Week 3 Discussion

CICERO

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO was born on 3 January 106 BCE into a wealthy family in Arpinum. As a young man he went to Rome to study and by the year 70 BCE had established himself as the leading advocate in Rome. At the same time he launched himself on a political career, being elected praetor for 66, and finally – the highest honor the Roman republic could bestow – consul for 63. He was, both at the time and since, recognized as the most brilliant orator of his day and his forensic attack on the Senate rebel Cataline remains a masterpiece of political invective. He was unusually principled for a Roman politician of the time, a key weakness in the struggles that saw the younger, equally brilliant but much more ruthless Gaius Julius Caesar eventually defeat Cicero’s friend and ally Pompey and overthrow the republic, creating what would become the Roman empire. Always a man with intellectual interests, in the last few years of his life he wrote a number of treatises of moral and political topics (most especially On Duties, excerpted here) as well as publishing his speeches, all of which show the range of his classical learning and the range of influences upon him. He also left a collection of 900 letters which were published after his death, which means we know more about him that about almost any other comparable figure in antiquity. In his final years he sought to prevent the decline of the republic and the rise of what he saw as tyranny, opposing especially the second triumvirate, dominated by Caesar. The attempt was as brave as it was useless. On 7 December 42 BCE, on the orders of Caesar, Cicero was killed.

From On Duties

Book 1, 53–60

(53) There are indeed several degrees of fellowship among men. To move from the one that is unlimited, next there is a closer one of the same race, tribe and tongue, through which men are bound strongly to one another. More intimate still is that of the same city, as citizens have many things that are shared with one another: the forum, temples, porticoes and roads, laws and legal rights, law-courts and political elections; and besides these acquaintances and companionship, and those business and commercial transactions that many of them make with many others. A

tie narrower still is that of the fellowship between relations: moving from that vast fellowship of the human race we end up with a confined and limited one.

(54) For since it is by nature common to all animals that they have a drive to procreate, the first fellowship exists within marriage itself, and the next with one’s children. Then, there is the one house in which everything is shared. Indeed that is the principle of a city and the seed-bed, as it were, of a political community. Next there follow bonds between brothers, and then between first cousins and second cousins, who cannot be contained in one house and go out to other houses, as if to colonies. Finally there follow marriages and those connections of marriage from which even more relations arise. In such propagation and increase political communities have their origin. Moreover, the bonding of blood holds men together by good-will and by love; (55) for it is a great thing to have the same ancestral memorials, to practise the same religious rites, and to share common ancestral tombs.

Of all fellowships, however, none is more important, and none stronger, than when good men of similar conduct are bound by familiarity. For honourableness – the thing that I so often mention – moves us, even if we see it in someone else, and makes us friends of him in whom it seems to reside.(56) (All virtue indeed lures us to itself and leads us to love those in whom it seems to reside, but justice and liberality do so the most.) Moreover, nothing is more lovable and nothing more tightly binding than similarity in conduct that is good. For when men have similar pursuits and inclinations, it comes about that each one is as much delighted with the other as he is with himself; the result is what Pythagoras wanted in friendship, that several be united into one. Important also are the common bonds that are created by kindnesses reciprocally given and received, which, provided that they are mutual and gratefully received, bind together those concerned in an unshakeable fellowship.

(57) But when you have surveyed everything with reason and spirit, of all fellowships none is more serious, and none dearer, than that of each of us with the republic. Parents are dear, and children, relatives and acquaintances are dear, but our country has on its own embraced all the affections of all of us. What good man would hesitate to face death on her behalf, if it would do her a service? How much more detestable, then, is the monstrousness of those who have savaged their country with all manner of crime and who have been, and are still, engaged in destroying her utterly?

(58) Now were there a comparison, or competition, as to who ought most to receive our dutiful services, our country and our parents would be foremost; for we are obliged to them for the greatest kindnesses. Next would be our children and

our whole household, which looks to us alone and can have no other refuge. Then our relations, who are congenial to us and with whom even our fortunes are generally shared. Therefore whatever is necessary to support life is most owed to those whom I have just mentioned; on the other hand a shared life and a shared living, counsel and conversation, encouragement, comfort, and sometimes even reproofs, flourish most of all in friendships; and friendship is most pleasing when it is cemented by similarity of conduct.

