Altman-Womanly Humanism in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations PDF

Transactions of the American Philological Association 139 (2009) 411–445
Womanly Humanism in Cicero’s Tusculan

Disputations*
william h. f. altman
E. C. Glass High School, Lynchburg, Virginia
summary: Like his de Finibus, Cicero’s Tusculanae Disputationes is best under-

stood in the context of his daughter Tullia’s death as a result of childbirth. It is
only the uncritical assumption that M. speaks for Cicero that validates reading
the Tusculans as a rejection of unmanly grief and a celebration of an aloof de-
tachment associated with Anaxagoras. As befits a literary shrine conceived by a
Platonist for a woman who gave her life for another, this multi-layered text art-
fully advocates altruism, a virtuous but compassionate humanism that Cicero
was man enough to present as womanly between the lines.
section 1. virtus and humanitas

It is a good thing that gender and sexuality are universally conceded to be facts
of life; were they not, it would be easy for the skeptical to dismiss the explosion
of interest in such matters as an example of our age imposing its own concerns
on the Romans.1 In a social context where virtus could only be manly,2 it is
Rome’s tenderhearted poets who offer evidence for the existence of the wom-
anly man (but see Boyd 1987), perhaps the best-documented theme for ancient
reflection on gender.3 But the prolific Cicero has also proved invaluable;4 he is,
to begin with, the first Roman to attribute virtus to a woman without humor-
* For my mother, Adeline Fassett Furness (b. 1913). Thanks are due to Allen Miller,
Roslyn Weiss, Bernd Schelling, and four anonymous readers.
1 Cantarella 1992, Edwards 1993, Gleason 1995, Hallett and Skinner 1997, and Wil-
liams 1999.
2 McDonnell 2006: 162: “In Latin of the late Republic, virtus is ascribed to women on
only a handful of occasions.” The exception is Cicero.

3 Catullus 63 is particularly relevant. See Skinner 1997, Lefèvre 1998, Wray 2001, and
Nauta and Harder 2005.

4 Despite the fact that McDonnell 2006 uses passages from Cicero as means to the
larger end of illuminating the traditional Roman attitude to virtus, the contextualization
of Cicero’s position offers support for the exegetically oriented reconsideration attempted
here (see 161–65, Chapter 3, and Section 2 of Chapter 10).
412 William H. F. Altman
ous intent, something he does repeatedly in the case of his daughter Tullia.5
Cicero’s rhetorical treatises have not only provided considerable evidence
about Roman sexuality but have also been illuminated by scholars interested
in gender.6 Of course not every classicist—at least qua classicist—is interested
in such questions. The scholars who have accomplished a revival of interest
in Cicero as philosopher,7 in conformity with quite another aspect of our age,
have been more inclined to value the hardheaded over the tenderhearted;
here a far more skeptical frame of mind prevails.8 As a result, the Tusculan
Disputations, despite recent attention (Douglas 1995, White 1995, Seng 1998,
Görler 2004) including what amounts to a complete commentary (Doulgas
1990, Douglas 1994, and Graver 2002), continues to be read as the work of a
skeptical thinker who was nevertheless strongly inclined to uphold the claims
of a self-sufficient and Stoic virtus (most recently by Graver 2002). Increasing
awareness of the politics of Roman sexuality during the twilight of the Roman
Republic suggests that this reading now requires re-examination.9
Central to this project is a willingness to revisit Ciceronian humanitas in
the context of our long overdue concern for questions of gender: it is therefore
unfortunate that the subject has not received independent attention since H.
A. K. Hunt’s The Humanism of Cicero (1954).10 Despite Hunt’s awareness that
the books illustrating Cicero’s humanism were written in the context of Tul-
lia’s death (Hunt 1954: 1), he never considers the altruistic love of a mother
for her children as a non-Stoic11 basis for Cicero’s evident commitment to
humanity’s natural gregariousness.12 This is perfectly understandable:13 Cicero
5 McDonnell 2006: 163–64 and Treggiari 2007: 161–62 and 203n52. At ad Fam. 14.11,
for example, Cicero (referring to Tullia) mentions “. . . her consummate virtus and singular
kindness (cuius summa virtute et singulari humanitate)” (translation by McDonnell).
6 Gunderson 2000, 2003, Corbeill 2004, and Dugan 2005.
7 In Griffin and Barnes 1989, Powell 1995, and Barnes and Griffin 1997.
8 In particular Glucker 1988, Barnes 1989, Glucker 1995, and Görler 1995.
9 Particularly suggestive are the political implications of Dugan 2001; see also Miller
2004 and Corbeill 2004: 133–37

10 Although the strictures of Douglas (1968: 33) on Hunt 1954 are accurate, it holds
the field where Cicero’s humanism is concerned. See also Wood 1988: 79–83. Preferable
is Rand 1932.
11 Consider the reference to the protective taurus by Cicero’s Cato at de Finibus 3.66
on which see Altman 2008b, 384–86.

12 Hunt 1954: 188–91 emphasizes the Stoic influence; compare Wood 1988, 82: “Natural
human kindness and gregariousness, stemming from reason and speech, lead men to
exhibit a tender and loving care for their offspring. . .” Consider Cato’s reference to the
vox naturae at de Finibus 3.62 on which see Wright 1995: 179.
13 Without, however, justifying Wood 1988: 84: “Cicero argues that virtue (virtus) is
derived from the word for man, vir, and hence the characteristic virtue of man as distinct
Womanly Humanism in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations 413
follows Plato—whose Socrates reports that even Diotima did not specifically
confine to the mother a willingness to die for her offspring (Symposium
207a7–b6)—in approaching this subject in a very discreet manner.14 In fact, it
is precisely Cicero’s indirect approach to the feminine aspect of humanitas (as
distinct from an all-male virtus) that makes his Tusculan Disputations a better
place to broach the topic of Cicero’s “womanly humanism” than de Finibus,
despite the fact that the latter devotes far more attention to childbirth and
the natural bonds between parent and child per se (See Wright 1995: 178–81
and Altman 2008b). This preference is due to the golden sentence at Tuscu-
lan Disputations 5.10–11, discussed at length below, where Cicero explains
that he is following the example of Socrates in concealing his own views. In
a Roman world where virtus was the unquestioned preserve of the male, the
philosopher Cicero found it both prudent and pedagogically productive to
promote a more humane ideal—one that necessarily valorized the womanly
at the expense of the narrowly virile—between the lines.
In the Tusculan Disputations, a character called “M.” upholds the claims of
Stoic virtue: in addition to withholding his tears for Tullia,15 M.’s sage wouldn’t
hate Julius Caesar,16 wouldn’t have been heart-broken by exile,17 shattered by
the overturning of the Republic,18 wouldn’t feel pity,19 experience remorse,20
from woman is courage, a moral quality involving scorn of pain and death.” Compare de
Legibus 1.30 (Trans. Keyes): “In fact there is no human being of any race who, if he finds
guide, cannot attain to virtue.”
14 Compare the gender-neutral use of coniugi at de Officiis 1.12.
15 Tusculan Disputations 3.26 and 3.30; hereafter citations of this text—following King
1927—will be by number alone (i.e. “3.30”) and all translations from it (except where
indicated) will be based on J. E. King’s.
16 King 1927: 105n2 and 382n1 (on 4.50 and 4.2) anticipates Balsdon 1958: 91 in
arguing that Cicero surreptitiously incites Brutus to kill Caesar. See also Strasburger
1990: 56–62. The anger that would lead to such incitement is rejected at 3.11, 3.19, and
especially 4.49–52. The two elements—anger and Caesar—come together at 4.50. See
also 4.77–79.
17 A vivid description of Cicero in exile is found at 4.35: “What again is not only more
wretched but more degraded and hideous (deformius) than a man depressed, enfeebled,
and prostrate with distress?” Exile is discussed at 5.106–9; the key question, apparently
rhetorical, is posed at 5.109: “What value indeed can be attached to the sort of community
from which the wise and good are driven away?”
18 Cicero refers to “patriae eversiones” at 5.25. The wise man avoids politics altogether
at 3.57 and 5.105.

19 4.56: “It is urged too that it is useful to feel rivalry, to feel envy, to feel pity. Why pity
rather than give assistance if one can? Or are we unable to be open-handed (liberales)
without pity (sine misericordia)?” Though treated as rhetorical, this is a good question.
20 The “nihil poeniteat” is announced at 5.53–54 and constitutes a very weak response
to the compelling defense of repentance at 4.45 considered below.

or even yearn for glory.21 The antithesis between M.’s detached Stoic hero and
Cicero’s own practice can be explained, of course, by assuming that Cicero
used M. to persuade himself to alter that practice and abandon his unmanly
(3.70–71) grief. Assuming that M. represents Cicero’s own views, scholars
have never described the Tusculan Disputations as Malcolm Schofield did de
Divinatione: “. . . no simple tract but a multilayered work of surprising oblique-
ness and complexity” (1986: 63). This is somewhat surprising because Cicero
tells us explicitly in the Tusculans that he is employing “a multilayered method
of disputation” (5.10). In what follows, M.’s manly Stoicism will be presented
as only the layer closest to the text’s surface; below it, the careful reader will
discover a vindication of Cicero’s grief for Tullia in a literary shrine22 to her
altruism that expresses his own womanly humanism.
In Section 2, Cicero’s belief in or rather awareness of the intimate connec-
tion between motherhood and altruism will, despite the loss of the Consolatio,
indicate the probable philosophical significance of Tullia’s death for Cicero’s
humanism. Section 3 will examine the role of Anaxagoras in the Tusculan
Disputations: M. uses him to validate a philosophic aloofness to the death of
a child while sharply contrasting his celestial concerns with those of Socrates,
who “called philosophy down from the heavens.” Section 4 will explicate the
golden sentence (5.10–11) that links a Socratic rejection of Anaxagoras to
Cicero’s own multiplex ratio disputandi: it is here that Cicero tells the reader
that he is concealing his own view (“nostram sententiam”) while pursuing
what is only most like the truth (“simillimum veri”), in this case, M.’s Stoicism.
In Section 5, the role of gender in the Tusculan Disputations will show why
it is appropriate to call Cicero’s humanism “womanly.” Section 6 will then
examine M.’s defense of Stoicism in Book 3, and show why this account con-
ceals Cicero’s own views because of its dependence on “manly reason” (3.22).
Finally, Section 7 will show how and why Cicero undermines M.’s discourse
while nevertheless using it to achieve his own pedagogical purpose.
21 4.79: “Who can doubt that sickness of the soul, such as avarice, or the thirst for glory
(gloriae cupiditas), originate in the fact that a high value is attached to that which occasions
the sickness of the soul?” Compare 4.62 where “the feeling of lust itself must be stifled
(libido ipsa tollenda est) . . . even if the unduly violent longing be for virtue itself.”
22 See Altman 2008b: 385 for an answer to the question aptly posed at Trollope 1880:
340–41: “How could he lay his mind to work when his daughter was dead, and write in
beautiful language four such treatises as came from his pen while he was thinking of
the temple which was to be built to her memory?” Consider the parallel, noted by an
anonymous reader for the Review of Politics, between Cicero and Artemisia, builder of
the Mausoleum (3.75).
section 2: maternal altruism

