The fragments of Hecato of Rhodes afford an opportunity to consider what is distinctive about the middle Stoa of the Republican period, from Diogenes of Babylon to Posidonius. Veillard views this intermediate period as one marked, not by doctrinal retreat, but by an openness to look to outside traditions to respond to problems raised after Chrysippus.[1] Since Hecato is a bridge connecting Republican to Imperial Stoics, Veillard wants to show that his fragments make visible the complex origins of tropes common in Seneca and Epictetus, like meditative exercises and the care of the self. Although the fragments do not offer a coherent enough view of Hecato’s philosophy to support this ambition, Veillard offers a new account against which others can develop their opinions on a source who is now obscure, but who had a definite impact on Cicero and Seneca.
Veillard’s edition contains three parts of similar length: five introductory essays justifying the selection of fragments and evaluating their sources; the fragments, translation, and commentary; and four interpretive essays on Hecato’s philosophy. The introductory essays are a strength of the volume. Veillard first reviews the assumptions of the prior editions of Fowler and Gomoll (ch. 1) and then outlines a sensible plan for identifying and delimiting fragments (ch. 2).[2] She next addresses texts which bear a likeness to secure fragments but do not cite Hecato, deciding which are informative (Stob. Ecl. 2.7.5b4 and 5b5 [selections]; Cic. Off. 3.49–55) and which are deceptive (Martin of Braga, Formula vitae; Varro’s satires and Cicero’s Paradoxa Stoicorum) (ch. 3). Of the three principal authors who do cite Hecato (Diogenes Laertius, Cicero, and Seneca), Veillard comes to some tentative conclusions (ch. 4); for instance, that in his Maxims (Chreiai) Hecato gave Zeno a Socratic filiation that brought nuance to the pro-Cynic tradition followed by Diogenes Laertius himself,[3] that Cicero uses Hecato’s On Appropriate Actions (Peri kathēkontōn) merely as one (indirect) source among others in De officiis 3, that Hecato’s putative treatise On Benefits (Peri charitōn) is the principal source (supplemented by Chrysippus’ On Benefits) for Seneca’s De beneficiis 1–4,[4] and that in his Epistles Seneca also literally translates selections from this same work as he begins to turn Lucilius away from Epicurus (Frs. 17–19 = Sen. Ep. 5.7, 6.7, 9.6). Despite some reservations (see the two prior notes), Veillard’s source criticism often improves on Fowler and others. There follows a brief chapter on what little we know of Hecato’s life (ch. 5). Veillard favors the hypothesis that Hecato and Tubero (169/163–89/63 BCE) were contemporaries and students of Panaetius, at least part of the time in Rome, between Panaetius’ return from his eastward voyage with Scipio Aemilianus (138 BCE) and the start of his scholarchy in Athens (129 BCE).
Veillard does not pretend to offer a critical edition, instead following Dorandi, Winterbottom, and Préchac’s Budé editions, unless otherwise noted.[5] The printed text is not very useful, since relevant textual variants and editorial decisions are mentioned only in the commentary; and now Kaster’s new OCT edition of Seneca adds to the deficiency.[6] Concerning the translation I mention only two oddities. At DL 7.101 (Fr. 4), ἰσοδύναμον τὸ καλὸν τῷ ἀγαθῷ is given as “équivaloir au beau, c’est être bon,” which differs considerably from “the fine is equivalent to the good”. Then, at DL 7.90–91 (Fr. 6), σωφροσύνῃ … παρεκτείνεσθαι τὴν ὑγίειαν becomes “santé … prolonge par extension la tempérance,” giving the impression that temperance partially depends on health, but the sense only requires that “health is a byproduct of temperance” (as Veillard herself is aware, cf. p. 260: “…la santé arrive par extension de la tempérance…”).
