Department of the Classics, Harvard University

Cicero and Greek Philosophy Author(s): Gisela Striker Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 97, Greece in Rome: Influence, Integration, Resistance (1995), pp. 53-61 Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/311300 Accessed: 22/11/2008 17:07
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CICERO AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY*

GISELA STRIKER

O speak 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 centuryB.C.took over from the Greeks as a partof higher education. It was both a prestigious and a suspect branch of Greek cultureprestigious because it was intellectually demanding, suspect because philosophical argumentcould be seen as subversive;witness the notorious story of the futile attemptby Cato the Censor in the second century to banish philosophersfrom the city in orderto safeguardthe 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,1 while assuring his readers that the affairs of the state would of course take precedence over philosophical pursuits.2 But the prejudice T
*I am grateful to Zeph Stewart for encouragementand stylistic advice. This short piece was writtenfor the conference, with no intentionof developing it into a largerproject. It is merely an attemptto put Cicero's philosophical writings in perspective, as it were, in the hope of attractingthe attentionof those studentsof antiquitywho still take a dim view of Cicero's achievementon the groundsthat he was neitheroriginal nor a great philosopher. 1 With varying success: the "Scipionic Circle" of the Rep. was apparentlya success, but Cicero gave up on the attemptto present some of his own older contemporariesas involved in a technical philosophical debate; see Att. 13.16.1 Illam &lcaKa6TlutKv (UvTxCtv totam ad Varronem traduximus.Primofuit Catuli, Luculli, Hortensi; deinde, quia T(apatoX Ti7npov videbatur,quod erat hominibusnota non illa quidem&arlXt6e'oia sed in his rebus atxpilia, simul ac veni ad villam, eosdem illos sermones ad Catonem Brutumquetranstuli. 2 See, e.g., Div. 2.2.6 Ac mihi quidem explicandaephilosophiae causam adtulit casus

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remained that professional philosophers, at any rate, were engaged in hairsplittingand endless debates about obscure points, to the detriment of more importantconcerns like politics.3 In short, the Roman upper class displayed the same attitudes as the Athenian contemporariesof Socrates and the Sophists, so amusingly described in some of Plato's earlierdialogues. Cicero seems to have been the first educatedRoman who developed a real flair for philosophy and a serious attachmentto it, consideringit not just as an intellectual hobby or a kind of spiritualsupportin times of personal or political turmoil, and attemptingin earnest to make it a part of Roman culture. I do not mean, of course, to overlook the great poet Lucretius. But Lucretius,perhapsprecisely because he was a great poet, but also because he adopted the tone of a fervent missionary, seems to have remainedan 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 discuss philosophy. No doubt Cicero's own auctoritas helped here, too. Not quite a century later, in the works of Seneca, the "povertyof the Latin tongue" (Lucr. 1.139, 832; 3.260) so eloquently lamented by Lucretiusseems to have been overcome. What I have said so far is familiar and, I take it, uncontroversial. Cicero's role as a mediatorprobablyalso explains why he remaineda respected philosophical authorso long as Latin, alongside Greek, was one of the main languages of philosophy. Until the end of the eighteenth century at least some of Cicero's philosophical books were part of a standardeducation, and indeed, before the Renaissance, Cicero was seen as a philosopherratherthan a politician or an orator. But over the last two hundredyears, Cicero as a philosophical writerhas 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 armis civilibus nec tueri meo more remp. nec nihil agere poteram nec quidpotius, quod quidemme dignumesset, agerem reperiebam. 3 See, e.g., Luc. 2.5 Ac vereor interdumne taliumpersonarumcum amplificarevelim minuametiam gloriam. sunt enim multi qui omnino Graecas non ament litteras, plures qui philosophiam, reliqui qui etiam si haec non inprobenttamen earum rerumdisputationemprincipibuscivitatis non ita decoramputent.

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prejudices-as we would now say-that became prevalentin the nineteenth 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 period.4It is not entirely clear what was meant by this term, but one suggestion seems to have been that an "eclectic"philosopher's views would lack rigor and coherence. If he picked up the most attractive bits of doctrinefrom variousincompatiblesystems, 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 argumentsbehind 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 compelling. True, a philosopherwho tries to bring togetherplausible theses from different theories cannot embrace all those systems at the same time. But the same philosophical theses can be supportedby different arguments,and it is surely legitimate to try and produce a theory that combines, as it were, the best of all availableviews by introducingnew or modified argumentsfor old doctrines. This is, in fact, what Cicero's teacherAntiochus seems to have done in ethics, as one can see from De Finibus5.5 Sometimes the term "eclecticism"also seems to carrythe suggestion thatthe eclectic philosopherhas no comprehensivesystem at all, so that his views, consistent or not, are not solidly supported. This is an objection thatcould be raised againstCicero's otherteacher,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 thereforebe content with trying to find the most plausible or probableview, case by case. As a studentof Philo, Cicero may have had some fairly strong convictions, but no overarchingWelt4 See the collection of essays in J. M. Dillon and A. A. Long eds., The Question of "Eclecticism"(Berkeley 1988), in particular the opening chapterby P. Donini. 5 For this point see J. Barnes, "Antiochusof Ascalon," in M. Griffin and J. Barnes eds., Philosophia Togata (Oxford 1989) 51-96, and for Antiochus' ethics, J. Annas, The Moralityof Happiness (Oxford 1993) chapters2.6 and 4.20.3.

