Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T23:49:54.505Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - Philosophy in Cicero’s Letters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2021

Jed W. Atkins
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
Thomas Bénatouïl
Affiliation:
Université de Lille
Get access

Summary

Cicero’s epistolary corpus is still partly unexplored from a philosophical angle. Modern scholars have left aside discrete and fragmentary allusions to philosophy, though the letters are a laboratory in which the origins and the development of Cicero’s thought appear more clearly than in his later works. The study of Greek words loaded with philosophical connotations, especially when these words are not translated, is particularly enlightening from this point of view. In this chapter, I successively study three different uses of philosophical Greek in Cicero’s letters: (1) Greek language betraying the influence of a philosophical model on the letters (the influence of protreptic) long before the Hortensius was written in 45 bce; (2) Greek language coming from implicit quotes, whether they serve a purely philosophical purpose or interweave philosophy and literature; (3) Greek language revealing the progressive elaboration of a philosophical work, De finibus, and its analysis of the Stoic theory of οἰκείωσις in book 3.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×