The Republic and The Laws (Oxford World's Classics) (2 page)

The Importance of Cicero’s
Republic
and
Laws

The two works of Cicero translated in this volume have suffered much damage in transit to the modern world, and on this account have usually been regarded as the preserve of specialists, largely inaccessible to the public or even to classics students. Yet they offer considerable rewards to the modern reader, and especially to the student of the history of political thought. Despite the gaps and problems in the text, it is still possible to appreciate something of their literary qualities, and the ideas discussed in them are in many ways as relevant to the modern world as they were to their original historical context. The lasting merit of these works is that they concentrate on first principles. The concepts of legitimacy, justice, and responsibility in government; the nature of liberty and equality, and the conflict of these ideals with the need for directed policy; the evils of tyranny and unjust government in general; the question of the character and qualifications of those who are to be politicians; the nature of law and its relationship to morality—all these are matters which cannot be ignored as long as the human race continues to have any kind of political organization.

Both the
Republic (De Republica)
and the
Laws (De Legibus)
have had considerable and varied influence over the centuries. There is little evidence for the latter’s circulation in antiquity, but there are indications that the former enjoyed great popularity both immediately on publication (as a letter to Cicero from one of his friends testified
¹
) and later during the first century
AD
.
²
Tacitus shows signs of engagement with the ideas of the
Republic,
but takes a cynical and pessimistic line far removed from Cicero’s, and directly rebuts Cicero’s view that the mixed constitution is especially durable.
³
For the Christian writers of late antiquity, to whom we owe such knowledge as we have of some parts of the lost text,
Cicero’s
Republic
represented the culmination of pagan thinking about political theory and about the Roman state in particular, and this naturally served as a foil for their own reflections on these matters. At approximately the same period, the Neoplatonist Macrobius picked out the concluding passage of the dialogue for detailed commentary,
⁴
and may therefore have been responsible for setting the so-called
Dream of Scipio
on its way as a separate literary entity. The
Dream,
thus torn out of its context, was the only part of the text known in the Middle Ages, and, as a vision of the cosmos and of life in the hereafter, it became a highly formative influence on medieval and Renaissance views of the world.
⁵

The fragments of the rest of the
Republic
were collected in the sixteenth century,
⁶
but could give little idea of the overall shape of the work. With the discovery of the Vatican manuscript in 1820, it became possible again to speculate more fruitfully about Cicero’s political message, although the mutilated state of the text has allowed more latitude for debate than is the case with many classical works. Victorian Englishmen could see the
De Republica
as a prophecy of British parliamentary democracy,
⁷
while one influential view at the beginning of this century interpreted Cicero’s ideal statesman as a kind of saviour-dictator.
⁸
Ronald Syme’s dismissal of the
Republic,
on the brink of the Second World War, as ‘a book about which too much has been written’,
⁹
doubtless reflects more on Cicero’s interpreters than on Cicero himself. Subsequently the work suffered some neglect, particularly in the English-speaking world. However, scholarly interest in it has recently started to revive, and it appears that the time may now be ripe to take a fresh look at the
Republic
and at its companion,
the
Laws,
which has been less prominent in modern debates, but was influential in informing Renaissance and early modern theories of natural law.

The Background to the Composition of the
Republic
and
Laws:
Cicero’s Career to 54
BC

In May 54
BC
Cicero wrote from his villa at Cumae to his brother Quintus: ‘I am writing the
political
treatise I mentioned. It’s a pretty heavy and laborious work. But if it goes according to plan, the effort will have been well spent. Otherwise I shall throw it into the sea on which I am looking out as I write, and I shall start on other things, since I can’t stay idle.’
¹⁰

The word
political,
here italicized, is in Greek. It refers not primarily to practical politics, but to a branch of philosophy, the theory of the
polis
or city-state; this was regarded as a part of the larger study of ‘ethics’, the theory of human character and behaviour. Cicero, in other words, was writing a work in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle (as far as we know, the first of its kind in Latin) which would cover not only the theory of constitutions and laws, but also matters such as the moral education and training of citizens, the place of culture and the arts in a well-run society, the character of the kind of individual best equipped to take part in government, and (perhaps more surprisingly for a modern reader) the place of well-run states in the cosmic order.

