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ancient Rome
Intellectual life of the Late Republic

The late Roman Republic, despite its turmoil, was a period of remarkable intellectual
ferment. Many of the leading political figures were men of serious intellectual interests and
literary achievement; foremost among them were Cicero, Caesar, Cato, Pompey, and Varro,
all of them senators. The political upheaval itself leavened intellectual life; imperial
senators were to look back to the late republic as a time when great political struggles
stimulated great oratory, something the more ordered world of the emperors could no longer
do.

The seeds of intellectual development had been sown in the late 3rd and early 2nd
centuries; the flowering came in the last generation of the republic. As late as the 90s BC the
Romans still appear relatively unsophisticated. Greek intellectuals were absorbed in debates
among themselves, giving only passing nods to Romans by dedicating untechnical works to
them. In 92 the censors issued an edict closing down the schools of Latin rhetoric in Rome.
Serious students such as Cicero had to go east in the 80s to receive their higher education
from leading Greek philosophers and rhetoricians.

The centre of intellectual life began to shift toward the West after the 90s. As a result of the
Mithradatic wars, libraries were brought from the East to Italy. The Hellenistic kingdoms,
which had provided the patronage for much intellectual activity, were dismantled by
Pompey and Octavian, and Greek intellectuals increasingly joined the retinues of great
Roman senators such as Pompey. Private Roman houses, especially senatorial villas on the
Bay of Naples, became the focus of intellectual life; it was there that libraries were
reassembled and Greek teachers kept as dependents.

Roman traditions favoured the development of certain disciplines, creating a pattern that
was distinct from the Greek. Disciplines related to the public life of senators prospered—
notably oratory, law, and history; certain fields of study were judged fit for diversions in
leisure hours, and still others were considered beneath the dignity of an honourable Roman.
Areas such as medicine and architecture were left to Greeks and others of lower status, and
mathematics and the sciences aroused little interest. Greek slaves especially played an

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important role in the intellectual life of the late republic, serving in roles as diverse as
teachers, copyists of manuscripts, and oral readers to aristocrats.

By the beginning of the imperial era the maturing of Roman intellectual culture was
evident. Caesar had commissioned Varro to organize the first public library in Rome, and
Greek scholars such as the geographer Strabo moved west to pursue their studies in Rome.

Grammar and rhetoric

The education of the Roman elite was dominated by training in language skills, grammar,
and rhetoric. The grammatici, who taught grammar and literature, were lower-class and
often servile dependents. Nevertheless, they helped to develop a Roman consciousness
about “proper” spelling and usage that the elite adopted as a means of setting themselves off
from humbler men. This interest in language was expressed in Varro’s work on words and
grammar, De Lingua Latina (43?), with its prescriptive tone. Rhetoric, though a discipline
of higher status, was still taught mainly by Greeks in Greek. The rhetoricians offered rules
for composition: how to elaborate a speech with ornamentation and, more important, how
to organize a work through the dialectical skills of definition and division of the subject
matter into analytical categories. The Romans absorbed these instructions so thoroughly
that the last generation of the republic produced an equal of the greatest Greek orators in
Cicero. The influence on Roman culture of dialectical thinking, instilled through rhetoric,
can hardly be overstated; the result was an increasingly disciplined, well-organized habit of
thinking. This development can be seen most clearly in the series of agricultural works by
Roman authors: whereas Cato’s 2nd-century De agricultura is rambling and disorganized,
Varro’s three books on Res rusticae (37), with their division of soils into 99 types, seem
excessively organized.

Law and history

Roman law, though traditional in content, was also deeply influenced by Greek dialectic.
For centuries the law had been passed down orally by pontifical priests. It emerged as an
intellectual discipline only in the late republic, when men who saw themselves as legal
specialists began to write treatises aimed at organizing existing law into a system, defining
principles and concepts, and then applying those principles systematically. Quintus Mucius
Scaevola was a pivotal figure: a pontifex in the traditional role, he published the first
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systematic legal treatise, De iure civili, in the 80s. Cicero credited his contemporary Servius
Sulpicius Rufus with being the jurist who transformed law into a discipline (ars).

The decisive events of the late republic stimulated the writing of history. The first extant
historical works in Latin (rather than in Greek) date from this period: Sallust’s Bellum
Iugurtinum (Iugurthine War) and Bellum Catilinae (Catilinarian Conspiracy) and Caesar’s
memoirs about his Gallic and civil wars. The rapid changes also prompted antiquarian
studies as Roman senators looked back to archaic institutions and religious rituals of the
distant past to legitimize or criticize the present. Varro’s 41 books (now lost) on
Antiquitates terum humanarum et divinarum (“Antiquities of things human and divine”)
were influential in establishing the traditions of early Rome for future generations.

Philosophy and poetry

Philosophy and poetry were suitable as pastimes for senators; few, however, were as serious
about philosophy as the younger Cato and Cicero. Even Cicero’s philosophical works were
not technical treatises by Greek standards; rather, they were presented as dialogues among
leading senators in their leisure. Similarly, Lucretius’ De rerum natura (On the Nature of
Things; 50s) offered, in verse, a nontechnical explanation of Epicureanism. The technical
philosophical works were written by humbler men and are now lost. A survey of their
names and titles, however, shows that stoicism was not yet the dominant philosophical
school it later became; more in evidence were the Epicureans, peripatetics, and academics.
There also were revivals of Aristotelian and Pythagorean studies in this period.

The best-known poets of the late republican and civil war periods came from well-to-do
Italian families. Catullus from Verona (c. 84–c. 54) had a reputation as doctus (learned) for
his exquisitely crafted poems full of literary allusions in the Alexandrian style. Far from
cumbersome, however, were many of his short, witty poems that challenged traditional
Roman mores and deflated senatorial pretensions. Rome’s greatest poets, Virgil (70–19) and
Horace (65–8), were born during the republic, came of age during the civil wars, and
survived to celebrate the victory of their patron, Augustus. Virgil’s Eclogues one and nine,
written during the civil wars, poignantly evoke the suffering of the upheaval that ironically
inspired Rome’s highest intellectual and artistic achievements.

Richard P. Saller

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Citation Information
Article Title:
ancient Rome
Website Name:
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published:
06 May 2021
URL:
https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Rome
Access Date:
June 28, 2021

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