The Lost Republic.

Cicero's De oratore
and De re publica James E. G. Zetzel
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i

The Lost Republic

ii
iii

The Lost Republic

Cicero’s De oratore and
De re publica
z
JAMES E. G. ZETZEL

1
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1
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v

In memory of my brother, Robert Guttman (1928–​2019)

You must remember that each of us was born not for

himself alone, but our country takes a share of our
existence, and so do our parents, so do our friends. . . .
And when our country calls us to take part in public
affairs, it would be foolish not to obey.
[Plato], Ninth Letter
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vi

Contents

Preface  ix
Abbreviations xi

Introduction: Mansuetiores musae 1

PART I : Orator

1. Genus dialogorum meorum 17

2. Cogitanti mihi 31

3. Vetera repetenti 49

4. Ratio dicendi 74

5. Eloquentem adhuc neminem 100

6. Praepotens et gloriosa philosophia 121

7. Cycnea vox 142

PART II : Statesman

8. Prequel and Sequel 163

9. The Lost Republic 179

10. Dialogue and Dissatisfaction 193

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viii Contents

11. Optimus status civitatis 213

12. Rerum publicarum natura 241

13. Iuris consensus 265

14. I Never Died, Said He 285

Conclusion: The Lost Republic 309

Appendix: Speeches and Trials 319

Works Cited 343
Passages cited 355
General Index 359
ix

Preface

In the fall of 2018, Clifford Ando invited me to give a course on De oratore

Book 1 at the University of Chicago, thus providing the occasion for me to revisit
the text and to begin writing this book. I am most grateful to Cliff for the invita-
tion and to the members of the Department of Classics at Chicago for their gen-
erous conversation and company, to the students in the class, particularly Huaxi
Zhou, for raising questions that I had not previously encountered, and above all
to Diana and Peter White for their hospitality and friendship—​including the
loan of Peter’s office, where I began to write this book.
My desire to write about Cicero’s dialogues goes back much further than that.
In the spring of 1966 I first read De oratore at the suggestion and under the guid-
ance of Glen Bowersock, a suggestion for which I have been indebted to him
ever since. My interest in the settings of the dialogues and Cicero’s presentation
of Rome’s intellectual history dates from that semester, and while I hope I have
learned something more about Cicero since then, echoes of the paper I wrote in
1966 are still to be found in the present book.
De oratore and De re publica are closely linked in my life as in Cicero’s. By
chance, I was able to take a course on De re publica with the late Herbert Bloch
one semester after first reading De oratore. Some years later, when I suggested De
oratore Book 1 to the late Ted Kenney as a suitable text for a Green and Yellow, he
proposed De re publica. When I tried, as I have more than once, to write a book
about De re publica, a chapter on the relationship between the two dialogues kept
inserting itself and growing out of all proportion. In 2018 I gave in to the logic of
the argument and began to write a book about both dialogues together.
I have been studying these texts for too long for me to thank all the friends
and students whose advice and suggestions have found their way into this book,
but I want to acknowledge one large debt from long ago. I met the late Elizabeth
Rawson in the fall of 1975, and from then until her untimely death in 1988 she
gave me much-​needed encouragement and advice about Cicero. More recently,
I am grateful to Catherine Steel for reading a draft of Chapter 3, to Chris van den
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x Preface

Berg for comments on the final draft of the book, and to John Ramsey for advice
on any number of questions concerning law and trials. Katharina Volk has read
the entire book, parts of it more than once, and made great improvements to both
its substance and its style, as she has to all aspects of my life; without her help
and companionship I would not have been able to write this book. So too, with-
out the skillful, kind, and professional ministrations of Dr. Israel Deutsch and
his staff (I thank particularly Brian, Cassandra, Errol, and Flavia), I might not
have been able to finish it. Bob Kaster and Catherine Steel read the entire manu-
script for Oxford University Press and gave me acute and copious suggestions for
improvement, almost all of which I have incorporated. Stefan Vranka of OUP
has offered wise and helpful suggestions. All translations are my own; those from
De re publica are taken from James E. G. Zetzel (Ed.), Marcus Tullius Cicero,
Cicero: On the Commonwealth and On the Laws, 2nd Edition © Cambridge
University Press 2017, and are used by permission. All references to De re publica
use the section and fragment numbers of my translation.
Cicero dedicated De oratore and De re publica to his brother; I am dedicating
this book to the memory of mine, who died while I was writing it. Like Cicero,
he endured (with rather more steadfastness) exile, war, and loss; and like Cicero,
he believed in the values expressed in my epigraph: devotion to family and to
public service.
New York
May 27, 2021
xi

Abbreviations

In addition to familiar abbreviations for periodicals and ancient texts, the follow-
ing are used here:

FRHist T. J. Cornell, ed., The Fragments of the Roman Historians.

Oxford, 2013.
LPW M. Tullius Cicero: De Oratore Libri III.
Vol. 1, ed. A. D. Leeman and H. Pinkster. Heidelberg, 1981.
Vol. 2, ed. A. D. Leeman, H. Pinkster, H. Nelson. Heidelberg, 1985.
Vol. 3, ed. A. D. Leeman, H. Pinkster, E. Rabbie. Heidelberg, 1989.
Vol. 4, ed. A. D. Leeman, H. Pinkster, J. Wisse. Heidelberg, 1996.
Vol. 5, ed. J. Wisse, M. Winterbottom, E. Fantham. Heidelberg, 2008.
MRR T. R. S. Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic. New York,
1951–​86.
ORF E. Malcovati, ed. Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta liberae rei publi-
cae. Ed. 4, Turin, 1976.
TLRR M. Alexander, Trials in the Late Roman Republic 149 bc to 50 bc.
Toronto, 1990.
xi
1

Introduction
mansuetiores musae

At the end of 54 bce, Cicero wrote a very long letter (Fam. 1.9) to P. Cornelius
Lentulus Spinther. Cicero owed Lentulus a great deal: as consul in 57, Lentulus
had helped organize Cicero’s restoration from exile, and the eight letters Cicero
wrote to him in 56 and 55, while Lentulus was away from Rome governing
Cilicia, are filled with expressions of loyalty and gratitude. But after the eighth
letter, probably written in February 55, there is a gap in the correspondence until
December 54. Then comes the long letter—​in reality, a carefully composed essay,
an apologia justifying Cicero’s way of life and his political position. It was obvi-
ously meant for a larger audience than the single man addressed.1
The letter to Lentulus is organized as a response to questions about Cicero’s
political behavior: after being for his entire career a resolute supporter of the sena-
torial order, how could Cicero suddenly change in 55 and 54 and deliver speeches
in support of Caesar and in defense of Vatinius, a man he loathed and had previ-
ously savaged in the trial of Sestius in 56? Cicero reminds Lentulus and other
readers of what had happened to him since his consulate and of how badly he
felt treated by the optimates at the time of his exile in 58, stressing (with some
exaggeration) his long-​term support for, and from, Pompey: why should Cicero
stick his neck out for fair-​weather friends against the man who actually helped
him? He also points out the risks such action would entail: he describes his vigor-
ous senatorial speeches of early 56 and opposition to the triumvirs, and then the
aftermath—​the conference at Lucca, which led to Pompey’s telling Cicero in no

1. On the letter to Lentulus, see above all McConnell 2014: 35–​44; also Büchner 1969 and
Schneider 1998: 238–​318. For background on Cicero’s place within the Roman politics of the
period, see, for instance, Rawson 1975: 122–​45, Mitchell 1991: 144–​203.