Cicero’s inconsolable grief at the death of his daughter Tullia in March 45,23
the connection between her death and the amazing literary productivity that
followed,24 and his apparently thwarted obsession with building her a shrine25
are documented in his letters to Atticus. Unfortunately, the most important
evidence about the significance of Tullia’s death is lost: only fragments of the
Consolatio survive (Coleman-Norton 1939). One of these is found in Book
1 of the Tusculan Disputations26 and this is noteworthy because no explicit
reference to Tullia’s death is found in the Academica (the Hortensius is, of
course, also lost) or in the five books of de Finibus,27 works written between
the Consolatio and the Tusculans. There is evidence, however, that suggests
why Cicero’s grief about Tullia’s death resurfaced here: she had died at Tus-
culum (Shackleton Bailey 1971: 204) and the pain thereafter associated with
the place that had long been his haven28 is revealed in the letters written to
Atticus when he returned in May (ad Att. 12.44.3, 12.45.1, and 12.46.1). It is
this tangible connection between Tullia’s death as a result of childbirth and
the Tusculan Disputations that opens up the question of what I am calling
Cicero’s “womanly humanism.”
Cicero’s theoretical awareness of the connection between motherhood
and altruism is demonstrated by a passage from the Fourth Catilinarian (63
b.c.e.) delivered to the Senate during his year as Consul (in Catilinam 4.1;
translation mine):
If the consulate has been given to me on the condition that I would endure
(perferrem) all pangs (acerbitates), pains, and tortures (cruciatusque), I will bear
(feram) them bravely and even gladly, provided only that through my labors
(meis laboribus), dignity for you and salvation (salusque) for the Roman People
may be brought to birth (pariatur).
23 Rawson 1983: 225–29; see also ad Att. 12.14.3; MacKendrick 1989: 106 and King
1927: xii place her death in February.

24 ad Att. 12.15, 12.20.1, 12.28.2, and 12.38.1 (Trans. Shackleton Bailey): “As for me
here [sc. Astura in early May], I write all day long, which brings no comfort but still it
gives me something else to think of.”
25 First mentioned at ad Att. 12.18.1; see Shackleton Bailey 1966: 404–13 for a full
discussion with citations.

26 The fragment is found at 1.66; other references to the Consolatio appear at 1.76,
3.70, 3.76, and 4.63.

27 For the connections between these books, see de Divinatione 2.1–2.
28 ad Att. 1.6.2 (Trans. Shackleton Bailey): “I am delighted with my place in Tusculum, so
much so that I feel content with myself when (68 b.c.e.), and only when, I get there.”
Although this pre-Christian juxtaposition of achieving salus for others by

undergoing cruciatus should not pass unnoticed, it is the intersection of altru-
ism and motherhood that is crucial here: Cicero will gladly bear all manner
of suffering (both fero and perfero are used of pregnancy) as long as the end
result of his labor is that the Senate’s dignity and the safety of the Roman
people may be born (“pariatur”).29 Cicero’s cross-gendered metaphor presents
him as playing the woman’s part: as long as the “child” is safely delivered, its
“mother” is more than willing to undergo grief for its sake. To put it another
way: although Cicero’s willingness to suffer for Rome could certainly be called
“patriotic,” he takes a distinctly maternal stance towards his fatherland. As he
anticipated,30 that suffering would later come in the form of exile, Republican
defeat in the Civil War, and the crushing victory of the man he had under-
mined in the Fourth Catilinarian: C. Julius Caesar (Cape 1995). And then
came Tullia’s death. In addition to adding a father’s grief to a patriot’s agony,
the lived experience of maternal courage in the face of personal extinction—
we know that Tullia’s death preceded her child’s (Shackleton Bailey 1971:
204)—could only deepen Cicero’s theoretical awareness of the intersection
of motherhood and altruism.
This deepening probably constituted a principal theme of the lost Consolatio
but it is also reflected in the surviving philosophical works of 45. In de Finibus,
the earlier companion piece to the Tusculan Disputations (5.121; see also de
Divinatione 2.1), Cicero uses Hercules as exemplar of altruistic self-sacrifice
in his rejection of Epicureanism (de Finibus 2.118; Trans. H. Rackham):
29 For the maternal fero, see Varro, Res Rusticae 2.19; later uses of perfero in this sense
are found at OLD (ad loc. §4). Labor in a maternal sense is found at Plautus, Amphitryon
490. A later use of pario that leaves no doubt that Cicero intends its literal resonances,
is found at Philippics 2.119; written after Tullia’s death, it is significant that Cicero there
plays the role of midwife, not “mother.”
30 in Catilinam 4.9 and 4.22 (translation mine): “For which reason I see that an eternal
war against debased citizens is being undertaken by me.” This war continues in the form
of a battle among scholars to acknowledge its very existence; see Gruen 1966 and Gruen
1974: 2: “Caesar’s dramatic triumph casts antecedents in the shade. Hence earlier events
have become precursors and determinants of that denouement—a dangerous fallacy.
And perspective can lead us astray in another direction. Information on the late Repub-
lic rests heavily on the pronouncements of Cicero. A figure of no small significance, he
looms even larger through the survival of his voluminous writings. But Cicero’s attitudes
grew out of personal—and atypical—experiences. One cannot understand the history
of the late Republic as an extension of Cicero’s biography or as an evolving blueprint for
Caesar’s dictatorship.” Given the decisive importance of Strasburger 1938 in concealing
this war (Syme 1939: 25n2 and Gruen 1974: 75n117), Strasburger 1990: 91 must be seen
as a palinode. On the need for one, see Strasburger 1982: xxvii.
Scan the contents of your own mind, deliberate thoroughly, and ask yourself
which you would prefer: to enjoy continual pleasure, experiencing the state
of tranquility that you frequently mentioned and spending your whole life
without pain (as you Epicureans generally add, though it cannot happen); or
to be a benefactor of the whole human race, enduring the labours (aerumnas)
of Hercules to bring it aid and succour in its hour of need?
Although the hero’s altruistic labors aren’t presented as maternal, Plautus had
used the noteworthy31 word aerumna to describe the traumatic moment of
delivery—as opposed to labor—in Amphitryon.32 More importantly, Cicero
connects Tullia with Hercules, son of Amphitryon, in a fragment from the
Consolatio:
And if any living being was worthy of being consecrated, assuredly it was this.
If the offspring of Cadmus, or Amphitryon, or Tyndarus, was worthy of being
extolled by fame to the heaven, the same honour ought undoubtedly to be ap-
propriated to her. And this indeed I will do; and with the approbation of the
gods, I will place you the best and most learned of all women in their assembly,
and will consecrate you to the estimation of all men.33
These connections suggest that it was Tullia’s courageous determination

to undergo life-threatening labor for another—not her considerable intel-
lectual attainments—that put her, according to Cicero, in the same class as
Hercules.
Not only is this passage echoed in the Tusculan Disputations during the
discourse on immortality that constitutes Book 1 (1.28) but M. specifically
mentions the presence of illustrious women as well as men in heaven (1.27).
And it is here that Hercules reappears (1.32):
What better type of nature therefore can we find among human beings than
the men who regard themselves as born into the world to help and guard and
31 de Finibus 2.118 (Trans. Rackham): “Dolours (aerumnas)—that was indeed the
sad and gloomy name which our ancestors bestowed, even in the case of a god, upon
labours which were not to be evaded (labores non fugiendos). I would press my question
and drag an answer from you were I not afraid lest you should say that Hercules himself
in the arduous labours that he wrought for the preservation of mankind was acting for
the sake of pleasure!”
32 Amphitryon 480, 489–91 (Trans. Nixon): “Now she shall bring forth (pariet) twin
sons . . . But out of consideration for Alcmena here, my father has provided that there
shall be only one parturition (uno ut fetu): he intends to make one labor (uno ut labore)
suffice for two (aerumnas duas).”
33 Lactantius quoting Cicero’s Consolatio at Divine Institutes 1.15.27; compare Tusculan
Disputations 1.28.
preserve their fellow-men (qui se natos ad homines iuvandos, tutandos, conser-

vandos arbitrantur)? Hercules passed away to join the gods; he would never have
so passed, unless in his mortal life he had built himself the road he traveled.34
Foremost among the many facts that M. offers to prove the connection
between altruism and immortality at 1.31 is the procreation of children
(“procreatio liberorum”) although perhaps the most poetic example offered
there concerns the selfless concern for others demonstrated by the man who
plants a tree. More relevant to Cicero’s own life is his claim that statesmen
expose themselves to death for their country’s sake on the basis of their belief
in immortality (1.32). This is also reflected in the pointed question he poses
at 1.33: “Take this feeling away and who would be such a madman as to pass
his life continuously in toil and peril?” There is no reason to think that Tul-
lia was motivated by concerns of this kind during her final confinement or,
for that matter, that Cicero believed himself worthy of the divine honors he
memorably accorded her.
section 3: anaxagoras aloft

