewards in another life for the political leaders of the state is

likely to draw on the ending of Cicero's De re publica, where a similar prospect is held out.

A writer whose engagement with philosophy was deep and complex, but in ways

which resist systematic exposition, was Horace (65-8 BC). The genres in which he wrote—

satire, lyric, iambic poetry—all allow for a personal voice, even if the speaker often is not

“Horace”. From the beginning, i.e. the Satires and the Epodes, his work shows a concern

with moral issues like the human inability to be satisfied, the value of friendship, and the

right attitude to life (and death). In his outlook, Horace is a self-declared Epicurean, but not

in any dogmatic sense - dogmatism does not suit him, and he has no interest in expounding

views, let alone doctrines, or in making coherent arguments. Partly because the conventions

of his chosen genres dictate it, partly because it comes to him naturally, Horace is famous for

his gliding transitions, for thoughts connected loosely and moving by association. That he is

an overtly political poet - the state of Rome frequently features in his poetry - sits as oddly

with his Epicureanism as it sits with his Callimachean esthetics (see Fowler 1995), especially

in his later work, which shows an awareness that Horace is becoming part of an increasingly

nationalized Augustan culture. In his so-called Roman odes (Carm. 3.1-6), Horace combines

an analysis of the moral state of Rome in categories which are similar to those employed by

the late-Republican historian Sallust (3.6) with an Epicurean longing for detachment and

spiritual tranquility (3.1) and a Stoicizing depiction of virtue in a speech delivered by the

   

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goddess Juno (3.3). In the first book of his Epistles, published after books 1-3 of the odes,

Horace treats a variety of philosophical topics, in a manner not dissimilar to that of the

Satires, but he does so through techniques and in a voice which constantly remind one of the

poet-philosopher Lucretius. Another important strand of philosophical thought in Horace,

which influences content as well as the characterization of the speaker persona, is cynicism.

In the first and second centuries AD, philosophy flourished in Rome. Lucan (39-65

AD) wrote his epic poem on the civil war between Pompey and Caesar, in which the Stoic

Cato wrestles with the problem that the view of the dominance of reason is hard to sustain

when faced with a fate which is not beneficial to the world as a whole, let alone to individuals

in it. Otherwise Seneca's treatises as well as his tragedies, which may be seen as counterparts

to the treatises in their explorations of the extremes of human emotion, stand out as examples

of Stoic writing, as do the Meditations by the emperor Marcus Aurelius, although he wrote in

Greek. After a succession of less prominent figures, many of whom produced works of an

encyclopedic nature, two names stand out at the end of antiquity, St. Augustine and Boethius.

Apart from writing works of his own as well as commentaries, Boethius composed a

translation of the Aristotelian Organon into Latin. After the works of Cicero and Seneca it

provided another major original impulse in the creation of a Latin philosophical vocabulary,

which was to be fundamental for medieval philosophy.

References and further Reading

Three fine articles on the impact philosophy made in Rome, and on models one might use for

explaining this impact, are Harder (1929), Griffin (1989), and Long (2003). Rawson (1985)

   

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gives a stimulating appraisal of late-Republican intellectual culture and the place of

philosophy in it.

Armstrong, D.M. (1993) "The Addressees of the Ars Poetica," Materiali e Discussioni 31:

185-230.

Armstrong, D.M. (2004, ed.) Virgil, Philodemus, and the Augustans, Austin: University of

Texas Press.

Courtney, E. (1993) The Fragmentary Latin Poets, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Courtney, E. (1999) Archaic Latin Prose, Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Dyck, A.R. (1996) A commentary on Cicero, De Officiis, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

Press.

Dyck, A.R. (1998) "Narrative Obfuscation, Philosophical Topoi, and Tragic Patterning in

Cicero's Pro Milone," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 98: 219-41.

Dyck, A.R. (2003) Cicero - De Natura Deorum Book 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Fowler, D.P. (1989) "Lucretius and Politics," in M. Griffin and J. Barnes (edd.) Philosophia Togata

1, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 120–50.

Fowler, D.P. (1995) "Horace and the Aesthetics of Politics," in S.J. Harrison (ed.) Homage to

Horace, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 248-66.

Fowler, D.P. (2000) "Philosophy and Literature in Lucretian Intertextuality," in Roman

Constructions - Readings in Postmodern Latin, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 138-55.

Gigante, M. (2002) Philodemus in Italy - the Books from Herculaneum, Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press.

Gill, C. (2004) "Character and Passion in Virgil's Aeneid," Proceedings of the Virgil Society

25: 111-124.

   

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Griffin, M. (1989) "Philosophy, Politics, and Politicians at Rome," in M. Griffin and J.

Barnes (eds.) Philosophia Togata I: Essays on Philosophy and Roman Society, Oxford:

Oxford University Press: 1-37.

Griffin, M.T. (1995) "Philosophical Badinage in Cicero's Letters to His Friends," in J.G.F.

Powell (ed.) Cicero the Philosopher, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 325-46.

Harder, R. (1929) "Die Einbürgerung der Philosophie in Rom," Die Antike 5, 291-316.

Kahn, C.H. (2001) Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans - a Brief History, Indianapolis and

Cambridge: Hackett.

Long, A.A. (2003) "Roman Philosophy," in D.N. Sedley (ed.) Roman Philosophy,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 184-210.

Martin, R.H. (1976) Terence - Adelphoe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 20-3.

Patzig, G. (1979) "Cicero als Philosoph, am Beispiel der Schrift 'De finibus'," Gymnasium

86: 304-322.

Powell, J.G.F. (1995) Cicero the Philosopher, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Powell, J.G.F.; North, J.A. (eds.) (2001) Cicero's Republic, London: Institute of Classical

Studies.

Rawson, E. (1985) Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic, London: Duckworth.

Sedley, D.N. (1998) Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Sedley, D.N. (2003) "The school, from Zeno to Arius Didymus," in B. Inwood (ed.) The

Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 7-32.

Sider, D. (1997) The Epigrams of Philodemus, New York and Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Skutsch, O. (1985) The Annals of Quintus Ennius, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

   

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Warren, J. (2001) "Lucretius, Symmetry Arguments, and Fearing Death," Phronesis 46: 466-

491.

Wilson, C. (2009) "Epicureanism in Early Modern Philosophy," in J. Warren (ed.) The

Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 266-86.

Zetzel, J.E.G. (1995) Cicero - De Re Publica. Selections, Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.