Cicero's Ideal Statesman in Theory and Practice

Jonathan Zarecki

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780934709
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua romana

The resurgence of interest in Cicero's political philosophy in the last twenty years demands a re-evaluation of Cicero's ideal statesman and its relationship not only to Cicero's political theory but also to his practical politics. Jonathan Zarecki proposes three original arguments: firstly, that by the publication of his De Republica in 51 BC Cicero accepted that some sort of return to monarchy was inevitable. Secondly, that Cicero created his model of the ideal statesman as part of an attempt to reconcile the mixed constitution of Rome's past with his belief in the inevitable return of sole-person rule. Thirdly, that the ideal statesman was the primary construct against which Cicero viewed the political and military activities of Pompey, Caesar and Antony, and himself.

1

Academic Skepticism and Cicero’s Political Philosophy

You know, I have not suddenly begun to be a philosopher, and from my youngest days I have expended no small amount of diligence and care in this study. When I least seemed to be philosophizing, I was at that time actually at my most engaged, a fact that my orations attest to, full as they are with philosophical aphorisms; so too my acquaintance with the most learned men in whose presence my house always flourished, and also those eminent and famous men who were my teachers: Diodotus, Philo, Antiochus, and Posidonius. And if indeed all precepts of philosophy make a difference in life, I think that I have demonstrated them in both my public and private actions, as reason and my education have advised.

De Natura Deorum 1.6–7

The separation of Cicero the politician from Cicero the philosopher is a modern convention.¹ Cicero himself viewed philosophy, particularly Academic skepticism, as both a lifestyle and a useful tool for political advancement, and not just in his last years but throughout his life.² Occasionally, politics and philosophy were at odds, as, for example, during the first months of the civil war, when the internal conflict between Cicero philosophus and Cicero politicus caused paralysis. At other times, they were in concord, as during the composition of De Officiis and his attempts to survive and flourish in a post-Caesar Rome. Yet they were never mutually exclusive, and there is no reason to assume that Cicero was being less than truthful in his professions of lifelong adherence to the Academic school. There was no distinct separation of public from private activities during the period when Cicero was composing De Oratore, De Re Publica, and De Legibus as there was later when he sat on the political sidelines under the autocracy of Caesar. Cicero was just as busy during the late 50s as he had been a decade earlier as consul (cf. Att. 4.16.2; Q.fr. 3.1.11; de Orat. 1.1–4; Div. 2.3).³ Yet he still found the time to write while continuing his work as an advocate and exercising his duties as a senior consular in the Senate. That Cicero was simultaneously a philosopher in politics and a politician in philosophy is the starting point for the following discussion, particularly in terms of how the integration of these two aspects of Cicero’s life influenced the composition of De Re Publica.

In his later years, with Caesar’s victory assured and his own fortunes pinned to Caesar’s goodwill, Cicero turned to philosophy as a means of educating Rome’s youth and as a salve for his personal and professional grief.⁴ His intentions with the philosophical program completed between 46 and 44 are well-established, primarily through his own statements in his prefaces to these works.⁵ He is also candid about his purpose in writing his first dialogue, De Oratore: it had long been a goal of his to return to the study of oratory, and his brother Quintus was urging him to do so (de Orat. 1.3–5). Unfortunately, the other two philosophical works of the 50s, De Re Publica and De Legibus, present interpretive challenges on several fronts. These two treatises have come down to us with a badly mangled preface and no preface at all, respectively.⁶ Ostensibly, they are the least philosophical, covering as they do topics of immediate and practical importance, the Roman res publica and its laws. They also lack the explicit didacticism of Cicero’s later works. Nor do they present themselves as justifications of the value of philosophy for the Roman ruling class in the manner that, for example, the Paradoxa Stoicorum or De Natura Deorum do. What is clear, however, is that with De Re Publica and De Legibus Cicero engaged in concurrent and interrelated philosophical inquiries into politics and law which were heavily influenced by both Rome’s illustrious past and its very uncertain future. These complex topics—the nature of the Roman res publica especially—had never before been subject to analysis in the Latin language.⁷ Cicero was, as he would often be again in his later philosophical works, required to start from scratch, so to speak, as he had no Roman models from which to craft his endeavor. Cicero thus required not only a Latin vocabulary but also a methodology which would facilitate his project.

He found his methodology in Academic skepticism.⁸ The Academy, to which Cicero had belonged from the beginning of his education in philosophy, provided both the tools and the training for a serious philosophical investigation into the origin, development, and success of the Roman res publica. The Academic preference for arguing in utramque partem, “from both sides of the issue,” in the dialogue format inherited from Plato provided Cicero with a method appropriate for this sort of philosophical inquiry. Cicero’s topic in De Re Publica was a suitable one for an inquiry according to Academic doctrine. Trivial topics were not worthy of discussion in the Academic manner; only the greater philosophical questions, such as the one Cicero tackles in De Re Publica or in De Natura Deorum were to be subjected to it; Scipio tells his friends that “the very nature of commonwealths often overcomes reason” (vincit ipsa rerum publicarum natura saepe rationem, Rep. 2.57). Furthermore, the skeptical Academy’s resistance to claims of absolute knowledge encouraged the reevaluation of old views and the incorporation of new ones. Probability rather than certainty had become the hallmark of the version of skepticism which Cicero learned from Philo of Larissa, his most influential teacher.

