The Republic and The Laws (Oxford World's Classics) (16 page)

MUMMIUS
: So what remains to be said in favour of democracy?

SCIPIO
: Well, tell me, Spurius, do you not think that Rhodes, which we visited together not so long ago, has some kind of republic?

MUMMIUS
: I think it does—and by no means a contemptible one at that.

SCIPIO
: Quite right. But, if you recall, all the citizens were both common people and senators. A rota system decided which months they should serve as commoners and which as senators. They received payment in both capacities for attending meetings. The same men heard all cases, including those of a capital nature, in the theatre and in the senate house. The senate had as much power, and as much prestige, as the masses …

[According to Lactantius (De
Opiflcio Dei i.
11–13) Cicero touched on the relation of mind (or soul) to body in Book 4. Fragments which seem to belong to that topic are usually placed at the beginning to serve as an introduction to the theme of education. The book is in a pitiful state; the Vatican manuscript contains just parts of sections 2–4.]

… and the very mind that envisages the future recalls the past … (Nonius, 3. 803).

… If it is true that everybody would sooner die than be turned into some form of animal (even though he retained a human mind), how much more awful it would be to have a human body and the mind of a wild beast! In my view the latter fate would be worse to the degree that the mind is nobler than the body … (Lactantius,
Divinae Institutiones
5. 11. 2).

… He did not think, he said, that what was good for a ram was also good for Publius Africanus … (Augustine,
Contra Iulianum
4. 12. 59).

SCIPIO
: … How efficiently the orders are arranged on the basis of age and property! For voting purposes the senate is counted along with the knights. Too many people now, in their folly, want to get rid of this admirable system; they advocate a new distribution of wealth through some resolution of the plebs whereby senators would have to resign their equestrian status.

Consider now how wisely provision has been made for that partnership of citizens in a happy and honourable life. For that is the primary purpose of forming a community, and that must be achieved for human beings by the state, partly through its institutions and partly through its laws. First, with regard to the training of free-born boys—an area in which the Greeks have worked hard to no avail and in which alone, according to our guest
Polybius,
*
our institutions have been neglectful—(the Romans) have never wished any system to be laid down by law, or officially spelt out, or universally imposed …
[At least two leaves have dropped out, which may have included the next three fragments.]

… (In Athens) when (youngsters) enter military service they regularly have guardians assigned to them, whose business it is to supervise them in their first year … (Servius on Virgil,
Aeneid
5. 546).

… not only as in Sparta, where boys are taught to filch and steal … (Nonius 1. 30).

… they thought it reflected badly on the young lads if they did not have lovers … (Servius on Virgil,
Aeneid
10. 325).

SCIPIO
: (The ancient Romans thought it wrong) that an adolescent should appear naked. So the foundations, as it were, of our modesty go far back in history. How absurd it is for naked young men to exercise in gymnasiums! How frivolous is the kind of training given to (Greek) cadets!
*
How free and easy are their caresses and liaisons! I say nothing of the Eleans and Thebans.
*
(With them, in love-affairs among free-born men, lust enjoys a licence which is actually sanctioned and unrestrained.) Even the Spartans, who permit everything short of the act of intercourse in young men’s amours, mark off their exception with a pretty flimsy barrier; for they allow partners to lie beside one another and embrace with just a blanket in between.

LAELIUS
: You make it very clear, Scipio, that in criticizing those Greek systems you prefer to grapple with the most famous states rather than with your friend Plato. You don’t lay as much as a finger on him, even though …

… and our revered Plato even more than Lycurgus; for he absolutely insists that everything should be held in common,
*
to prevent anyone from claiming anything as his own private property … (Nonius 2. 574).

… I, however, (would send him) to the place where he sends Homer from his imaginary city, festooned with garlands
*
and anointed with perfume … (Nonius 2. 481).

… The censor’s stigma involves nothing for the guilty man apart from a red face. And so, as the verdict centres solely on the
man’s good name, that kind of censure is called ‘de-naming’
[ignominia]
(Nonius 1. 35).

… Initially the state is supposed to have shuddered at (the censors’) severity … (Nonius 3. 683).