If Cicero regarded Tullia as his moral superior, he hardly bestowed this honor
on Anaxagoras. In the context of the spring and summer of 45, the most
obvious difference between Cicero and his Anaxagoras is the latter’s reaction
to the death of his son (3.30):
For he [sc. Euripides] had been a pupil of Anaxagoras, who, according to the
story, said when he heard of his son’s death, “I knew that I had begotten a
mortal.” This saying shows that such events are cruel for those who have not
reflected on them.35
Here M. praises Anaxagoras for bearing calmly a loss like the one that had
plunged Cicero himself into abject grief. M. also praises Anaxagoras for im-
munity to another form of attachment that caused Cicero anguish (1.104):
It was a noble saying of Anaxagoras on his deathbed at Lampsacus, in answer
to his friends’ inquiry whether he wished in the event of need to be taken away
to Clazomenae, his native land: “There is no necessity,” said he, “for from any
place the road to the lower world is just as far.”
The indifference of Anaxagoras to his native land indicates a second point of

contrast that suggests why it is necessary to read the Tusculan Disputations as
“multilayered.” The Anaxagoras praised by M. is antithetical to Cicero himself
34 Compare de Rep. 6.13 for another instance in which the actions denoted by these
three gerundives are linked.
35 The quotation from Anaxagoras is repeated verbatim at 3.58
because the latter’s love for child and country exposed him to sufferings that
M.’s sage avoids.
But the contrast between the two is even more pervasive, particularly in
Book 5 when the subject of disputation is the sufficiency of virtue for unin-
terrupted bliss (5.66–67):
Come, compare Democritus, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras with Dionysius (sc. the
Syracusan tyrant); what thrones, what resources will you put above the studies
in which they found their delight? For that “best” of which you are in search
must necessarily have its place in what is the best part of man. But what is
there in man better than a mind that is sagacious and good? The good of such
a mind then we must enjoy if we wish to be happy; but the good of the mind is
virtue: therefore happy life is necessarily bound up with virtue. Consequently
all that is lovely, honorable, of good report, as I have said above, but I must say
it again, it seems, with rather more expansion, is full of joys; but seeing that it is
clear that happy life comes from unceasing fullness of joys (ex perpetuis autem
plenisque gaudiis), it follows that it comes from rectitude.
Here M. invokes Anaxagoras as support for his Stoic contention that the wise
man is always happy;36 it is because of his philosophical researches that the
happiness of Anaxagoras is constituted ex perpetuis plenisque gaudiis. While
the example of Anaxagoras bolsters M.’s defense of Stoicism, his words also
recall those of Torquatus, the Epicurean spokesman in Book 1 of de Finibus;37
this echo deepens the reader’s suspicion that M. is not simply speaking for
Cicero, the inveterate enemy of Epicureanism (See in particular Book 2 of de
Finibus). And Cicero proves himself eminently capable of what Schofield calls
“surprising obliqueness and complexity” when his M. mistakenly includes
Anaxagoras in a catalogue of the blind in Book 5.38
36 5.43: “. . . will you hesitate to give the name of happy to the man whom you find
undisturbed by (vacuum), liberated from, and free (liberum) from agitations so oppres-
sive and so mutually discordant and estranged from one another? And yet this is always
the condition of the wise man: the wise man therefore is always happy.”
37 With the passage quoted in the previous note, compare Torquatus at de Finibus 1.37
(Trans. Rackham): “When we are released from pain, the mere sensation of complete
emancipation and relief from uneasiness is in itself a source of gratification (ipsa libera-
tione et vacuitate omnis molestiae gaudemus). . .”
38 5.114–15: “Do we think that Homer [due to his blindness] failed to feel delight of
soul and pleasure, or that any learned man ever did so? Or if this were not true, would
Anaxagoras or Democritus himself, whom we have named (“Democritus lost his sight”
at 5.114), have left the fields they inherited (agros et patrimonia sua reliquissent), would
they have given themselves up entirely to the divine delight of learning and discovery?
And so the augur Tiresias, whom the poets represent as being wise, is never introduced
as bemoaning his blindness.” A discussion of the blinded Polyphemus follows.
But the most significant passage about Anaxagoras in the Tusculan

Disputations—the beginning of the lengthy golden sentence—indicates the
theoretical foundation for the contrast between M. and Cicero (5.10):
But from the ancient days down to the time of Socrates, who had listened to
Archelaus, the pupil of Anaxagoras, philosophy dealt with numbers and move-
ments, with the problem whence all things came, or whither they returned,
and zealously inquired into the size of the stars, the spaces that divided them,
their courses and all celestial phenomena;
While Anaxagoras directed his attention aloft, Socrates changes course by

bringing philosophy down from the heavens (5.10):
. . . Socrates on the other hand was the first to call philosophy down from the
heavens (philosophiam devocavit e caelo) and set her in the cities of men and
bring her into their homes and compel her to ask questions about life and
morality and things good and evil. . .
The principal point of contrast between Anaxagoras and Socrates is analogous

to the difference between M. and Cicero: by descending to an active concern
for his native land, Cicero exposes himself to the grief from which both the
physicists and M.’s self-sufficient sage remain detached.
Cicero had already offered a theoretical defense of this descent in de Re-
publica where his Scipio explicitly follows Xenophon’s Socrates in drawing a
sharp line between himself and Anaxagoras.39 The contrast between celestial
meditation and self-sacrifice for the good of Rome is the essence of Scipio’s
dualistic (de Republica 6.17) dream. Not only is the willingness to undergo
earthly sufferings—and death in particular (de Republica 6.21; cf. 6.14)—for
the good of others a principal message of the Somnium Scipionis, it consti-
tutes the basis for the maternal imagery of the Fourth Catilinarian. And it is
precisely this altruistic willingness to descend into danger that provides the
theoretical basis—engendered, as it were, by Tullia’s recent practice—for
Cicero’s womanly humanism.
Descent becomes particularly important in Book 5 of the Tusculan Dispu-
tations.40 M. can prove that the wise man would necessarily be happy in the
torture chamber of the Syracusan tyrant but he can only challenge others to
prove that anyone would willingly descend into the Bull of Phalaris (5.75):41
39 Compare Xenophon Memorabilia 4.7.6 and de Republica 1.15.

40 An early (2.9) hint of descent’s importance is found in the detail that Cicero’s
“Academy” (at Tusculum) is below the “Lyceum.”
41 First mentioned at 2.18, descent is introduced in the context of the Bull at 5.75 and
repeated at 5.87: “Therefore by the reasoning of these philosophers happy life will follow
For my part (me quidem auctore), I should say, let the Peripatetics also and the
Old Academy make an end sometime or other of their stuttering and have the
courage to say openly and loudly that happy life will step down into the bull
of Phalaris.42
It is important to recognize that Scipio’s descent from the heavens to Rome

in Book 6 of Cicero’s de Republica is patterned on a voluntary return to the
Cave, accurately recognized by Glaucon in Book 7 of Plato’s dialogue about
justice as a just action performed by the just (Republic 7.520e1).43 Once one
recognizes (1) the Platonic exemplar of Scipio’s voluntary return to earth in
the Somnium, (2) the directional antithesis between Socrates and Anaxagoras
described at 5.10, and (3) Cicero’s own life as a philosopher who returned to
the Cave of political life,44 there should be no doubt that he has understood
Plato—whose Socrates admittedly does not state Plato’s own position “openly
and loudly”—in a way his M. has not. In other words, it is “his” failure to
understand Plato as Cicero himself does that accounts for the fact that Cicero’s
M. will praise Anaxagoras for pursuing the uninterrupted bliss of heavenly
virtue (virtutem) even to torture and in its company (cumque ea) pass down into the bull
(descendet in taurum), on the authority of Aristotle, Xenocrates, Speusippus, Polemo,
and threats and bribes will not pervert it to abandon virtue.” Note that Plato himself is
passed over (in favor of his students and followers); this happens for the first time at 1.7,
where it is Aristotle once again who is said to do what Plato himself actually did. Cicero’s
readers must know their Plato. See Altman 2008a: 108–10.
42 5.75. After A. challenges him to follow through on this challenge at 5.82, M. delib-
erately refuses to invoke Plato’s authority at 5.83.

43 Compare Penner 2005: 73n51: “On the other hand, that the main line of the Repub-
lic’s account of justice does involve the just person seeking his or her own good seems
to me undeniable (so that the best one can get from 519c–521b is the appearance of a
certain unresolved tension in Plato’s view).” The “unresolved tension” between 520e1
and an egoistic reading of Plato’s Republic was first recognized at Foster 1938: 230; Foster
1936: 304–5 deserves careful consideration. Note that Penner 2005: 13 also advances an
argument against using (Cicero’s) “Republic” as the title for Plato’s dialogue based on his
claim that the internal justice of the man described at 4.443c9–444a6—“egoistic” and
based entirely on “self-interest” (34)—is “the principal subject matter of the dialogue.”
Penner’s reading of Republic, indeed any reading that fails to emphasize both 4.435c9–d5
and 4.434e4–435a3, is analogous to insisting that M. speaks for Cicero.
44 See Plutarch Cicero 4.1–2 and 32.5 (translation mine): “He himself, however, be-
sought his friends not to call him “orator” but “philosopher”; for having chosen philosophy
as his métier (ἔργον), he employed rhetoric as a tool (ὀργάνῳ χρη̃σθαι) for the needs
of being political (πολιτευόμενος).” Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations (e.g.) prove that the
one job for which he was by nature suited (Lee 1989: 129) was not an ongoing attempt
to uphold the unity of Pompey and the Optimates, on which see Pocock 1926: 146–51
inadvertently supported by Gruen 1969.
contemplation45—perfectly indifferent to his native Clazomenae and the

death of his son—while Cicero himself follows the painful, dangerous, but
righteous downward path of Socrates.
section 4: cicero’s “multi-layered method of

disputation”
The contrast between Socrates and Anaxagoras constitutes only the first half
of this extraordinary sentence; why Cicero chooses to follow that contrast
with a discussion of his manner of writing philosophical dialogue should
now be intelligible (5.11):
. . .and his (sc. Socrates’) many-sided method of discussion (multiplex ratio
disputandi) and the varied nature of its subjects (rerumque varietas) and the
greatness of his genius, which has been immortalized in Plato’s literary master-
pieces have produced many warring philosophic sects of which I have chosen
to follow that one which I think agreeable to the practice of Socrates, in trying
to conceal my own private opinion (ut nostram ipsi sententiam tegeremus), to
relieve others from deception (errore alios levaremus) and in every case (in
omni disputatione) to look for the most probable solution (quid esset simil-
limum veri quaereremus);
According to Cicero, the Socratic method of disputation has three compo-

nents: (1) a concealment of one’s own position, (2) an attempt to relieve
others of error, and (3) a search for what is most like the truth. What this
means in practice has already been indicated: M., who takes the lead in omni
disputatione, is not presenting Cicero’s own sententia—this is being inten-
tionally concealed—but rather “what was most similar to the truth.” Cicero’s
inspiration for constructing a contrast between his own secret intentions and
his Stoic character—reflected in the difference between M.’s endorsement of
Anaxagoras and Cicero’s own decision to “follow the practice of Socrates”—
derives from a Platonic project to relieve the reader of error through dialectic.
Cicero’s creation of M. introduces the varietas46—in this case, a dialectical
contrast between author and principal interlocutor—that makes his text
multiplex. Its pedagogical purpose is explained in de Natura Deorum (1.10;
Trans. Rackham):
Those however who seek to learn my personal opinion on the various questions
(quid quaque de re ipsi sentiamus) show an unreasonable degree of curiosity.
In discussion it is not so much weight of authority as force of argument that
45 Compare Plato Republic 7.529a10–b3 with Laws 7.821c6–d4 (and Epinomis); see
also Zuckert 2009: 808–9, 834.