Marcus Tullius Cicero had made his own way to the top in Roman politics, as a ‘new man’ from an Italian country town, the first of his family to seek office in the capital.
¹¹
His father had been on companionable terms with Roman aristocrats, but had forgone a political career owing to uncertain health. Cicero himself, however, was ambitious to succeed not only in the political sphere but also in cultural and intellectual activities: he had studied philosophy with enthusiasm in his youth (see the following section) and also fancied himself, not without some justification, as a Latin poet. He was highly accomplished in Greek as well as in Latin; his balanced, rhythmical style owed much to the great Greek
orators, especially Demosthenes and Isocrates, but also to the current fashions of the Greek East. This mastery of style could be turned to advantage in literary activity as well as in political or legal oratory. When the political situation went against him Cicero easily cast himself in an alternative role of thinker, writer, and educator of his fellow-citizens, presenting to them the critical spirit and high-minded values of Greek philosophy while at the same time affirming the patriotic duty owed to the Roman state and its empire.
¹²

In his year as consul in 63
BC
, he had defeated the conspiracy of Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina). The importance of this episode has been variously assessed by historians, but at the very least it was a threat to stability and a symptom of recurrent problems. Cicero claimed to stand for reconciliation of factional interests for the sake of the common good: his catchwords were
concordia ordinum
(i.e. that all social classes should work together),
consensio omnium bonorum
(consensus of all good citizens),
otium cum dignitate
(peace with honour). The Catilinarians, to him, represented only an extreme and criminal minority; once they had been flushed out, the state could return to normal. Cicero did apparently succeed in uniting the Roman people behind him for a short time. But by his high-handed action in executing the conspirators without proper trial (even though he did so on the advice of the Senate), he offered a handle to his political enemies, one which was seized a few years later by the tribune P. Clodius Pulcher. Cicero incurred his enmity in
61
by testifying against him in the curious case of the profanation of the rites of the Bona Dea (see note on L. 2. 36). Now Clodius had his revenge by passing a law which enacted that anyone who had put Roman citizens to death without trial was to be outlawed. Cicero, as Clodius intended, withdrew into exile rather than face trial under this law (cf.
R. 1. 6, L.
2. 42).

Some fourteen months later Cicero was recalled, largely at the instance of Pompey, who had himself begun to suffer harassment at Clodius’ hands. Cicero’s orthodox progression up the
cursus
honorum
had led him to identify himself more and more with the interests of the senatorial aristocracy. After his consulship he had attempted to keep on good terms both with Pompey, whom he admired and whose influence he valued,
¹³
and with the so-called ‘optimates’,
¹⁴
aristocratic senators who were protective of the Senate’s role in government, and jealously obstructive of anyone who tried to circumvent it. But one of the chief targets of optimate obstruction was Pompey, and Cicero found himself in an impossible position, especially after the ‘Conference of Luca’ in 56 when Pompey, Crassus and Caesar reinforced their informal alliance and gained effective control of Roman politics. Cicero’s political debt to Pompey obliged him to move away from the ‘optimates’, in whose eyes he consequently lost all credibility, and he confessed privately to Atticus that he had been a prize ass.
¹⁵
Thereafter Cicero could no longer play a leading part in senatorial politics. Although he continued to attend the Senate from time to time and was continually occupied in the lawcourts (not least in defending various friends of Pompey whom he had previously opposed), he sought distraction from the turbulent political situation about which he could do nothing, and turned to writing.