… No overseer should be put in charge of women, of the type that is appointed in Greece, but there should be a censor to teach men how to control their wives … (Nonius 3. 8oi).

… So the inculcation of modesty has an enormous effect; all the women do without liquor … (Nonius 1. 8).

… Yes, and if any woman was notorious her relatives would refuse to kiss her … (Nonius 2. 476).

… I disapprove of a nation being at once the world’s ruler and its tax-collector. I consider thrift is the best source of revenue in family and state alike … (Nonius r. 35–6).

… I admire fastidiousness, not only in conduct but also in the choice of words. ‘If they disagree,’ is what the provision says. A dispute between friends, as distinct from a quarrel between enemies, is called a disagreement… hence in the eyes of the law neighbours disagree; they do not quarrel … (Nonius 3. 695).

… (They did not believe) that men’s concerns ended with their life. Hence the sacredness of burial is part of pontifical law … (Nonius 1. 255).

… (The Athenian commanders) failed to bury the dead because they were unable to recover them from the sea owing to the force of the storm. For this reason, in spite of their innocence, they were put to death (Nonius 2. 455).

… and in this dispute I sided not with the people but with the aristocracy … (Nonius 3. 836).

… for it is not easy to oppose the power of the people if you give them little or nothing in the way of legal rights … (Priscian 15. 4. 20).

… When (the playwrights) hear the shouts and cheers of the people, as if the people were a great and wise master, then what darkness they bring on, what fears they arouse, what desires they inflame! (Augustine,
De Civitate Dei
2. 14).

… Since (the ancient Romans) regarded the theatre and show
business in general as disgraceful, they thought that such people should not only be deprived of the public offices enjoyed by other citizens but should also be removed from their tribe by the censor’s stigma … (Augustine,
De Civitate Dei
2. 13).

… (The Greek Old) Comedy would never have succeeded in gaining the audience’s approval for its vices if those vices had not been condoned in everyday life … Who was not mentioned, or rather attacked, by it? Who was spared? Granted, it injured Cleon, Cleophon, and Hyperbolus—wicked demagogues who stirred up sedition in the country’s political life. We might tolerate this, even though it is preferable that such citizens should be pilloried by a censor rather than a playwright. But it was no more seemly that Pericles, after presiding over his country in peace and war with the greatest authority for so many years, should be insulted in verses and guyed upon the stage than if our Plautus or Naevius
*
had dared to traduce Publius and Gnaeus Scipio, or Caecilius had derided Marcus Cato … Contrast our Twelve Tables. Though they treated very few crimes as capital offences, they did include the case where a person chanted or composed a song which brought infamy or disgrace to another. And quite right too; for our life-style should be open to the magistrates’ verdicts and the judgements of the law, not to the cleverness of poets; nor should we have to listen to insults unless we are entitled to reply and to defend ourselves in court.

[According to Augustine,
De Civitate Dei 2. 9,
Cicero’s passage concluded with a demonstration that the early Romans thought it wrong that any living person should be praised or blamed on the stage.]

… The Athenian Aeschines, a very accomplished orator, although he had acted in tragedies in his youth, entered public life; and Aristodemus, another tragic actor, was often sent by Athens as an envoy to Philip about the most highly important questions of peace and war … (Augustine,
De Civitate Dei
2. 11).

The compactness and truth of that line are such that the poet
*
who uttered it must, I think, have been prompted by an oracle. For neither the men on their own (in a state which lacked such a moral tradition) nor the state on its own (without such men in charge) could have founded or long maintained so great and wide-ranging an empire. Long before living memory our ancestral way of life produced outstanding men, and those excellent men preserved the old way of life and the institutions of their forefathers. Our generation, however, after inheriting our political organization like a magnificent picture now fading with age, not only neglected to restore its original colours but did not even bother to ensure that it retained its basic form and, as it were, its faintest outlines. What remains of those ancient customs on which he said the state of Rome stood firm? We see them so ruined by neglect that not only do they go unobserved, they are no longer known. And what shall I say of the men? It is the lack of such men that has led to the disappearance of those customs. Of this great tragedy we are not only bound to give a description; we must somehow defend ourselves as if we were arraigned on a capital charge. For it is not by some accident—no, it is because of our own moral failings—that we are left with the name of the Republic, having long since lost its substance … (Augustine,
De Civitate Dei
2. 21).

