Andrew Dyck’s Cicero: the man and his works is a substantial accomplishment in more ways than one. Its erudition is massive: the bibliography occupies more than one hundred pages. Substantial too are the effort and thought it represents: Dyck has been working on Cicero for many years, and Cicero grows out of Dyck’s numerous commentaries on both speeches and philosophical works as well as his many articles. His knowledge both of Cicero’s writings and of the huge secondary literature is much more extensive and precise than mine; I have learned much from reading this book, and I value its information and bibliography. But Dyck’s work is weighty as well as substantial: at more than a thousand pages and more than 3 ½ lbs., Cicero is not in any sense light reading.
Any review of a book like this must either mirror its detail or aim at a broader view; this review is definitely of the second sort. As may already be evident, moreover, my respect for Dyck’s control of the material and his ability to write intelligently about it is somewhat counterbalanced by the exhaustion induced by his exhaustiveness. In short: while I am very glad to have read Dyck’s book, I am not sure all students of Cicero will need to do so. Sheer volume of details does not make a compelling biography, and this is a book to consult, not read: Dyck is astonishingly accurate, copious in the citation of scholarship—and, unlike many Anglophone scholars, he reads other languages—and admirably lucid in the analysis of Ciceronian arguments.[1] Dyck’s analysis of arguments, however, occupies too much space and the “works” of his subtitle overwhelm the man; thus, the book feels more like a bulked-up Realencyclopädie article than an exploration of Cicero’s life and character.
Dyck’s book falls into two parts. The first 726 pages, divided into nineteen chapters after a brief introduction and a note on sources, combine a year-by-year and at times day-by-day account of Cicero’s life with description and analysis of his surviving writings embedded in the chronological narrative. Each chapter is broken into subsections, and each ends with a brief conclusion summarizing the chapter and occasionally pointing ahead. The remainder of the book (727-914), other than the bibliography and extensive indexes, consists of 30 appendices, again ordered chronologically, beginning with twenty relatively brief discussions of particular points (chronology, authenticity, or law, as well as some lost speeches) and then explaining the arguments of seven philosophical works Cicero composed in 45-44, broken up by three notes on particular points. I have read the entire main narrative; I have not read in equal detail all the appendices: I trust Dyck’s accuracy in explaining philosophical arguments.
Lives take place in chronological order, but a diary is not the best format for understanding what makes a life significant or interesting. We know more about Cicero than just about any other individual in the ancient world (except perhaps some of the more verbose church fathers): the many speeches, whole and fragmentary; the treatises and dialogues; portions of his poetry, including fragments of his auto-epic on his own consulship; and above all the hundreds of letters to Atticus, to his brother, and to his friends. But Cicero’s writings are badly distributed chronologically (no letters from the first forty years of his life, a great many from the last years), and even in apparently private correspondence, Cicero was just as concerned to shape himself and the world through words as he was sometimes copious in self-pity or self-congratulation. Every aspect of his self-presentation, including the less appealing parts, is refracted through his artful and constantly self-aware rhetoric. It does not help that (as Dyck at times recognizes, although not enough to induce caution) Cicero clearly revised his speeches to a greater or lesser degree before circulating them, and that the letters were carefully edited into collections after his death. Modern treatments interpret the evidence variously and have created very different Ciceros: a brilliant and witty master of language, history, and thought, or a time-serving hypocrite; a noble and philosophical defender of constitutionalism and morality, or a complete wimp on the wrong side of history. Dyck announces that he is giving a “hard-headed appraisal” (1) of Cicero’s life and writings, but in fact his decision to examine Cicero’s actions or writings one at a time produces a Cicero who lives from one day to the next, reacting to immediate circumstances, writing and thinking whatever suits his needs or fears. The result resembles a pointillist painting seen much too close up. Dyck’s statement that “Cicero was in general vulnerable to influence from immediate impressions” (545) is true enough, but he was also a master at shaping those impressions into a larger whole—something Dyck almost entirely ignores. Even Mommsen’s near-caricature Cicero stands out vividly from the page. Much of the time, Dyck’s Cicero just sits there, wondering what comes next.
