Cicero and Greek Philosophy

Gisela Striker

Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 97, Greece in Rome: Influence, Integration,Resistance. (1995), pp. 53-61.

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CICERO AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY *

Tospeak about Cicero and Greek philosophy is to speak about Cicero and philosophy, period. Philosophy, for the Romans of

Cicero's age, was a Greek thing, and there was no other philosophy around. Philosophy was one of the disciplines the Romans of the first century B.C. took over from the Greeks as a part of higher education. It was both a prestigious and a suspect branch of Greek culture- prestigious because it was intellectually demanding, suspect because philosophical argument could be seen as subversive; witness the notori- ous story of the futile attempt by Cato the Censor in the second century to banish philosophers from the city in order to safeguard the morals of Rome's young men.

To judge from Cicero's prefaces, the suspicions never quite went away, although Stoicism, at least, turned out to be highly respectable. Cicero tried with varying success to raise the status of philosophy by introducing famous Roman statesmen as speakers in his dialogues,' while assuring his readers that the affairs of the state would of course take precedence over philosophical pursuit^.^ But the prejudice

*I am grateful to Zeph Stewart for encouragement and stylistic advice. This short piece was written for the conference, with no intention of developing it into a larger pro- ject. It is merely an attempt to put Cicero's philosophical writings in perspective, as it were, in the hope of attracting the attention of those students of antiquity who still take a dim view of Cicero's achievement on the grounds that he was neither original nor a great philosopher.

'With varying success: the "Scipionic Circle" of the Rep. was apparently a success, but Cicero gave up on the attempt to present some of his own older contemporaries as involved in a technical philosophical debate; see Art. 13.16.1 Illam 6ra6qpuc;lv (36~- ~ a c t vtotam ad Varronem traduximus. Primo fuit Catuli, Luculli, Hortensi; deinde, quia nap& npkaov videbatur; quod erat hominibus nota non illa quidem dtnat6euoia sed in his rebus 6rpt$a, simul ac veni ad villam, eosdem illos sermones ad Catonem Bru- tumque transtuli.

See, e.g., Div.2.2.6Ac mihi quidem explicandae philosophiae causam adtulit casus

54 Gisela Striker

remained that professional philosophers, at any rate, were engaged in hairsplitting and endless debates about obscure points, to the detriment of more important concerns like politic^.^ In short, the Roman upper class displayed the same attitudes as the Athenian contemporaries of Socrates and the Sophists, so amusingly described in some of Plato's earlier dialogues.

Cicero seems to have been the first educated Roman who developed a real flair for philosophy and a serious attachment to it, considering it not just as an intellectual hobby or a kind of spiritual support in times of personal or political turmoil, and attempting in earnest to make it a part of Roman culture. I do not mean, of course, to overlook the great poet Lucretius. But Lucretius, perhaps precisely because he was a great poet, but also because he adopted the tone of a fervent missionary, seems to have remained an isolated figure, at least as far as philosophy was concerned. It was Cicero who gained a lasting place in the history of European philosophy by creating a vocabulary in which Romans could debate philosophical questions; not just read, but write and dis- cuss philosophy. No doubt Cicero's own auctoritas helped here, too. Not quite a century later, in the works of Seneca, the "poverty of the Latin tongue" (Lucr. 1.139, 832; 3.260) so eloquently lamented by Lucretius seems to have been overcome.

What I have said so far is familiar and, I take it, uncontroversial. Cicero's role as a mediator probably also explains why he remained a respected philosophical author so long as Latin, alongside Greek, was one of the main languages of philosophy. Until the end of the eigh- teenth century at least some of Cicero's philosophical books were part of a standard education, and indeed, before the Renaissance, Cicero was seen as a philosopher rather than a politician or an orator. But over the last two hundred years, Cicero as a philosophical writer has pretty much vanished from the philosophical curriculum. I cannot here rehearse all the various reasons for Cicero's loss of prestige, which have to do as much with philosophical and intellectual fashion as with historians' varying assessments of his role as a politician. Some of the

gravis civitatis, cum in annis civilibus nec tueri meo more rem p. nec nihil agere poteram nec quidpotius, quod quidem me dignum esset, agerem reperiebam.