The commentary is more concerned to explain the text than to outline the conceptual problems at play. Accordingly, several important fragments receive little to no philosophical treatment: e.g., DL 7.90–1 (Fr. 6), Stob. Ecl. 2.7.5b4 and 5b5 [selections] (Fr. 6bis.), DL 7.125–6 (Fr. 7), Cic. Off. 3.89–92 (Fr. 11), Sen. Ben. 2.18.1–2 (Fr. 13), 3.18.1 (Fr. 15), and 4.37.1 (Fr. 16). One, then, must look either back to the introductory essays or ahead to the interpretive essays for richer discussions of the evidence. Yet cross-references to the introductory and interpretive essays are uneven. While the commentary to DL 7.2 (Fr. 25) gives particular pages for the reader to consult (pp. 67–70), Veillard on Sen. Ep. 5.7 (Fr. 17) refers the reader to an earlier discussion of Seneca’s “phrase-du-jour” without a citation (e.g., pp. 94–96). Or take Fr. 6 (DL 7.90–91), which contrasts theoretical and atheoretical virtues and surprisingly lists courage (ἀνδρεία) as atheoretical. What Veillard has to say about this puzzle (at p. 266 n. 3 and p. 286 n. 2), or even about the theoretical and atheoretical virtues (throughout pp. 252–76), is nowhere indicated in the commentary. Compounding the problem is the lack of an index locorum, so that it is impossible to find quickly wherever Veillard mentions a given passage.
The heart of Veillard’s book, then, are her essays on Hecato’s philosophy. Veillard makes the most of the fragments by gathering them under four heads. First, Hecato’s On Paradoxes and Maxims (Frs. 20–27) indicate an interest in the protreptic effect of striking language (ch. 6). Veillard turns next to the fragments about virtue (roughly, Frs. 1–8) to consider Hecato’s view of the four cardinal virtues and the question of his atheoretical virtues (ch. 7). Then, Veillard discusses Hecato’s interest in physiological affect (especially with respect to Frs. 3, 9, 17, and 19). A final chapter groups the fragments on appropriate actions (Frs. 10–11) and on benefits (Frs. 12–16) under the heading of Hecato’s use of precepts for teaching (ch. 9). The chapters, while comprehensively treating the available evidence, are rather loosely connected, as what has been transmitted to us is unlikely to give a holistic view of Hecato’s thought. In the space I have left I respond to two of Veillard’s more consequential positions, which I think exaggerate Hecato’s originality: that the atheoretical virtues of DL 7.90–91 could be acquired without the theoretical virtues (pp. 265–76), and that Hecato’s cases in Cic. Off. 3.89–92 show that he solved problems of competing appropriate actions by preferring one’s obligations to the city (pp. 302–12).
To support her claim that the epistemic virtues are sufficient but not necessary for acquiring the atheoretical virtues, Veillard relies on the phrase καὶ περὶ φαύλους γίγνονται (found in MSS P and F but omitted by B and in the excerpts from the Suda), which she translates as “et se manifestent aussi chez les fous” (“and [sc. the atheoretical virtues] are manifested also among fools”). Against Veillard, there is nothing in the text underlying “aussi”. Yet its intrusion is necessary to make sense of the phrase in context, since the point of the sentence is that atheoretical virtues supervene on the epistemic virtues of the wise. Other editors accordingly follow B and the Suda. Veillard, still relying on the phrase in question, then proceeds to reason that atheoretical virtues can be acquired regardless of a person’s natural endowments (pp. 270–1). Veillard suggests that Hecato was more sanguine about humanity’s capacity for all varieties of virtuous action than Panaetius, who recognized that different natural dispositions make us suited to virtuous action only in particular spheres of life (p. 273). But even if one chooses not to omit the problematic phrase, Veillard reads too far into the text to find the strong claim that atheoretical virtues are even more plentiful than natural predispositions to particular virtuous actions. To say that atheoretical virtues arise in fools does not imply they are widely prevalent or more common than Panaetius’ starting points.
