1996.4.34, Powell, ed., Cicero the Philosopher

Following Philosophia Togata (1989), Oxford University Press offers another collection of essays on Roman philosophy, this time with specific focus on Cicero. J.G.F. Powell has edited the dozen papers (including one of his own) and provided a general introduction on Cicero’s philosophical works and their background. Publication of the papers in aggregate rather than scattered individually among the journals is designed to strengthen their impact on scholarly perceptions (p.v). The needs of students at early stages are catered for by the provision (except in the papers of Glucker and Görler) of translations for cited Greek and Latin as well as a chronological list of the Ciceronian philosophica. The Editor has not attempted to impose any kind of orthodoxy on the doxai of the contributors, and indeed some differences of opinion crop up (see below). One regrets the lack of a general bibliography at the end; I am not sure what the “potential inconvenience” that is said to have militated against it (p.vii) would have been except to those charged with compiling it; but some of the authors have appended bibliographies to the end of their contributions. The volume concludes with a useful set of indices, viz., a general index and indices of Greek words and of passages discussed. Limitations of space and my own competence determine the scope of the following comments.

The Introduction dates the revival of interest in Cicero’s philosophical oeuvre from the last ten to fifteen years. This may be roughly true of Anglo-American scholarship, but Continental scholars such as Boyancé, Giusta, and Görler were cultivating this corpus with some notable results even when it had suffered deep eclipse across the Channel. Powell notes the objection that the reassessment currently under way may be due to “the academic habit of shifting cultivation: when the more rewarding areas are worked out one has of necessity to move into the less central and interesting ones” (p.1). He allows the book itself to stand as an answer to this objection. One could, however, from another perspective, put the problem in quite different and less defensive terms. In the larger history of Western thought Cicero’s philosophical works occupied a place of great importance down to the nineteenth century. The neglect, then, is of relatively recent origin and largely stems from the preoccupation, beginning in the nineteenth century, with reconstructing Cicero’s sources. It could be claimed that the neglect was an aberration caused by an academic trend and that the recent upsurge of interest restores these works to their normal centrality. In general, as L.P. Wilkinson once observed, “of all classical writers Cicero is the one whose interest today derives in largest proportion from his Nachleben“; ¹ this applies a fortiori to the philosophica. In spite of MacKendrick’s recent sweeping survey, ² some discussion—whether in the Introduction or a separate essay—of problems in the reception of the texts would have been welcome. ³

Problems of Quellenforschung still exercise the authors of some of these papers, albeit marginally. The nature of the evidence and the strength of source-critical constructs vary, of course, from work to work, and there is still no general agreement on approach (contrast, e.g., pp.203 n. and 221 n., both on the Tusculan Disputations). The Editor addresses this method in a footnote to the Introduction (n. 20, pp.8-9), with an explanation offered for the current trend (“The word Quellenforschung tends now to be used pejoratively to refer to the mechanical method of searching for sources …”); ⁴ the point is made, however, that “there is nothing wrong with source-analysis per se, provided that it is done intelligently …” Many readers would no doubt have found helpful a detailed discussion with examples of the favored and disfavored use.

Cicero was, since his student days, devoted to the study of philosophy, but it was by no means inevitable that this man, intent on a career at the bar and in politics, would ever write a line of his own on the subject. It is the virtue of Miriam T. Griffin’s study of “Philosophical Badinage in Cicero’s Letters” to set Cicero’s occupation with philosophy into the larger context of his interactions with educated contemporaries. It provides striking confirmation of Cicero’s claim cum minime videbamur tum maxime philosophabamur ( N.D. 1.6). Thus Griffin infers from the mention of Diodotus at Fam. 9.4 together the date of Diodotus’ death (59: Att. 2.20.6) that Cicero may have been thinking about problems raised in De Fato at least fifteen years before the composition of that treatise (p.340). She also raises an interesting possibility as to how Cicero might have arrived at the quasi-Antiochean view περὶ δυνατῶν at Fat. 39-45 in the absence of an account from his teacher’s pen (p.341). In general Griffin shows that Cicero’s philosophical works should not be studied in isolation but against the backdrop of the philosophical tastes and interests of the time. There is gain for Cicero’s letters as well, for her philosophically alert reading refines our understanding of a number of passages.

