arguments for political participation in cicero's 'pro sestio' and 'de re...

David T. West, SCS 2016 1

Arguments for Political Participation in Cicero’s Pro Sestio and De Re Publica

In the last 20 years, scholarly opinion has stabilized around the view of Cicero the

philosopher as a consistent Academic skeptic who held no truths as epistemologically certain.

This trend was firmly established by the publication in 1995 of Woldemar Görler’s book chapter

entitled “Silencing the Troublemaker: De Legibus 1.39 and the Continuity of Cicero’s

Scepticism,” in which Görler convincingly refuted John Glucker’s argument that Cicero changed

his philosophic allegiance to Stoicism in the 50s and then returned to the Academic skepticism of

his youth in the 40s. Görler argued that Cicero maintained an allegiance to Academic skepticism

throughout his life, including the period in the 50s when Cicero likely composed the dialogue de

Legibus. The abiding influence of Görler’s argument is well illustrated by the publication just

last year of Raphael Woolf’s monograph entitled Cicero: The Philosophy of a Roman Sceptic, a

title that nicely encapsulates Woolf’s thesis of Cicero as an epistemologically uncommitted

skeptic who presents all sides of a question while choosing for himself, and encouraging others

to choose, the solution that seems most probable or most similar to the truth.

Turning to Woolf’s reading of De Re Publica in particular, while his interpretation of the

Somnium Scipionis stops short of denying Cicero any beliefs or persuasive purposes, his

tendency to see Cicero as an epistemological skeptic leads him to attribute to Cicero only general

conclusions such as the notion that political engagement is something good, though a good of

limited value from other perspectives (112-13). For Woolf, Cicero teaches us in the Somnium

about various irresolvable tensions, such as that which persists between the human and divine

perspectives. As for the Somnium’s doctrine of the eternal reward of the soul as a motive for

political engagement, he grants its presence but suggests in effect that it need not be taken

seriously, in the following words: “the notion of being transferred to a heavenly location seems


also to represent, in concrete form, the realization of the true nature of a human being as ally of

god” (112). In short, Woolf takes the idea of assuming one’s place among the gods as symbolic

for the human being’s participation in the divine government of the universe.

It is the contention of my talk this morning, however, that a cross-generic comparison of

discourse about political engagement in De Re Publica and Cicero’s speech Pro Sestio,

especially at the end of each work, reveals a continuity of Ciceronian thought and purpose that

calls into question Woolf’s symbolic interpretation of the Somnium’s doctrine of immortality,

and that, more broadly, has implications for the scholarly consensus that Cicero is fundamentally

an Academic skeptic1 in De Re Publica and the philosophic works. I argue that both works end

on a similar note by subordinating previously formulated arguments for political engagement

(especially the allure of human glory) to the new and higher motive of gaining immortal glory,

revealing a continuity in Cicero's thought that strongly suggests he considered the prospect of

immortal glory as the only ultimately compelling motive for political engagement. And if this

seems too bold, then at the very least, the continuity of ideas between the speech from 56 and the

dialogue from 51 surely indicates Cicero’s intention to persuade his audience (perhaps himself

included) on the basis of this motive of eternal reward that pursuing public life was worthwhile.

Near the end of Pro Sestio, Cicero’s conclusio summing up his speech’s previous

arguments for political engagement ends with an entirely new argument based on the immortal

glory the soul may consciously enjoy in eternity due to its eternal motion and its virtuous

political behavior on earth. We will break this paragraph into two parts, beginning with

NUMBER 1 ON YOUR HANDOUT:

Therefore let us imitate our own Bruti, Camilli, Ahalae, Decii, Curii, Fabricii, Maximi, Scipiones,

Lentuli, Aemilii, and the countless others who have made this Republic strong—whom I, in any

case (equidem), place in the numerous company of the immortal gods... Let us disregard what we

1 For an important challenge to this consensus, see Altman 2009: 418-22 and especially Forthcoming 2016.


may gain for the present; let us be in the service of glory that comes from posterity; let us

consider what is right to be the best; let us hope for what we want, but be ready to bear whatever

comes.2 (Sest. 143)

In speaking of disregarding what may be gained for the present and striving for glory with

posterity, Cicero sums up, as is typical in a conclusio, his previous arguments about the certainty

of gaining glory from future generations if one’s contemporaries should disappoint. But his

exhortation to hope for what one wants but bear whatever comes is his first implicit admission

that even glory with posterity may prove unreliable. His solution to this possibility is to turn to

immortality and immortal glory. This turn is initially indicated in his profession that he

considers the maiores of the past who served the state to have joined the company of the

immortal gods. As Kaster notes on this passage, Cicero’s sentiment falls outside the mainstream

of Roman tradition, as Cicero acknowledges with the word equidem: “I, any case,” Cicero says.