The Lost Republic. James E. G. Zetzel, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/9780197626092.003.0001
2

2 In t roduct ion

uncertain terms not to oppose Caesar, and reminding Cicero of his obligations to
Pompey and thus indirectly to Caesar too; that Cicero’s brother Quintus was in
Gaul as Caesar’s legate, and thus under Caesar’s surveillance, had some effect as
well. Cicero, in practical terms, had little choice but to toe the line.
Cicero’s account of his recent life and political career in the letter matches
fairly closely what he writes elsewhere: the redescription of his unceremonious
departure from Rome in 58 as a deliberate choice to protect his fellow citizens
from the need to defend him and to avert the violence of Clodius and friends;
his sense of betrayal; his disgust with the state of politics and the lack of principle
of his so-​called friends; his desire for cum dignitate otium (Fam. 1.9.21), a phrase
found also in Pro Sestio of early 56 (98) and the preface to De oratore (1.1).2 The
correspondence of these years, particularly the more candid correspondence with
Atticus, shows repeated expressions of unhappiness with the political world of
Rome and Cicero’s sense of his own lack of influence. Although immediately after
his return from exile in 57 he had been optimistic about resuming what he felt to
be his rightful leading position in public life and had spoken boldly about public
affairs—​and against Caesar—​in the first months of 56, by the middle of the year
he had been compelled by Pompey and Caesar to utter what he described as a
“palinode” (probably the speech De provinciis consularibus, supporting Caesar’s
continuing command in Gaul). Valeant recta, vera, honesta consilia, he wrote in
June of 56 (Att. 4.5), and in describing the comparable humiliation inflicted on
Domitius Ahenobarbus (denied the consulate of 55), he wrote in November (Att.
4.8a.2) that the only entity in a worse state than Domitius was the res publica
itself, “in which we can’t even hope for anything better.” A letter he wrote on or
about April 19 of 55 bce vividly expresses Cicero’s dilemma:3 after referring to the
death of L. Cornelius Lentulus Niger, who had earlier been a candidate for the
consulate of 58,4 Cicero notes that his grief at Lentulus’ death was tempered by
the fact that he had died at the right time: “he so loved his country that his being
snatched out of its conflagration seems to me a gift of the gods” (4.6.1). In con-
trast to Lentulus’ good fortune in meeting a timely end, Cicero describes his own
unhappy condition: “If I say what I ought to about the commonwealth people

2. The exact meaning of cum dignitate otium has been much discussed; for a good summary of
the problems, focusing on Pro Sestio, see Kaster 2006: 31–​37 with a lengthy bibliography at 31
n. 70. On the preface to De oratore, see below, Chapter 2.
3. Att. 4.6 (SB 83). Note that in the heading of the Latin text at Shackleton Bailey 1965–​70: 2.94
the date is given as March rather than April; the English translation has it correctly. On the
chronology of the letters in this period, see Shackleton Bailey 1965–​70: 2.233–​35.
4. On this Lentulus, see Shackleton Bailey on Att 2.24.2; his defeat in the elections of 59 is
recorded in Vat. 25.
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Introduction 3

will think I’m crazy; if what I have to, a slave; if I keep silent, a defeated pris-
oner: imagine my painful condition” (4.6.2).5 The gloomy representation here of
Cicero’s situation and state of mind is not unusual, but this sentence shows very
clearly just what Cicero thought his contribution to the res publica had been and
ought to be: speech. But in the circumstances of 55, he felt that nothing that he
could say in public about public affairs could possibly satisfy either himself or
others. There was no good choice.
During the course of the subsequent months, however, Cicero found other
ways to speak, and the letter to Lentulus shows how. Together with the practi-
cal and political (and face-​saving) arguments for going along with Pompey and
Caesar, Cicero, as Sean McConnell has shown, employs in the letter to Lentulus
three texts of Plato to justify his position. The Laws is used to argue that the
decline in the behavior of the Roman people is intimately related to the decline in
the morality of leadership in the years after Cicero’s own consulate (Fam. 1.9.12).6
The Seventh and Fifth Letters are cited together (1.9.18), the first to show that one
should treat one’s country as a parent, in other words not bring force against it,
and the second to show that there was more reason for him to remain in politics,
given the good that still existed in Rome, than for Plato in an Athens described
as old, weak, and sick.7 Cicero concludes his political analysis by saying that if
Lentulus were there to advise him, he would still behave the same way: it is better
to contribute what he must and can than to abandon the res publica.
The letter to Lentulus offers both practical and philosophical responses to crit-
icisms of Cicero’s political position. What may be most important about it, how-
ever, is that the letter itself, as McConnell shows, is clearly based on the Platonic
letters Cicero cites. It is thus not only a discussion of politics but is itself a literary
form of political action, using allusion to Plato in order to structure as well as to
clarify his own position. Although Cicero uses Plato in his argument, however, he
does not identify with him. Cicero is not Plato; Roman circumstances are not the
same as those Plato faced in Athens; and as a result, Cicero’s decision to remain
active in public life, even in ways that Lentulus and others might criticize, goes
directly against the decision Plato described in the Fifth Letter. It is important to
recognize too that much as Cicero admires Plato as a writer, it is his life, not his
philosophy, that serves as a template to be accepted or modified. As will become

5. On this letter, see also Fantham 2004: 12–​13.

6. Cicero names Plato, but his wording is very close to a passage of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: on
the problem, see McConnell 2014: 36n.
7. These are (so McConnell 2014: 36–​40) the first extant allusions to the Platonic letters;
Cicero cites them elsewhere as well and is particularly fond of Letter 9.
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4 In t roduct ion

clear in subsequent chapters, Cicero’s admiration for Plato’s style and imagination
did not for the most part extend to Plato’s philosophy.
The letter to Lentulus does not end when Cicero has finished making his anti-​
Platonic case for his political choices; instead, he turns to more particular matters
of politics or business, constantly assuring Lentulus of his good will and respect.
The first and most important of these paragraphs deserves attention here: after
talking about his political position in Platonic terms, he responds to Lentulus’
apparent request for copies of whatever Cicero had been writing (1.9.23):

You ask me to send you what I’ve written since your departure. There are
several orations which I’ll give to Menocritus; don’t worry, there aren’t
very many. Since I’ve pretty much divorced myself from oratory and have
gone back to the gentler Muses (ad mansuetiores Musas), who have given
me great pleasure, as they have since I was very young, I have also written in
the manner of Aristotle (at least that was my intention) three books of dia-
logue De oratore; I imagine they would be useful to your son. They depart
from standard kinds of instruction and instead embrace the whole sub-
ject of oratory as discussed by the ancients and by Aristotle and Isocrates.
I have also written three books in verse De temporibus meis; I would have
sent them to you before if I had thought they should be made public. They
are, and will be forever, witnesses of your good deeds to me and of my
gratitude. But because I was afraid, not of those who might think them-
selves wounded (even though I did so both rarely and gently), but of those
who treated me well but whom it would take forever to name. . . . But I will
have these books sent to you if I can find someone I can entrust them to.
That whole part of my way of life is all yours: whatever I can accomplish
in writing and study, our sources of pleasure from long ago, I will happily
offer to your judgment, a man who has always loved these things.

Cicero passes rapidly over the orations he has written, concentrating instead
on two recently composed works: one is the three-​book epic on his exile and
return, De temporibus suis, which was apparently completed but, as this letter
implies, never circulated; the other is the dialogue De oratore. What is notable
in this description is the frame within which he puts these two works. Cicero
has turned from oratory to something different, ad mansuetiores Musas. At the
end, in flattering Lentulus once more, he talks about quantum litteris, quantum
studiis . . . consequi poterimus. And in both sentences he notes that these literary
activities have always been important to him: sicut iam a prima adulescentia delec-
tarunt; istam . . . partem vitae consuetudinisque nostrae.
5