46 See OLD (5b) on “uarietas.”
should be demanded. Indeed the authority (auctoritas) of those who profess

to teach is often a positive hindrance to those who desire to learn; they cease to
employ their judgment, and take what they perceive to be the verdict of their
chosen master as settling the question.
Readers of the Tusculan Disputations must discover for themselves that the
three components of Cicero’s Socratic project are actually one: it is only when
they distinguish Cicero’s own sententia from M.’s veri simillimum that they
will be relieved of error. To put it another way: it is precisely an ongoing de-
termination to lighten the burdens of others down below that distinguishes
both Cicero and Cicero’s descending Socrates from M.’s aloof and detached
Anaxagoras.
In short, this text is crucial for understanding Cicero’s dialogues: Cicero
here reveals that he is elsewhere concealing his views and that he intends,
as soon as the ensuing disputation begins, to do so again. Cicero’s self-con-
cealment is all the more difficult to detect because unlike Plato, Cicero does
not use an ironic Socrates who professes to know significantly less than one
suspects he does but rather, in addition to the Stoical M., a skeptical “Cicero”
who repeatedly asserts that nothing more true than the veri simile is discover-
able.47 Indeed this disguise is so carefully maintained that immediately after
Cicero has revealed his deliberate self-concealment, he invites the trusting
reader to ignore that revelation by appealing to received opinion about the
skeptical Carneades (5.11):
. . . and as this was the custom observed by Carneades with all the resources
of a keen intelligence, I have endeavoured on many other occasions as well as
recently in the Tusculan villa to conform to the same fashion in our discussions
(disputaremus); and I have in fact written out in the preceding books and sent
you the result of four days’ conference; on the fifth day, however, after seating
ourselves in the same place, the following subject was put forward for discus-
sion (disputaremus).48
It has been generally assumed that “the custom observed by Carneades”

refers only to the third of Cicero’s three Socratic intentions: to deny access to
47 Just as M. is generally considered to speak for Cicero—e.g. Graver 2002—the skepti-
cal “Cicero” is rarely distinguished from the author; Schofield’s reading of de Divinatione
is path breaking in this respect, see also Sedley 1997: 118–121. For more traditional ap-
proaches, see Glucker 1988, Barnes 1989, Glucker 1995, and Görler 1995. For the use of
“Cicero,” see Gotoff 2002.
48 It is with these words that the sentence ends; M.’s interlocutor A. abruptly sparks the
fifth disputation with the claim: “It does not appear to me that virtue can be sufficient
for leading a happy life” (5.12).
anything higher than what is veri simile. This assumption has in fact proved so
congenial to modern sensibilities that the element of concealment—despite
Cicero’s explicit statement to the contrary—has recently been dismissed as
irrelevant by an eminent student of the Tusculans.49 But Augustine, whose
familiarity with Cicero’s intentions was greater than ours if only because
he had read the lost Hortensius (Compare Taylor 1963), gives us reason to
think otherwise. Based on his reading of Cicero50—Carneades himself wrote
nothing—Augustine theorizes in Book 3 of the Contra Academicos that the
founders of the New Academy adopted a merely exoteric skepticism in order to
combat the Stoics while secretly adhering to Platonic dualism.51 Most scholars
have flatly rejected this interpretation of the New Academy’s skeptics;52 it is,
however, of considerable value in reconstructing what Cicero thought they
thought, and therefore what Cicero believed it meant “to conform to the same
fashion” as Carneades, well described by Augustine:
Carneades—what an extraordinary man! And yet not so extraordinary, for
he was a stream flowing out of Plato’s springs—Carneades wisely examined
the characteristics of the actions of which his opponents (sc. “Chrysippus and
the Stoics themselves”) approved. Seeing them to be like some truths or other
(easque nescio quarum verarum similes), he called what he followed while act-
ing in this world (in hoc mundo) “truthlike” (veri simile) (Contra Academicos
3.18.40 at King 1995: 89).
In Cicero’s case, M.’s Stoic assertion of the autonomy of virtue is very much
like the truth, particularly in contrast with the Epicureans (Compare Kries
2003). But his praise for Anaxagoras indicates that M.’s ideal is the philosopher
who soars aloft and not the one who—like Scipio, Tullia, and Cicero himself
(to say nothing of Socrates)—willingly undergoes suffering in hoc mundo
49 Douglas 1995: 215: “It is scarcely possible to reconcile the first part of this claim [sc.
that Cicero is “concealing his own opinion and freeing others from error”] with what
actually happens in the Tusculans . . .” See also Douglas 1990: 144.
50 Brittain 2001: 247: “It thus appears that Augustine’s history is the product of his own
creative reading of Cicero.” Compare Long 2006: 102n12: “There is no reason to think
that Augustine drew on anything more for his account of the Academics than Cicero’s
Academica, which he would have known in its complete form, and his own imagination.”
See also Glucker 1978: 315.
51 In addition to Augustine Contra Academicos 3.38–43, Glucker 1978: 297–306 dis-
cusses all the ancient testimonia for this view: (1) Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel
14.6.6 (Numenius quoting Diocles), (2) Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.234,
(3) Cicero Academica 2.60, and (4) the anonymous 3rd century c.e. commentary on
Plato’s Theaetetus 150c.
52 Barnes 1989: 92; but see Glucker 1978: 287n2 and 298n4, Long 1986: 93.
while committed (if only privately) to the view that there exists another.
Whether in Cicero’s Republic or Plato’s, descent is impossible without a prior
commitment to the Platonic distinction between Being and Becoming.53 But
having made such a commitment, the Platonist can express nothing more
than the veri simile about the impermanent things of this world.54 According
to Augustine, then, Carneades only pretended that his investigations could
yield nothing more than the probable because he recognized the existence of
truths entirely inaccessible to his Stoic rivals thanks to their physicalism;55 even
where Stoic ethical doctrine was consistent with Platonism,56 the Academy
responded (not without humor) that it was merely truth-like (Augustine
Contra Academicos 3.18.40 at King 1995: 89–90):57
What they are like (cui enim esset simile) he (sc. Carneades) knew well and
prudently concealed (tegebat). He also called it “the plausible.” Someone who
gazes upon an exemplar does, indeed, rightly approve an image (imaginem)
of it. How then does the wise man give his approval to nothing, or follow the
truthlike (simile sequitur veri), if he doesn’t know what the truth itself (ipsum
verum) is? Therefore, the Academicians knew the truth, and gave approval to
falsehoods in which they recognized a commendable imitation of true things
(in quibus imitationem laudabilem rerum verarum).
In the Tusculan Disputations, it is M.’s praiseworthy Stoicism that is like, in-

deed most like, the truth. But praise of this kind also indicates Cicero’s own
53 Compare the fragment from the Consolatio at 1.66.

54 Augustine Contra Academicos 3.17.37 at King 1995: 87: “For my purposes, it’s enough
that Plato perceived that there are two worlds (duos esse mundos): an intelligible world
where truth itself (ipsa veritas) resides, and this sensible world that we obviously sense
by sight and touch. The former is the true world (verum), the latter only truthlike (veri
similem) and made in its image (imaginem).”
55 Annas 2001: xix: “. . . the Stoics, who are physicalists, have metaphysical and episte-
mological positions which cannot be reconciled with anything in Plato.”

56 The aporia in which Book 5 of de Finibus leaves the spokesman for Antiochus
indicates that Augustine was also right at Contra Academicos 3.18.41 in claiming that
Cicero resisted the Antiochean synthesis of Stoicism and Platonism on the grounds that
it would “desecrate Plato’s innermost sanctuary” (Trans. King). See also Altman 2008b:
377–80 and Brittain 2008: 534: “Antiochus’ position was an empiricist one, and accord-
ingly substituted an immanent Stoic god for the transcendent metaphysical principles
that were central to Platonism.” Although the hat-changing Cicero of Sedley 1995: 121
is a distinct improvement over a purely skeptical version, Augustine provides external
evidence for the existence of a third Cicero beyond the intermittent disciple of Philo the
skeptic or Antiochus the dogmatist: a genuine Platonist.
57 qua true Academic, Cicero recognizes “a commendable imitation of true things” in
both Philonian skepticism and Antiochean dogmatism.

awareness that only the Platonic exemplar justifies the altruistic descent that
forms the true basis of his overt political practice no less than his theoretical
teaching, concealed as it is in a most revealing way at 5.10–11.
section 5: gender in the tusculans

Although Cicero does not inform the reader that he has been concealing
his own sententia by means of a multiplex ratio disputandi until Book 5, not
only have there been previous indications that he is doing so, but the most
significant of these involve gender. In the context of M.’s assertion in Book
5 that virtue is sufficient for maintaining continuous joy, his derivation of
virtus from vir in Book 2 is particularly important.58 Although this etymology
accurately reflects the Roman conception of virtue,59 it hardly does the same
for Cicero’s: as noted at the outset, he is the first Latin author to apply the
word to a woman. In fact the best basis for claims about Cicero’s womanly
humanism is the simple recognition that suppression of the feminine had
recently become the decisive criterion for separating virtus from humanitas, a
separation and suppression to which Caesar’s description of the Belgae gives
classic expression (de Bello Gallico 1.1, translation mine):
Of all these, the bravest-strongest (fortissimi) are the Belgians, on account of the
fact that they are farthest removed from the culture and humanity (humanitate)
of our province and least often to them do merchants come, importing those
things that pertain to the effeminizing (effeminandos) of spirits, and because
they are nearest to the Germans who dwell across the Rhine, with whom they
continuously wage war. For which reason, the Helvetii also surpass the other
Gauls in virtue (virtute). . . 60
Unlike his principal political opponent, Cicero regards humanitas as morally

superior—both braver and stronger—to a strictly etymological virtus and
indeed it is this theoretical contrast with Caesar that reveals precisely why
calling Cicero’s humanism “womanly” is little more than pleonasm. On the
other hand, the fact that Caesar’s position clearly resonated with many Romans
indicates why Cicero felt obliged to proceed with considerable caution while
introducing his readers to what I am calling his “womanly humanism.”
58 2.43: “. . . for it is from the word for “man” (ex viro) that the word virtue (virtus) is
derived; but man’s (viri) peculiar virtue is fortitude, of which there are two main functions,
namely scorn of death and scorn of pain.” Compare Douglas 1990: 71: “This etymological
derivation, though accurate, does not seem necessary to the argument.”
59 McDonnell 2006: 24–25, 72–73, and 339.
60 See McDonnell 2006: 300–2 and Riggsby 2006: 83–90 for Caesar’s conception of
virtue. White 1995: 223n5 should also be consulted.