That Cicero is speaking of the actual enjoyment of glory in eternity becomes more clear in the

following magnificent period, which is NUMBER 2 ON YOUR HANDOUT:

Finally, let us reflect that the body of brave men and of great persons is mortal, but the motion of

the soul (animi... motus) and the glory of virtue are everlasting (virtutis gloriam sempiternam),

and if we see that this opinion has been made sacred through what happened to that most

venerable man, Hercules, of whom it is said that, once his body had been burned, his life and

virtue were taken up into immortality, then we should be no less inclined to consider that those

men who have by their counsels and toils strengthened or defended or preserved this great

Republic have obtained immortal glory (immortalem gloriam consecutos). (Sest. 143)

Cicero implicitly answers here a question he posed earlier in the speech about what happens after

death. In paragraph 47, he argued that he was not afraid of death because he had studied the

opinions of learned men and had narrowed down the possibilities to loss of consciousness, in

which death is nothing to fear, or the gaining of a “better state of awareness” (melior sensus), in

which case death would even be desirable. Cicero’s final exhortation evidently endorses the

2 Translations in this paper are my own. They are based on Maslowski’s Teubner (1986) edition for Pro Sestio, and

on Powell’s OCT (2004) for De Re Publica.


latter, and indeed the thinly-veiled Platonic idea of the soul’s immortality and attainment of a

melior sensus (as against the first option, which sounds more or less Epicurean).3 Cicero

therefore crafts a new argument for political engagement by linking this Platonic idea of the

soul’s immortality to a specific notion of virtue or courage that recalls the kind of courageous,

laborious political service he advocated throughout the famous digression on optimates and

populares. But while the definition of virtue from that digression has been retained, the chief

allure of virtue that was held out during the digression has been implicitly transcended, namely,

the ideal of gaining glory from one’s contemporaries and from posterity in exchange for political

service. Consequently it seems to me that Kaster is mistaken in affirming that the immortal

glory spoken of in this final exhortation was “promised by the contractualist premises of Roman

Republicanism, implicit since the speech’s first paragraph... and repeated at key points in the

interval” (ad. loc.). Rather, Cicero’s idea of the soul’s ongoing motion in eternity and hence its

actual enjoyment of immortal glory hearkens back to an idea suggested in passing in paragraph

47, and transcends the contractualist premise he has been promoting throughout the speech and

in particular during the digression on optimates and populares.4

It is striking that in the Somnium Scipionis, this same Platonic doctrine of the soul’s

immortality appears again, where it is presented as a reward for virtue conceived of as public

service no less than in Pro Sestio.5 In a famous passage, NUMBER 3 ON YOUR HANDOUT,

3 Anti-Epicureanism is another thread that ties Sest. to Rep. (cf. Sest. 23 & 139 with Rep. 1.1 & 1.9, and Sest. 47 &

143 with the Somnium, especially 6.33 regarding the punishment of Epicureans in the afterlife) and hence also argues for Rep.’s common persuasive purpose. 4 Pace Kaster, when Cicero refers to “the shortness of life and the eternity of glory” in Sest. 47, the context and

ensuing discussion of the two possibilities of what happens after death show that he is foreshadowing the same concept of eternal enjoyment of glory by the conscious soul as he describes in Sest. 143, not the idea of being rewarded for one’s political service with the “immortal” glory of memorialization that figures so prominently in the digression. 5 In the preface of Rep. 1, Cicero establishes that the highest form of virtue is its use in governing states (1.2), and

as far as we can tell from the remains of the work, it is in these terms that virtue is consistently understood throughout the dialogue. A major difference between Pro Sestio and De Re Publica presents itself inasmuch as in


Scipio Africanus informs his grandson in the Dream that “for all those who have preserved,

aided, or strengthened the fatherland, there is without doubt a specific place in the heavens where

the blessed enjoy an eternal age (ubi beati aevo sempiterno fruantur)” (Rep. 6.17).