Dyck himself is well aware that describing Cicero’s written works within their exact context—“to allow the literature to carry its full weight within the biography” (2)—risks distorting the narrative; for that reason he moves to appendices his analyses of the major philosophical works, and he rightly eschews a blow-by-blow account of the Verrines (103). As a result, those chapters flow better than much of the rest of the book, and Dyck’s treatment of the Verrines is in fact excellent. Analyses of some other speeches are very useful, particularly difficult speeches such as Pro Fonteio, Pro Cluentio, or De domo sua, and Dyck explains clearly difficult texts such as Paradoxa Stoicorum and Orator. But the intrusive summaries of Cicero’s speeches often make the book very heavy going. Thus in chapter 11 (371-438), “Strategies for Coping,” covering the period between May 56 and December 54, only seven of 68 pages are narrative, broken into five small bits surrounding analyses of texts that occupy 25, 21, and 15 pages respectively. The shape of this chapter (and others) resembles the Little Prince’s drawing of a boa constrictor that has swallowed an elephant; in this case, three ill-digested elephants take up 90% of the uncomfortable snake. These proportions vary in accordance with the available material, but a smooth narrative this is not; and its fragmentation simply magnifies Dyck’s tendency to focus on detail at the expense of a larger picture.
That does not mean that Dyck lacks broader ideas about Cicero’s character and motivations; numerous threads running through the book suggest connections that he does not tie together explicitly. Dyck marks the development of Cicero’s ideas about political order and society, leading up to his dialogues on politics and law; he repeatedly draws attention to Stoic elements in Cicero’s speeches as well as in his more philosophical works; he regularly points out Cicero’s debt to the rhetorical and philosophical training of his youth and his attempts to maintain the political connections that could advance his career. On the other hand, Dyck’s repeated emphasis on Cicero’s background and training and his concentration on Cicero’s immediate concerns make for a very passive Cicero. In his conclusion, Dyck emphasizes formative influences such as “Arpinum, remote from and more conservative than the center of Roman politics”; he describes him as “an eager student . . . intensely pursuing the study of rhetoric, philosophy, and law” and refers to his “diligent application of the accrued knowledge and skills” (715). This matches numerous comments along the way: in describing aspects of the Verrines, Dyck speaks of his debt to “the Greek rhetorical exercises . . . in which Cicero was no doubt trained” (109) and says that in his discussion of Verres’ military activities in 2.5 he was “evidently still following the order of military manuals” (121). He describes Cicero’s early career as following “a fairly well-defined ‘script’ for political success” and sees him floundering after his consulate because “there was no longer a set framework within which Cicero could act” (306), and in the courtroom he finds him dutifully following “rhetorical doctrine” (401) and taking advantage “here, as elsewhere, of topoi taught in rhetorical schools” (430) or “following a forensic pattern” (555). Dyck’s Cicero is a clever student who follows rules and traditions until, once he reaches the summit of the consulship, he has no more rules to guide his behavior. Cicero did have real problems after 63, but he had dispensed with childhood rule-books long before that.
It is not Cicero but Dyck, with his repeated reference to the rules of rhetoric and the techniques of argument, who tries to shoehorn Cicero’s speeches into patterns he and Cicero have both studied; but Cicero learned how to manipulate them to advantage; Dyck has not. In his treatment of Cicero’s first public speech (On the Manilian Law, delivered in 66), Dyck observes Cicero’s “marked attention to formal structure, with the various components announced in advance and summarized at the end” (146-47); but his summaries of Cicero’s arguments seem uneasy. The first section is not really about “the type of war,” as Cicero says it is (148); the second “also obfuscates the true topic” (150); the third “elides” a crucial question (151). Dyck notes that Cicero has mastered the manner of contional rhetoric and suggests that the clear organization is modelled on the style of Hortensius (147, 154). In fact, as his comments show, Cicero uses formal signposts for misdirection: every argument of the speech slides from the announced topic into the praise of Pompey. Perhaps Cicero was pretending to emulate Hortensius—who was arguing against Cicero, possibly in the same contio—but here as elsewhere he draws attention to the rules of rhetoric only to subvert them in order to shape his case effectively.
Dyck knows this. The same subversion of structure is an important aspect of Cicero’s attack on Rullus’ agrarian law, as Dyck rightly points out. But he somehow seems to find Cicero’s manipulations of fact, rules, and audience disreputable. In the first Verrine, “Cicero borders on demagoguery” (128); in Pro Fonteio, “Cicero did not scruple to play upon the jurors’ ethnic prejudices” (134); in Pro C. Rabirio his speech “misrepresents the issue at trial” (208); in De domo sua “One can query whether the argument is in good taste” (344); in Pro Milone Cicero introduces “another of his deceptive alternatives” (447). In his final summing up, Dyck questions Cicero’s moral worth, pointing out that Cicero knew that some of his actions in support of the equites were “morally indefensible”; that “he probably entered into an unsavory profit-sharing arrangement with his colleague C. Antonius”; that “he was not the scrupulous moralist that Cato generally was” (723). Dyck’s Grundyism, to be sure, spreads beyond Cicero himself. Of Cicero’s disreputable son-in-law Dolabella he remarks that he ”dishonored Tullia’s bed by flagrant adultery” (566). Shame, shame.