See, e.g., Luc. 2.5 Ac vereor interdum ne talium personarum cum amplificare velim minuam etiam gloriam. sunt enim multi qui omnino Graecas non ament litteras, plures qui philosophiam, reliqui qui etiam si haec non inprobent ramen earum rerum disputa- tionem principibus civitatis non ita decorum putent.

55 Cicero and Greek Philosophy

prejudices-as we would now say-that became prevalent in the nine- teenth century with regard not just to Cicero, but to the Hellenistic period in general have, I think, been overcome in the last few decades. For example, we no longer consider the "post-Aristotelian" period as an era of sad decline that ended only with Plotinus and the emergence of Neoplatonism. There is also now a concerted effort to get rid of the invidious label "eclecticism," used to describe the philosophers of the late Hellenistic p e r i ~ d . ~ It is not entirely clear what was meant by this term, but one suggestion seems to have been that an "eclectic" philoso- pher's views would lack rigor and coherence. If he picked up the most attractive bits of doctrine from various incompatible systems, one might expect the results to be inconsistent-if not on the surface, then at least as far as the theoretical foundations are concerned. Different schools started from different principles, and so one could hardly expect a consistent set of arguments behind a philosophical view that combines heterogeneous elements. If this was behind the derogatory use of "eclecticism," it must be pointed out that the argument is not com- pelling. True, a philosopher who tries to bring together plausible theses from different theories cannot embrace all those systems at the same time. But the same philosophical theses can be supported by different arguments, and it is surely legitimate to try and produce a theory that combines, as it were, the best of all available views by introducing new or modified arguments for old doctrines. This is, in fact, what Cicero's teacher Antiochus seems to have done in ethics, as one can see from De Finibus 5.'

Sometimes the term "eclecticism" also seems to carry the suggestion that the eclectic philosopher has no comprehensive system at all, so that his views, consistent or not, are not solidly supported. This is an objec- tion that could be raised against Cicero's other teacher, Philo of Larissa. But the objection fails against a philosopher who holds, by explicit appeal to skeptical arguments, that there is very little knowledge to be had, and that we must therefore be content with trying to find the most plausible or probable view, case by case. As a student of Philo, Cicero may have had some fairly strong convictions, but no overarching Welt-

See the collection of essays in J. M. Dillon and A. A. Long eds., The Question of "Eclecticism" (Berkeley 1988), in particular the opening chapter by P. Donini.

For this point see J. Barnes, "Antiochus of Ascalon:' in M. Griffin and J. Barnes eds., Philosophia Togata (Oxford 1989) 51-96, and for Antiochus' ethics, J. Annas, The Moralrty of Happiness (Oxford 1993) chapters 2.6 and 4.20.3.

56 Gisela Striker

anschauung. If skepticism or anti-dogmatism is what accounts for the label "eclectic," we need not find it damaging.

Philo and Antiochus are treated with greater r e~pec t ,~ now but Cicero still does not seem to be taken seriously. It may be true, of course, that Cicero, who was not a professional philosopher, was even less of an original thinker than his teachers. But originality was not an issue at a time when philosophers, far from advertising their own inno- vations, were anxious to show that their doctrines went back to the great founding fathers-Socrates, Plato, Aristotle or even Pythag~ras.~ If we for our part wish to insist that some degree of originality or inde- pendence is crucial, we should admit that we are in no position to form an accurate judgment of Cicero in this respect, given that most of his sources are lost. The two works most likely to give us an impression of Cicero working on his own would no doubt be the De Republica and the De Legibus, in which he set out to produce a Roman-not just a Latin-version of political and legal philosophy. But we have only fragments of the De Republica, and the first book of the De Legibus, which contains the philosophical discussion of natural law and of the objective foundations of justice, has a number of lacunae that make it difficult to follow the course of the exposition. A lot of work still needs to be done to reconstruct these arguments, as opposed to identifying the Greek authorities allegedly behind them. In De Oficiis 3 (4. 19-20), Cicero tells us that he is trying to fill a gap in Panaetius' theory. He offers a "formula" to deal with apparent conflicts between moral duty and expediency-a topic that Panaetius had promised to discuss, but failed to treat in his n~piTOG rcaeljrcovzo~.~Cicero's solution is not