Introduction 5

In its context in the letter to Lentulus, this paragraph appears to move away
from the preceding political exposition: Cicero starts by turning to what seems
to be a different request from Lentulus (Quod rogas . . .) and becomes more per-
sonal, describing De oratore as suitable for Lentulus’ son to read as part of his rhe-
torical training. In fact, however, Cicero is still reflecting on his own place in the
contemporary scene—​and the paragraph does not altogether harmonize with his
earlier argument that, however unhappily, he should remain involved in public
life. Here, he indicates a turn away from politics toward the gentler arts; and just
as he emphasized the consistency of his public behavior in the main portion of
the letter, so here he emphasizes the consistency of his private, literary activities.
In describing his recent writings to Lentulus, Cicero begins from the most
obvious category, his orations, and as a joke remarks that Lentulus need not
worry, that there are not many of them. This may be self-​disparaging humor, but
we do not in fact know of that many speeches given by Cicero between the mid-
dle of 56 and his departure for Cilicia in the spring of 51; it appears that very few
of those speeches were circulated, and in fact very few of them survive. The con-
trast with the first part of 56 is striking: before Lucca, he delivered the extant Pro
Sestio (together with In Vatinium) and Pro Caelio, in addition to participating in
at least two other trials and taking an active part in the senate; in the second part
of the year, however, after the uncomfortable De provinciis consularibus, the only
significant speech was his defense of Pompey’s friend Cornelius Balbus.8 Only
one major speech from 55 is known, In Pisonem, delivered in September;9 in 54
Cicero was more active in the courts (perhaps ten forensic speeches, including
the extant Pro Scauro, Pro Plancio, and Pro Rabirio Postumo), but not happily so,
being forced to defend Vatinius and Gabinius. And after that, only one speech
(De aere alieno Milonis) is known from 53, only one important one (Pro Milone;
there are four other cases) from 52, and one from the early months of 51. Cicero’s
surviving correspondence is unfortunately also very sparse: thirty-​one letters
written in 54 survive, but only eight from 55, seventeen from 53, and two from 52
(contrast 51 letters from Cicero in both 51 and 50, and more than 90 in 49). We
are thus lacking our major evidence for his activities; even so, nothing we know

8. There are other speeches—​according to Marinone and Malaspina 2004, nine before Lucca
and six or seven after—​but only one other forensic speech in the second part of the year, his
sixth defense of Calpurnius Bestia. For the chronology of Cicero’s speeches and letters, I rely
on Marinone and Malaspina 2004.
9. The only other speech listed by Marinone and Malaspina 2004 is a speech in defense of
L. Caninius Gallus, although one or two undatable (and not extant) speeches may also
belong in 55.
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6 In t roduct ion

suggests that he spoke frequently in major cases in the courts or in the senate on
matters of major political importance.10
Even if he spoke less in public, however, Cicero did not keep silent. The two
other works mentioned in the letter to Lentulus at the end of 54, De oratore and
the epic De temporibus suis, reflect large-​scale literary activity beginning in 55
and possibly even earlier. The same letter to Atticus of April 55 in which Cicero
expressed his sense that there was no possibility of public speech that was both
ethical and effective offers the earliest clue to a new direction in his writing. At
the end of the letter, he first discusses a suggestion from Atticus and then refers to
one of his own recent compositions (Att. 4.6.3–​4):

As to your advice to write something concerning Hortensius, I’ve found

something else to do. I haven’t forgotten your instructions, but once
I began I shrank from it: I don’t want somehow to seem to have been
stupid in [not]11 putting up with my so-​called friend’s rudeness and then
being equally stupid in making his insult public if I write something. At
the same time, I don’t want my restraint to be less apparent in my writing
than it was in the event; that would make my response seem frivolous.
But we’ll see. You should write something to me as often as you can. You
should get from Lucceius the letter I wrote asking him to write about my
history; it’s very clever. You should urge him to hurry and thank him for
having written back to me that he would do it.

The reference in the second part of this note is to Cicero’s letter to Lucceius
(Fam. 5.12, probably written shortly before the letter to Atticus quoted here),
a well-​known and very clever attempt to get the historian to write a mono-
graph on Cicero’s dramatic career, from his defeat of Catiline through his exile
to his (in his own mind) triumphant return in 57; the request failed, despite
Lucceius’ promise to write what Cicero wanted.12 This was, in fact, the second
coming of Cicero’s desire for commemoration by himself and others: in the years

10. Like many of us, Cicero stresses how busy he is or is not as circumstances require, and his
references to his lack of otium must be taken with a grain of salt; so too his reference in 44 (Div.
2.3) to his having had major public responsibilities in the late 50s. Compared to his complete
lack of any influence under Caesar’s dictatorship, that is true; compared to his earlier genuine
importance, it is not. Such passages are often taken too literally. It also seems unlikely that he
really appeared in court nearly every day in 52 under the new rules of the lex Pompeia (Br. 324).
11. Shackleton Bailey 1965–​70 deletes non; I think the change is unnecessary but have left it in
brackets.
12. On the letter to Lucceius, see particularly Hall 1998.
7

Introduction 7

immediately after his consulate, he had written several versions of autobiogra-

phy, including the epic poem De consulatu suo, and had attempted without suc-
cess to have his victory over Catiline immortalized in Greek poetry by Archias,
whose claim to Roman citizenship he defended in 62, and in Greek prose by the
historian and philosopher Posidonius.13 In the mid-​50s he renewed the attempt
and expanded the scope of the desired narrative of his vicissitudes, both through
his request to Lucceius and through the epic De temporibus suis (a sequel to
De consulatu suo) that he mentioned to Lentulus.14 In both periods, Cicero was
unsuccessful in his requests to others, but his desire to have himself commemo-
rated was very real.
The reference to Hortensiana that precedes Cicero’s mention of the letter to
Lucceius in Att. 4.6 is less transparent. Atticus seems to have urged Cicero to write
something about (or to) Q. Hortensius Hortalus, with whom Cicero was then for
some reason not on good terms.15 In the letter, Cicero says that he made several
attempts to do so but then, he says, in alia incidi. We do not know for certain what
the alia were, but a few days later (Att. 4.10.1) Cicero tells Atticus that he is work-
ing in the library of Faustus Sulla, and the linked reference to Hortensius may
suggest that he was thinking of De oratore, in which Hortensius is praised in the
very last paragraph.16 By the middle of November 55, at any rate, Cicero included
a laconic statement near the end of a letter to Atticus (Att. 4.13.2): “I’ve worked
hard on the books about oratory, and they were in my hands for a long time. You
can copy them.” A year later, when Cicero wrote his long letter to Lentulus, not
only was De oratore in circulation, but Cicero had already begun another work,
the dialogue that was to become De re publica; his correspondence shows that he
had made considerable progress on it by the summer of 54.

13. On Cicero’s attempts at commemoration by himself and others in the 60s, see Steel
2005: 49–​63; on De consulatu suo, see Gildenhard 2011: 292–​98 and particularly Volk 2013; on
the (reconstructed) exchange with Posidonius, see Hall 1996: 112–​14.
14. Cicero seems to have completed the three-​book poem but seems not to have circulated
it: no-​one in antiquity other than Cicero himself ever refers to it. See Harrison 1990.
15. On Cicero’s relationship to Hortensius, see Dyck 2008; on this passage and the conclusion
to De oratore, see Dyck 2008: 163. Hortensius (consul 69) was the leading orator in Rome until
Cicero’s appearance; they were on different occasions opponents (as in the case of Verres in
70) and advocates on the same side (as in the trial of Murena in 63). The fullest account of his
oratory is in Cicero’s Brutus, which begins with a commemoration of Hortensius’ death and
concludes with a comparison of his and Cicero’s careers; see now van den Berg 2021.
16. So Taylor 1949: 219–​20; see also Shackleton Bailey 1965–​70: 2.193. Faustus Sulla’s library
included the library of Apellicon, which contained a major collection of Aristotelian-​
Peripatetic texts; on its history and its importance for the study of philosophy in Rome, see
Barnes 1997 and Tutrone 2013: 160–​66.
8

