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V. The Philosophical Writings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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If eddies and cross-currents still complicate the charting of the study of Cicero as politician and orator, it is not at all difficult to determine the main movement of the tides in the study of his philosophical works.

It is still popularly believed that the Middle Ages got their philosophy from Cicero and that at the Renaissance he was replaced more or less overnight by the newly discovered Greeks. But of course the Middle Ages also learned philosophy from Aristotle via Boethius, then through Arabic sources, then in the original. It is easy enough to find medieval writers who knew Cicero’s De Amicitia and De Senectute, and a good many knew the Tusculans and De Officiis—the easy ones, it might be said. But it was Petrarch and the men of the Renaissance who put Cicero on the map, precisely because they rebelled against what they felt to be the arid theorizing of Aristotelian scholasticism and looked for a guide to life. After Petrarch, the belief that Cicero was outstanding both as statesman and thinker helped a great deal, and on the map he remained in that capacity for centuries. Plato profoundly influenced many, but often in bizarre manifestations which owed more to neo-Platonism and allied mysticisms than to the Plato of, say, Apology and Republic familiar to the modern student. Greek anyhow remained a scarce commodity until the nineteenth century: for the ordinary educated man what Tully said was good enough.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 2: Cicero , 1968 , pp. 27 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1968

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References

page no 27 note 1 For full bibliographical information on recent work on the philosophical and rhetorical writings see the excellent surveys by Smethurst, S. E., CW li (1957), 1 ff.Google Scholar, 32 ff.; lviii (1964-5), 36 ff.; lxi (1967), 125 ff. General surveys of Cicero’s philosophical writings are much rarer than they should be. In addition to the works of Hunt and Süss referred to below, the introduction to J. S. Reid’s edition of the Academica (London, 1885) and Petersson, Cicero, 537 ff. contain much of value.

page no 27 note 2 On Petrarch’s attitude to Cicero cf.Baron, H., Bull. John Rylands Library xx (1938), 72 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page no 28 note 1 e.g. Acad. ii. 118 ff.; Fin. v. 12 ff.; Nat. D. i. 25 ff.

page no 28 note 2 e.g. Clitomachus in Acad. ii. 98 ff.

page no 28 note 3 Among the most pungent critics of the Quellenforscher are Boyancé, P., RÉL xiv (1936), 288 ff.Google Scholar; Testard, M. in his introd. to the Budé De Officiis (Paris, 1965)Google Scholar. Laurand, L., De M. Tulli Ciceronis studiis rhetoricis (Paris, 1907)Google Scholar showed that as regards the rhetorical works we can go little further than Cicero’s express acknowledgements take us.

page no 29 note 1 Att. xii. 52. 3. Shackleton Bailey, Towards a Text . . ., 62-3 and in his edition ad loc points out that we cannot be certain that the reference is, as is invariably assumed, to the philosophical works: Cicero is not explicit. But, though he shows that the remark cannot be a reply to what Tyrrell and Purser conjectured Atticus had said, that does not suffice to demolish the traditional view.

page no 29 note 2 Michel, A., RÉL xxxix (1961), 158 ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 29 note 3 Kumaniecki, K., RÉL xxxvii (1959), 171 ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 30 note 1 Gelzer, M., Gnomon xxxvii (1965), 362 Google Scholar, reviewing Büchner’s Cicero, denied Cicero any importance as a thinker: he was only an orator. Gelzer was too harsh (see Boyancé, P., Latomus xxvi [1967], 3 ff.Google Scholar), but one sympathizes with his impatience, particularly after a surfeit of the effusions prompted by the bimillenary of Cicero’s death a decade ago.

page no 30 note 2 Süss, W., Cicero: eine Einführung in seine philosophischen Schriften (Wiesbaden, 1966)Google Scholar.

page no 30 note 3 Cf.Guite, H. F., Greece and Rome N.s. ix (1962), 142 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an interesting comparison with the modern African trying to express his own ideas with only European modes of thought and expression available. In other parts of the article Guite’s anxiety to make a case against Cicero leads him even, I think, to misinterpret texts.

page no 30 note 4 But not everywhere: much entertainment is still to be had from observing them at work on Roman drama.

page no 31 note 1 De Div. ii. 1 ff.

page no 31 note 2 Knoche, U., Hermes lxxxvii (1959), 57 ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 31 note 3 Guillemin, A., RÉL xxxiii (1955), 209 ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 31 note 4 In a lecture summarized in PCA lxi (1964), 33.

page no 31 note 5 Perret, J., RÉL xxiv (1946), 169 ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 31 note 6 Michel, A., RÉL xxxix (1961), 158 ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 31 note 7 Schulte, H. K., Orator: Untersuchungen über das ciceronianische Bildungsideal (Frankfurt, 1935), 107 Google Scholar. The book is an important study of Cicero’s educational ideas in relation to both Greek and Roman traditions.

page no 32 note 1 On this, and many cognate matters, the introduction to the English translation by Sabine, G. H. and Smith, S. B., Cicero on the Commonwealth (Columbus, Ohio, 1929)Google Scholar, remains one of the most sensible contributions.

page no 32 note 2 See De Rep. ii. 51, v. 5, 8 f. Meyer, E., Cäsars Monarchie und das Prinzipat des Pompejus (Stuttgart, 1918)Google Scholar advanced Pompey’s claims: they were denied by Heinze, R., Hermes lxix (1924), 73 ffGoogle Scholar. (Vom Geist, 141 ff.) and How, W. W., JRS xx (1930), 24 ffGoogle Scholar. There is a useful brief discussion in Poyser, G. H., Selections from Cicero De Re Publica (Cambridge, 1948), 22 ffGoogle Scholar. and a very full one by Lepore, E., Il princeps ciceroniano (Naples, 1954)Google Scholar.

page no 32 note 3 Cf. Syme, pp. 144 f., 318 f. Béranger, J. (Hermes lxxxvii [1959], 103 ff.Google Scholar) suggests that, though not the inspiration of the Augustan settlement, Cicero’s ideas had an important if diffused influence in the first century or so of the Principate.

page no 32 note 4 The search for the sources of the ideas which make up the Somnium Scipionis, with which De Re Publica ends, is prima facie a reasonable undertaking, though again a lack of agreed answers must be noted. Recent studies include Festugière, A. J., Eranos xliv (1946), 370 ff.Google Scholar; Luck, G., Harv. Theol. Rev. xlix (1956), 207 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coleman, R. G. G., Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. N.S. x (1964), 1 ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 33 note 1 Hunt, H. A. Kinross, The Humanism of Cicero (Melbourne, 1954)Google Scholar.

page no 33 note 2 Douglas, A. E., Greece & Rome N.S. ix (1962), 41 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. and in Dorey, pp. 138 ff.

page no 33 note 3 Becker, E., Technik und Szenerie des ciceronianischen Dialogs (Osnabrück, 1938)Google Scholar. On the whole question, Hirzel, R., Der Dialog (Leipzig, 1895)Google Scholar is still a classic, while more recently Ruch, M., Le Préambule dans les œuvres philosophiques de Cicéron (Paris, 1958)Google Scholar, has covered much more than his main title implies.

page no 34 note 1 BICS vi (1959), 22 ff.

page no 34 note 2 Poncelet, P., Cicéron traducteur de Platon (Paris, 1957)Google Scholar.

page no 34 note 3 Lack of the definite article (so that то áyaOóv becomes omne bonum) and of prepositions (κατά is often untranslatable, and Cicero can be caught naughtily omitting the troublesome phrases) and of participles (change from active to passive can subtly change the nuance) are only a few of the problems.