The Republic and The Laws (Oxford World's Classics) (44 page)

TULLUS HOSTILIUS
: third king of Rome (674–642). He is supposed to have destroyed Alba Longa and transferred its population to Rome (Livy 1. 29). The senate house
Curia Hostilia
bore his name.
R.
2. 31, 53; 3.
47
.

VALERIUS POTITUS, LUCIUS:
consul 449. See Horatius Barbatus.
R. z.
54
.

VALERIUS PUBLICOLA, PUBLIUS
: consul 509–4. A man of popular sympathies; hence the name Publicola or Poplicola (Livy 2. 8. T). HE WAS SO POOR THAT THE AUTHORITIES HAD TO PAY FOR HIS FUNERAL. THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE APPEAL LAW
(R. z.
55) is defended by Cornell 276–7.
R.
2. 53, 55; L. 2.
58
.

VENNONIUS
: a late second-century historian, used by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (4. 15. T) AND (TO HIS ANNOYANCE) NOT AVAILABLE TO CICERO
(Att.
12. 3. 1).
L.
1.
6
.

VENUS
: Roman goddess of love and sex.
R.
6.
17
.

VESTA
: the hearth goddess, etymologically connected with the Greek Hestia. The Vestal Virgins had to ensure that the fire in her temple did not go out. L. 2.
29
.

VICA POTA:
an old Roman goddess of Victory, whose festival was on 5 January. She had a temple at the foot of the Velian hill. L. 2.
28
.

VOLSCIANS
: a people in south Latium who were strong opponents of Rome in the fifth and fourth centuries.
R.
3.7.

XENOCRATES
: (of Chalcedon on the Bosporus), head of the Academy 339–314. He is credited with the division of philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics.
R.
1. 3; L. 1. 38,
55
.

XENOPHON OF ATHENS: C
.428
-C
.354. An aristocrat who was a disciple of Socrates. In his
Anabasis
he described the retreat of the army of Greek mercenaries to the Black Sea in 399. Amongst other works he wrote a novelistic account of the education of Cyrus in 8 books. L. 2.
56
.

XERXES
: king of Persia 486–65. He bridged the Hellespont, dug a canal behind Mt. Athos, and ravaged Attica; but he was defeated at Salamis in 480.
R.
3. 14;
L.
2.
26
.

ZALEUCUS
: a stern lawgiver in the Greek colony of Locri in the toe of Italy in the seventh century. As with Charondas, the material about him is mainly fictitious. L. 1. 57; 2. 14,
15
.

ZENO
: (of Citium in Cyprus), 335–263. Founder of the Stoic school. See D.L. 7. 110–262. L. 1. 38, 53, 54,
55
.

ZETHUS
: son of Zeus and Antiope. He was a warrior, twin brother of the musician Amphion, with whom, according to one version, he founded Thebes. Here a character in a play by Pacuvius, doubtless his
Antiopa. R.
T.
30
.

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¹
Caelius to Cicero,
Tarn.
8. i. 4 (51
BC
): ‘Your books on the
Republic
are well received on all sides.’

²
Seneca,
Epistles
TO
8. 30ff. implies that it was well known.

³
Tacitus,
Annals
4. 33; cf. ibid. 3. 26–7.

⁴
Macrobius, tr. Stahl.

⁵
See Lewis 23–8. (Full details of modern sources are given in the Bibliography.)

⁶
See Heck 270–81 for the 16th-cent. editions.

⁷
See the edition of G. G. Hardingham (London, 1884).

⁸
This view was first put forward in 1917 by Reitzenstein, who (probably incorrectly) regarded the
Republic
as a foreshadowing of, and possibly an inspiration for, the Augustan principate. The debate on this issue has continued ever since; for a convenient summary of its progress, see MacKendrick
64.
The question largely depends on the meaning of the phrase
rector rei publicae,
for which see n. 34 below.

⁹
Syme 144 n. 1.

¹⁰
Q. fr.
2. 12. 1; cf. nn. 26 and 27 below.

¹¹
For a more detailed account of his career and its historical circumstances, see e.g. E. Rawson (3); Griffin.

¹²
The prefaces to the later philosophical works present the writing of philosophy as a patriotic service to Rome. See in general Douglas
T
3 5–70.

¹³
On the course of Cicero’s relations with Pompey, cf. B. Rawson.

¹⁴
The word
optimates
originally meant simply ‘aristocrats’ and is so used in the
Republic,
regardless of its current use as a political catchword (see Note on the Translation).

¹⁵
Att. 4.
5.

¹⁶
Cicero’s ‘Academic books’ are the main source for the debate between Philo and Antiochus on the possibility of knowledge. Cf. further Glucker (1).

¹⁷
For a convenient list see Powell (3) xiii-xvii.

¹⁸
See Glucker (2) for the ‘conversion’ hypothesis, and, for the arguments against this, Görier.

¹⁹
The subject of the
Republic
is defined more fully in
Q. fr.
3. 5. 1 as
deoptimo statu civitatis et de Optimo cive
(‘on the best condition of the State and the best citizen’).

²⁰
He apparently called himself a ‘companion of Plato’, fr. ib Ziegler, quoted by Pliny the Elder,
Natural History,
pref. 22.

²¹
In contrast, Sharpies, followed by Zetzel (p. 14), has emphasized the un-Platonic features of the
De Republica.

²²
Cf. also Plato,
Republic
347C-d; see Powell (4).

²³
Referred to in Cic.
De Finibus
5. 11;
Q. fr.
3. 5. 1.

²⁴
See Frede.

²⁵
See notes on
T.
45, and Zetzel 22–4.

²⁶
Q- fr-
3- 5- I_2; cf- also
Aft.
4. 16.

²⁷
The allusion in
R.
T. 13 suits Quintus rather than Atticus, the other main possibility. It may be relevant that Cicero discussed the progress of the work in letters to his brother.

²⁸
Appian,
Bella Civilia
1. 19; cf. Cic.
Laelius de Amicitia
12.

²⁹
On Scipio in general see Astin; for the idealism of Cicero’s portrait of him cf. Zetzel 12–13.

³⁰
Cf. Plutarch,
Tiberius Gracchus
8; Cic. De
Finibus
2. 24, etc.

³¹
Cf. Becker.

³²
Geiger (to my mind not altogether convincingly) tries to link
R.
with attempts to make Pompey dictator.

³³
Att. 6.
1. 8; 6. 2. 9;
6.
3. 3; 6. 6. 2; 7. 3. 2; 8. I I. T.

³⁴
Rector
literally means ‘ruler’, ‘controller’, or ‘helmsman’. The phrase has often been taken to imply an office or function within the state: a permanent or temporary position of supreme power, or of supreme informal authority whether or not recognized by law (a conception obviously similar to that of the Augustan principate; cf. n. 8 above). This assumption once made, the question inevitably followed: who was envisaged as a candidate for the job? Some have thought that Cicero had Pompey in mind, others suppose that he was putting himself forward. But the more likely view (argued for more fully by Powell (2)) is that the phrase
rector rei publicae
was intended to mean simply ‘statesman’, and that the ideal of the
rector
delineated in the lost parts of the fifth and sixth books was one to which all statesmen could aspire. Cf. also How, esp. 41–2, and see Schmidt for a survey of previous views.

³⁵
For the history of this period, see most conveniently Syme.

³⁶
Att.
14. 12. 2.

³⁷
See Plutarch,
Life of Cicero
47–8, translated in E. Rawson (3) 293–5; for other sources see E. Rawson (3) 320 and T. N. Mitchell 323–4.

³⁸
Nepos’ informative, if over-laudatory, account of Atticus’ life is printed in the Loeb volume along with Florus. The fullest and most sensitive essay on his life and character is in Shackleton Bailey (1) 3–59.

³⁹
Horsfall 99.

⁴⁰
An interesting character-sketch can be compiled from the index of Shackleton Bailey (2).

⁴¹
See Plutarch,
Life of Cicero
49.

⁴²
e.g.
R. 6.
15 ff.

⁴³
Cf. Plato,
Laws
10. 897ff., Aristotle (Oxford Trans, vol. 12 nos. 12–15), and the Stoic writers employed by Cicero in
De Officiis l.
22 and
De NaturaDeorum
2.

⁴⁴
Since animals were supposed to be devoid of reason, there could be no justice between them and men; see D.L. 7. 129; Cic.
De Finibus
3. 67.

⁴⁵
Cf. Cic.
De Natura Deorum
1. 36 (Zeno),
SVF
3. 314 (Chrysippus), 1. 537 (Cleanthes), and Cic.
R.
3. 33.

⁴⁶
Cf. Horace,
Satires
1. 3. 99–111. A famous later example is Hobbes’s description of the life of pre-social man
(Leviathan
i. 13).

⁴⁷
Diogenes would often use animals to represent the virtues of nature as opposed to custom; D.L. 6. 22; Dio Chrysostom,
Orationes 6.
21–2, 27, 32–3.

⁴⁸
For the Academic Polemo, Zeno’s teacher, the chief good was to liveaccording to nature (Cic.
De Finibus
4. 14). The idea, with various modifications, was shared by the Stoics; see Sandbach, 53–9.

⁴⁹
Diodorus Siculus (1st cent,
BC) I.
8. 1–7; Lucretius,
De Rerum Natura
5. 958 ff, 1145 ff.

⁵⁰
As in Protagoras’ story (Plato,
Protagoras
322c).

⁵¹
Aristotle,
Politics
1. 2. 8–14 (Barker). Thanks to Darwin, we can push the question further back and assume that our distant ancestors lived in groups before the emergence of
homo sapiens.

⁵²
Cic.
De Officiis
1. 50 (based on the Stoic, Panaetius),
De Finibus
5. 65 f.

⁵³
Aristotle,
Rhetoric
1. 13. 2 (the words are supplied by the scholiast).

⁵⁴
Digest
1. 1. 4; cf.
Institutiones
1.
Title
2. 2.