8 In t roduct ion

The letter to Lentulus itself, then, can be seen not just in the context of Cicero’s
political anxieties and self-​justifications in the period after Lucca: it is also part
of Cicero’s literary self-​transformation as a writer. As has been emphasized above,
the letter is a very artful composition: it cites not only Plato but Terence, and
it assumes that its readers will understand the relevance of the works cited to
Cicero’s own argument.17 And indeed it alludes not just to other authors, but to
Cicero’s own current projects—​not merely through the explicit mention of De
temporibus suis and De oratore, but also more obliquely: the reference to cum dig-
nitate otium might refer to Pro Sestio, but it is far more likely to be an allusion to
the opening sentences of De oratore; and when Cicero speaks of his return to the
literary aspirations of his youth, quae me maxime sicut iam a prima adulescentia
delectarunt, he echoes a phrase of the same preface (1.2), eas artis quibus a pueris
dediti fuimus. The letter to Lentulus is thus itself an effective example of Cicero’s
return to the mansuetiores Musae.
Several elements of the literary construction of the letter are relevant to the
dialogues that Cicero was writing in just the same years. One is clearly the use
of Plato as a model. Another is the letter’s self-​conscious literariness: Cicero
not only draws on earlier literature, he also draws the reader’s attention to it
and expects the reader’s active engagement with his use of quotations. A third
is a much broader feature, implicit in the letter but quite emphatic in the dia-
logues: the links and contrasts between Greek and Roman life, between Plato
and himself, between the philosophic life and the active life of a politician. These
three points entail a fourth: a preoccupation with the role of leisure and letters
in the intellectual formation and public behavior of a Roman senator. The letter
is both self-​contradictory and self-​reflexive: while the bulk of it stresses Cicero’s
engagement and preoccupation with the public world, the paragraph about the
mansuetiores Musae suggests that he is much less engaged with politics than with
writing. It is also clear that it is those Musae themselves who allow him to express
clearly (in the letter itself ) his views about the public world. Precisely the same
tension exists in the preface to De oratore: while the turbulence of the public
world has denied Cicero the opportunity for reflection, writing, and otium cum
dignitate, he is still able to write about the public world in which he is simultane-
ously a participant and an observer.
What Cicero says about De oratore in the letter to Lentulus is disingenu-
ous: he describes it as a new and improved version of rhetorical education based
on Aristotle and Isocrates, but says not a word about its elaborately constructed
historical setting and his emulation of Plato in constructing it, nor does he

17. See Goldberg 2005: 87–​89 on this passage.

9

Introduction 9

mention his complex account in the dialogue of the relationship between phi-
losophy, rhetoric, and oratory in both Greece and Rome. But in fact part of the
elaborate politeness of this letter—​and of Cicero’s letters in general—​involves
self-​deprecation of a kind that his readers would recognize as not altogether sin-
cere.18 He disparages his speeches; he says that he will not circulate De tempori-
bus suis; and he makes De oratore appear to be a work of rhetorical instruction
designed for students.
De oratore does have quite a lot to say about rhetoric, a subject that was central
to Roman education; to a certain extent the dialogue is also about its impor-
tance in Roman education. But Cicero’s next project was definitely outside the
standard syllabus. De re publica was probably begun early in 54, but it was not
circulated, and therefore presumably not completed to Cicero’s satisfaction, until
just before he left Rome to govern Cilicia in May of 51—​more than three years
later, far more time than Cicero devoted to anything else he ever wrote. A third
dialogue is frequently grouped with these two: the amount of time that elapsed
between the first mention of De re publica and its circulation has made it seem
likely to many scholars that Cicero was at the same time also working on De legi-
bus as a companion to De re publica. While that is certainly possible, there is no
positive evidence for it, as well as fairly strong evidence that if De legibus was ever
completed, it was certainly not made public before the summer of 44.19 De legi-
bus is often used to supplement the fragmentary De re publica, particularly for the
sections in the two works concerning natural law, but there is no indication that
they were conceived as a pair. De legibus is clearly the latest of the three Platonic
dialogues: there are links back from it to each of the others, but nothing in De
oratore or De re publica looks ahead to De legibus.20
Within De legibus, Cicero sets up a parallel between his Republic and Laws
and the corresponding pair of Platonic dialogues: the Laws in each case provides
a legal code for the society described in the Republic and while each Republic is
set in the past, the dialogues about law are in the present, with the author as the

18. On politeness in the letters, see Hall 2009.

19. Schmidt 1969 offers strong arguments to show that it is possible that all that survives of De
legibus was written in the 50s, but he offers no evidence that it was actually written then. His
arguments can easily be reversed: it is just as possible that the work was written after the civil
war. There is simply no hard evidence, except for the significant absence of any mention of De
legibus in the thorough catalogue of Cicero’s works (completed and in progress) in De divi-
natione Book 2, written in March/​April of 44. The problem needs thorough re-​examination.
20. The few references to laws in De re publica, particularly at 2.65, constitute the one possible
anticipation of De legibus; on this, see below, Chapter 12. On the relationship between De
legibus and the other two dialogues, see also Zetzel forthcoming.
10

10 In t roduct ion

principal character in his own dialogue.21 In Plato’s case, the Laws was in fact
written long after the Republic, but we cannot assume the same for Cicero’s dia-
logues; whenever De legibus was written, it was designed to look back to De re
publica as a written text which is cited by the participants in the dialogue in the
same way that Cicero’s later De divinatione looks back to De natura deorum as
a written text that had been read by the participants in the later dialogue. The
result is that while it is important to read De legibus against De re publica, the
reverse is not true. Cicero certainly may have begun to think about De legibus or
even to write parts of it in the late 50s along with De re publica, but we have no
way to know whether he actually did so, or that he was satisfied with what he may
have written; nor do we know for certain whether or not he ever returned to the
text after the civil war.
No matter what one thinks of De legibus, and no matter how useful compari-
son of De legibus and De re publica might be, the relationship between those two
dialogues is fundamentally different from the relationship between De oratore
and De re publica. These two dialogues, as will be argued below, are parallel as
well as sequential works, and they are also programmatic statements: both indi-
vidually and as a pair, they are self-​conscious representations and examinations
of the intellectual and philosophical underpinnings of Roman public life. Each
one not only describes and defines the values inherent in an aspect of Roman
civic behavior, but also, through the use of the dialogue form and the choice of
setting, illustrates the performance of those values. And while each of them starts
from a Platonic model and premise, Cicero’s intention in De oratore in particular
is to demonstrate the independence of Roman practice from Greek theory and to
trace the history of Roman thought both internally—​exemplified by the devel-
opment of Roman law—​and through engagement with Greece. In so doing he
offers a vision of the history of Greek thought through a Roman lens: he defines
those areas of Roman intellectual life that owe something to the Greeks and those
which are indigenous. De re publica is similar in its understanding of the conduct
of civic and political life, although it is much harder at present to follow Cicero’s
argument: the text is very fragmentary, and only about one third of it survives. In
that respect, the parallels between De oratore and De re publica are of great value
for reconstructing the argument of the latter.
These are broad claims and deliberately so; I hope that the following chap-
ters will clarify and justify them. Much of what has been written about these

21. Whether or not the Athenian Stranger of Plato’s Laws is really to be identified with Plato
himself is not important: Cicero believed that he was, and he also apparently believed that
Plato’s Laws contained a code for the society shaped in the Republic. See, for instance, Atkins
2013: 3 and elsewhere.
1

Introduction 11

dialogues, and about De re publica in particular, seeks to find a narrow and imme-
diate purpose for them, in some cases self-​justification and in others advocacy of
a particular political position.22 But while it is clear that Cicero’s choice to write
works of this kind was conditioned by his immediate situation—​as he says in the
letter to Lentulus—​it is equally clear that his intentions in writing them go far
beyond momentary concerns: these texts are, and were meant to be, κτήματα ἐς
ἀεί, not works of ephemeral relevance.
In the same spirit, much has been written about De oratore and De re publica
on the assumption that Cicero was attempting the narrow goal of making accessi-
ble and useful in Rome ideas about rhetoric and government that he took whole-
sale from the Greeks; but the fact that Cicero knew Greek philosophical and
technical literature very well does not mean that he meant to reproduce it: much
that he says has precedents in Greek thought, but very little of it is simply deriva-
tive. In general, as will be argued below, Cicero writes as a Roman senator, not
a Greek professor, and he has no intention of constructing an argument about
either rhetorical or political theory that would satisfy a Hellenistic philosopher
or a modern academic. De oratore and De re publica are large and complex works
of imagination that use as their starting point questions about rhetoric, philos-
ophy, and government that had been addressed by Greek scholars, but Cicero
enlarges them well beyond the narrow confines of technical writing to offer bril-
liant portraits of the place of such intellectual matters in the lives and conversa-
tions of the Roman élite.23
De oratore and De re publica, in short, need to be read and understood in much
the same way as other contemporary literary works; they cannot be reduced to a
single argument or a simple summary and cannot be approached from one single
perspective. Their very literariness is central to their interpretation: Cicero delib-
erately shaped these dialogues not only as explorations of the values of Roman
public life, but as compelling fictions in which the organization, characterization,