The decision to write on philosophy was a turning point both for Cicero and for Latin literature. He hardly had predecessors in this genre whom he took seriously. One of the first problems was that of finding suitable Latin terminology for the concepts in his Greek sources, a problem addressed in two papers of this collection, a more general one by J.G.F. Powell and in terms of a specific set of locutions by John Glucker.

Powell’s paper “Cicero’s translations from the Greek” (confined to prose translations) begins frustratingly. He remarks on the variability in “accuracy” of Cicero’s renderings but chooses to conduct this discussion in general terms without reference to a single specific “error” in Ciceronian translation. The result is that the reader who has not already made a special study of the subject is likely to be uncertain as to what kinds of things he has in mind, whether minor inadvertences or major blunders. Cicero was certainly capable of errors of various kinds, as any close study of his philosophical works will show; but since we know of no other ancient author whose mastery of both languages reached Cicero’s level, modern scholars will want to think long and hard before ascribing to him, apart from acts of carelessness or misunderstandings of the matter of a difficult original, simple errors in translating from Greek to Latin. In fact, Powell’s approach turns out to be more nuanced than appears at the very beginning of this piece, for he has thought about other explanations (listed on p.274) of the phenomena in the texts apart from simple error. By way of querying the notion that the ancients’ views of translation differed markedly from ours, he includes a useful study of the various terms for the translator and his work in classical Latin ( interpres, interpretari, ad verbum, verbum de/e/pro verbo reddere, vertere, convertere : pp.276-78). ⁵

In part II of his study Powell includes, after Jones, a list of passages from the philosophica translated from a surviving Greek source (pp.279-80). ⁶ Here it might, depending upon the flexibility or expansibility of the system of categorization, be possible to add more items; see the list of Widmann (not cited by Powell) ⁷; many of her items will fall between Powell’s categories (c) (“explicitly acknowledged quotations, more or less accurately reproduced in direct speech”) and (d) (“passages freely adapted or summarized in indirect speech”). Note, too, that the doxography of N.D. 1 amounts to a virtual translation of those portions of Philodemus De Pietate printed in parallel columns by Diels, ⁸ albeit De Pietate is not explicitly acknowledged. Powell goes on to argue (section III) that Poncelet’s strictures on the Latin language as a vehicle for philosophical expression are one-sided. ⁹

Section IV explores the topic of Cicero’s innovations in vocabulary in general, ¹⁰ as well as constraints imposed by Latin upon the process. The function of this section, like the previous one, is presumably to show that the Latin language was, appropriately expanded, adequate to express the ideas in Cicero’s sources, i.e., any inadequacies of the translations cannot be excused on grounds of the language itself. There are really two related but somewhat different problems here: (1) Cicero’s contribution to the Latin vocabulary in general, both in coining new words and in expanding the semantic and syntactic possibilities of existing words—a contribution which will be in evidence in the speeches, letters, etc., as well as the philosophica; (2) the specific problem of coining technical terms for philosophy; the two are somewhat elided in Powell’s account, which emphasizes the latter in view of its greater relevance to his overall thesis. Powell argues that Cicero’s “invention of new terms sometimes seems to have been more for display than for use; and the display was so successful that Cicero has often been credited with more than he either intended or achieved” (p.297). To this statement is appended a footnote referring to Plut. Cic. 40.2, including this list of Greek terms for which Cicero is said “first or especially” (πρῶτος ἢ μάλιστα) to have provided a Latin equivalent: ἐποχή, συγκατάθεσις, κατάληψις, ἄτομον, ἀμερές, κενόν. Certainly Plutarch is vague (“first or especially”); but Cicero did, in fact, provide Latin equivalents for all these terms, ¹¹ so it cannot be said that Plutarch claimed too much. The highly fragmentary record of earlier Latin literature makes it, of course, very hazardous to speak about which words Cicero did or did not coin. Powell remarks of multiformis (= πολυειδής) “perhaps not an original invention of Cicero’s” (p.296); the assumption is evidently that since it is a compound it ought to be of poetic origin. But, in fact, like a number of compounds in multi-, ¹² it is a prose word that hardly occurs in poetry ¹³; first attested at Acad. Post. 1.26, multiformis, like multiiugis (first attested at Att. 14.9.1), seems likely to be a Ciceronian coinage. Cicero himself makes a rather ambitious claim for his philosophical vocabulary: … tantum profecisse videmur ut a Graecis ne verborum quidem copia vinceremur ( N.D. 1.8), so that the argument about Cicero being credited with more than he intended, or wanted to receive credit for, seems dubious. Powell cites one instance of Cicero’s being credited with a word likely to have been invented by another ( qualitas : p.295). But one would need a much more detailed study of his vocabulary, both philosophical and non-philosophical, either to establish or refute Palmer’s claim of “many new words” for Cicero. ¹⁴ In any case, one will readily agree with Powell that “what is interesting … in all this is to see Cicero’s mind at work on the details, surmounting the concrete problems …” (p.299).