(59) But, one ought when bestowing all these dutiful services to look at what each person most greatly needs, and what each would or would not be able to secure without our help. Thus the degrees of ties of relationship will not be the same as those of circumstance. Some duties are owed to one group of people rather than to another. You should, for example, assist your neighbour sooner than your brother or companion in gathering his harvest; but you should in a suit in the lawcourts defend a relative or friend rather than your neighbour.

In every case of duty, therefore, considerations such as these ought to be examined, and we should adopt this habit and should practise so that we can become good calculators of our duties, and can see by adding and subtracting what is the sum that remains; from this you can understand how much is owed to each person. (60) But neither doctors nor generals nor orators are able, however much they have taken to heart advice about their art, to achieve anything very worthy of praise without experience and practice. Similarly, advice on observing duty certainly has been handed down, as I myself am now handing it down, but a matter of such importance also demands experience and practice. And now I have said enough on the question of how honourableness, upon which duty hangs, is derived from those things that constitute the justice of human fellowship.

MARCUS AURELIUS

MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS was born in 121 CE, born into a family which had ruled Rome for generations. As a young man he became fascinated by philosophy and rhetoric, being tutored by a range of Greek and Roman thinkers, before coming under the spell of the most influential philosophy of the day, Stoicism. On becoming emperor in 161, at the age of forty, Marcus realized that the empire was besieged from both within and without. Much of his time as emperor was spent on campaign against barbarian threats to the empire and it was during these campaigns that he began what amounted to a philosophical diary “to myself” as he called it: a collection of philosophical maxims, judgements, and reflections written in Greek and ranging across an astonishingly wide range of concerns. Marcus was a remarkably honest man, both in his writings (which were not intended for publication) and in his dealings as emperor. He has been seen, since the publication of his “meditations,” as his reflections have become known, as the very paradigm of the Stoic sage, yet he was also an extremely skilled warrior and diplomat with a true vision for his empire that was largely in tune with the Stoic philosophy he had developed. He never, however, had the chance to develop it. On campaign as usual in 180 CE he fell ill and was dead within days.

From Meditations

Book 2, 17

17. Of the life of man the duration is but a point, its substance streaming away, its perception dim, the fabric of the entire body prone to decay, and the soul a vortex, and fortune incalculable, and fame uncertain. In a word all the things of the body are as a river, and the things of the soul as a dream and a vapour; and life is a warfare and a pilgrim’s sojourn, and fame after death is only forgetfulness. What then is it that can help us on our way? One thing and one alone – Philosophy; and this consists in keeping the divine ‘genius’ within pure and unwronged, lord of all pleasures and pains, doing nothing aimlessly or with deliberate falsehood and hypocrisy, independent of another’s action or inaction; and furthermore welcoming what happens and is allotted, as issuing from the same source, whatever it be, from which the man himself has issued; and above all waiting for death with a good

grace as being but a setting free of the elements of which every thing living is made up. But if there be nothing terrible in each thing being continuously changed into another thing, why should a man look askance at the change and dissolution of all things? For it is in the way of Nature, and in the way of Nature there can be no evil.

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Book 6, 36 and 44

36. Asia, Europe, corners of the Universe: the whole Ocean a drop in the Universe: Athos but a little clod therein: all the present a point in Eternity:— everything on a tiny scale, so easily changed, so quickly vanished.

All things come from that one source, from that ruling Reason of the Universe, either under a primary impulse from it or by way of consequence. And therefore the gape of the lions jaws and poison and all noxious things, such as thorns and mire, are but after-results of the grand and the beautiful. Look not then on these as alien to that which thou dost reverence, but turn thy thoughts to the one source of all things.

… 44. If the Gods have taken counsel about me and the things to befall me, doubtless they have taken good counsel. For it is not easy even to imagine a God without wisdom. And what motive could they have impelling them to do me evil? For what advantage could thereby accrue to them or to the Universe which is their special care? But if the Gods have taken no counsel for me individually, yet they have in any case done so for the interests of the Universe, and I am bound to welcome and make the best of those things also that befall as a necessary corollary to those interests. But if so be they take counsel about nothing at all – an impious belief – in good sooth let us have no more of sacrifices and prayers and oaths, nor do any other of these things every one of which is a recognition of the Gods as if they were at our side and dwelling amongst us – but if so be, I say, they do not take counsel about any of our concerns, it is still in my power to take counsel about myself, and it is for me to consider my own interest. And that is to every man’s interest which is agreeable to his own constitution and nature. But my nature is rational and civic; my city and country, as Antoninus, is Rome; as a man, the world. The things then that are of advantage to these communities, these, and no other, are good for me.