22. Some recent scholarship on Cicero’s rhetorical works has emphasized the importance of
self-​fashioning, self-​advancement, and Cicero’s need to defend his style and approach to ora-
tory as well as his character, sexuality, and social position. The best such discussion is Dugan
2005: 75–​171, which provides some excellent interpretations, but the larger argument, like the
narrowly political readings of earlier scholarship, seems to me to ignore the civic and literary
goals which I emphasize here. See also Zetzel 2006.
23. My approach to these dialogues is perhaps closest to that of Fox 2007, who rightly empha-
sizes their non-​dogmatic nature and the complexity of the interaction between philosophi-
cal and historical approaches, and of Gildenhard 2013a and 2013b, who explores the complex
relationships between Cicero and Plato and between history and fiction in the dialogues. Both
treatments are broader and more theoretical than mine, and while we share similar concerns,
our arguments are generally very different.
12

12 In t roduct ion

and style all contribute to and reflect the argument itself. Both dialogues have
multiple voices speaking from different perspectives, and the differences among
these voices are not always resolved—​except that they start from the shared
assumption (which many modern critics have not shared) that textbook learning
and Greek intellectualism are of limited value in late republican Rome.
My interest, then, is in interpreting these dialogues in their own time, as
masterpieces of Cicero’s literary art, an approach that entails certain limits.
On the one hand, these dialogues have sometimes been used as vehicles for the
understanding or improvement of modern public life. That is often interesting
but rarely fruitful, and I cite scholarship of that kind here only when I think it
offers something of value for understanding Cicero himself; my intention is to
try to understand him in his own context, not in terms of the value his works
may still have in a very different world. Here, I am starting from the assumption
that their primary importance is as works of imaginative literature. On the other
hand, just as I do not think it particularly useful to read Cicero in a rearview mir-
ror, so too I believe that while questions about sources (which have historically
dominated discussion of Cicero’s theoretical writings) are important for schol-
ars interested in recovering those sources, they are largely unimportant for the
interpretation of Cicero himself. It does not matter any more in assessing what
Cicero has written if what he says about Plato or Aristotle is based on a lost trea-
tise of Philo of Larisa on rhetoric or on a lost Peripatetic work on constitutional
theory than does a modern scholar’s use of his or her predecessors: even if—​and
I do not believe he did so more than very rarely—​Cicero is in fact translating
from a lost Greek source (the assumption of much Quellenforschung), he made
a conscious, informed, and deliberate choice of what to excerpt, and any such
borrowing is therefore part of his own philosophy as well as that of any putative
source. Cicero’s relationship to his Greek sources and models (and he certainly
had them) is not one of dependence but one of intertextuality: he feels free to
adapt, distort, echo, or combine the books that he read, and in that fashion he
offers interpretations of those books that contribute to his own argument. Cicero
was a writer of astonishing brilliance and originality and deserves to be read with
the attention more often given to poetry: he knew what he wanted to say and he
knew how to say it, and I assume throughout that in every aspect of these texts he
meant what he wrote.
The two works discussed here are closely related, but they pose very different
problems of interpretation. The first part of this book deals with De oratore on
its own, both because it is the earlier work and because it is complete, beginning
with a discussion of the form of Ciceronian dialogue and Cicero’s choice of set-
ting and characters, then examining the major elements of the argument: Cicero’s
theory of rhetoric; the relationship between oratory and philosophy; and the
13

Introduction 13

complex relationships between Greek theory and Roman practice and between
law and philosophy. The second part focuses on De re publica, and because of its
fragmentary condition I have paid much more attention to reconstructing what
Cicero in fact said; in this, the relationship between De oratore and De re publica
is a useful guide to the interpretation of the latter’s structure and argument. My
goal is to locate these works in three different contexts, all of which were of some
importance in the years before the civil war in Rome, and all of which I believe
Cicero had in mind when writing: the place of Greek philosophy in Roman life;
the literary developments of the late Republic; and the loss of that Republic itself.
14
15

PART I

Orator
16
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
work are numberless, so that a man’s life is not long enough to relate
them all. I shall be able to tell you only the events of a single night.
“One fearful night of tempest, in which neither cock will crow nor dog
bark, Mohammed shall be aroused from sleep by Gabriel, who shall
appear to him in the shape he has when he appears before God,
with seven hundred wings streaming with light; between each a
space such as a fleet-footed horse could scarce traverse in five
hundred years. Gabriel will lead the prophet forth into the open air,
where the wondrous horse Borak will be ready. That is the horse on
which Abraham mounted when he made his pilgrimages from Syria
to Mecca. This horse has two wings as an eagle, and feet like a
dromedary, and a body like a costly gem, shining like the sun, and a
head like the fairest maiden. On this wondrous beast, whose brow
bears the inscription, ‘There is no God save God, and Mohammed is
his prophet,’ he will mount and ride, first to Medina, then to Sinai,
thence to Bethlehem, and finally to Jerusalem, to view the holy
places, and at them to offer up his prayers. From Jerusalem he will
ascend on a golden ladder, with rungs of rubies, emeralds, and
jacinths, into the seventh heaven, where he will be instructed in all
the mysteries of the creation, and the governance of the world. He
will see the blessed in all their joy, in Paradise, and the sinners, in all
their pain, in Hell. There will he see many pasturing wild cattle in
unfruitful fields. These are they who in the time of life used the gifts
of God without giving to those in need. Others will he see running
about, and carrying in one hand fresh, and in the other putrid, meat,
and as often as they attempt to taste the former, a fiery rod will smite
them on the hand, till they devour the latter. This is the punishment
of those who have violated marriage, and have preferred forbidden
pleasures. Others have a swollen body, swelling daily more and
more; these are the fraudulent and avaricious. Others have their
tongues and lips fastened together with iron clamps; these are the
slanderers and backbiters. Between Paradise and Hell sits Adam,
laughing with joy when the gate of Heaven opens to receive one of
his sons, and he hears the songs and shouts of the blessed;
weeping with self-reproach when the gate of Hell uncloses to take in
one of his descendants, and he hears the sobbing of the damned.
On this night will Mohammed also see, besides Gabriel, the other
angels, who have each seventy thousand heads, and in each head
seventy thousand faces, and in each face seventy thousand mouths,
and in each mouth seventy thousand tongues, wherewith they cease
not day or night to praise God in seventy thousand diverse
languages. He will also see the angel of atonement, who is half fire,
half ice; also the angel who watches the treasure of fire with gloomy
countenance and flashing eyes; also the angel of death, with a great
writing-table in his hand, whereon are inscribed many names, and
from which at every instant he wipes off several hundreds; finally, the
angel who guards the waters, and weighs in great scales the water
allotted to each spring and well, and brook and river; and the angel
who bears up the throne of God on his shoulders, and has a horn in
his mouth, wherewith he will blow the blast that is to wake the dead.
Moreover, the prophet will be conducted through many seas of light
near to the throne itself, which is so great that the whole world will be
beside it as a link in a coat of mail dropped in the desert. What will
be further revealed to him,” answered Samuel, “is unknown to me;
this only I know, that, after having contemplated the Majesty of God
a bowshot off, he will descend the ladder precipitately, and, mounting
Borak, will return to Mecca. Now the whole of this journey, his
sojourn in Medina, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and the seventh heaven,
will occupy so little time, that a water-pitcher which he upset as he
left the house in Mecca will not have run all its water out by his
return.”
The assembled Israelites listened to Samuel, and when he was
silent, they cried with one voice, “We believe in God and in all the
past prophets, and in all those who are yet for to come. Pray for us
that we may escape the tyranny of Gjalout (Goliath).”
Thus Saul was chosen king of Israel, and Samuel was prophet to the
people of God.[605]
XXXVI.
SAUL.
 1. WAR WITH THE PHILISTINES.—GOLIATH
SLAIN.