He chooses to do so in a story about Marius (who was both Cicero’s towns-

man and Caesar’s relative) and the painful surgery he underwent in order to
remove his varicose veins (2.53):61
But as a matter of fact C. Marius, a countryman by extraction (rusticanus vir),
yet undoubtedly a man (vir), when under the surgeon’s knife, as I related earlier,
refused from the outset to be bound, and there is no record of anyone before
Marius having been operated on without being tied up.62
This emphasis on Marius as vir will soon enough prove to be prudent: the
full story of Marius’s surgery introduced here will artfully undermine the
exclusive claims of virtus when divorced from humanitas. Having already
asserted that virtue is something specifically male at 2.43, M. now contrasts
the civilized Romans with a barbaric Indian who voluntarily jumps into fire63
in openly sexual terms (2.52):
We, on the contrary, cannot bear a pain in the foot, or a toothache (but suppose
the whole body is in pain); the reason is that there is a kind of womanish and
frivolous (effeminata ac levis) way of thinking (opinio) exhibited in pleasure
as much as in pain (in dolore), which makes our self-control melt and stream
away through weakness (mollitia), and so we cannot endure a bee-sting without
crying out (sine clamore).
This passage leaves little doubt that M. regards the Roman who can’t bear a
bee-bite sine clamore as not only effeminata but as a woman. Marius, by con-
trast, is a vir whose opinio with respect to dolor has furnished an admirable
example of manly indifference to pain. But M. then adds (2.53):
And yet the same Marius showed that the sting of the pain (doloris) was severe,
for he did not offer the other leg; thus being a man he bore pain, being human
he refused to bear greater pain without actual necessity (Ita et tulit dolorem ut
vir et ut homo maiorem ferre sine causa necessaria noluit).
At first glance, it is the clamorous recipient of the bee-sting who comes

to mind: if the bloodied but unbound leg of the virtuous Marius plays the
man’s part, the context requires us to understand the other leg as not only
reasonably squeamish but, if only by contrast, as feminine. It is not, however,
61 2.35: “When C. Marius had his varicose veins cut out (varices secabantur) he felt
pain (dolebat).”
62 2.53; the translation at Douglas 1990: 49 is preferable here: “. . . he at first refused
to be tied down.”
63 2.52: “Callanus the Indian, an untutored savage (indoctus ac barbarus), born at the
foot of the Caucasus, of his own free-will was burnt alive.” More light is shed on Callanus
at de Divinatione 1.47; see Altman 2008a: 118.
the squeamishness of Marius that is being castigated but his humanity that is
celebrated. Necessary as it is for every homo to be able to act ut vir, Cicero is
indicating that he regards the decision of the vir to act ut homo as something
at least equally admirable. As M., Cicero gives his audience assurance that he
too regards effeminata mollitia with contempt but the tale of Marius’s hu-
mane decision to spare his other leg allows those who recognize Cicero’s own
preference for the human over the manly (and his ability to write between the
lines in accordance with the tegeremus) the opportunity to begin discovering
his womanly humanism for themselves (Vesey 1928).
The impression that Cicero is not simply denigrating women is strength-
ened when we reach Book 5, where Cicero refers to Indians once again, this
time to the practice of suttee;64 if self-immolation displays a man’s virtus, the
favored wife possesses no less of it. But the majority of Cicero’s references to
women in the Tusculan Disputations, both positive and negative, precede the
story of Marius’s decision to spare his other leg; this context strengthens the
case for identifying that humane decision with the feminine. This is not to
say that M.’s non-Indian women are simply shirkers; in addition to praising
Spartan women (1.102, 2.36), he makes it clear that if the preeminent go to
heaven after death, this number includes women (1.27); even here on earth,
elderly women are capable of setting an example in abstinence to philosophers
(2.40). But there are at least as many negative comments: Epicurus subscribes
to womanish views (2.15), the thwarted virtue of Sophocles’ Hercules becomes
effeminate (2.21), poets contribute to mollitia and counteract virtus (2.72),
those who—unlike Spartan lads—cry out in pain, do so “like a woman,”65
and inexperienced soldiers will seem like women in comparison with veterans
(2.37). But if we follow J. E. King’s apt observation on this last point (“Cicero
is thinking of Caesar’s veterans and Pompey’s untrained troops in 48 b.c.,”
1927: 187n5), it is easy to see that Cicero’s own sympathies are actually with
the “women.”
64 5.78: “. . . she who is victorious, accompanied by her relatives, goes joyfully (laeta)
to join her husband (una cum viro) on the funeral pyre. . .”

65 2.46. But at 2.36, the toils to which Spartan women are subjected, especially when
they are struck (feriuntur), brings “. . . a certain callousness to pain (dolori).” Compare
this with the contemptio doloris of the vir at 2.43. It is also noteworthy that these Spartan
youths are called “gloria ducti” at 2.46 while of nature Cicero writes: “. . . she offers noth-
ing more excellent, nothing more desirable than honour, than renown (laudem), than
distinction, than glory (decus).” These incentives are rejected at 4.79, for the sake of a
more self-sufficient virtus. Note the use of homo rather than vir (especially “nihil homine
indignius”) throughout this section.
It is in the context of the contrast between the honor-loving Spartans and

whoever else responds to pain ut mulier that M. introduces a two-part soul;
such a division makes self-control possible. He then adds (2.47):
As a rule, all men’s minds (in animis omnium) contain naturally an element of
weakness (molle quiddam), despondency, servility, a kind of nervelessness (en-
ervatum quodam modo) and flaccidity (languidum). Had human nature nothing
else, no creature would be more hideous than man (homine); but reason, the
mistress and queen of the world (domina omnium et regina ratio), stands close
at hand and striving by her own strength and pressing onward she becomes
completed virtue (perfecta virtus). It is man’s duty (videndum est viro) to enable
reason to have rule over that part of the soul which ought to obey.
Having already defined virtus in terms of the vir at 2.43, Cicero’s use of molle
and enervatum here at 2.47—the latter already linked with the feminine at
2.15, the former soon to be applied to Marius’s other leg at 2.53—strongly
suggests that a female part of the soul is to be ruled by the male; in any case,
all doubt about this is quickly removed (2.48):
If the part of the soul, which I have described as yielding (molle), conducts itself
disgracefully, if it give way in womanish fashion (muliebriter) to lamentation
and weeping, let it be fettered and tightly bound by the guardianship of friends
and relations; for we often find men crushed by a sense of shame who would
never be overcome by reason (ratione).
But the riddling mixture of positive and negative female attributes con-
tinues: the ruling reason is not only a female domina, but is tellingly called
regina ratio; the merely grammatical gender of ratio is thus emphasized by
these strongly feminine nouns in apposition. This deliberate use of domina
and regina—where merely grammatically feminine adjectives (or participles)
would have sufficed—is particularly striking in the context of the previous
masculinization of virtue: regina ratio now becomes perfecta virtus. And the
indeterminate sexuality of the self-controlled soul continues: in addition
to the traditional scheme in which the subservient part is molle and female
(2.49–50), M. also likens it to a soldier (2.50): “The weaker (mollior) part of
his soul was submissive to reason in the same way that the disciplined sol-
dier (miles pudens) obeys the strict commander (severo imperatori).” We are
therefore left in doubt whether the virtuous two-part soul, easily imagined
as a man ruling over his wife, might not also be like a queen giving orders to
a male warrior (videndum est viro). In short, while M. makes it clear at 2.47
that “no creature would be more hideous than man” if only feminine mollitia
constituted our souls, the Marius anecdote at 2.53 adds balance by revealing
that we would also be something less than human if our souls were, like those
of Caesar’s Belgae, solely constituted by the virtus of the vir.
section 6: m.’s “manly reason”

Although Cicero’s portrait of the vir of self-sufficient virtue emerges fully only
in Books 4 and 5,66 the long and uninterrupted speech in Book 3 between 3.12
and 3.84 begins the process; here M. must prove that A. is wrong to believe
“the wise man is susceptible to distress (aegritudinem, 3.12):”
It is natural (humanum) at any rate for you to have this opinion; for we are not
sprung from rock, but our souls have a strain of tenderness and sensitiveness
(tenerum quiddam atque molle) of a kind to be shaken by distress (aegritudine)
as by a storm.
This humanistic opening gives a very misleading impression of what is to

follow. Immediately after quoting a passage from Crantor that applies very
well to Marius’s decision to forgo surgery on his other leg,67 M. sets the tone
(3.13):
But let us have a care lest this be the language (oratio) of those who flatter the
infirmity of our nature and regard its weakness with complacency, for ourselves
let us have the courage not merely to lop the branches (ramos amputare) of
wretchedness, but tear out all the fibres of its roots (omnes radicum fibras evel-
lere). Yet even then there will, perhaps, be some left; the roots of folly (stirpes
stultitiae) go so deep; yet only that much will be left which must be left.
It will be noted that as radical as the surgery proposed here is, M. leaves room
for the possibility that some of the stirpes radicum will remain. It is therefore
important that he concludes the speech with no further reference to rami;
they have presumably long since been amputated (3.83):
But how far-reaching the roots of distress (stirpes sunt aegritudinis), how numer-
ous, how bitter! All of them, when the trunk itself is overturned (ipso trunco
everso), must be picked out, and, if need be, by a discussion of each single one
(singulis disputationibus).68
66 4.38, 4.57, 5.66, and 5.81. The homo confidens of 3.14 already foreshadows him.
67 3.12: “And it is not ridiculous of the famous Crantor, who held the foremost place of
distinction in our Academy, to say: ‘I do not in the least agree with those (sc. the Stoics)
who are so loud in their praise of that sort of insensibility (indolentiam) which neither
can nor ought to exist. Let me escape illness (ne aegrotus sim): should I be ill, let me have
the capacity for feeling I previously possessed, whether it be knife or forceps that are to
be applied to my body (sive secetur quid sive a vellatur a corpore). For the state of apathy
(nihil dolore) is not attained except at the cost of brutishness in the soul and callousness
in the body.”” Compare varices secabantur at 2.35 and secaretur at 2.53. Medical imagery
dominates Book 3 from the start: see 3.1, 3.4–6.
68 3.83. See also the reference to “illae fibrae stirpium, quas initio dixi” at 3.84. Note
that these would be fibers of the rootlets of the roots (radicum).