Cicero’s Philosophical Education and Affiliations

In his youth, Cicero had spent time in the company of Greek philosophers, both in Rome and in Athens. After a brief flirtation with Epicureanism, he became a follower of the Academic philosopher Philo of Larissa, who attracted him partly because of his interests in rhetoric. Philo was the latest representative of the sceptical turn taken by the Academy since Arcesilaus in the third century
BC
. Later, Cicero attended the lectures of another Academic, Antiochus of Ascalon, who had been a pupil of Philo but had abandoned scepticism, claiming to restore the authentic doctrines of the ‘Old Academy’ (i.e. of Plato’s
immediate successors) as opposed to the sceptical ‘New Academy’. Antiochus argued not only that the true Platonic tradition did after all allow certain knowledge, but also that there was no difference other than in terminology between the doctrines of the Academy (as interpreted by himself), those of Aristotle and those of the Stoics.
¹⁶

In the later series of philosophical works,
¹⁷
written in 45–44
BC,
Cicero proclaims himself as an adherent of the sceptical methods of the New Academy. His version of scepticism, owed presumably to Philo, was a moderate one; far from insisting on absolute suspension of judgement in all circumstances, he allowed the wise man to assent provisionally to any view which seemed probable, while remaining open to contrary argument. The New Academics used several methods to combat rash claims of certainty. They emphasized the variety of possible viewpoints
(diaphonia);
they would argue successively on both sides of a question, or undertake to find arguments against whatever view was offered by the opponent. These methods were to provide Cicero with an excellent vehicle for objective exposition of the doctrines of the various schools.

However, in the
Republic
and
Laws
his position is somewhat different. It is true that in the third book of the
Republic
he presents arguments both for and against justice in the Academic manner, recalling the opposing theses of Carneades (see note on
R.
3. 8); but it is clear that he has changed the whole drift of Carneades’ arguments. There is no sceptical reservation of judgement. The whole debate is explicitly directed towards establishing the case for justice and refuting the opposing view. The speaker Philus, who puts the case against justice, does so unwillingly (3. 8), and the outcome is never left in doubt. Furthermore, in the
Laws,
Cicero explicitly keeps the sceptical Academy at a distance (1. 39) so that it will not disturb his neatly constructed theory of divine providence and natural law; and the views on the
summum bonum
given in
L.
1. 54 ff. are explicitly in line with those of Antiochus.

It has been thought, therefore, that he had at this time deserted
scepticism in favour of the views of Antiochus;
¹⁸
and a passage in a later work, the
Academica
(1. 13, cf. r. 43), has been taken to indicate that Cicero was at that time converted back from the ‘Old Academy’ (as interpreted by Antiochus) to the scepticism of Philo. But it may be going too far to speak of a change of allegiance. Rather, it seems that Cicero has here consciously and temporarily relinquished the stance of a sceptic, to which he would later return when his context and purposes demanded it. In some of the later dialogues it suited him to stress the difficulty of coming to a firm conclusion on the philosophical questions he was discussing, but this would not have been appropriate in the context of the
Republic
and
Laws
(cf. L. 1. 37). In fact, as Gorier has pointed out, there are also signs of the persistence of a sceptical attitude in the
Laws:
in L. 1. 54 Cicero stops short of confessing total allegiance to Antiochus, and in L. 1. 36 he proclaims his own freedom of judgement. A certain measure of distancing is effected, too, by the dialogue form. But we are left in little doubt as to the views of which Cicero wishes to convince us. Cicero here appears as a Roman consular speaking on his own authority about matters that lie well within his experience, and in the
Laws
he assumes the mantle of a legislator after the Platonic manner. The whole edifice of the
Laws
depends on certain assumptions about the nature of law, morality, and the order of the universe. Cicero realizes that these assumptions are open to sceptical attack. If challenged, he would be unable to claim certainty for them. But from a legislator’s point of view it was important not just that they should be believed, but also that they should not be called into question. Hence, for the time being, the sceptical Academy is respectfully asked to keep its distance.