About conflicts of appropriate action, Veillard holds that Hecato used his cases to teach a rule of action. Working through dilemmas of whether to maximize profits during a famine or storm or to protect the life of the enslaved, whether to preserve one’s own life or to save another’s during a shipwreck, and whether to protect one’s father or one’s city, Hecato, says Veillard (pp. 305, 307), offered the following rule: do what most benefits one’s city, the intermediate level between one’s personal and universal spheres of concern. Thus, maximize profits, which constitute the city’s wealth (Cic. Off. 3.63); save whoever’s life best serves one’s country; and prosecute one’s father if there is no other way to divert him from harming the state. I suspect this misunderstands what Hecato set out to do, which was not to teach an easy rule to follow but to show, as he suggested elsewhere (Sen. Ben. 2.18.2), that it is difficult to find a rule that respects competing social obligations. Hecato’s cases treat circumstantial appropriate actions (kathēkonta kata peristasin); in DL 7.109 we are given as examples neglecting one’s property and self-harm, which correspond to Hecato’s cases of slave owners starving or otherwise killing the enslaved and shipwrecked passengers giving up planks. Whereas non-circumstantial kathēkonta, like promoting one’s health, are appropriate on their face, circumstantial ones look inappropriate. Hecato’s cases seem to identify circumstances in which counterintuitive duties (because either so cruelly calculative or so nobly self-sacrificial) are in fact the right thing to do. Hecato would merely be illustrating the orthodox Stoic view that in extreme circumstances, like supply shocks and shipwrecks, the right action can be disturbingly paradoxical. The case of the criminal father, meanwhile, is raised by an interlocutor who, like Veillard, tries to derive a rule from Hecato’s use of what is advantageous to one’s city as a tiebreaker between two sages holding onto a plank. Hecato frustrates expectations, however, by cleaving to ordinary morality and denying that the son ought to prosecute his father in all but the most extreme scenario. The rather banal point would seem to be that, unless the right circumstance obtains, the right thing to do can equally fall in line with more conventional rules of behavior.
Notes
Thanks to Matthieu Réal and Kathleen Garland for discussion.
[1] See also Veillard, C., 2015, Le stoïcisme intermédiaire: Diogène de Babylonie, Panétius de Rhodes, Posidonius d’Apamée, Paris.
[2] Fowler, H. (ed.), 1885, Panaetii et Hecatonis librorum fragmenta, Diss. Bonn. Gomoll, H. (ed.), 1933, Der stoische Philosoph Hekaton, Leipzig.
[3] Veillard (p. 69) opposes what Apollonius of Tyre and Hecato said of Zeno’s turn to philosophy – that Zeno received an oracle to cozy up to the dead (DL 7.2) – to the anecdote of Demetrius of Magnesia, that while in Athens Zeno’s father bought Socratic books for him (7.31). And since Apollonius is elsewhere said to have provided an anecdote about Zeno’s change of allegiance from the Cynic Crates to the Socratic but non-Cynic Stilpo (DL 7.24), Veillard surmises that (i) Hecato, like Apollonius, saw Zeno’s tutelage under Crates as a stepping-stone towards other Socratics and that (ii) Demetrius would have also differed from Apollonius/Hecato by stressing Zeno’s relation to the Cynic Crates. But I see no ground for taking either anecdote to emphasize any one of Zeno’s contemporary teachers; further, the two anecdotes may well belong to the very same narrative – e.g., if Zeno asked his father to buy him books after interpreting his oracle.
[4] Despite cautioning that, in Book 4, on the choice-worthiness of benefits, Hecato disappears from view and that Seneca could easily devise his own arguments on this topic, Veillard (p. 119) concludes that Seneca followed Hecato’s treatise “dans la partie théorique au moins de son exposition (livres I à IV).” But this leaves open that Hecato ended his On Benefits with a defense of the benefit as something to be done for its own sake; Veillard could have stressed that book 4, a structural hinge between the two halves of De beneficiis, is likely Seneca’s invention.
[5] Dorandi, T. (ed.), 2013, Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Cambridge. Winterbottom, M. (ed.), 1994, M. Tullii Ciceronis De officiis, Oxford. Préchac, F. (ed.), 1926–7, Sénèque : Des bienfaits, 2 vol., Paris. Préchac, F. (ed.), 1945–64, Sénèque : Lettres à Lucilius, Paris.
[6] Kaster, R. (ed.), 2022, L. Annaei Senecae: De Beneficiis libri VII; De Clementia libri II; Apocolocyntosis, Oxford.