A vir rusticanus like Marius would instantly recognize the extirpation project
described here:69 the words “trunco everso” refer not simply to a tree-trunk but
to an uprooted stump. In other words, a tree has been cut down, limbed, and
stumped; whatever stirpes radicum now remain do so only in the ground, no
longer attached to what was once a tree with both leaves and fruits. My claim,
supported by what Cicero says both immediately before and afterwards,70 is
that the speech of M. found between these images of cutting and uprooting
doesn’t reflect what Cicero will later call nostra sententia: his secret loyalty is
to the human, to mollitudo, to Crantor’s attack on the Stoics, to the generous
man who plants a tree for others (1.31), and thus to his own grieving self.
And this loyalty was well placed: before his merely visible remnant was mur-
dered and mutilated in the service of the dying Republic,71 he had managed
to preserve in written form enough of his deathless spirit as would inspire a
distant posterity to revive the republican cause.72
M.’s speech, on the other hand, presents the simillimum veri. The position
“he” takes will ignore or rather negate the humanism of the Marius story: “So
it comes that distress (aegritudo) is incompatible (repugnet) with fortitude
(fortitudini)” (3.14). By undergoing painful surgery unbound, Marius proves
himself a vir fortitudinis but his acknowledgement of the dolor aegritudinis
makes him a human (homo); it is easy to see why Cicero’s own brand of cour-
age must remain invisible to those who would find a self-contradiction in
Marius. In his rigorous pursuit of logical consistency, M. resorts for the first
time to a Stoic-style proof (3.14):
It is therefore probable (veri simile) that the man who is susceptible of distress
(aegritudo) is also susceptible of fear, and indeed of dejection and depression
of soul. Where men are susceptible of these emotions there also comes a feeling
of subjection, a readiness to admit themselves beaten should occasion arise.
He who makes this admission has to admit fear and cowardice as well. But of
such feelings the brave man is not susceptible: therefore he is not susceptible
of distress. Therefore the wise man will not be susceptible of distress.
69 The description of Marius is at 2.53. Cicero’s remarks on trees, plants, and animals
at 5.37–38 and his evocation of summer in Arpinum at 5.74 display the characteristic
Roman feeling for nature. For “extirpation,” see Nussbaum 1989.
70 3.83: “For I have this single boon left to me, whatever its worth, of leisure.” It is
against the backdrop of his own misery that the extirpation of the truncus eversus takes
place. Compare the list of infinitives that follows with Cicero’s own experiences.
71 Republic 7.517a4–6 (Shorey): “And if it were possible to lay hands on and to kill the
man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they not kill him?”
72 Highet 1949: 398–401 and 670n1 (quoting Camille Desmoulins): “Ces républicains
étaient la plupart des jeunes gens qui, nourris de la lecture de Cicéron dans les colleges, s’y
étaient passionés pour la liberté” (“These republicans were for the most part young men
who, nourished by the reading of Cicero in school, had become enamored of liberty”).
In the context of 5.10–11 as well as Cicero’s life, it is clear that this argument
does not represent nostra sententia but rather the simillimum veri. Cicero’s M.
hammers home this point by repeating the phrase veri simile a few sentences
later.73 In between, M. tells us that the man he is describing is in a position
“to despise human things (res humanas despicere).”74 If we assume that M.
is Cicero and therefore regards this as a good thing, we have forgotten the
other leg of Marius.
Although Cicero is concealing his own position between 3.14 and 3.84, it
is hardly his intent to do so throughout the Tusculan Disputations: between
his first Socratic goal (“nostram ipsi sententiam tegeremus”) and his third
(“simillimum veri quaereremus”), is the crucial second: he also intends to
deliver others from the burden of error (“errore alios levaremus”). Consider,
for example, the work’s final sentence (5.21): “In doing this (sc. in writing the
Tusculan Disputations) I cannot readily say how much I shall benefit others;
at any rate in my cruel sorrows and the various troubles which beset me from
all sides no other consolation (levatio) could be found.” Naturally it is not
for Cicero to assert that his book will, as a matter of fact, benefit others: he
therefore states only the skeptical veri simillimum of his own self-interested
attempt at levatio. But the use of this word reminds us once again that he
intended “ut errore alios levaremus”; he thus conceals—in accordance with
the tegeremus—that it was always his intention to benefit others. The limit
of Cicero’s willingness to conceal his own altruism is reached when M. uses
a second Stoic-style proof (the sensitive reader gradually comes to recognize
such passages as humorous) to show that the wise man will never feel pity for
others.75 Lest we should miss Cicero’s comic intentions, his M. momentarily
takes the opportunity (3.22) to distance himself from this style of argument
(“This is how the Stoics state their case, reasoning in a way that is unduly
intricate (contortius). . .”) before adding (3.22):
73 3.16: “It is also probable (veri etiam simile) that the temperate man. . . .” Cicero
introduces the term in Book 1; see 1.8 and 1.23.

74 My translation of 3.15; in context, King’s is: “Moreover the brave man must also be
high-souled, and the high-souled, must be unconquered; and the unconquered must look
down on human vicissitudes and consider them beneath him (infra se positas arbitrari).”
For Cicero’s nuanced position on res humanas dispicere—it gives rise to “the most human-
izing form of pleasure” (Trans. Rackham)—see Academica 2.127–28.
75 The “proof ” depends on the reciprocity of pity and envy at 3.21 (King’s translation
modified): “The same person therefore is inclined to pity (misereri) and to envy (invi-
dere). For the man who is pained by another’s misfortunes is also pained by another’s
prosperity.”
None the less we must above all make use of the opinions of thinkers who in
the method they use and the opinion they adopt show a highly courageous and
so to speak manly spirit (virili utuntur ratione atque sententia).
This description of the Stoics is critical for detecting Cicero’s womanly human-
ism: it is precisely upon ratio virilis that the conclusions of Cicero’s M. depend;
his admittedly rather contorted (“contortius”) defense of the self-sufficient
Stoic sage has accomplished the extirpation of compassion explicitly by means
of “manly reason” at the expense of womanly humanism.76
The feminine reappears at 3.36 in the form of a rhetorical question: “But
what is more vile or disgraceful (nequius aut turpius) than a womanish man
(effeminato viro)?” In pursuit of M.’s simillimum veri, we are encouraged to
answer: “Nothing.” But if we seek Cicero’s own sententia, we must recall the
introduction of the two-part soul at 2.47: “Had human nature nothing else
(sc. beside the molle quiddam), no creature would be more hideous (defor-
mius) than man (homine).” More hideous and deformed than a vir who had
been mastered by the feminine would be a homo who was simply feminine
through and through, i.e. one whose soul was nothing but molle quiddam.
Nor can we have much sympathy for the vir, devoid of all sympathy, who has
begun to emerge, thanks to the use of virilis ratio, from M.’s radical surgery.
In other words, there are two other candidates who might well be worse than
the vir effeminatus: the homo without courage and the vir without compas-
sion. If Cicero would insist that a vir of this description was less ugly than
the correspondingly one-sided homo, he would doubtless insist that a manly
woman was considerably less ugly than an effeminate man (See McDonnell
2006: 162–64). The point of the Marius anecdote, however, is that the homo
is precisely not one-sided: the truly human is both female and male. In this
context, it is the truncus eversus from which the fibrae stirpium of humanity’s
other half have been uprooted that falls short of the homo humanus.
“Why am I to listen to words, seeing that I have deeds before my eyes?”
(3.48).77 This rhetorical question, found in the center of M.’s Book 3 speech—
itself the center of the Tusculan Disputations—brings us closer to the heart
of the matter and must be applied not only to Book 3 but to Books 4 and 5
76 3.21: “The wise man, however, does not come to feel envy; therefore he does not come
to feel compassion either. But if the wise man were accustomed to feel distress (si aegre
ferre sapiens soleret) he would also be accustomed to feel compassion (ergo ne misereri
quidem). Therefore distress keeps away from the wise man.” With ratio virilis, compare
the use of regina ratio at 2.47.
77 3.48. The context is an extended discussion of self-contradiction, beginning at
3.46.
as well. The crucial point is that the portrait of the vir virtutis, this uprooted
stump of a man (Compare de Amicitia 48) upon whom M. will lavish so many
words, is the antithesis of Cicero himself.78 Cicero literally puts himself on the
line. On the one hand, for the sake of his reader’s edification, he repeatedly
exposes himself to the charge of hypocrisy for praising a manliness he obvi-
ously and admittedly lacks. On the other hand, both between his lines and
throughout his life—not least of all in the crisis that called forth his Fourth
Catilinarian—Cicero proves that no nobler human being exists than the
womanly humanist who plays a man’s part.
Of course there is something to be said in defense of playing the woman’s
part, as Cicero the Consul indicated when he used the verb pario. The closest
he comes to doing so in the Tusculan Disputations is, not surprisingly, in the
context of grieving the dead; this theme inevitably revolves around Tullia. M.
begins by noting the self-contradiction of those who could meet their own
deaths calmly but give way to grief when someone else dies (3.72). Since the
Consolatio is lost, we know no more about Tullia’s death than that it preceded
her child’s. But coupled with Cicero’s attempt to immortalize her, that single
fact leaves no doubt that Tullia bore her own death more calmly in the belief
that her baby would survive her. Certainly Cicero himself bore his own death
far more calmly than he did his daughter’s.79 Naturally M. makes no reference
to childbirth (or to Cicero’s grief for Tullia) when he refutes the notion that
anyone can love another more than herself (3.72–73):
As if it were in any sense possible, as is often said in lovers’ talk (in sermone
amatorio), that anyone should love another more than himself (ut quisquam
plus alterum diligat quam se). It is an excellent thing, and if you look into it,
a right and just thing too to love those, who should be our dearest, as well as
(aeque) we do ourselves; but to love them more than ourselves is in no way
possible.80
Brushing aside the likes of Pyramus and Thisbe (Compare de Finibus

5.63 and Altman 2007b: 381n33) in favor of a reasonable aequalitas, M. here
achieves the veri simile using a ratio virilis that plausibly rejects the com-
78 Trollope 1880: 354–57 is eloquent on this discrepancy.