Samuel ordered Thalout (Saul) to make war upon Gjalout (Goliath),

and to assemble the fighting men of the tribes of Israel. Saul
summoned all the men, and they numbered eighty thousand.
Samuel gave Saul a suit of mail, and said to him, “He who can wear
this coat with ease will decide the war, and Goliath will perish by his
hand.”
Saul started with his army; his way led through a desert, a day’s
journey across; and it was very hot weather. On the other side of the
desert was a broad river, between Jordan and Palestine, and the
children of Israel had to pass this river to reach the army of Goliath.
Saul thought that now he would prove his soldiers, for Samuel had
bidden him take into battle only as many men as he could rely upon.
The men were faint with heat and thirst as they reached the river of
Palestine, and Saul said, “He who drinks of this water shall not come
with me, but he who drinks not thereof shall follow after me.”[606] For
he would not have them slake their thirst till they reached Jordan.[607]
But, according to another version of the story, the men were fainting
in the wilderness, and murmured against Saul. Then Samuel prayed,
and God brought a water-spring out of the dry, stony ground, and
made standing water in the desert, fresh as snow, sweet as honey,
and white as milk.[608]
Samuel spake to the soldiers, and said, “Ye have sinned against
your king and against God, by murmuring. Therefore refuse to drink
of this water except in the hollow of your hand, and so expiate your
fault.”[609]
Samuel’s words were disregarded. Only three hundred and thirteen
men were found who had sufficient control over themselves not to
drink except slightly out of the hollow of their hand; but these felt
their thirst quenched, whereas those who had lain down and lapped
were still parched with thirst.
Saul and his army came before that of Goliath; then said the majority
of those who had lain down and lapped, “We have no strength to-day
to stand against the Philistines.” So Saul dismissed them to their
homes, to the number of seventy-six thousand men; he had still with
him four thousand men. Next day, when they saw the array of the
Philistines, and the gigantic stature of their king, and their harness
flashing in the sun, the hearts of more of the warriors failed, and they
would not follow Saul into battle, but said, “We have no strength to-
day to stand against the Philistines!”
So Saul dismissed three thousand six hundred men, and there
remained to him only three hundred and thirteen, the same number
as those who on the day of Bedr remained with the prophet
Mohammed.
Then said Saul, “God is favourable to us!” and he advanced, and set
his army in array against Goliath. And he prayed, saying, “Grant us,
O Lord, perseverance.”[610]
However, God sent an order by Samuel, saying, “Go not into battle
this day, for the man who is to slay Goliath is not here; he is Daud
(David), son of Jesse, son of Obed, son of Boaz; he is a little man,
with grey eyes, and little hair, timid of heart, and slender of body. By
this shalt thou know him: when thou placest the horn upon his head,
the oil will overflow and boil.”
Then Samuel went to Jesse, and said to him, “Amongst thy sons
there is one who will slay Goliath.”
Jesse said, “I have eleven sons, men stalwart and comely.”
Samuel placed the horn on their heads, but the oil was not to be
seen.
Then God gave him a vision, and he said to him, “Look not at the
beauty and strength of these men, but on the purity of their hearts
and their fear of God.”
Samuel said to Jesse, “God says thou art a liar, and He says thou
hast another son besides these.”
Jesse answered, “It is true; but he is diminutive in stature, and I am
ashamed to bring him into the company of men; I make him tend
sheep; he is somewhere with the flock to-day.”
Samuel went to the place, and it was a valley into which a torrent fell.
He saw David drawing the sheep out of the torrent by twos. Samuel
said, “Certainly this is the man I seek.” He placed the horn on his
head, and the oil overflowed.
Now Goliath, seeing the small number of the children of Israel,
despised them, and scorned to fight them. He sent a messenger to
Saul, saying, “Thou hast come out to fight against me with this
handful, and I disdain to attack thee with my large army. If thou wilt,
come forth that we may fight each other, or send any one out of the
army, whom thou wilt, to fight with me.”
None in Saul’s army would venture against the giant, and Saul was
himself afraid. He produced the shirt of mail Samuel had given him,
and he tried it upon each of his soldiers in turn; but it was too short
for one, too long for another, too tight for a third, and too loose for a
fourth.
Now the father of David had come with his eleven sons into the host;
but he had left David, because he was young and small of stature, to
keep the sheep; and he had bidden him, from time to time, bring him
supplies of food. David came with the provisions. He was dressed in
a woollen shirt, and he bore in his hand a staff, and a pouch
attached to his waist.
As he passed over a pebbly strip of soil, a stone cried to him, “Pick
me up, and take me with thee.” He stooped and picked up the stone,
and placed it in his pouch. And when he had taken a few paces,
another stone cried to him, “Pick me up, and take me with thee.” He
did so. And a third stone cried in like manner, and was in like manner
taken by David. The first stone was that wherewith Abraham had
driven away Satan, when he sought to dissuade the patriarch from
offering up his son; and the second stone was that on which the foot
of Gabriel rested when he opened the fountain in the desert for
Hagar and Ishmael; and the third stone was that wherewith Jacob
strove against the angel whom his brother Esau had sent against
him.[611] But, according to another account, the first was the stone
which Moses cast against the enemies of God, the second was that
cast by Aaron, the third was destined to cause the death of Goliath.
[612]
When David came into the army, Saul had finished trying on the
suit of mail upon the soldiers, and he said, “It fits none of them.”
Then he spied David, and he said, “Young man, let me place this
shirt of mail on thee.” Then he cast it over him, and it fitted him
exactly.
Saul said, “Wilt thou fight Goliath?”
David answered, “I will do so.”
Saul said, “With what horse and arms wilt thou go?”
David answered, “I will have no horse and no arms, save these
stones of the brook.”
David was feeble in body, he had grey eyes, was short, yellow-
complexioned, thin-faced, and had red hair.[613]
Saul had little hope that David would overcome the giant, but he
thought his example might shame and stimulate others, therefore he
let him go.
Now when Goliath came forth and defied the army of Israel, David
went to meet him, wearing only his linen shirt, and belt, and pouch,
and he had his shepherd’s staff in his hand.
Then cried Goliath, “Who art thou, that comest out to meet me?”
Then David replied, “I am come out to fight with thee.”
Goliath said, “Go back, petty fool, and play with children of thine own
age. I despise thee; thou art unarmed.”
“And I despise thee, dog of a Philistine!” cried the stripling; “thou
deservest to be dealt with as men deal with dogs,—pelting them with
stones till they turn tail.”
Then Goliath was in a rage, and he lifted his spear against David;
but David hasted and loosed his belt, and laid in it one of the stones,
and slung it; and the wind caught the helmet of Goliath, and lifted it
in the air above his head, and the stone struck him on the brow, and
sank in, and crushed all his skull, and strewed his brains all over the
horse he rode; then the giant fell out of his saddle, and died.
Then again David placed the second stone in his sling, and he cast
it, and it smote the right wing of the army of the Philistines; then he
cast the third stone, and it smote the left wing, and the host of the
Philistines fled before him.[614]
 2. SAUL’S JEALOUSY OF DAVID.