MANILIUS
:
*
… (that there was no function so) proper for a king as the administration of justice. That embraced the interpretation of law, because private citizens used to ask the kings to rule
on legal questions. To make that possible, rich and extensive lands, whether for crops, plantations, or herds, were marked out. These were to be the property of the kings, and were to be managed without any work or labour on their part so that they would not be distracted from public concerns by any worries over their private business. No private citizen acted as a judge or arbitrator in any lawsuit; everything was decided by the king’s judgement. In my view Numa, among the Romans, adhered most closely to this ancient system, which was that of the kings of Greece. The others, though they did perform this function too, nevertheless spent a large part of their time waging war and dealing with the legal problems involved; whereas the long peace which this city enjoyed under Numa gave birth to its laws and religion. For he drafted the laws which, as you know, are still in force. That, indeed, is the proper concern of the citizen whom we are discussing …

[At least two leaves are missing. Scipio is now drawing an analogy between the statesman and the farm-manager. Though both need some theoretical knowledge, that is not their primary concern.]

SCIPIO
: … I take it you won’t object to finding out about the nature of roots and seeds, will you?

MANILIUS
: No, not if the need arises.

SCIPIO
: You don’t think that all that sort of thing should be left to your farm-manager, do you?

MANILIUS
: Certainly not; for then the cultivation of the land would very often lack proper attention.

SCIPIO
: So a farm-manager knows about the nature of the land, and a steward knows how to read and write; but each of them concentrates on practical efficiency rather than enjoying that kind of knowledge for its own sake. Similarly our statesman will indeed have taken trouble to find out about justice and laws and will certainly have studied their foundations. But he should not become involved in answering queries, reading up cases, and writing decisions. He must be free, as it were, to manage and keep account of the state. He will be well versed in the fundamental principles of law (without that, no one can be just); he will have some grasp, too, of civil law, but only in the sense that a ship’s captain will
have a grasp of astronomy and a doctor of natural science. Each of those men draws on those areas of knowledge in practising his skill, without being diverted from his special business. The statesman, moreover, will make sure that…

[An indeterminate number of leaves have been lost.)

SCIPIO
: … states in which the best men strive for praise and honour, shunning disgrace and dishonour. They are not deterred so much by fear of the penalty prescribed by law as by a sense of shame—that dread, as it were, of justified rebuke which nature has imparted to man. The statesman develops this sense by making use of public opinion, and completes it with the aid of education and social training. So in the end citizens are deterred from crime by moral scruples as much as by fear. That will do for the question of prestige, which could be discussed at greater length and in greater detail.

For the purposes of life and its practical conduct a system has been devised, consisting of legal marriages, legitimate children, and sacred shrines belonging to the domestic gods of Roman families, so that everyone may enjoy both public and private benefits. The good life is impossible without a good state; and there is no greater blessing than a well-ordered state. In consequence, it always amazes me …

[The palimpsest breaks off here.]

SCIPIO
: … The aim
*
of a ship’s captain is a successful voyage; a doctor’s, health; a general’s, victory. So the aim of our ideal statesman is the citizens’ happy life—that is, a life secure in wealth, rich in resources, abundant in renown, and honourable in its moral character. That is the task which I wish him to accomplish—the greatest and best that any man can have (Cicero,
Ad Atticum
8. 11. 1).

SCIPIO
(?): Nothing in a state
*
should be so free from corruption as a vote and a verdict. So I fail to understand why a man who corrupts them by money should deserve punishment whereas one who does so by eloquence should actually win applause. For my own part, I think that a man who corrupts a judge by his speech causes more harm than one who does it by a bribe; for no honest man can be corrupted by a bribe, but he
can
be by eloquence (Ammianus Marcellinus 30. 4. 10).

… On hearing these remarks of Scipio’s, Mummius strongly agreed, for he thoroughly disliked the modern type of rhetorician (Nonius 3. 838).