CONTINUING WITH HANDOUT NUMBER 3, we can note that Africanus’ words qui patriam

conservaverint adiuverint auxerint closely resemble Cicero’s words at Pro Sestio 143, qui hanc

tantam rem publicam... auxerint aut defenderint aut servarint. In the Somnium, Cicero has

nearly transposed the verbs from Pro Sestio in reverse order. Furthermore, Africanus reveals

that the eternal reward he makes known is ontologically possible due to the duality between body

and soul, the one being mortal and the other immortal, echoing the same concept as Cicero

announced in his own voice in Pro Sestio when referring to the contrast between Hercules’ body

consumed on the pyre and his soul, taken up to heaven. THIS IS PASSAGE 4 ON YOUR

HANDOUT. Referring to those who served the state on earth who have since arrived in the

heavens to enjoy their eternal beatitude, Africanus says: “Having been loosed from their bodies

(corpore laxati) they dwell in the place you see (Rep. 6.20). . . Consider that it’s not you who are

mortal, but this body; for you are not what that measly appearance (forma ista) declares you to

be, but rather your own mind— that’s what each man is (mens cuiusque is est quisque)” (6.30).

In addition, Cicero’s compact statement in Pro Sestio that “the motions of the soul are eternal”

(Sest. 143) is explained in full in the Somnium, where Cicero translates as literally as possible the

proof of the soul’s immortality from self-motion given by Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus (Rep.

the latter, Cicero’s weakened political status under the renewal of the triumvirate drove him to expand the definition of political engagement to take in writing and thinking about the state (1.12), an activity in which Cicero himself is obviously engaged by the act of writing, as well as his characters, most notably Scipio. But as Cicero stated in the preface, the highest form of virtue nevertheless remains its active exercise, active engagement in the state, an activity denied to Cicero at the time of writing just as it is denied to Scipio in the fictional context of the dialogue (cf. Laelius’ complaint at 1.31 about Scipio’s exclusion from political affairs during the present crisis as well as the prophecy of Scipio’s return to politics as dictator in the Somnium, 6.16). Here is an indicator of Cicero’s intended self- identification with his character Scipio.


6.30-32). The inclusion of this technical philosophic argument may be ascribed to the more

fitting generic context of the philosophic dialogue, but Cicero’s choice of this new genre was

itself determined by his changed political circumstances, a subject to which I will turn shortly.

Indeed, important differences between the two works are revealed not only though the

more marked presence of philosophy in De Re Publica, but also in the way that Cicero has

Africanus denigrate the value of all human glory at great length (6.24-29). In particular,

Africanus deconstructs explicitly and in detail Cicero’s arguments from Pro Sestio about the

reliability of glory from posterity, including the observation in PASSAGE 5 ON YOUR

HANDOUT: “All that talk. . . has never been everlasting about anyone (nec umquam de ullo

perennis fuit): it is buried with the death of men, and extinguished by the oblivion of posterity”

(Rep. 6.29; cf. 6.27, non modo non aeternam, sed ne diuturnam quidem gloriam adsequi

possumus). This devaluing of human glory was merely implicit in Pro Sestio’s final exhortation

to act virtuously come what may and to consider the souls of great statesman to have attained

immortal glory. These differences, it seems to me, should be ascribed to changes in Cicero’s

political circumstances. In Pro Sestio, the bulk of Cicero’s thematic concern6 with political

engagement to preserve the Republic emphasized human glory as a compelling motive, while the

argument for engagement based on the soul’s immortal glory was presented in only the briefest

terms. When Cicero delivered this speech in February 56, he was seeking to motivate immediate

political action above all through the allure of traditional cultural motives centered around the

appeal to glory. He was aggressively maneuvering against a triumvirate that he thought was in