For Philo, see H. Tarrant, Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy (Cambridge 1985); for Antiochus, see J. Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Gijttingen 1978 [Hypomnemata 561). 'For this point see D. Sedley, "Philosophical Allegiance in the Greco-Roman World,"

in Griffin (above, n. 5) 97-1 19. See 08 3.2.7 Panaetius igitur; qui sine controversia de oficiis accuratissime dis-

putavit quemque nos correctione quadam adhibita potissimum secuti sumus, tribus gener- ibus pmpositis, in quibus deliberare homines et consultare de oficio solerent, uno cum dubitarent, honestumne id esset, de quo ageretur; an turpe, altem, utilene esset an inutile, tertio, si id, quod speciem haberet honesti, pugnaret cum eo, quod utile videretur; quo- mod0 ea discerni oporteret, de duobus generibus primis tribus libris explicavit, de tertio autem genere deinceps se scripsit dicturum nec exsolvit id, quod promiserat. bid. 3.4.19-20 Itaque, ut sine ullo ermre diiudicare possimus, si quando cum illo, quad honestum intellegimus, pugnare id videbitur; quod appellamus utile, formula quaedam

57 Cicero and Greek Philosophy

entirely convincing, but it does cohere, as he says, with Stoic doctrine. But as I said, it would be a mistake to judge Cicero's competence and achievements primarily by reference to standards of originality.

A different aspect has been emphasized by A. E. Douglas? who points out that some of Cicero's treatises belong to a genre that is not much in fashion among philosophers today--consolation and moral advice for everyday life. In this group fall the Tusculan Disputations, the Cato Maior (De Senectute), the Laelius (De Amicitia) and to some extent also the De OfJiciis. This is a genre in which eloquence has a larger role to play than in other philosophical works, since the aim is not so much instruction or explanation as psychological guidance and moral education. It seems that some philosophers are beginning to be less dismissive about this kind of "applied philosophy," and in any case it is an interesting feature of Hellenistic philosophy in general that is well worth investigating.10 But I think it is still fair to say that few philosophers today would subscribe to Cicero's famous little "hymn to philosophy" (Tusc. 5.2.5): o vitae philosophia dux, o virtutis indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum . . . . Most of us would probably rather agree with Aristotle, who thought that philosophy may indeed help us to clarify our moral ideas, but that it cannot replace a good upbringing.

There remains the group of dialogues in which Cicero, toward the end of his life, attempted to provide a kind of philosophical encyclope- dia in Latin: l 1 the Academici libri, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, De Natura Deorum, De Divinatione, De Fato. I suspect that what lies behind the lack of respect on the part of philosophers for these treatises is not an argument at all, but the habit of reading Cicero as a "source." When philosophical scholars began to rediscover the Hellenistic schools as a serious subject in the last two decades or so, they naturally also began to read Cicero in order to find out about Epicurus, Zeno, Chrysippus, Arcesilaus, and so on. Although we have finally left behind the excesses of Quellenforschung, according to which Cicero's

constituenda est; quam si sequemur in comparatione rerum, ab oficio numquam recede- mus. erit autem haec formula Stoicorum rationi disciplinaeque maxime consentanea . ..

"Cicero the Philosopher" in T. A. Dorey ed., Cicero (London 1965) 135-170. lo See Martha Nussbaum's recent book, The Therapy of Desire (Princeton 1994). l 1 For this project see Div. 2.2.4 Adhuc haec erant; ad reliqua alacri tendebamus

animo, sic parati ut nisi quae causa gravior obstitisset nullum philosophiae locum esse pateremur qui non Latinis litteris inlustratus pateret. quod enim munus rei p. adferre maius meliusvepossumus quam si docemus atque erudimus iuventutem . . .