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Book 9, 1 and 9

1. INJUSTICE is impiety. For in that the Nature of the Universe has fashioned rational creatures for the sake of one another with a view to mutual benefit based upon worth, but by no means for harm, the transgressor of her will acts with obvious impiety against the most venerable of Deities.

And the liar too acts impiously with respect to the same Goddess. For the Nature of the Universe is the Nature of the things that are. And the things that are have an intimate connexion with all the things that have ever been. Moreover this Nature is named Truth, and is the primary cause of all that is true. The willing liar then is impious in so far as his deceit is a wrong-doing; and the unwilling liar too, for he is out of tune with the Nature of the Whole, and an element of disorder by being in conflict with the Nature of an orderly Universe; for he is in conflict who allows himself, as far as his conduct goes, to be carried into opposition to what is true. And whereas he had previously been endowed by nature with the means of distinguishing false from true, by neglecting to use them he has lost the power.

Again he acts impiously who seeks after pleasure as a good thing and eschews pain as an evil. For such a man must inevitably find frequent fault with the Universal Nature as unfair in its apportionments to the worthless and the worthy, since the worthless are often lapped in pleasures and possess the things that make for pleasure, while the worthy meet with pain and the things that make for pain. Moreover he that dreads pain will some day be in dread of something that must be in the world. And there we have impiety at once. And he that hunts after pleasures will not hold his hand from injustice. And this is palpable impiety.

But those, who are of one mind with Nature and would walk in her ways, must hold a neutral attitude towards those things towards which the Universal Nature is neutral – for she would not be the Maker of both were she not neutral towards both. So he clearly acts with impiety who is not himself neutral towards pain and pleasure, death and life, good report and ill report, things which the Nature of the Universe treats with neutrality. And by the Universal Nature treating these with neutrality I mean that all things happen neutrally in a chain of sequence to things that come into being and to their after products by some primeval impulse of Providence, in accordance with which She was impelled by some primal impulse to this making of an ordered Universe, when She had conceived certain principles for all that was to be, and allocated the powers generative of substances and changes and successions such as we see.

…

9. All that share in a common element have an affinity for their own kind. The trend of all that is earthy is to earth; fluids all run together; it is the same with the aerial; so that only interposing obstacles and force can keep them apart. Fire indeed has a tendency to rise by reason of the elemental fire, but is so quick to be kindled in sympathy with all fire here below that every sort of matter, a whit drier than usual, is easily kindled owing to its having fewer constituents calculated to offer resistance to its kindling. So then all that shares in the Universal Intelligent Nature has as strong an affinity towards what is akin, aye even a stronger. For the measure of its superiority to all other things is the measure of its readiness to blend and coalesce with that which is akin to it.

At any rate to begin with among irrational creatures we find swarms and herds and bird-colonies and, as it were, love-associations. For already at that stage there are souls, and the bond of affinity shews itself in the higher form to a degree of intensity not found in plants or stones or timber. But among rational creatures are found political communities and friendships and households and gatherings, and in wars treaties and armistices. But in things still higher a sort of unity in separation even exists, as in the stars. Thus the ascent to the higher form is able to effect a sympathetic connexion even among things which are separate.

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Book 12, 36

36. Man, thou hast been a citizen in this World-City, what matters it to thee if for five years or a hundred? For under its laws equal treatment is meted out to all. What hardship then is there in being banished from the city, not by a tyrant or an unjust judge but by Nature who settled thee in it? So might a praetor who commissions a comic actor, dismiss him from the stage. But I have not played my five acts, but only three. Very possibly, but in life three acts count as a full play. For he, that is responsible for thy composition originally and thy dissolution now, decides when it is complete. But thou art responsible for neither. Depart then with a good grace, for he also that dismisses thee is gracious.