Saul had promised his daughter to the man who should slay Goliath.
When the Philistines had been routed, Saul told Samuel all that had
taken place; and the prophet exhorted the king to fulfil his promise,
and to give to David his daughter in marriage.
To this Saul agreed, and he gave David his ring, and made him
manager of all his affairs, and he exalted him to be his son-in-law.
Several years passed, and Saul became envious of David, whose
praise was in everybody’s mouth.
He sent David into the wars, in hopes of his there meeting his death;
but it was all in vain. Then he spoke to his daughter Michal, that she
should introduce him into her husband’s chamber at night, that he
might slay David with his own hand.
Michal told David her father’s resolution, with many tears; but David
bade her be comforted. “For,” said he, “the God of my fathers, who
preserved Abraham and Moses from the hands of the executioner,
will deliver me from thy father. But do as he bade thee, open the
door at night, and fear not for me.”
Then David went into his smithy and wrought a suit of chain mail. He
was the inventor of chain-armour. And he had received from God the
power of moulding iron, like wax, in his fingers, without fire and
without hammer.
Now he fashioned for himself a whole suit of chain mail; it was so
thin that it was like gossamer, and it fitted to his body like his skin,
and it was impenetrable to the thrust of every weapon.
David put upon him his armour, and lay down in his bed. He slept,
but was awakened at midnight by the knife of Saul stabbing at him
as he lay. He sprang up, struck the weapon from the hands of his
father-in-law, and thrust him forth out of the house.[615]
After this, Saul came to Michal and said, “He was not asleep, or I
certainly would have slain him. Admit me again into his chamber at
night.”
Michal went to David and told him all, with many tears.
Then said David, “I must escape from my house, for my life is not in
security here. But do thou fill a leather bottle with wine, and lay it in
my bed.”
Michal did so; she took a large skin of wine and placed it in the bed,
and drew the cover over it. But David fled away to Hebron.
And in the night came Saul, and he felt the clothes, and he thought it
was David in the bed, so he stabbed at him with his knife, and the
wine ran out in the bed. Then Saul smelt it, and he said, “How much
wine the fellow drank for his supper!”[616]
But when he found that David had escaped him once more, he was
wroth, and he gathered men together, and pursued after him; in his
anger, moreover, he sought to kill Michal, but she fled away and
concealed herself.
Saul pursued David in the mountains, but David knew all the caves
and lurking-places, and Saul was unable to catch him. One night,
David crept into the camp and thrust four arrows, inscribed with his
name, into the ground, round the head of Saul. When Saul awoke,
he saw these arrows, and he said, “David has been here; he might
have slain me had he willed it.”
During the day, Saul came upon his enemy in a narrow valley; he
was mounted, and he pursued David, who was on foot. David fled as
fast as he could run, and managed to reach a cave a few moments
before Saul could reach it. Then God sent a spider, which spun a
web over the mouth of the cave; and Saul saw it and passed on,
saying, “Certainly David cannot have entered in there, or the web
would be torn.”[617]
One night, Saul and his soldiers lodged in a cavern. And David was
there, but they knew it not. In the night David carried off the sword
and banner and seal-ring of the king, and he went forth out of the
cave, for it had two openings. In the morning, when Saul prepared to
continue his search, he saw him on a mountain opposite the mouth
of the cave, and David had girded the royal sword to his side, and
brandished the flag, and held forth his finger that all might note that
he had on it the king’s signet.[618]
Then Saul said, “His heart is better than mine;” and he was
reconciled with David, and he bade him return with him and live at
peace. And he did so.
 3. THE DEATH OF SAUL.

Now when Saul had gone forth against David, the wise men of Israel
had gathered themselves together, and had remonstrated with him.
But Saul was wroth at this interference, and he slew them all, and
there escaped none of them save one wise woman, whom his vizir
spared. This vizir was a good man, and he took the woman into his
own house, and she lived with his family.
Some time after that, Saul had a dream, and in his dream he was
reproached for having slain the wise men. And when he awoke he
was full of remorse, and he went to his vizir and said, “It repents me
that I have put to death all the wise men of my realm; is there none
remaining of whom I might ask counsel how I could expiate my
crime?”
Then the vizir answered, “There remains but one, and that is a
woman.”
Saul said, “Bring her hither before me.”
Now, when the wise woman was come before Saul, the king was
troubled in mind, and he said, “Show me how I can make atonement
for the great sin that I have committed.”
The woman answered, “Lead me to the tomb of a prophet; I will pray,
and may be God will suffer him to speak.”
They went to the tomb of Samuel, and the woman prayed.
Then Samuel spake out of his sepulchre, and said, “Let his expiation
be this: He shall go down, he and his sons, to the city of Giants, and
they shall fall there.”
Saul had twelve sons. He called them to him and said to them all the
words of Samuel. They then answered, “We are ready, let us go
down.”
So they went to the city of Giants, and fought against it, and fell
there, all in one day.[619]
 XXXVII.
DAVID.

David says of himself, “Behold, I was shaken in wickedness; and in

sin did my mother conceive me.”[620] The Rabbis explain this passage
by narrating the circumstances of the conception of David, which I
shall give in Latin. The mother of David they say was named
Nitzeneth. “Dixerunt Rabbini nostri beatæ memoriæ, quod Isai
(Jesse) habebat ancillam, eamque sollicitabat ad turpia; quæ, cum
esset pudica et fidelis uxori Isai, eidem retulit; quæ seipsam aptavit
(loco ancillæ) et congressa est cum Isai, ex quo concubitu egressus
est David. Et quia Isai intentio fuerat in ancillam, quamquam res
aliter evenerat, idcirco dixit David,—super eum sit pax: Ecce in
iniquitate formatus sum, et peccato calefecit me mater mea.”[621]
On this account, Jesse, having discovered the deception, lightly
esteemed his son David, and sent him to keep sheep, and made him
as a servant to his brethren. And to this David refers when he says,
“The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the
corner;”[622] for, from being the despised brother, put to menial work,
he was exalted before his brethren to be king over Israel.
When David was born he would have died immediately, had not
Adam, when he saw his posterity marshalled before him, taken
compassion on David, and given him seventy years.[623]
However, David was without a soul for the first fourteen years of his
life, and was so regarded by God, as he was uncircumcised;[624] but
other Rabbinic writers say that he was born circumcised.
The Jewish authors relate, as do the Mussulman historians, that
David had red hair. In Jalkut (1 Sam. xvi. 12) it is said, “Samuel sent,
and made David come before him, and he had red hair;”[625] and
again in Bereschith Rabba, “When Samuel saw that David had red
hair, he feared and said, He will shed blood as did Esau. But the
ever-blessed God said, This man will shed it with unimpassioned
eyes—this did not Esau. Esau slew out of his own caprice, but this
man will execute those sentenced to death by the Sanhedrim.”
David was very small, but when Samuel poured the oil upon his
head and anointed him, he grew rapidly, and was soon as tall as was
Saul. And this the commentators conclude from the fact of Saul
having put his armour upon David, and it fitted him. Now Saul was a
head and shoulders taller than any man in Israel; therefore David
must have started to equal height since his anointing.[626]
David was gifted with the evil eye, and was able to give the leprosy
by turning a malignant glance upon any man. “When it is written,
‘The Philistine cursed David by his gods,’[627] David looked at him
with the evil eye. For whoever was looked upon by him with the evil
eye became leprous, as Joab knew to his cost, for after David had
cast the evil glance on him, it is said, ‘Let there not fail from the
house of Joab one that hath an issue, or that is a leper.’[628]
“The same befell the Philistine when he cursed David. David then
threw on him the malignant glance, and fixed it on his brow, that he
might at once become leprous; and at the same moment the stone
and the leprosy struck him.”[629]
But David was himself afflicted for six months with this loathsome
malady, and it is in reference to this that he says, “Thou shalt purge
me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Thou shalt wash me, and I
shall be whiter than snow.” During this period, he was cast out and
separated from the elders of the people, and the Divinity withdrew
from him.[630] And this explains the discrepancy apparent in the
account of the number of years he reigned. It is said that he reigned
over Israel forty years,[631] but he reigned seven years in Hebron, and
thirty and three in Jerusalem. In the Second Book of Samuel,
however, it is said, he reigned in Hebron seven years and six
months;[632] though the statement that he reigned only forty years in
all, that is, thirty-three in Jerusalem, is repeated. Consequently,
these six months do not count, the reason being that David was at
that time afflicted with the disorder, and cut off from society, and
reputed as one dead.[633]
The Rabbis suppose that David sinned in cutting off the skirt of
Saul’s robe;[634] and they say that he expiated this fault in his old age,
by finding no warmth in his clothes, wherewith he wrapped himself.
[635]
For it is said, “King David was old and stricken in years; and they
covered him with clothes, but he got no heat.”[636]
To David is attributed by the Rabbi Solomon the power of calling
down the rain, the hail, and the tempest, in vengeance upon his
enemies. “Our Rabbis,” says he, “say that these things were formerly
stored in heaven, but David came and made them to descend on the
earth: for they are means of vengeance, and it is not fitting that they
should be garnered in the Treasury of God.”[637] But the rain and hail
fell at the Deluge, in Egypt, and on the Amorites; therefore the
signification to be attributed to this opinion of the Rabbis probably is,
that David was the first to be able to call them down by his prayer.
David had a lute which he hung up above his head in the bed, and
the openings of the lute were turned towards the north, and when the
cool night air whispered in the room towards dawn it stirred the
strings of the lute, which gave forth such sweet and resonant notes,
that David was aroused from his sleep early, before daybreak, that
he might occupy himself in the study of the Law. And it is to this that
he refers when he cries in his Psalm, “Awake, lute and harp: I myself
will awake right early.”[638]
When Absalom was slain, David saw Scheol (Hell) opened, and his
son tormented, for his rebellion, in the lowest depths. The sight was
so distressing to the king, that he wrapped his mantle about his face
and cried, “O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God
I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” Here it is to be
noted that David called Absalom either by name or by his
relationship seven times. Now in Hell there are seven mansions, and
as each cry escaped the father’s heart, Absalom was released from
one of these divisions of the Pit; and he thus effected his escape
from Gehenna through the love of his father, which drew him up out
of misery.[639]
David was very desirous to build a temple to the Lord, but God would
not suffer him to do so, as he was a man of blood. This is the reason
why he so desired to erect a temple. When he was young, and
pastured his father’s sheep, he came one day upon a rhinoceros
(unicorn) asleep, and he did not know that it was a rhinoceros, but
thought it was a mountain, so he drove his flock up its back, and fed
them on the grass which grew thereon. But presently the rhinoceros
awoke, and stood up, and then David’s head touched the sky. He
was filled with terror, and he vowed that if God would save his life
and bring him safely to the ground again, he would build to the Lord
a temple of the dimensions of the horn of the beast, an hundred
cubits. The Talmudists are not agreed as to whether this was the
height, or the breadth, of the horn; however, the vow was heard, and
the Lord sent a lion against the rhinoceros; and when the unicorn
saw the lion, he lay down, and David descended his back, along with
his sheep, as fast as possible; but when he saw the lion, his spirit
failed him again. However he took the lion by the beard, and smote,
and slew him. This adventure the Psalmist recalls when he says,
“Save me from the lion’s mouth: Thou hast heard me also from
among the horns of the unicorns;”[640] and to his vow he alludes in
Psalm cxxxii., “Lord, remember David, and all his trouble: how he
sware unto the Lord, and vowed a vow unto the Almighty God of
Jacob.”[641]
One day David was hunting in the wilderness. Then came Satan, in
the form of a stag, and David shot an arrow at him, but could not kill
him. This astonished him, for on one occasion, in strife with the
Philistines, he had transfixed eight hundred men with one arrow.[642]
Then he chased the deer, and it ran before him into the Philistine
land. Now when Ishbi-benob, who was of the sons of the giant, knew
this, he said, “David has slain my brother Goliath; now he is in my
power!” and he came upon him and chained him, and cast him
down, and laid a winepress upon him, that he might crush him, and
squeeze all the blood out of him. But God softened the earth
beneath him, so that it yielded to his body, and he was uninjured; as
he says in the Psalms, “Thou shalt make room enough under me for
to go.”[643] And as David lay under the press, he saw a dove fly by,
and he said, “Oh that I had wings as a dove, that I might flee away,
and be at rest;”[644] and he alludes to his being among the pots, and
noting the wings of the dove as silver, in another Psalm.[645]
Now Abishai, the son of Zeruiah, heard the plaining of the dove,
which had seen the trouble of the king, and came into Jerusalem in
grief thereat. Then Abishai went to the chamber of David to search
for him, but he was not there. Then he knew that the king must be in
danger, and the only means of reaching him with speed was to
mount the royal mule, which was fleet as the wind; but this Abishai
did not venture to do without advice, for he remembered the words of
the Mischna, “Thou shalt not ride the king’s horse, nor mount his
throne, nor grasp his sceptre.” But as the danger was pressing,
Abishai went to the school, and consulted the doctors of the Law,
who said, “In an emergency all things are lawful.” Then he mounted
the mule of King David, and rode into the desert, and the earth flew
under him, and he reached the house of Ishbi-benob. Now the
mother of Ishbi-benob—her name was Orpha—sat without the door,
spinning. And when she saw Abishai galloping up, she brake her
thread and flung the spindle at him, with intent to strike him dead.
But the spindle fell short of him. So Orpha cried to him, “Give me my
spindle, boy.” Abishai stooped and picked it up, and cast it at her
with all his force, and it struck her on the brow, and broke her skull,
and she fell back and died.
Then, when Ishbi-benob saw what was done, he said, “These two
men will be too much for me!” so he drew David from under the
winepress, and flung him high into the air, and set his lance in the
ground, that David might fall upon it, and be transfixed. But Abishai
cried the Sacred Name, and David was arrested in his fall, and hung
between heaven and earth, and gradually was let down, not on the
spear, but at a distance. Then Abishai and David slew Ishbi-benob.
[646]