58 Gisela Striker

works were just a patchwork of paraphrases and Greek passages in translation, it is still tempting to try to discern, for example, the argu- ments of Panaetius behind Cicero's admittedly briefer version in the De Oficiis, and I would not wish to claim that I can always resist the temp- tation. The interests of present-day readers attempting to understand Stoicism or Academic Skepticism do not always coincide with Cicero's own intentions. More often than not, such readers would find Cicero frustrating. His outlines of philosophical doctrines are sketchy; they often seem to skip details that might be crucial for a proper understand- ing of the relevant arguments, and the very elegance of his Latin may compound the difficulties by making him less faithful to the terminol- ogy of the schools. Occasionally one also suspects that Cicero has mis- understood or missed a philosophical point. Add to this that he has the annoying habit of indulging in rhetorical flourishes from time to time and of interrupting or inflating an argument by more or less irrelevant stories from Rome's glorious past or deplorable present, and you will easily understand why a philosophical reader might lose patience. Finally, there are those who never find the time to read one of Cicero's books from beginning to end. This tendency will be reinforced by the use of collections like von Arnim's Stoicorum Veterum Fragments or Usener's Epicures, which present us with excerpts from Cicero's reports of a school doctrine, leaving out his comments or placing the following paragraph in a different section because it introduces a differ- ent topic. In these collections, Cicero is treated on a par with authors like Diogenes Laertius or Stobaeus, whose books would indeed be of merely antiquarian interest if the literature of the Hellenistic period had not been lost. Cicero thus comes to look like a not entirely reliable and sometimes misleading witness-and why should we take such an author seriously?

This way of looking at Cicero's books, however, is grossly unfair because it takes his treatises to be what their author never intended. In berating Cicero for superficiality or lack of detail, we overlook a crucial fact that is obvious upon a moment's reflection, but rarely taken into account: he could not possibly foresee that all the works, not only of his own teachers, but of their Hellenistic predecessors as well, would be lost. He wrote what might today be called introductory surveys of major fields in philosophy-epistemology, ethics, philosophical theol- ogy-trying to give an outline of the main positions, highlighting what he saw as their most important strengths and weaknesses. Because he

59 Cicero and Greek Philosophy

was following the Academic practice of presenting all sides of a debate, he purported at least to be fair to each school's doctrine, offering the reader a set of interesting problems to think about, but leaving the final judgment open. But of course he assumed that a reader whose curiosity had been awakened by his outline would easily be able to pursue partic- ular points of detail by getting the relevant Greek books. The educated Romans for whom he was writing could be expected to be bilingual or at least able to read Greek. This is, after all, why Cicero himself has Varro object that the entire project of translating or putting philosophi- cal doctrines into Latin is superiluous-why seek out mere rivulets when you can drink from the sources? (Acad. 1.2.8:sed meos amicos in quibus est studium in Graeciam mitto id est ad Graecos ire iubeo, ut ex fontibus potius hauriant quam rivulos consectentur). Cicero never intended his books to replace the more technical Greek ones.

But apart from the fact that he realized, unlike some of his friends, how important it is to be able to talk philosophy, not just to read it, Cicero may have been quite right to think that his books fulfilled a function that the more technical and austere works of the Greeks might have neglected, or did not fulfill as well. On this point we are of course reduced to guessing; we do not know how well the genre "introductory survey" was represented in the Greek literature of Cicero's time. The books to which Cicero himself explicitly refers do not seem to have been of this kind.12 In fact, it is clear that Cicero's literary models came from the early Academy-Plato, Aristotle, from whom Cicero claims to have taken the form of his dialogues,13 Theophrastus, Polemo and so on. For surveys, we might compare Epicurus' letters, which do purport to offer simplified summaries-and here, I would say, the comparison would be in favor of Cicero. And while we do not have enough from an earlier period, we do know that the books we now describe, after Diels, as "doxographical" tend to leave out what Cicero, on the con-

l2 Although Cicero tells us that Panaetius used ordinary language when writing about everyday subjects (Off 2.10.35). he clearly still finds it necessary to abbreviate what Panaetius had treated "with great precision" (accuratissime; 08 3.2.7). In the Acad. libri he claims to have combined Antiochus' acumen with his own stylistic elegance (nitor; Att. 13.19.5). Philo of Larissa taught rhetoric as well as philosophy, and Cicero says that he used to quote lines from the poets, as Cicero himself likes to do (Tusc. 2.1 1.26). But the "Roman books" mentioned in the Luc. (4.1 1) belonged to a rather esoteric epistemo- logical dispute and can hardly have been intended for beginners.