The starting point of John Glucker’s contribution “Probabile, Veri Simile, and Related Terms” is Cicero’s statement of the position of Academic Skeptics at Luc. 32: volunt enim … probabile aliquid esse et quasi veri simile, eaque se uti regula et in agenda vita et in quaerendo ac disserendo. Glucker’s problem is this: if Cicero is rendering something similar to the πιθαναὶ φαντασίαι with reference to Carneades’ criteria for the conduct of life at S.E. M. 7.435, why does he add veri simile and also apply the procedure in quaerendo ac disserendo ? He establishes that veri simile and probabile are both standard Latin translations for εἰκός ¹⁵ and then explores the use of εἰκός and πιθαν in rhetoric with the result that the εἰκότα are “arguments from what would appear … to be the case,” whereas the πιθαν is the “final aim” of a speech (p.124). By Cicero’s time, εἰκός, πιθαν, and εὔλογον were used more or less interchangeably in philosophical and rhetorical texts (pp.127-28), nor does he draw a sharp distinction between probabilis and veri similis, except that πιθανὴ φαντασία is invariably rendered probabilis visio or probabile visum. Glucker claims that both πιθαν and εἰκός appeared in the source of Luc. 32 (p.132). It is true that Cicero’s equivalents of ἀξίωμα, though not literal, render something in the Greek sources (ibid.), but the same need not be true of probabile … et quasi veri simile (for examples of Ciceronian additions in rendering his sources cf. Powell, p.287). Glucker rejects W. Görler’s suggestion (p.133 and n. 75) that Cicero’s ascription of his regula as applied not only to conduct of life but also philosophical inquiry to Academic Skeptics may be an ad hoc invention to lend the statement greater authority. That the probabile should be followed in agenda vita is a well attested position of the Skeptical Academy. I suspect that Cicero has mixed with that the probabile or veri simile as an object of disputation. This extension or misunderstanding of Carneades’ procedure appears to be peculiar to Cicero, possibly a confusion with Peripatetic doctrine (Arist. Top. 163a36-b12). ¹⁶ Note that at De Orat. 1.158 the probabile alone functions as the goal of in utramque partem disputari. Might veri simile have been added by Cicero to make it clear in this context that veritas itself ( Top. 163b13 speaks of ἀλήθεια) is not in question? In general, the wording of Cicero’s sources may not be so easily inferred as has sometimes been supposed. ¹⁷