79 King 1927: 192n2 draws attention to 2.41 as foreshadowing Cicero’s death: “Who
after falling has drawn in his neck when ordered to suffer the fatal stroke?” Compare
Plutarch Cicero 48.4.
80 The passage continues: “It is not to be desired in friendship either that my friend
should love me more than himself or that I love him more than myself; if it could be so,
it would result in an upset of life (perturbatio vitae) and all its obligations (officiorum om-
nium). But this question can be dealt with at another time. . .” See de Amicitia 56–57.
monplaces in sermone amatorio. But if lovers do so only in extraordinary

cases, mothers, as in Tullia’s case, give abundant evidence of the possibility
“ut quisquam plus alterum diligat quam se” (3.73).81 In short, M.’s rejection
of altruism is precisely the opposite of Cicero’s womanly humanism. To put
it another way: the essence of Cicero’s humanism is altruism. It is Cicero’s
recognition—made palpable by his daughter’s death if temporarily obscured
by the subsequent loss of his Consolatio—that women are, by nature, more
inclined to practice this divine altruism than men are, that constitutes his
greatest original contribution as a philosopher.
On the other hand, even for those who recognize that Cicero was a genuine
philosopher rather than a mere compiler of various school doctrines, the ex-
tent of his originality must always remain in doubt. In Orator, the last work in
the catalogue of his philosophical writings, (de Divinatione 2.4) Cicero offers
his own negative assessment (Orator 12, translation mine):
Of course I’m also aware that I often seem to be saying original things when I’m
saying very ancient ones (albeit having been unheard by most) and I confess
myself to stand out as an orator—if that’s what I am, or in any case, whatever
else it is that I am (aut etiam quicumque sim)—not from the ministrations of the
rhetoricians but from the open spaces of the Academy. For such is the curricula
of many-leveled and conflicting dialogues (curricula multiplicium variorumque
sermonum) in which the tracks of Plato have been principally impressed.82
Determining the originality of Cicero’s womanly humanism would therefore

require careful reconsideration of the midwife Phaenarete, the rhetorician
Aspasia, and the mantic rationalist Diotima; if nothing else, Plato’s own
“multi-layered method of discourse” makes this impossible here (See Saxon-
house 1985 and Hobbs 2006). But it is equally impossible to miss a Platonic
intersection of maternal and altruistic elements in both maieutic pedagogy
(Theaetetus 150c7–8) and procreative politics (Symposium 209d4–e3); the
latter finds an eloquent voice in the Fourth Catilinarian while the former is
implicit in Cicero’s own multiplex ratio disputandi throughout the Tusculan
81 Continuing the passage cited in the previous note): “. . . for the present it is enough
to refrain from making ourselves wretched as well as losing our friends, for fear our love
go further than they themselves would wish if they were conscious, certainly further than
our love for ourselves” (emphasis mine). In addition to the possibility that she loved her
child more than herself, Tullia is here imagined, presumably in heaven (1.27), as loving
her father so much that it is for her sake, not his, that Cicero should refrain from loving
her more than himself. A rediscovered Consolatio would constitute a landmark in the
history of feminism.
82 Fantham 2004: 50n2 recommends translating sermones as “dialogues.”
Disputations. Any adequate solution to the problem of Cicero’s originality

must begin with careful consideration of the intimate connection between
Plato’s altruism83 and his pedagogy.84 But a reassessment of Cicero is an es-
sential propaedeutic to this larger project. As long as the Somnium Scipionis is
explicated in connection with the Myth of Er rather than the Allegory of the
Cave,85 both the nature of Cicero’s debt to Plato and Plato’s own intentions
in his Republic must remain equally obscure.
Consider, for example, M.’s final (and apparently unanswered) question at
5.119: “. . . what (quid) pray do you conclude that philosophers who go back
to Socrates and Plato ought to do (faciendum)?” The words “quid faciendum?”
echo the plaintive question found in Cleitophon, a dialogue whose authenticity
Cicero, unlike us, had no reason to doubt (408d7–e2 Trans. Gonzales).86
Or, when we have agreed that this is exactly what a man should do (του̃τ’
αὐτὸ ἀνθρώπῳ πρακτέον εἶναι) ought we to ask Socrates, and one another,
the further question (τὸ μετὰ του̃τ’ ἐπανερωτα̃ν): “What is the next step?” (τί
τοὐντευ̃θεν;)
The answer to Cleitophon’s question will not be found in the dialogue that
bears his name but rather in its sequel,87 the speech of Socrates that begins
with the word “κατέβην” (Republic 1.327a1). In the case of the Tusculans,
Cicero’s M. has already answered his own question at 3.61: “For we must,
as it were, shore up in every way those who are toppling over and unable
to stand because of the extent of their distress” (Compare de Officiis 1.28).
83 See Vernezze 1992: 348 and Weiss 2007: 113: “Unlike physical health, however, whose
good consequences benefit the agent himself, the good consequences of a healthy soul
benefit primarily not the agent himself but others.”
84 Cicero provocatively refuses to confirm Plato’s altruism—i.e. he upholds the Platonic
exemplar of the tegeremus—even when revealing his own at de Officiis 1.28. Plato’s peda-
gogy is the subject of my manuscript “Plato the Teacher: The Crisis of the Republic.”
85 Zetzel 1995: 15, 223–24 and Powell 1990: 122–23 following Macrobius, Commentary
on the Dream of Scipio, 1.1–2. See Altman (forthcoming, 2010a).

86 For evidence of Cicero’s familiarity with this dialogue, compare Acad. 1.16 to
Cleitophon 410b5. Both Cleitophon and Cicero’s Varro suggest that Socrates can do no
more than praise virtue (410c4) and exhort others to practice it (408b4–c3, 408d2–3,
and 408d5–6).
87 Consider Tetralogy 8 of Thrasyllus in the context of Dunn 1976. Note that Cleito-
phon has already demanded to know “τὸ μετὰ ταυ̃τα” (“that which comes after these
things”) at Cleitophon 408c4 (translation mine) and 408c9. In order to advance beyond
the cautious affirmation of authenticity found at Slings 1999: 233–34, Cleitophon—like
all of the Platonic dialogues anathetized since the 19th century—must be reconsidered
in a broader context; see Altman (forthcoming, 2010b).
In the words “omnibus enim modis fulciendi sunt, qui ruunt nec cohaerere
possunt,” ethical obligation is expressed by a gerundive in exactly the same
way that Plato’s Socrates employs καταβατέον in the Republic: “It is neces-
sary to descend” (7.520c1). In Cicero’s Latin, the gerundive applies to those
who can no long “keep it together” (cohaerere) and must be propped up
(fulciendi). Their inability to remain coherent suggests internal division: this
is the emotional landscape of the two-part soul of 2.47, here in process of
dissolution as the molle quiddam gains mastery. But (and this is crucial) it is
also a two-part soul that will experience an ethical obligation, engendered by
compassion, to bring them support.
Cicero is silent about the identity of those for whom the buttressing of the
falling is an ethical obligation: he resigns the place of the dative of agent to the
ablative of means (omnibus modis). But he also fails to identify those who are
in need of that agent’s support. In the conventional reading of the Tusculan
Disputations, the solution to these twin cases of indeterminate identity is that
the Stoic M. brings support to Cicero himself (White 1995: 224n7): the weak-
ened, grieving, and womanish Cicero is badly in need of some manly virtus
and the works written after Tullia’s death constitute an attempt to substitute
for the vir effeminatus he has become the vir virtutis who will emerge from
M.’s radical emotional surgery.88 Devoid of either concealment or concern
for lightening the burden of others, this reading should be reckoned as the
text’s simillimum veri. A better interpretation is that Cicero is coming to the
aid of us, his readers (White 1995: 224n8), in accordance with the levaremus.
But Cicero’s own project, the one that guides his maieutic pedagogy (Altman
2007b: 388–91), is far more ambitious and originates in his womanly human-
ism: he is exhorting us, his readers, to become fully human by helping others,
as he—no less than Tullia and the son of Amphitryon—has done and will
continue to do. A manly pep talk like the Tusculan Disputations inevitably
originates in a womanly humanism: it is because of our misericordia that we
are willing to bring aid to the molle quiddam in others. It is therefore womanly
to help someone else to be a man. But the mirror image of this statement
proves equally true: it is manly to help others to become womanly. The fact
that Cicero does both of these things is the essence of his humanism.
88 Rawson 1983: 241: “Of all his philosophical works the Tusculan Disputations is, one
feels, the one Cicero wrote for himself; the most sensitive and emotional of beings is try-
ing to persuade himself into the serenity of the Sage, into independence of the fears and
hopes, the pain and grief, that had wracked him for so long.”
section 7: in the mirror of the text

The interpretive crux of the Tusculan Disputations is M.’s exposition of what he
calls Peripatetic doctrine in Book 4 (4.38–46). After giving the first extended
portrait of the self-sufficient sage at 4.37–38, M. sets about at 4.38 ridiculing
the “mollis et enervata . . . ratio et oratio” (“weak and effeminate . . . views
and utterances”) of his opponents. But beginning at 4.43, Cicero’s M. allows
“them” to present their own views and it is here that Cicero challenges the
reader to defy M.’s authority by making the doctrines castigated by “him” her
own: iracundia is legitimate against both an enemy and “in improbum civem”
(the “disloyal citizen” of 4.43 is, of course, C. Julius Caesar); the effective ora-
tor must either feel anger or simulate it (4.43) as Cicero will soon enough be
doing once again in the thunderous Philippics; libido is praised in the case
of patriots like Themistocles and Demosthenes (4.44); cupiditas—here the
Latin equivalent of Diotima’s ἔρως (Symposium 203b2–7)—ignites the love
of wisdom (4.44); and pity (“misericordia”) is a particularly useful form of
the aegritudo that M. would extirpate. But the most telling passage concerns
repentance (4.45):
As for distress itself (ipsam aegritudinem), which we have said is to be shunned
as an abominable and savage monster, they say it has been provided by nature
not without considerable advantage, in order that mankind (homines) if guilty
of trespass should feel pain (dolerent) at incurring correction (castigationibus),
censure, and disgrace. For escape from the penalty of trespasses seems granted
to those who endure disgrace and shame without pain (sine dolore); it is better
to suffer the stings of conscience (morderi est melius conscientia).
If we can admit the force of this compelling argument, it is odd to deny this
capacity to Cicero himself.89 But if we allow Cicero himself to be persuaded
by it, then the surface of the text—M.’s entire project of eliminating aegri-
tudo, perturbatio, and dolor—falls to pieces. It is essential to grasp that even
by the standard of the veri simile (i.e. by insisting that M. speaks for Cicero),
Cicero is contradicting himself here: even a straightforward reading must
recognize that he is subjecting himself to castigatio throughout the Tusculan
Disputations. Cicero knows that the mental distress of that molle quiddam in
the soul is vital for all spiritual growth; the self-sufficient sage not only rises
above it (to his own personal detriment) but also cares for nothing other than
himself: “How besides can he hold his head erect, in disdain of all the vicis-
situdes of man’s lot, in the spirit we wish the wish the man to show, unless
89 See White 1995 on “the penitent’s paradox” and 5.53 where it is “answered.”
he think that for him all things depend on himself ” (omnia sibi in se, 5.42;
compare 4.37–38 and 5.17).
By the time that the self-sufficient sage emerges in Books 4 and 5, it becomes
clear that although he will bear with great strength all manner of pain, he will
also avoid the principal cause of Cicero’s own sufferings: the compassionate
love of country that led the philosopher to both glory and agony, to exile,
failure, anger, and death.90 This is why the wise man’s voluntary descent into
the “Bull of Phalaris” becomes such an important theme in Book 5: although
M. can prove that his self-sufficient sage can withstand the torture inflicted
there, he cannot explain why anyone would go there in the first place. In fact
it is precisely that which motivates the true philosopher to “go back down
into the Cave” that Cicero, following the tracks of Plato,91 conceals in ac-
cordance with the tegeremus; the Platonist loves more than himself (“plus
alterum diligat quam se”)92 and is therefore more inclined to plant a tree for
the benefit of others than to deracinate one.93 The deepest lessons in Plato
and Cicero, in accordance with a maieutic pedagogy, are those that their true
readers—those who can be brought to recollect the generous essence of their
own humanity—must discover for themselves by looking in the mirror of
the text. To put it another way: when the conception to which a young man
gives birth is altruism (Compare Theaetetus 150b6–9), the pedagogy that
accomplishes this sublime result is maieutic par excellence.
The proof of the paradoxical claim that it is manly to help another become
womanly is, to say no more of Phaenarete’s son, the Tusculan Disputations as
a whole. Despite literary concealments, Cicero is steering throughout a course
dangerously close to the Charybdis of hypocritically defending a type of Stoic
manliness he manifestly lacked and the evidently far more dangerous Scylla
90 A sanitized form of public service is appended to the sage’s activities at 5.72, on which
see Douglas 1995: 215; the real question—merely rhetorical according to the veri simile—
is put at 5.109: “Surely it was not foolish of him (sc. Demaratus father of King Tarquin)
to prefer the freedom of exile to slavery at home?” Tarquin, who instituted servitude for
others, springs from a man who embraced for himself the liberty of exile. Brutus, who
will liberate our patria from a second Tarquin, is the spiritual son of one who experienced
exile as servitude and tirelessly fought to restore liberty at home.
91 Cicero’s loyalty to Plato (1.22, 1.39, and 1.49) and Platonism (1.57–58) is exemplary:
the lengthy digression on the ruthlessness of Dionysius (5.57–66) is intended to prepare

