Hellenes in the Eyes of Cicero

Cicero in Greece, Greece in Cicero: Aspects of Reciprocal Reception from Classical Antiquity to Byzantium and Modern Greece, edited by Ioannis Deligiannis, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2024, pp. 11-30, 2024

The primary meaning of auctoritas is a political one; it is linked both to the political legitimacy of venerated Roman institutional bodies, such as the Senate, but also to non-institutionalised trustworthy testimony. In Cicero, however, we may trace an extension of the application of auctoritas to intellectual traditions as well; for example, Cicero refers to figures like Homer and Plato as major auctores in the fields of poetry and philosophy, respectively. This process transfers the unique political and social connotations of the word auctoritas into the Greek past and its intellectual traditions. In what follows, I examine, more specifically, how Athens is invested with authority in Cicero, both as a space of (formal) education and as the place of origin of the most weighty philosophical tradition, namely that of Plato. Subsequently, it will be shown how Cicero in various ways negotiates Athenian intellectual authority in his philosophical works, appropriates it in a peculiarly Roman context and combines it with ‘indigenous’ sources of authority. The focus lies here in Cicero’s appropriation of the Academic discourse in his philosophical dialogues, in the construction of their dramatic setting and ‘scenography’ as a conscious response to Athens’ cultural landscape, as also in his remarks on the superior value of political activity over and above intellectual pursuits which originate in Athens. The analysis will suggest that the straightforward promotion of Athens’ intellectual authority which can be found in some passages in Cicero is only one part of his multifaceted engagement with Athens and its traditions.

Cicero’s first speech as praetor before a contio meeting, De Imperio Cn. Pompei, gives us a sense of the early stages of the development of imperial metaphor. De imp. Cn. Pomp. is an ingenious attempt at articulating a vocabulary of consensus for its audience, which consisted of a large swath of Roman inhabitants in addition to the reading public cultivated by Cicero. It reveals to us the creation of several different areas of public discourse. Many biographers of Cicero and historians of the Roman republic seek the impulses toward their creation in the socio-economic position of Cicero himself, and in his own original assimilation of Greek rhetorical techniques to Roman circumstances. But this explanation is clearly insufficient to explain the public appeal of the extension of the idea of personal patronage (clientela) into the realm of foreign affairs, for instance, and its institutionalization in the late republic and early empire. Certainly, emphasizing the virtus and auctoritas of Rome as compared with its foreign peers and allies was one important way in which the Roman ruling class could legitimate its own imperialist ideology. But the appeal of the argument was also an eminently popularis one. Metaphorical claims to ancestry and precedent consequently play a prominent role in the opening speech of Cicero’s praetorship: they provide a “pre-text” for Roman imperium as it was embodied by first the late republican warrior-generals, and then the emperor himself. They lay the necessary rhetorical groundwork for linking populist claims to imperial politics. This paper will concentrate on three of these: the relationship of Roma/socius as imitative of the traditional Roman relationship of patronus/cliens; the idea that virtus historically grounds the claim of the Roman people to rule over groups that might alternatively have been imagined as peers or rivals within the world of the Hellenistic Mediterranean; and the idea that there is a kind of auctoritas that belongs to the Roman people as a whole.

The Classical Review, 2010

ment, Epicurean views on death and the telos, and the relation between Epicurean tranquillitas and Ciceronian otium cum dignitate. There is an epilogue, drawing the threads of the argument together. Cicero rejects above all Epicurean quietism, but because, as he recognises, Epicurus is a systematic thinker, he fi nds it necessary also to probe the physics and the conception of the cosmos on which the whole system is founded. M. is a level-headed and well-informed scholar, who writes pleasantly. His main thesis and detailed discussions perhaps break little fresh ground, but they constitute an eminently reliable and readable account of Cicero's engagement with Epicureanism as evidenced in the philosophical dialogues. M. is generous in his citation of the most relevant non-Ciceronian evidence on the Epicurean topics in Cicero listed above, and helpfully deploys an impressive knowledge of bibliography. All this makes the book-beautifully produced to Bibilopolis's usual high standards, with good indexes-a resource anyone working on this material will fi nd it useful to consult. There are one or two missed opportunities. One thing which might have enriched M.'s study would have been fuller exploitation of Cicero's non-philosophical writings, particularly the letters. M. has interesting remarks in observations on otium and amicitia (pp. 143-50, which rather oddly form part of the introduction to his account of the doxography of ND 1), and on otium honestum (pp. 279-99, where good use is made of the speeches, Pro Sestio in particular). More in this vein would have been welcome. M. does not appear to know Yasmina Benferhat's fi ne study Cives Epicurei (2005; reviewed in CR 57 [2007], 179-81), which is illuminating inter alia on Atticus' Epicureanism and Cicero's attitude to it. As for the dialogues, M. has nothing to say about the remarkable philosophical rhetoric of the concluding pages of Book 5 of the Tusculan Disputations, where having argued at length for the Stoic thesis that virtue alone is suffi cient for happiness, Cicero takes up the challenge of showing that even Epicurus can make a powerful case for thinking that the sapiens will remain beatus whatever gruesome misfortunes come his way (TD 5.88-118). After the critique of Epicurean ethics in Book 2 of De fi nibus, could Cicero's readers ever have anticipated that in handling that locus qui totam philosophiam maxime illustrat (Div. 2.2), the culminating tour de force would present even Epicurean philosophy as in this supremely important matter uitae … dux (TD 5.5)?

CICERO - Studies on Roman Thought and Its Reception, 2024

Taking as a starting point the semantic and cultural Latinization of a Greek literary image found in part. 78-79, where dialectics and oratory are depicted as handmaidens and companions of wisdom (ministrae comitesque sapientiae), this paper aims at investigating the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy in Cicero’s Partitiones oratoriae.

The paper investigates the social and political concept cum dignitate otium in Cicero's writings. The concept is commonly translated as 'leisure with dignity'. The meaning is not so simple. The concept can be either a political or a social category. As a political category, cum dignitate otium means 'peace with dignity' that the best citizens, optimates, wealthy and powerful statesmen had in the Roman society of Cicero's times. It was optimates' activity contrasted to other people's activities. Cicero also used the concept cum dignitate otium in a social sense. It meant 'peaceful leisure full of studies' or 'peace in private affairs'.

Cicero as Philosopher. New Perspectives on His Philosophy and Its Legacy, 2024

We sayt his with the caveat that as harp distinctionb etween Cicero's 'public' writings and 'private' letters is untenable. Cicero wasi ns everal respects engagingi np ublic or quasi-public acts when writinghis letters. Furthermore, the myriad letters he wrote vary with respectt ot heir privacya nd design. 2 On Cicero'ss elf-fashioning, see Bishop 2019 and Dugan2 005. 3 See Reinhardt 2022bfor adetailed summary of this scholarlydebate. See Allen 2022 for arecent accountofCicero'sradicalism that incorporates manyofthe features scholars have come to associatew ith mitigated skepticism.

Both for what it contains and excludes, the catalogue of his philosophical writings at the beginning of the second book of De divinatione (2.1-4) is a useful starting-point for considering Cicero's late philosophy, and this preface will therefore include an overview of that catalogue, intended to give the reader a clear idea of this book's contents since its chapters are ordered in relation to it.

Let me start with the term Enlightenment, which plays a crucial role in both Western and Eastern history.