When David’s life was run out, the Angel of Death came to fetch his
soul. But David spent all his time in reading the Law. The angel
stood before him, and watched that his lips should cease moving, for
he might not interrupt him in this sacred work. But David made no
pause. Then the angel went into the garden which was behind the
house, and shook violently one of the trees. David heard the noise,
and turned his head, and saw that the branches of one of his trees
were violently agitated, but no leaf stirred on the other trees; so he
closed the book of the Law, and went into his garden, and set a
ladder against the tree and ascended into it, that he might see what
was agitating the leaves. Then the angel withdrew the ladder, but
David knew it not; so he fell and broke his neck, and died. It was the
Sabbath day. Then Solomon doubted what he should do, for the
body of his father was exposed to the sun, and to the dogs; and he
did not venture to remove it, lest he should profane the Sabbath; so
he sent to the Rabbis, and said, “My father is dead, and exposed to
the sun, and to be devoured by dogs; what shall I do?”
They answered, “Cast the body of a beast before the dogs, and
place bread or a boy upon thy father, and bury him.”[647]
David had such a beautiful voice, that, when he sang the praises of
God, the birds came from all quarters and surrounded him, listening
to his strains. The mountains even and the hills were moved at his
notes.[648] He could sing with a voice as loud as the most deafening
peal of thunder, or warble as sweetly as the tuneful nightingale.
He divided his time, say the Mussulmans, into three parts. One day
he occupied himself in the affairs of his kingdom, the second day he
devoted to the service of God, and the third day he gave up to the
society of his wives.
As he was going home from prayer, one day, he heard two of his
servants discussing him and comparing him with Abraham.
“Was not Abraham saved from a fiery furnace?” asked one.
“Did not David slay the giant Goliath?” asked the other.
“But what has David done that will compare with the obedience of
Abraham, who was ready to offer his only son to God?” asked the
first.
When David reached home, he fell down before God and prayed:
“Lord! Thou, who didst give to Abraham a trial of his obedience in the
pyre, grant that an opportunity may be afforded me of proving before
all the people how great also is mine.”[649]
But others relate this differently. They say that David besought the
Lord to endue him with the spirit of prophecy. Then God answered,
“When I give great gifts, he who receives them must suffer great
trials. I proved Abraham by the fire, and by the sacrifice of one son,
and separation from others; Jacob by his children; Joseph by the
well and the prison; Moses by Pharaoh; Job by the worms. I afflicted
all these, but thee have I not afflicted.” But David said, “O Lord,
prove me and try me also, that I may obtain the same degree of
celebrity as they.”[650]
One day, as David sang psalms before God and the congregation, a
beautiful bird appeared at the window, and it attracted his whole
attention, so that he could scarcely sing. David concluded his
recitation of the psalms earlier than usual, and went in pursuit of the
bird, which led him from bush to bush, and from tree to tree, till it
suddenly disappeared near a secluded lake. Now this bird was Eblis,
and he came to tempt David into evil.
When the bird vanished, David saw in the water a beautiful woman,
bathing, and when she stood up, her hair covered her whole person.
David hid behind the bushes, that he might not startle her, till she
was dressed; then he stood forth, and asked her her name.
“My name,” said she, “is Bathsheba,[651] daughter of Joshua, and wife
of Uriah, son of Hanan, who is with the army.”[652]
Then David departed, but his heart was inflamed with love, and he
sent a message to Joab, the captain of his host, to set Uriah before
the ark in every battle. Now those who went before the ark must
conquer or fall. Three times Uriah came out of battle victorious, but
the fourth time he was killed.
Then David took Uriah’s wife to his own house and made her his
own wife. And she consented upon the condition that should she
bear him a son, that son was to succeed him in the kingdom. Now
David had, before he married her, ninety-nine wives. The day after
his marriage, Michael and Gabriel appeared before him in human