l3 See Att. 13.19.4 quae autem his temporibus scripsi'Ap~o~ozkhEtov morem habent in quo ita senno inducitur ceterorum ut apud ipsum sit principatus.

60 Gisela Striker

trary, tends to emphasize-the theoretical framework and the arguments behind the theses, not to mention other philosophers' objections. What Cicero offers us is a framework in which to place more technical con- siderations, and a guide to the fundamental doctrines of each school. His books provide orientation and incentive to further study, and in this they seem to me to be quite successful. Cicero is surely right to think that a clear and fluent style will appeal to inexperienced readers, and the presentation of conflicting views in the form of a debate is an effec- tive pedagogical device to get readers involved in thinking about the problems for themselves. On the other hand, one cannot overburden a conversation, even an imaginary one, with too much detail without defeating the dialogue's purpose. Some lines of argument will have to be abbreviated or condensed and Cicero, to his credit, often points this out himself. There is no reason to believe that he left out the details because he regarded them as superlluous. I cannot think of a modern introductory book that would not be open to the kind of complaints some scholars have made about Cicero-sketchiness, lack of detail and occasional misrepresentation. Nobody expects an encyclopedia article about Aristotle to give a full and adequate picture of his philosophy. Still, such books or articles are useful in setting their readers on the right track, as it were, but they are not meant to be the last word about anything. If we sometimes end up thinking that Cicero must have mis- understood an argument, we should not forget that it was often Cicero himself who enabled us to see that something went wrong.

We have every reason to think that the loss of the works of the major Hellenistic philosophers is among the more regrettable calamities of our fragmentary tradition, and it would be ridiculous to pretend that Cicero can make up for it. But I suspect that even if we had much more, we might still find ourselves turning to Cicero's judicious and lively little surveys to help us find our way, for example, through the laborious volumes of a Chrysippus, who was famous for his dreadful style.14

l4 For Chrysippus' style, see Dion. Hal. Camp. 4. 30-31 (p. 21 Us.-Rad., SVF I1 28) 6nouye rai oi T ~ Vcpthoaocpiav kaayyehh6pevot rai zhq 6 t a h r z t r h ~ kxcpdpov.re$ rk~vaq 0.6.roq e i d v Qtihtot nepi T ~ Vo6veeotv TGV bvopb~wv, &oz' ai6eiatiat rai Xiyetv; dLn6~pq 6k ~erpqpio ~ p ~ i a a o t i a t zijj M y o Xpuoinnou .roc Z~otroG. nepat~kpo yhp o6r 6.v npopaiqv. ~ 0 6 ~ 0 ~ 6tah~.rtrh$ zkxva~ yhp 067' Qpetvov o66ei5 T&S

jrpipooev, o i i z ~ x~ipovt &pCLoviSL kS{vep h6youq .rGv bvopbzwv ra i ~ U V T ~ X ~ ~ V T C I S

665qq &cto0kvzwv.

61 Cicero and Greek Philosophy

When Cicero had finished his Academici libri, he wrote to Atticus (13.13.1): "the books have turned out-unless I am deceived by that common failing, amour-propre-better than anything of their kind, even in Greek" (tr. J. Barnes. libri quidem ita exierunt, nisi forte me communis cpthauzia decipit, ut in tali genere ne apud Graecos quidem simile quicquam). Nobody seems to have taken this remark seriously, given that Cicero is well known to have been particularly prone to the "common failing." But in this case I am inclined to think that he may well have been right.