Epistemology lay at the heart of Academic skepticism. For most of its history the Academy had been engaged in a long-running feud with the Stoics over the nature of knowledge and the criteria necessary for belief.⁹ This feud had not abated when Cicero began his studies under Philo; the advent of the more mitigated skepticism adopted by the scholarchs of the late third and early second centuries had failed to bring about either victory or reconciliation. However, while Cicero was well-versed in Academic epistemological theory, he was less interested in understanding the nature of knowledge than he was in the manner in which Academics engaged with the questions of knowledge and opinion. Cicero’s treatise on the State provides a salient example. With De Re Publica Cicero may not have been seeking a teleological solution to the State’s problems, but the employment of the processes of Academic inquiry nevertheless led him to a personal telos which seemed not only probable but also practical. But, as a skeptic, philosophy did not provide him with a determined course of action. What it did provide was a way to cast the problem into relevant terms; the final choice of whether to accede to the conclusions reached was a personal one. Cicero’s skepticism is thus central to my reading of De Re Publica and the rector-ideal.

The three political-philosophical works of the 50s, De Oratore, De Re Publica, and De Legibus, are philosophically, methodologically, and thematically linked.¹⁰ This chapter will focus on De Re Publica; more will be said about the relationship of De Oratore and De Legibus to the development of the rector-ideal in the next chapter, in the context of Cicero’s reaction to the political developments of the 50s. A comprehensive analysis of Academic doctrine is neither my goal nor particularly germane to my argument, but it will be necessary to outline several major developments in it, particularly those that relate to method and the holding of opinions.¹¹ A prosopographical or chronological history of the Academy likewise lies outside the scope of the present argument, but once again it will be necessary to survey the scholarchs of the later Academy.¹² It will suffice to say that Cicero identified two incarnations of the Academy, both of which shared a commitment—albeit of varying degree—to skepticism: the Old, which began with Plato and was identical to the Peripatetic school (Ac. 1.18), and the New, which had been inaugurated by the scholarch Arcesilaus in the third century (Ac. 1.46).

However, it will be important for the following discussion to define Cicero’s peculiar brand of skepticism and the parameters of skeptical inquiry which he employed in De Re Publica. The following explication is divided into three sections. The first summarizes Cicero’s philosophical education, particularly his engagement with Academic skepticism under the tutelage of both Philo and Antiochus. The parameters of Cicero’s concept of skepticism, especially his adoption of Philonian mitigated skepticism, the limits of Academic political philosophy, and the usefulness of Philonian skepticism for investigating political questions are also discussed in this section, for these three issues inform both the method and the content of De Re Publica. The following section establishes De Re Publica as an Academic dialogue by examining Cicero’s use of dialectic and the dialogue format to integrate earlier philosophical arguments from a variety of schools with his own uniquely Roman view of the mixed constitution. The third and final section uses the apology of monarchy in De Re Publica as both proof of the Academic nature of the dialogue and as an example of how Cicero integrated his philosophy with his political principles. The chapter ends with a few closing comments on the importance of Philonian skepticism for the creation of the rector-ideal, a topic which will be treated in much more detail in Chapter 3.

I. Cicero’s skepticism

Cicero’s education, like that of many upper-class Romans, was designed to prepare him for a career in public life. He memorized the Twelve Tables (Leg. 2.4); he studied rhetoric and the best Latin orations of the day (Inv. 1.17–18; Tusc. 2.27; Brut. 127, 129); and he apprenticed with several of the leading orators in Rome, including Crassus, Scaevola Augur, and Marcus Antonius (de Orat. 2.2).¹³ He also received rigorous training in all things Greek. His first formal schooling was likely done with a Greek grammaticus, quite possibly the poet Archias (Q.fr. 2.4.2; Arch. 5, 7). He became intimately acquainted with the works of Homer in particular, as evidenced by the frequent and varied quotes used in his correspondence with Atticus.¹⁴ Even some of his early rhetorical training was in Greek (de Orat. 1.13), a practice he renewed during his two-year trip to the East in 79–77.

More important for the present discussion, however, is the fact that, in addition to the standard course of study in the pragmatic disciplines of rhetoric, oratory, and law, Cicero received a broad education in philosophy which immersed him in the teachings of the major schools prevalent in first-century Rome. Cicero took to philosophy as easily as he did to rhetoric. By the age of seventeen he was, by his own admission, enamored of philosophy and thoroughly devoted to its study (Brut. 306). His fascination with philosophy, which was at this time considered a thoroughly Greek discipline, was uncommon. Philosophy was very much mistrusted by the Romans, carrying as it did the air of subversiveness which had caused periodic attempts to banish philosophers from the capital. Nevertheless, Cicero embarked on a philosophical education which rivaled, if it did not exceed, that of any of his peers. The list of Cicero’s teachers, fortunately preserved in his own writings, is impressive for its depth and breadth. He received instruction from the Epicureans Phaedrus and Zeno (Fam. 13.1; Fin. 1.16), the Stoics Diodotus and Posidonius (Ac. 2.115; Tusc. 2.61), and, most importantly, the Academics Philo and Antiochus (Brut. 306; Ac. 1.14). The only school with which Cicero does not seem to have engaged in formal study was the Aristotelian Peripatos. He was, however, well-acquainted with the tenets of that school, and Cicero held the Peripatos in high regard.¹⁵ He often referred to Aristotle himself with admiration (e.g. Ac. 2.132; Div. 1.53; Orat. 172; Tusc. 1.7) though it is likely that he never read any of Aristotle’s works.¹⁶

While Cicero received a thorough training in a variety of schools and internalized a number of the teachings of his various instructors—the Stoics proved to be particularly influential on the subject of ethics—his most important philosophical influence was undoubtedly the time he spent with the Academic philosophers Philo of La...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Academic Skepticism and Cicero’s Political Philosophy
• 2 Cicero’s Philosophical Politics
• 3 De Re Publica and the Outbreak of Civil War
• 4 Rex Caesar and the Rector-ideal
• 5 The Ultimate Failure of the Rector-ideal
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index Locorum
• General Index
• Copyright