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anschauung. If skepticism or anti-dogmatismis what accounts for the label "eclectic,"we need not find it damaging. Philo and Antiochus are now treated with greater respect,6 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 thinkerthan his teachers. But originalitywas not an issue at a time when philosophers,far from advertisingtheir own innovations, were anxious to show that their doctrines went back to the great founding fathers-Socrates, Plato, Aristotle or even Pythagoras.7 If we for our partwish to insist that some degree of originalityor independence is crucial, we should admit that we are in no position to form an accuratejudgment of Cicero in this respect, given that most of his sources are lost. The two works most likely to give us an impressionof 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 naturallaw and of the objective foundationsof justice, has a numberof lacunae that make it difficultto follow the course of the exposition. A lot of work still needs to be done to reconstructthese arguments,as opposed to identifyingthe Greek authoritiesallegedly behind them. In De Officiis 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 apparentconflicts between moral duty and expediency-a topic that Panaetius had promised to discuss, but Cicero's solution is not failed to treat in his Ilepi ro3 Ka0ljKOVTO;.8
6 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 56]). Academy(Gottingen 1978 [Hypomnemata 7 For this point see D. Sedley, "PhilosophicalAllegiance in the Greco-RomanWorld," in Griffin(above, n. 5) 97-119. 8 See Off 3.2.7 Panaetius igitur, qui sine controversia de officiis accuratissime disputavit quemquenos correctionequadamadhibitapotissimumsecuti sumus, tribusgeneribus propositis, in quibus deliberare homines et consultare de officio solerent, uno cum dubitarent,honestumneid esset, de quo ageretur,an turpe,altero, utilene esset an inutile, tertio, si id, quod speciem haberet honesti, pugnaret cum eo, quod utile videretur,quomodo ea disceri oporteret,de duobus generibusprimis tribus libris explicavit, de tertio autem genere deinceps se scripsit dicturum nec exsolvit id, quod promiserat. Ibid. 3.4.19-20 Itaque, ut sine ullo errore diiudicare possimus, si quando cum illo, quod honestum intellegimus,pugnare id videbitur,quod appellamus utile, formula quaedam

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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 of originality. achievementsprimarilyby referenceto standards A different aspect has been emphasized by A. E. Douglas,9 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 TusculanDisputations, the Cato Maior (De Senectute), the Laelius (De Amicitia) and to some extent also the De Officiis. 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 instructionor explanationas psychological guidance and moral education. It seems that some philosophersare beginning to be less dismissive about this kind of "appliedphilosophy,"and in any case it is an interesting feature of Hellenistic philosophy in general that is well worth investigating.10But I think it is still fair to say that few philosopherstoday would subscribeto Cicero's famous little "hymnto philosophy"(Tusc. 5.2.5): o vitae philosophia dux, o virtutisindagatrix expultrixquevitiorum.... Most of us would probablyratheragree with Aristotle, who thought that philosophy may indeed help us to clarify our moralideas, but thatit cannotreplace a good upbringing. There remains the group of dialogues in which Cicero, toward the end of his life, attemptedto provide a kind of philosophicalencyclopedia in Latin:1lthe 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 partof philosophersfor these treatises is not an argumentat 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
constituendaest; quam si sequemurin comparationererum,ab officio numquamrecedemus. erit autem haec formula Stoicorumrationi disciplinaequemaxime consentanea ... 9 "Cicerothe Philosopher"in T. A. Dorey ed., Cicero (London 1965) 135-170. 10See MarthaNussbaum'srecent book, The Therapyof Desire (Princeton1994). 1l For this project see Div. 2.2.4 Adhuc haec erant; ad reliqua alacri tendebamus animo, sic parati ut nisi quae causa gravior obstitisset nullumphilosophiae locum esse pateremur qui non Latinis litteris inlustratuspateret. quod enim munus rei p. adferre maius meliusvepossumus quam si docemus atque erudimusiuventutem ...

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works were just a patchwork of paraphrasesand Greek passages in translation,it is still tempting to try to discern, for example, the arguments of Panaetiusbehind Cicero's admittedlybrieferversion in the De Officiis,and I would not wish to claim thatI can always resist the temptation. The interests of present-dayreaders attemptingto understand Stoicism or Academic Skepticismdo 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 properunderstanding of the relevantarguments,and the very elegance of his Latin may compound the difficulties by making him less faithful to the terminology of the schools. Occasionallyone also suspects that Cicero has misunderstoodor missed a philosophicalpoint. Add to this that he has the annoying habit of indulging in rhetoricalflourishes from time to time and of interrupting or inflating an argumentby more or less irrelevant stories from Rome's glorious past or deplorablepresent, 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 reinforcedby the
use of collections like von Amim's Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta or