6 Pace Kaster’s (2005) persuasive-process analysis of the speech, it may also be considered as a sustained attempt

to motivate Romans to political action on behalf of Cicero’s policies, which are presented as those favorable to the Republic. Such an approach is founded upon recent trends in Ciceronian scholarship (e.g. Narducci 1997, Habinek 1998, Dugan 2005) that analyze Cicero’s speeches for the cultural and political goals they promote alongside judicial aims. In particular, the delivery of Pro Sestio at a time when Cicero saw an opening to weaken further the first triumvirate allows for a focus on the speech’s political goals.


its dying stages, as Pompey appeared to be drifting apart from Caesar, and it also bears

mentioning that Cicero had already successfully scheduled a discussion of Caesar’s Campanian

land law in the senate for the following month. But the renewal of the triumvirate just weeks

after the speech’s delivery led Cicero in De Re Publica to acknowledge far more openly and

extensively than in Pro Sestio the futility of human glory as a motive for serving the Republic,

and to place in relief the necessity of an eternal reward that does not depend on time or

circumstance. And yet, remarkably, this acknowledgement of the vanity of human glory was

already implicitly present in Pro Sestio, which shows that Cicero did not turn to immortality and

eternal reward as a sort of “cop-out” once he was no longer politically relevant, but rather reveals

that his thought and persuasive intent remained stable while he adjusted his persuasive strategies

to the circumstances in which each work was to be disseminated.

Besides the similar exposition of ideas, another important similarity between De Re

Publica and Pro Sestio can be seen in the way the Somnium’s final teaching about immortal

glory in eternity transcends previous motives and arguments for political engagement. The

following fragment from Book 6 indicates that the Dream is in part a response to Laelius’

previous arguments about virtue’s rewards, PASSAGE 6 ON YOUR HANDOUT:

[Scipio]: But although for wise men the very awareness of one’s outstanding deeds is the most

glorious reward for virtue, nevertheless that divine virtue longs for neither statues mounted on

lead, nor triumphs with their gradually withering laurels (arescentibus laureis), but for certain

more durable (stabiliora) and evergreen (viridiora) kinds of rewards. (Rep. 6.12)

This surviving fragment is remarkable and indeed priceless for the continuity it establishes

between De Re Publica and Pro Sestio. In Pro Sestio, Cicero moved his argument for

engagement beyond the appeals to the glory one can win from posterity and from one’s

contemporaries in the same way that Scipio proposes a higher reward for engagement than


Laelius’ expectation of the virtuous political actor’s posthumous and contemporaneous glory,7 as

is signified by Scipio’s references to statues and to triumphs. Cicero made the same move in Pro

Sestio by dwelling at length on the supposed lesson of his own exile and glorious return as proof

that whatever storms the republican statesmen may encounter, he can always count on happily

coming to port through the efforts of his grateful fellow-citizens who crown him anew with glory

(Sest. 50-52). He made the same point about contemporary glory in the excursus on optimates

and populares, where he laid down the argument that those statesmen who pursue the interests of

loyal citizens should receive and, given the general pattern of Roman history, will receive glory

from these same loyal citizens as their due (Sest. 103-4; cf. 106-27). As for posthumous glory,

Cicero gave various examples of statesman exiled during their lifetimes whose glory was

recuperated in the eyes of posterity through memorialization, and most notably in the case of one

Opimius, who died in exile but whose monument, Cicero says, is heavily frequented in the forum

(Sest. 140).8 As we have seen, these arguments are summed up before being transcended by an

argument for political engagement that takes the idea of immortal glory to the ontological and

eternal level, just as Scipio did in the Dream in response to Laelius’ earlier arguments. Just as

Cicero in Pro Sestio ultimately though implicitly repudiated his shaky promises of contemporary

glory based on unpredictable political events and persons, as well as monuments that offer the

deceptive guarantee of immortal glory through memorialization, Scipio likewise turns from

Laelius’ statues and triumphs to eternal rewards that he initially designates as more durable than

lead (stabiliora) and evergreen (viridiora) in comparison with laurels.9

7 Cf. also Rep. 3.28, where Laelius states: “Virtue wants honor (honorem), nor does virtue have any other reward.”

8 Cicero adds to Opimius the example of Athenian statesmen who were exiled by an ungrateful populace and were

never recalled in their lifetime but obtained even greater glory in the eyes of posterity up to the present day (Sest. 141-42). 9 Another previous argument that Cicero and Scipio reject in Sest. and Rep. respectively is the idea that virtue is its

own reward. Cf. Sest. 143 “let us consider what is right to be the best” with Rep. 6.12: “But although for wise men