the reader to recognize Plato’s courage in going to Syracuse (5.100). What Cicero did in
Rome, of course, was infinitely more courageous.
92 Symposium 205e5–206a; see also de Officiis 1.22 (Trans. Miller): “. . . as Plato has admi-
rably expressed it, we are not born for ourselves alone (non nobis solum nati sumus). . .”
93 See 1.31, where Caecilius Statius is quoted: “Trees does he sow to be of service to
the coming age (Serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint).”

of exposing himself to the charge of effeminacy.94 His courage with respect to

the latter—his manly willingness to make another womanly, albeit between
the lines—is revealed in Book 5 when he sets up a zero-sum contrast between
himself and the noble Cato, exemplar of the Stoic sage (5.4):
But in such a mood I rebuke myself (me ipse castigo) for forming my judg-
ment of the strength of virtue from the effeminacy of others and perhaps
from my own (et ex nostra fortasse mollitia), and not from virtue itself (ex ipsa
virtute). For virtue, if only any exists—and that doubt your uncle, Brutus, has
destroyed—keeps beneath its own level all the issues that can fall to a man’s
lot, and looking down upon them despises the chances of human life, and free
of all reproach (culpaque omni carens) thinks that nothing concerns it besides
itself (praeter se ipsam nihil censet ad se pertinere).
The stated paradox applies perfectly to Cicero’s self-effacing attempt to convert

Brutus—who, like his uncle and M.’s self-sufficient sage, would otherwise
be too self-assured to feel shame—to a more humane but no less coura-
geous form of virtus, one that would survive, thanks to Cicero, the suicide
of the impenitent but ultimately selfish Cato. Although certainly capable of
penitence, indeed while openly castigating himself for an effeminate mollitia,
Cicero actually knows that Cato’s disastrous decision to kill himself was—in
addition to being antithetical to the Phaedo (1.74) with which Cato confirmed
his resolve95—less manly, less womanly, and consequently less human than
his own agonizing decision to soldier on (see Griffin 1986: 195n12), amidst
great sufferings, for the good of others in faece Romuli.96
In this context, the story of the soldierly Marius deserves another look.
At first glance, his manly leg—let’s call it his right—was indifferent to pain
while a certain reasonable squeamishness led the hero to spare the other, its
womanish counterpart, on the left. Unnoticed at first was the less obvious
cross-gendering of his decision: varicose veins were considered unsightly,97
the only way to remove them was horribly painful, and the surgery required
to accomplish this was evidently strictly discretionary. In other words, there
94 For the gendering of this metaphor, see Aeneid 3.420–28

95 Compare Plutarch Cato, 68.2 and Phaedo 61e5–62c8; Zadorojnyi 2007 offers an
interesting account of Cato’s Platonism and a compelling one of Plutarch’s.
96 ad Att. 2.1.8 (translation mine): “You don’t love our Cato any more than I do, but
even so: by exercising his unparalleled spirit and unsurpassed loyalty, he not infrequently
damages the Republic: for he speaks his opinion as if living in Plato’s Polity and not in
the shit-hole of Romulus.”
97 Quintillian Inst. 11.143: “. . . for he [the elder Pliny] asserts that Cicero was in the
habit of wearing his toga in such a fashion to conceal his varicose veins. . .”
is something to be said for the view that it was, in accordance with conven-
tional standards, womanish of Marius to seek the surgery in the first place
and that he showed a manly indifference to beauty when he decided to forgo
the second half of an unnecessary operation. But this hypothetical reversal of
gender roles merely foreshadows the reversal that would actually result from
looking at Marius in a mirror: now the battle-scarred leg is on the womanly
left and the pristine one appears on the manly right.
This mirror image is analogous to the literary reversal accomplished in
the Tusculan Disputations. A self-sufficient sage like Cato will prefer suicide
to following Cicero’s Scipio and Cicero himself back down into the shadowy
Cave of Rome’s excruciating “Bull of Phalaris.” Inspired by his daughter’s
heroic example, Cicero discovered that this humane and virtuous willingness
to suffer courageously for others was anything but an all-male preserve. Ci-
cero’s womanly humanism leads those like him to take the longer and harder
way: to undergo torture, childbirth, or death while M.’s vir virtutis keeps his
soul—like the other leg of Marius—intact and unspotted from the world. In
other words, the qualities that at first appeared to be manly and womanly
now trade their places. The truly Platonic hero—a homo humanus in whom
manly strength and womanly compassion are so intertwined and affiliated
that neither can truly be said to exist without reciprocally cross-gendering
the other—is what Cicero intends that we should see when we look into the
mirror of his text, itself the product of Cicero’s own sovereign care for us,
for humanitas, and for any republic that might someday re-emerge from the
dark night of the Caesars in order to preserve, protect, and defend it. It is, of
course, only our own altruism that will enable us to recognize his. But if we
do, and if we then lift our gaze from that mirror, we will see for the first time
in far too many years the tired but smiling Tully holding it, tears of compas-
sion, fortitude, and love mixed in his eyes.
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Transactions of the American Philological Association 139 (2009) 411–445

Womanly Humanism in Cicero’s Tusculan

summary: Like his de Finibus, Cicero’s Tusculanae Disputationes is best under-

section 1. virtus and humanitas

only a handful of occasions.” The exception is Cicero.

Nauta and Harder 2005.

2004 and Corbeill 2004: 133–37

on which see Altman 2008b, 384–86.

at 3.57 and 5.105.

to the compelling defense of repentance at 4.45 considered below.

section 2: maternal altruism

1927: xii place her death in February.

discussion with citations.

3.70, 3.76, and 4.63.

Although this pre-Christian juxtaposition of achieving salus for others by

These connections suggest that it was Tullia’s courageous determination

preserve their fellow-men (qui se natos ad homines iuvandos, tutandos, conser-

section 3: anaxagoras aloft

The indifference of Anaxagoras to his native land indicates a second point of

But the most significant passage about Anaxagoras in the Tusculan

While Anaxagoras directed his attention aloft, Socrates changes course by

The principal point of contrast between Anaxagoras and Socrates is analogous

39 Compare Xenophon Memorabilia 4.7.6 and de Republica 1.15.

It is important to recognize that Scipio’s descent from the heavens to Rome

erately refuses to invoke Plato’s authority at 5.83.

contemplation45—perfectly indifferent to his native Clazomenae and the

section 4: cicero’s “multi-layered method of

According to Cicero, the Socratic method of disputation has three compo-

also Zuckert 2009: 808–9, 834.

should be demanded. Indeed the authority (auctoritas) of those who profess

It has been generally assumed that “the custom observed by Carneades”

In the Tusculan Disputations, it is M.’s praiseworthy Stoicism that is like, in-

53 Compare the fragment from the Consolatio at 1.66.

mological positions which cannot be reconciled with anything in Plato.”

both Philonian skepticism and Antiochean dogmatism.

section 5: gender in the tusculans

Unlike his principal political opponent, Cicero regards humanitas as morally

virtue. White 1995: 223n5 should also be consulted.

He chooses to do so in a story about Marius (who was both Cicero’s towns-

At first glance, it is the clamorous recipient of the bee-sting who comes

to join her husband (una cum viro) on the funeral pyre. . .”

It is in the context of the contrast between the honor-loving Spartans and

section 6: m.’s “manly reason”

This humanistic opening gives a very misleading impression of what is to

that these would be fibers of the rootlets of the roots (radicum).

introduces the term in Book 1; see 1.8 and 1.23.

Brushing aside the likes of Pyramus and Thisbe (Compare de Finibus

78 Trollope 1880: 354–57 is eloquent on this discrepancy.

monplaces in sermone amatorio. But if lovers do so only in extraordinary

Determining the originality of Cicero’s womanly humanism would therefore

Disputations. Any adequate solution to the problem of Cicero’s originality

on the Dream of Scipio, 1.1–2. See Altman (forthcoming, 2010a).

section 7: in the mirror of the text

the lengthy digression on the ruthlessness of Dionysius (5.57–66) is intended to prepare

the coming age (Serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint).”

of exposing himself to the charge of effeminacy.94 His courage with respect to

The stated paradox applies perfectly to Cicero’s self-effacing attempt to convert

94 For the gendering of this metaphor, see Aeneid 3.420–28

The Question of “Eclecticism”: Studies in Later Greek Philosophy. Berkeley: University

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