Several of the papers go beyond a discussion of individual works. The first of these is A.A. Long’s on “Cicero’s Plato and Aristotle,” which usefully explores the probable agenda underlying Cicero’s use of those mighty names. Cicero knew Plato at first hand and was competent to do his own excerpting of points of interest to him. At first glance surprising, however, is his neglect of Plato’s works on dialectic, which is explained by Cicero’s having received what he thought necessary on the subject via Antiochus (p.46). Aristotle is a particularly tricky problem since Cicero’s Aristotle ( viz., apart from the Topics and Rhetoric, mostly the lost dialogues) is not ours and vice-versa. In general, Cicero is seen to follow the twofold strategy of “playing down Plato’s hostility to rhetoric” (e.g., by the use of the theory of Forms in Orator) while playing up Aristotle’s authority (p.55), albeit his Aristotle, largely mediated via the rhetorical schools, is essentially the protos heuretes of in utramque partem disputari, seen as a technique for rhetorical as well as philosophical training. Long’s paper ably illustrates the important point that the tendency of specialists in ancient philosophy to focus on the philosophica of Cicero’s last years and to ignore the rhetorica“gives many misleading impressions” (p.39). ¹⁸

Long finds “something original and challenging” in Cicero’s insistence that good style is necessary to philosophy (59). Philippa R. Smith, however, takes Cicero’s view on this as her problem. Using as her starting point the strictures on bad philosophical writing at Tusc. 1.6, she queries whether the “rhetorical philosophy” Cicero advocates would not be a better candidate for the predicate of “self-indulgent misuse of leisure and writing” which Cicero applies to sloppy philosophical writing. She goes on to offer a confrontation of the argumentative mode of the speeches and the philosophica, including the impeaching of Asiatic witnesses in Pro Flacco and of Antiochus at Luc. 69-71, and finds the two different in the degree to which passion and ad hominem attack are allowed free reign, but not in kind. The juxtaposition of forensic and philosophical argument is revealing, but Smith also needed to consider the passages in which Cicero discusses in utramque partem disputari and its goals. This would have given her own argument on the subject historical depth (see Long, pp.52 ff.).

In light of his exile and recall, Cicero was moved to reexamine some premises he had held about the res publica, statesmanship, and glory, and to search for a basis in philosophy and history for views on these subjects. The result was his first philosophical essay, De Republica, the subject of a paper in this collection by Malcolm Schofield, who takes as his target the view of M.I. Finley that the legitimacy of government was hardly raised as a problem in ancient political discourse. ¹⁹ Schofield usefully delimits res publica from the modern concept “state” on the one hand (with an important distinction between the entrusting and transfer of powers) and the πόλις on the other; in addition, the metaphors attached to it suggest that the res publica resonated in a Latin speaker at a much deeper level than the civitas (pp.67-69; the patria, with its still greater potential for appealing to the emotions, could have been brought in as well). ²⁰ In his exploration of the famous definition of the res publica as the res populi ( Rep. 1.39), Schofield focuses on the important limitation of populus that immediately follows ( populus autem non omnis hominum coetus quoquo modo congregatus, sed coetus multitudinis iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatus) and the use in particular of the italicized words to exclude not only tyranny but also ochlocracy from a res publica properly so called. The ambiguity of res enables Cicero to take res populi in the sense “property of the public” at Rep. 3.43, where he denies to the polity of Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, the name res publica: nihil enim populi, et unius erat populus ipse. The implicit analogy of the position of the populus vis-à-vis the res publica to an owner in relation to his property is further elaborated when Cicero speaks of the deprived populace claiming its res from the domination of a king or oligarchy, i.e., reasserting its liberty ( Rep. 3.44). Schofield finds that “Cicero here creates an entirely new theory, cast in a legal vocabulary which has no parallel in Greek … Its legal inspiration makes it a distinctively Roman contribution to political thought” (p.77). This is an important finding, but the emphasis, I think, needs to be distributed somewhat differently. What Cicero does is based upon the semantic range of the Latin word res. Once res publica has been “deconstructed” as res populi (whether first by Cicero or Varro does not matter for our purposes), the property analogy suggests itself all but automatically. The legal terminology, vindiciae, rem suam recuperare, etc., used with reference to reestablishing ownership ( Rep. 3.44), is not so much the “inspiration” of this concept as its corollary, though it may be a telling marker of the difference from political philosophy of the Platonic/Aristotelian type (so Schofield, p.82).