By comparing these works of disparate genre, noting their internal development and

similar conclusions, a methodological basis may be established both for identifying Scipio as

Cicero’s spokesman— at least in the context of the Somnium— and for distinguishing between

views skeptically endorsed by Cicero in the speeches and those he held more definitively, or at

least sought to persuade others to hold more definitively. For just as Scipio’s argument in the

Dream about virtue’s ultimate reward disagrees with and transcends the rewards proposed by

Laelius, so Cicero’s final argument about immortal glory in Pro Sestio disagrees with and

transcends the claims he made earlier in the speech about the value and certainty of human glory

in the eyes of posterity. The similar stance on immortal glory that appears at the conclusion of

the two works as well as similarities between Scipio the character and Cicero the author10

invite

the reader to identify Cicero’s ultimate views on the highest motive for political engagement

with those expressed by Scipio in the Dream, and to identify the previous arguments in the two

works as those which Cicero views with a skeptical eye as ultimately unreliable and indeed

unsatisfying to the human soul given its nature as something immortal.

A final consideration also suggests my conclusion about where Cicero’s true views lie. I

am thinking of the deeply personal stake that Cicero had in these arguments, and the role that

personal experience played in leading him to his views. The most cursory glance at Cicero’s life

shows that, unlike Plato, he was a prominent public figure and that, especially during his last

twenty years, he was continually obsessed with engaging in politics and with the problem of his

the very awareness (conscientia ipsa) of one’s outstanding deeds is the most glorious (amplissimum) reward for virtue, nevertheless that divine virtue longs for... certain more durable and evergreen kinds of rewards.” Cf. also Scipio’s investment of Laelius’ term decus (which Laelius understands as virtue’s intrinsic reward, 3.31) with a new meaning at 6.29, where he quotes Africanus: “Therefore if you prove willing (voles) to look on high and gaze at this dwelling and eternal home... you must let virtue herself (ipsa virtus) with her own charms (suis... illecebris) draw you to true splendor (verum decus).” The nature of this true decus is explained by the beginning of the

sentence— that is, decus is the splendor one takes in while “gazing at this dwelling and eternal home.” 10

See n. 5 above.


constantly fluctuating status. During the 50s in particular, first, the experience of his exile, and

later on, the renewal of a triumvirate that stripped him of his honorable role in the state led

Cicero to reevaluate the Roman honor code and his previous commitment to earthly glory as the

object of all his labors.11

Exile taught him how fleeting human glory can be. In addition, the

experience of his own and the Roman Republic’s changeable status, as well as the general

changeability of political regimes he learned through a renewed engagement in the 50s with

Plato and the Greek tradition of political philosophy, all contributed to his sense that he could not

rely on having immortal glory with posterity, impelling him to seek a more stable source for his

heart’s desire and his life’s driving passion. In the end, Cicero’s self-reflective reevaluation and

redefinition of what constitutes immortal glory reminds me,12

to venture a comparison to

Homeric epic, of Achilles’ rejection of the Iliadic honor code as a result of his retirement from

the battlefield, through which he gained a new critical perspective on the values he had

previously, and thoughtlessly, pursued. As a result of being dishonored by Agamemnon and

through the leisure of his temporary retirement from battle, Achilles comes to recognize the

futility and fragility of honor as something that, like himself, is mortal; only the gods are

permanently happy.13

Somewhat analogously, Cicero concluded on the basis of his misfortunes

and the time they afforded him for philosophic reflection that the only way to obtain secure glory

is by becoming a god, which is possibility only if the soul can be conceived of as divine due to

its nature as something eternally self-moved and capable of virtuous action, and therefore

ontologically and morally capable of joining the ranks of the gods. Cicero, far from being a

11

As expressed, for example, in Pro Archia at a time when he possessed human glory: nihil esse in vita magno opere expetendum nisi laudem atque honestatem (14). Cicero also wrote to Atticus in 61 that on the Nones of December, he had gained immortal glory (immortalem gloriam consecutus sum, Att. 1.19.6). 12

Cf. Pro Sestio 47, in addition to 143. 13

When the Embassy arrives at the tents of Achilles at the beginning of Iliad 9, they find him singing about the glory of heroes. Achilles subsequently expresses to the Embassy his lack of interest in the motives of the warrior code that previously moved him.


skeptic about the ultimate rewards of political engagement proposed in Pro Sestio and De Re

Publica, found in the Platonic doctrine of the immortal soul a rational basis for the ultimate

argument for political engagement, one that reconciled societal and individual benefit on the

highest level by granting the soul eternal reward in exchange for serving its country,

transcending in the process the traditional Roman cultural norm whereby human glory was the

chief currency of exchange for virtue.