Usener's Epicurea, which present us with excerpts from Cicero's reports of a school doctrine, leaving out his comments or placing the in a differentsection because it introducesa differfollowing paragraph ent topic. In these collections, Cicero is treatedon a par with authors like Diogenes Laertiusor Stobaeus, whose books would indeed be of interestif the literatureof the Hellenistic period had merely antiquarian not been lost. Cicero thus comes to look like a not entirelyreliable and sometimes misleading witness-and why should we take such an authorseriously? This way of looking at Cicero's books, however, is grossly unfair because it takes his treatisesto be what their authornever intended. In beratingCicero for superficialityor 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 introductorysurveys of major fields in philosophy-epistemology, ethics, philosophical theology-trying to give an outline of the main positions, highlightingwhat he saw as their most importantstrengthsand weaknesses. Because he

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was following the Academic practiceof presentingall sides of a debate, he purportedat least to be fair to each school's doctrine, offering the readera set of interestingproblemsto think about, but leaving the final judgmentopen. But of course he assumedthat a readerwhose curiosity had been awakenedby his outline would easily be able to pursueparticular points of detail by getting the relevantGreek 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 Varroobject that the entire project of translatingor putting philosophical doctrines into Latin is superfluous-why seek out mere rivulets when you can drinkfrom the sources? (Acad. 1.2.8: sed meos amicos in quibus est studiumin Graeciammitto id est ad Graecos ire iubeo, ut ex fontibus potius hauriant quam rivulos consectentur). Cicero never intendedhis books to replace the more technical Greek ones. But apartfrom the fact that he realized, unlike some of his friends, how importantit 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 austereworks of the Greeks might have neglected, or did not fulfill as well. On this point we are of course reducedto guessing; we do not know how well the genre "introductory survey"was representedin the Greek literatureof Cicero's time. The books to which Cicero himself explicitly refers do not seem to have been of this kind.12In fact, it is clear that Cicero's literarymodels came from the early Academy-Plato, Aristotle, from whom Cicero claims to have taken the form of his dialogues,13Theophrastus, Polemo and so on. For surveys, we might compareEpicurus'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 tend to leave out what Cicero, on the conDiels, as "doxographical"
12 Although Cicero tells us that Panaetiusused ordinarylanguage when writing about everyday subjects (Off. 2.10.35), he clearly still finds it necessary to abbreviatewhat Panaetiushad treated"with greatprecision"(accuratissime;Off 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 Larissataughtrhetoricas well as philosophy, and Cicero says that he used to quote lines from the poets, as Cicero himself likes to do (Tusc. 2.11.26). But the "Romanbooks" mentioned in the Luc. (4.11) belonged to a ratheresoteric epistemological dispute and can hardlyhave been intendedfor beginners. 13 See Att. 13.19.4 quae autem his temporibusscripsi'Apiatoxo?3Xtov moremhabent in quo ita sermo induciturceterorumut apud ipsumsit principatus.

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trary,tends to emphasize-the theoreticalframeworkand the arguments behind the theses, not to mention otherphilosophers'objections. What Cicero offers us is a frameworkin which to place more technical considerations, and a guide to the fundamentaldoctrines of each school. His books provide orientationand incentive to furtherstudy, 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 inexperiencedreaders, and the presentationof conflicting views in the form of a debate is an effective pedagogical device to get readers involved in thinking about the problems for themselves. On the other hand, one cannot overburdena conversation, even an imaginary one, with too much detail without defeating the dialogue's purpose. Some lines of argumentwill have to be abbreviatedor 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 regardedthem as superfluous. I cannot think of a modem introductorybook that would not be open to the kind of complaints some scholarshave 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 thinkingthat Cicero must have misunderstoodan argument,we should not forget that it was often Cicero himself who enabledus to see that somethingwent wrong. We have every reason to thinkthat the loss of the works of the major Hellenistic philosophers is among the more regrettablecalamities of our fragmentarytradition, 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, throughthe laborious volumes of a Chrysippus,who was famous for his dreadful
style.14 14For Chrysippus' style, see Dion. Hal. Comp. 4. 30-31 (p. 21 Us.-Rad., SVF II 28) &aXKTiKac ?Kpc?povT?; Kai oi0 riv (pqhooocplav E:ayyEXXdOgEvotKcai rCxaS o6no'uy ai6SeiOal Kca 6Xao'o{TQo eioiv a0Xtoi Irepi TiV cvO0eoav TiV ovop&drov, rZcvac i- epavctipo TO Xo6yP Xpuoi"tou ro ZXToIKco' XpliGaooa Xtyetv; an6oprIl 6e T?Kjl:1piO
yap icKpipatev, OVcK av 7ipopairlv. roUJov) yap Oi)' axIeilvov 06eiS rEXvaS 'aI; 15aXEKTZKaS; OiTE XEipOVI aplpovia CovTvax0?Va<; >iveyKe X6yoV; tXV 6vo!&XTov Kai

860Sq atloOe:VTrov.

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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 (pitxauia decipit, ut in tali genere ne apud Graecos quidem

simile quicquam). Nobody seems to have taken this remarkseriously, given that Cicero is well known to have been particularlyprone to the "common failing." But in this case I am inclined to think that he may well have been right.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY