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Department of the Classics, Harvard University

Cicero and Greek PhilosophyAuthor(s): Gisela StrikerSource: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 97, Greece in Rome: Influence, Integration,Resistance (1995), pp. 53-61Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/311300

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CICERO AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY*GISELA STRIKER

T O speak about Cicero and Greek philosophy is to speak aboutCicero and philosophy, period. Philosophy, for the Romans ofCicero's age, was a Greek thing, and there was no other philosophyaround. Philosophy was one of the disciplines the Romans of the firstcenturyB.C. ook over from the Greeksas a partof highereducation. Itwas both a prestigious and a suspect branch of Greek culture-prestigious because it was intellectually demanding, suspect becausephilosophical argumentcould be seen as subversive;witness the notori-ous storyof the futile attemptby Cato the Censor in the second centuryto banishphilosophers romthe city in orderto safeguard he morals ofRome's young men.To judge from Cicero's prefaces, the suspicions never quite wentaway, althoughStoicism, at least, turnedout to be highly respectable.Cicero tried with varying success to raise the status of philosophy byintroducingfamous Roman statesmen as speakers in his dialogues,1while assuringhis readers that the affairsof the state would of coursetake precedence over philosophical pursuits.2 But the prejudice

*I am grateful to Zeph Stewart for encouragementand stylistic advice. This shortpiece was writtenfor the conference,with no intention of developingit into a largerpro-ject. It is merely an attemptto put Cicero's philosophical writings in perspective,as itwere, in the hope of attracting he attentionof those studentsof antiquitywho still take adim view of Cicero's achievementon the groundsthathe was neitheroriginalnor a greatphilosopher.1With varying success: the "ScipionicCircle" of the Rep. was apparentlya success,but Cicero gave up on the attemptto present some of his own older contemporariesasinvolved in a technical philosophical debate; see Att. 13.16.1 Illam &lcaKa6TlutKvUv-TxCtv totamad Varronemraduximus.Primofuit Catuli, Luculli,Hortensi; deinde, quiaT(apa oXi7npov videbatur,quoderat hominibusnota non illa quidem&arlXt6e'oia sed inhis rebus atxpilia, simul ac veni ad villam, eosdem illos sermones ad Catonem Bru-tumque ranstuli.2 See, e.g., Div. 2.2.6 Ac mihi quidem explicandaephilosophiae causam adtulit casus

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Gisela Strikerremained that professionalphilosophers,at any rate, were engaged inhairsplittingandendless debates about obscurepoints, to the detrimentof more importantconcerns like politics.3 In short, the Roman upperclass displayed the same attitudes as the AtheniancontemporariesofSocrates and the Sophists, so amusingly describedin some of Plato'searlierdialogues.Cicero seems to have been the first educated Roman who developeda real flair for philosophyand a serious attachment o it, consideringitnot just as an intellectualhobby or a kind of spiritualsupport n timesof personalor political turmoil,and attempting n earnest to make it apartof Roman culture. I do not mean, of course, to overlook the greatpoet Lucretius. But Lucretius,perhapspreciselybecausehe was a greatpoet, but also because he adopted the tone of a fervent missionary,seems to have remainedan isolated figure,at least as faras philosophywas concerned. It was Cicerowho gaineda lastingplace in the historyof Europeanphilosophy by creating a vocabularyin which Romanscould debatephilosophical questions;not just read, but write and dis-cuss philosophy.No doubt Cicero's own auctoritas helped here, too.Not quite a centurylater, in the works of Seneca, the "povertyof theLatin tongue" (Lucr. 1.139, 832; 3.260) so eloquently lamented byLucretiusseems to have been overcome.What I have said so far is familiarand, I take it, uncontroversial.Cicero's role as a mediatorprobablyalso explains why he remainedarespected philosophicalauthor so long as Latin, alongside Greek,wasone of the main languages of philosophy. Until the end of the eigh-teenthcenturyat least some of Cicero's philosophicalbooks were partof a standardeducation, and indeed, before the Renaissance, Cicerowas seen as a philosopherrather han a politicianor an orator.But overthe last two hundredyears, Cicero as a philosophicalwriter has prettymuch vanished from the philosophical curriculum. I cannot hererehearse all the various reasons for Cicero's loss of prestige, whichhave to do as much with philosophicaland intellectualfashion as withhistorians'varyingassessmentsof his role as a politician. Some of thegravis civitatis, cum in armis civilibusnec tueri meo more remp. nec nihil agerepoteramnec quidpotius, quodquidemme dignumesset, agerem reperiebam.3 See, e.g., Luc. 2.5 Ac vereor interdumne taliumpersonarumcum amplificarevelimminuametiam gloriam. sunt enim multi qui omnino Graecas non ament litteras,pluresqui philosophiam, reliqui qui etiam si haec non inprobent amenearum rerumdisputa-tionemprincipibuscivitatisnon ita decoramputent.

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Ciceroand GreekPhilosophyprejudices-as we would now say-that became prevalent n the nine-teenth century with regard not just to Cicero, but to the Hellenisticperiodin generalhave, I think,been overcome in the last few decades.Forexample,we no longerconsider the "post-Aristotelian"eriodas anera of sad decline that ended only with Plotinus and the emergenceofNeoplatonism. There is also now a concerted effort to get rid of theinvidious label "eclecticism,"used to describe the philosophersof thelate Hellenistic period.4It is not entirelyclear what was meantby thisterm,but one suggestion seems to have been that an "eclectic"philoso-pher'sviews would lack rigorandcoherence. If he picked up the mostattractivebits of doctrinefrom various ncompatiblesystems,one mightexpect the results to be inconsistent-if not on the surface,then at leastas far as the theoreticalfoundationsare concerned. Different schoolsstarted from different principles, and so one could hardly expect aconsistentset of argumentsbehind a philosophicalview thatcombinesheterogeneous elements. If this was behind the derogatory use of"eclecticism" it must be pointed out that the argumentis not com-pelling. True,a philosopherwho tries to bringtogetherplausiblethesesfrom differenttheories cannot embraceall those systems at the sametime. But the same philosophicaltheses can be supportedby differentarguments,and it is surely legitimateto try and producea theory thatcombines,as it were, the best of all availableviews by introducingnewor modifiedarguments or old doctrines. This is, in fact, what Cicero'steacherAntiochus seems to have done in ethics, as one can see from DeFinibus5.5Sometimesthe term"eclecticism"also seems to carrythe suggestionthatthe eclectic philosopherhas no comprehensivesystem at all, so thathis views, consistent or not, arenot solidly supported.This is an objec-tion thatcould be raisedagainstCicero's otherteacher,Philo of Larissa.But the objection fails against a philosopher who holds, by explicitappealto skeptical arguments, hat there is very little knowledge to behad, andthatwe must thereforebe contentwith tryingto find the mostplausibleor probableview, case by case. As a studentof Philo, Ciceromay have had some fairly strongconvictions,but no overarchingWelt-

4 See the collection of essays in J. M. Dillon and A. A. Long eds., The Questionof"Eclecticism" Berkeley 1988), in particularhe openingchapterby P.Donini.5For this point see J. Barnes, "Antiochusof Ascalon," in M. Griffinand J. Barneseds., Philosophia Togata(Oxford 1989) 51-96, and for Antiochus' ethics, J. Annas, TheMoralityof Happiness(Oxford1993) chapters2.6 and4.20.3.

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Gisela Striker

anschauung. If skepticismor anti-dogmatisms what accounts for thelabel "eclectic,"we need not find it damaging.Philo and Antiochus are now treated with greater respect,6 butCicero still does not seem to be taken seriously. It may be true, ofcourse, thatCicero, who was not a professionalphilosopher,was evenless of an originalthinker han his teachers. But originalitywas not anissue at a time when philosophers, ar from advertising heir own inno-vations, were anxious to show that their doctrines went back to thegreatfoundingfathers-Socrates, Plato, Aristotle or even Pythagoras.7If we for ourpartwish to insist that some degreeof originalityor inde-pendenceis crucial,we shouldadmitthatwe arein no position to forman accurate udgmentof Cicero in this respect, given that most of hissources arelost. The two works most likely to give us an impressionofCicero workingon his own would no doubt be the De Republicaandthe De Legibus, in which he set out to producea Roman-not just aLatin-version of political and legal philosophy. But we have onlyfragmentsof the De Republica,and the first book of the De Legibus,which contains the philosophicaldiscussion of natural aw and of theobjective foundationsof justice, has a numberof lacunae that make itdifficultto follow the courseof the exposition. A lot of work still needsto be done to reconstruct hese arguments,as opposedto identifyingtheGreek authoritiesallegedly behind them. In De Officiis3 (4. 19-20),Cicero tells us that he is trying to fill a gap in Panaetius' theory.Heoffers a "formula" o deal with apparentconflicts between moraldutyand expediency-a topic that Panaetiushad promised to discuss, butfailed to treat in his Ilepi ro3 Ka0ljKOVTO;.8icero's solution is not

6For Philo, see H. Tarrant,Scepticismor Platonism? The Philosophy of the FourthAcademy (Cambridge 1985); for Antiochus, see J. Glucker,Antiochus and the LateAcademy(Gottingen1978 [Hypomnemata 6]).7For this point see D. Sedley, "PhilosophicalAllegiance in the Greco-RomanWorld,"in Griffin above,n. 5) 97-119.8 See Off 3.2.7 Panaetius igitur,qui sine controversiade officiis accuratissimedis-putavit quemquenos correctionequadamadhibitapotissimumsecuti sumus,tribusgener-ibuspropositis, in quibusdeliberarehomines et consultare de officio solerent, uno cumdubitarent,honestumne d esset, de quo ageretur,an turpe,altero, utilene esset an inutile,tertio, si id, quod speciem haberethonesti,pugnaret cum eo, quod utile videretur,quo-modo ea disceri oporteret,de duobusgeneribusprimis tribuslibris explicavit,de tertioautem genere deinceps se scripsit dicturum nec exsolvit id, quod promiserat. Ibid.3.4.19-20 Itaque, ut sine ullo errore diiudicarepossimus, si quando cum illo, quodhonestumintellegimus,pugnare id videbitur,quod appellamus utile, formula quaedam

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Ciceroand GreekPhilosophyentirelyconvincing,but it does cohere, as he says, with Stoic doctrine.But as I said, it would be a mistaketo judge Cicero's competenceandachievementsprimarilyby referenceto standards f originality.A different aspect has been emphasized by A. E. Douglas,9 whopoints out that some of Cicero's treatisesbelong to a genre that is notmuch in fashion among philosophers today-consolation and moraladvice for everydaylife. In this groupfall the TusculanDisputations,the Cato Maior (De Senectute),the Laelius (De Amicitia) and to someextent also the De Officiis. This is a genre in which eloquence has alargerrole to play than in other philosophicalworks, since the aim isnot so much instructionor explanationas psychological guidance andmoral education. It seems that some philosophersare beginningto beless dismissive about this kind of "appliedphilosophy,"andin any caseit is an interestingfeatureof Hellenistic philosophy in general that iswell worth investigating.10But I think it is still fair to say that fewphilosopherstoday would subscribe to Cicero's famous little "hymntophilosophy"(Tusc. 5.2.5): o vitaephilosophia dux, o virtutisindagatrixexpultrixquevitiorum ... Most of us would probablyratheragreewithAristotle, who thought that philosophy may indeed help us to clarifyour moralideas, but that it cannotreplacea good upbringing.There remains the group of dialogues in which Cicero, toward theend of his life, attempted o providea kind of philosophical encyclope-dia in Latin:1lthe Academici libri, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum,De NaturaDeorum,De Divinatione,De Fato. I suspect that what liesbehind the lack of respecton the partof philosophers or these treatisesis not an argumentat all, but the habit of readingCicero as a "source."When philosophical scholars began to rediscover the Hellenisticschools as a serious subjectin the last two decades or so, they naturallyalso began to read Cicero in order to find out about Epicurus,Zeno,Chrysippus, Arcesilaus, and so on. Although we have finally leftbehind the excesses of Quellenforschung,accordingto which Cicero's

constituendaest; quamsi sequemur n comparationererum,ab officionumquamrecede-mus. erit autem haecformula Stoicorum rationidisciplinaequemaximeconsentanea ...9 "Cicerothe Philosopher"n T. A. Doreyed., Cicero(London 1965) 135-170.10See MarthaNussbaum'srecentbook, TheTherapyof Desire (Princeton1994).1l For this project see Div. 2.2.4 Adhuc haec erant; ad reliqua alacri tendebamusanimo, sic parati ut nisi quae causa gravior obstitisset nullumphilosophiae locum essepateremurqui non Latinis litteris inlustratuspateret. quod enim munus rei p. adferremaiusmeliusvepossumusquamsi docemusatqueerudimus uventutem . .

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Gisela Strikerworks were just a patchworkof paraphrasesand Greek passages intranslation, t is still temptingto try to discern,for example, the argu-mentsof PanaetiusbehindCicero'sadmittedlybrieferversionin the DeOfficiis,andI would not wish to claim thatI can alwaysresist the temp-tation. The interests of present-dayreadersattemptingto understandStoicism or AcademicSkepticismdo not always coincide with Cicero'sown intentions. More often than not, such readers would find Cicerofrustrating. His outlines of philosophical doctrines are sketchy; theyoften seem to skip details thatmightbe crucial for a properunderstand-ing of the relevantarguments,and the very elegance of his Latin maycompoundthe difficultiesby makinghim less faithful to the terminol-ogy of the schools. Occasionallyone also suspectsthatCicero has mis-understoodor missed a philosophicalpoint. Add to this that he has theannoyinghabit of indulging in rhetoricalflourishes from time to timeand of interrupting r inflatingan argumentby more or less irrelevantstories from Rome's glorious past or deplorablepresent,and you willeasily understandwhy a philosophical reader might lose patience.Finally,therearethose who never find the time to read one of Cicero'sbooks from beginningto end. This tendencywill be reinforcedby theuse of collections like von Amim's Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta orUsener's Epicurea, which present us with excerpts from Cicero'sreportsof a school doctrine,leaving out his comments or placing thefollowing paragraphn a differentsection because it introducesa differ-ent topic. In these collections, Cicero is treated on a par with authorslike Diogenes Laertius or Stobaeus,whose books would indeed be ofmerely antiquariannterest f the literatureof the Hellenisticperiodhadnot been lost. Cicerothus comes to look like a not entirelyreliable andsometimes misleading witness-and why should we take such anauthorseriously?This way of looking at Cicero's books, however, is grossly unfairbecause it takes his treatisesto be what their authorneverintended. InberatingCicerofor superficialityor lack of detail,we overlook a crucialfact that is obvious upon a moment's reflection,but rarelytaken intoaccount:he could notpossibly foresee that all the works,not only of hisown teachers,but of their Hellenistic predecessorsas well, would belost. He wrote what might today be called introductorysurveys ofmajorfields in philosophy-epistemology, ethics, philosophicaltheol-ogy-trying to give an outlineof the mainpositions, highlightingwhathe saw as theirmost importantstrengthsand weaknesses. Because he

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Ciceroand GreekPhilosophywas following the Academicpracticeof presentingall sides of a debate,he purportedat least to be fair to each school's doctrine,offering thereadera set of interestingproblemsto thinkabout,but leaving the finaljudgmentopen. But of course he assumed that a readerwhose curiosityhad been awakenedby his outlinewould easily be able to pursuepartic-ularpoints of detailby gettingthe relevantGreek books. The educatedRomansfor whom he was writingcould be expectedto be bilingualorat least able to read Greek. This is, after all, why Cicero himself hasVarroobject that the entireprojectof translatingor putting philosophi-cal doctrines into Latin is superfluous-why seek out mere rivuletswhen you can drinkfrom the sources?(Acad. 1.2.8: sed meos amicos inquibusest studium n Graeciam mitto id est ad Graecos ire iubeo, ut exfontibus potius hauriant quam rivulos consectentur). Cicero neverintendedhis books to replacethe more technical Greek ones.But apartfrom the fact that he realized, unlike some of his friends,how important t is to be able to talk philosophy,not just to read it,Cicero may have been quite right to think that his books fulfilled afunction that the more technical and austereworks of the Greeksmighthave neglected,or did not fulfill as well. On this pointwe are of coursereducedto guessing; we do not know how well the genre "introductorysurvey"was represented n the Greekliteratureof Cicero's time. Thebooks to which Cicero himself explicitly refers do not seem to havebeen of this kind.12 n fact, it is clear that Cicero's literarymodels camefrom the early Academy-Plato, Aristotle, from whom Cicero claimsto have takenthe form of his dialogues,13Theophrastus,Polemo andsoon. For surveys,we might compareEpicurus' etters,which do purportto offer simplified summaries-and here, I would say, the comparisonwould be in favor of Cicero. And while we do not have enough froman earlierperiod, we do know that the books we now describe, afterDiels, as "doxographical"end to leave out what Cicero, on the con-

12AlthoughCicero tells us that Panaetiusused ordinary anguagewhen writingabouteveryday subjects (Off. 2.10.35), he clearly still finds it necessary to abbreviate whatPanaetiushadtreated"withgreatprecision" accuratissime;Off 3.2.7). In theAcad. librihe claims to have combined Antiochus' acumen with his own stylistic elegance (nitor;Att. 13.19.5). Philo of Larissataughtrhetoricas well as philosophy,and Cicero says thathe used to quote lines from the poets, as Cicero himself likes to do (Tusc.2.11.26). Butthe "Romanbooks"mentionedin the Luc. (4.11) belonged to a ratheresoteric epistemo-logical disputeand can hardlyhave been intended or beginners.13See Att. 13.19.4 quae autem his temporibus cripsi'Apiatoxo?3Xtovmoremhabent inquo ita sermoinduciturceterorumutapud ipsumsitprincipatus.

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Gisela Strikertrary, ends to emphasize-the theoretical rameworkand the argumentsbehind the theses, not to mentionotherphilosophers'objections. WhatCicero offers us is a framework n which to place more technical con-siderations,and a guide to the fundamentaldoctrines of each school.His books provideorientationand incentiveto further tudy,and in thisthey seem to me to be quite successful. Cicero is surely right to thinkthat a clear and fluent style will appeal to inexperiencedreaders,andthe presentationof conflictingviews in the form of a debateis an effec-tive pedagogical device to get readers involved in thinking about theproblemsfor themselves. On the otherhand,one cannotoverburdenaconversation,even an imaginary one, with too much detail withoutdefeatingthe dialogue's purpose. Some lines of argumentwill have tobe abbreviatedor condensedandCicero, to his credit,often points thisout himself. There is no reason to believe that he left out the detailsbecause he regarded hem as superfluous. I cannot think of a modemintroductorybook that would not be open to the kind of complaintssome scholars have made aboutCicero-sketchiness, lack of detail andoccasional misrepresentation.Nobody expects an encyclopediaarticleabout Aristotle to give a full and adequatepicture of his philosophy.Still, such books or articles are useful in setting their readerson therighttrack,as it were, butthey are not meantto be the last word aboutanything. If we sometimes end up thinkingthat Ciceromust have mis-understoodan argument,we shouldnot forget that it was often Cicerohimself who enabledus to see thatsomethingwent wrong.We haveeveryreasonto think that the loss of the works of the majorHellenistic philosophersis among the more regrettablecalamities ofour fragmentary radition,and it would be ridiculous to pretendthatCicero can make up for it. But I suspect that even if we had muchmore, we might still find ourselves turningto Cicero's judicious andlively little surveys to help us find our way, for example, throughthelaboriousvolumes of a Chrysippus,who was famous for his dreadfulstyle.14

14For Chrysippus'style, see Dion. Hal. Comp.4. 30-31 (p. 21 Us.-Rad., SVF II 28)o6no'uy Kai oi0 riv (pqhooocplav E:ayyEXXdOgEvotKcai rCxaS&aXKTiKac ?Kpc?povT?;rZcvac o{TQoeioiv a0Xtoi IrepiTiV cvO0eoav TiV ovop&drov,Xao' ai6SeiOal KcaXtyetv; an6oprIl 6e T?Kjl:1piOXpliGaooa TOXo6yP puoi"tou ro ZXToIKco'- epavctipoyap OVcKav 7ipopairlv. roUJov) yap Oi)' axIeilvov 06eiS 'aI; 15aXEKTZKaS;EXvaSicKpipatev, OiTE XEipOVI aplpovia CovTvax0?VaiveyKe X6yoV; tXV 6vo &XTov Kai860SqatloOe:VTrov.

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Cicero and GreekPhilosophy 61When Cicero had finished his Academici libri, he wrote to Atticus

(13.13.1): "the books have turned out-unless I am deceived by thatcommon failing, amour-propre-better than anything of their kind,even in Greek" (tr. J. Barnes. libri quidem ita exierunt, nisi forte mecommunis (pitxauia decipit, ut in tali genere ne apud Graecos quidemsimile quicquam). Nobody seems to have takenthis remarkseriously,given that Cicero is well known to have been particularlyproneto the"commonfailing." But in this case I am inclined to thinkthathe maywell havebeen right.HARVARD NIVERSITY