Bibliography

Altman, W. H. F. 2009. “Womanly Humanism in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations.” TAPA 139: 407-41.

--------------------. Forthcoming 2016. The Revival of Platonism in Cicero’s Late Philosophy: Platonis

Aemulus and the Invention of Cicero. Lanham, MD.

Atkins, J. W. 2013. Cicero on Politics and the Limits of Reason: The Republic and Laws. Cambridge

Classical Studies. Cambridge.

Baraz, Y. 2012. A Written Republic: Cicero’s Philosophical Politics. Princeton, NJ.

Blössner, N. 2001. Cicero gegen die Philosophie: Eine Analyse von De re publica 1.1-3. Nachrichten

der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, no. 3.

Göttingen.

Boyancé, P. 1936. Etudes sur le Songe de Scipion. Limoges.

Dugan, J. 2005. Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-Fashioning in the Rhetorical Works. Oxford.

Gardner, R. ed. and trans. 1958. Cicero: Pro Sestio, In Vatinium. Loeb Classical Library 309.

Cambridge, MA and London.

Gildenhard, I. 2011. Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero’s Speeches. Oxford.

Glucker, J. P. 1988. “Cicero’s Philosophical Affiliations.” In J. Dillon and A. A. Long eds. The

Question of “Eclecticism”, 34-69. Berkeley, CA.

----------------. 1992. “Cicero’s Philosophical Affiliations Again.” LCM 17.9: 134-38.

Görler, W. 1995. “Silencing the Troublemaker: De Legibus 1.39 and the Continuity of Cicero’s

Scepticism.” In J. G. F. Powell ed. Cicero the Philosopher: Twelve Papers, 85-113. Oxford.

Habinek, T. 1998. The Politics of Latin Literature: Writing, Identity, and Empire in Ancient Rome.

Princeton, NJ.

Kaster, R. A. ed. and trans. 2006. Cicero: Speech on Behalf of Publius Sestius. Clarendon Ancient

History Series. Oxford.

Keyes, C. W. ed. and trans. 1958. Cicero: De Re Publica, De Legibus. Loeb Classical Library 213.

Cambridge, MA and London.

Maslowski, T. 1986. M. Tullius Cicero, Scripta quae manserunt omnia, Fasc. 22: Oratio pro P. Sestio.

Bibliotheca Teubneriana. Leipzig.

Narducci, E. 1997. Cicerone e l’eloquenza romana: Retorica e progetto culturale. Roma-Bari.

Powell, J. G. F. ed. and trans. 1991. Cicero: On Friendship and the Dream of Scipio. Warminster.

------------------. 1996. “Second Thoughts on the Dream of Scipio.” In F. Cairns and M. Heath eds.

Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 9. 13-27.

------------------- ed. 2006. M. Tulli Ciceronis: De Re Publica, De Legibus, Cato Maior de Senectute,

Laelius de Amicitia. Bibliotheca Oxoniensis. Oxford.

Riggsby, A. 2002. “The Post Reditum Speeches.” In J. May ed. Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory

and Rhetoric. Leiden. 159-95.

Steel, C. 2005. Reading Cicero: Genre and Performance in Late Republican Rome. London.

Woolf, R. 2015. Cicero: The Philosophy of a Roman Sceptic. Abingdon and New York.

Zetzel, J. E. G. ed. 1995. Cicero: De Re Publica. Selections. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics.

Cambridge.

------------------- ed. and trans. 1999. Cicero: On the Commonwealth and On the Laws. Cambridge Texts

in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge.

arguments for political participation in cicero's 'pro sestio' and 'de re...

Documents