What Dyck’s “hard-headed appraisal” really means is that in reading the speeches, he looks only at the argument: the rhetorical framework, the validity of Cicero’s case, and the ways in which he misleads his audience or misrepresents or blurs the subject matter. He points out each instance (in speeches or in life) in which Cicero fudges, hesitates, or loses his way, and they are generally perfectly valid observations—but they provide the basis for a narrow and thus false picture of Cicero. It is surely no surprise that Cicero (unlike Cato) is a human being like the rest of us, not a Stoic Sage. He makes mistakes, he gets angry or boastful or frightened; so do we all (except Cato, and even he got angry). Dyck judges Cicero the orator, advocate, and politician by a wholly inappropriate standard. Witnesses in court may be required to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but advocates (and political leaders) have a different task: to convince, to persuade, to move, to inspire. Mere truth does not win votes or convince juries; that is why people study rhetoric.
Dyck’s portrait of Cicero looks at the skeleton (are his arguments legitimate?), not the person, and as a result it is lifeless. I will mention here only two huge omissions. One of them is Cicero’s sociability and participation in the culture and life of the world around him. Dyck’s focus on the particular, the detail, the individual leaves out the context in which he worked—not the political or rhetorical context, the only ones Dyck seems to acknowledge, but the intellectual and emotional context.[2] Cicero writes about the exiled Marcellus in the Brutus; but Dyck (521) does not connect this to the discussions of Marcellus’ exile in two contemporary works, Varro’s Logistorici and Brutus’ own De virtute. When Dyck summarizes Pro Caelio, the name of Catullus does not appear, just as he is missing from Dyck’s commentary on the speech. The wonderful correspondence with Paetus gets only a few words about rhetorical strategy; I can find no mention of the fascinating correspondence with Cassius on Epicureanism. Matius gets mentioned, but the index of passages discussed includes not a single passage from Ad familiares. Dyck isolates Cicero from his friends, just as he severs every moment of Cicero’s life from its context.
This is only one aspect of the truly fatal loss in Dyck’s Cicero: he has no heart. You can read this book cover to cover without getting any sense of Cicero as a writer of astonishing skill and virtuosity. Dyck mentions style or wit only in passing, and the nine columns of Dyck’s index entry on Cicero include exactly five references under the rubric “style.” It is not only Catullus who is missing from Pro Caelio, but the entire comic drama that Cicero and his fellow-advocates enact: Dyck never discusses the brilliant opening sentence of Cicero’s speech, drawing attention to the courtroom drama as an alternative to the festival going on outside. When he discusses Pro Murena, he never mentions how much the emotional peroration owes to Ennius’ Medea Exul any more than he notices that the lurid description of the Furies in Pro S. Roscio was taken from Aeschines. When he writes about De oratore, he says nothing about either the opening sentence or Cicero’s astonishing and powerful account of the death of Crassus. And when he says that Pro Archia is not particularly different in style from normal “forensic discourse” (272), I can only wonder if he has even read the opening of the speech, one of the most elaborate and ornate sentences Cicero ever wrote.
Dyck’s “hard-headed” appraisal is in fact a version of Hamlet without the Prince, an accountant’s reckoning up of facts and figures without a life. In the final sentence of his book (725-26), after extolling Cicero’s rationality and the value of his writings as “documents of the human spirit,” Dyck adds that Cicero is also worth reading “for his masterly and versatile style, by turns charming, passionate, witty, or erudite,” but almost nothing in the previous 725 pages gives any hint of that, and where Mommsen’s Cicero was (in Dickson’s translation) “a statesman without insight, idea, or purpose,” Dyck’s Cicero is without wit, brilliance, or imagination. That Cicero was a flawed human being is true, but it does not distinguish him from anyone else who has ever lived. It is Cicero’s extraordinary capacity to use language to shape the perceptions of his audience, his ability to make even hostile audiences see the world as he wanted them to see it, that makes him live. When I read Cicero’s parodies of law and philosophy in Pro Murena, I savor the language and I laugh; Dyck, apparently, just looks puzzled and disapproving. I have read that speech probably forty or fifty times; I have read the description of Crassus’ death perhaps a hundred times, and I am still moved by it. If Cicero were as small and bloodless as Dyck makes him, I would not have read him even a second time. I remain grateful that he is a great deal larger than that.
Notes
[1] I note the following minor errors: 84, “consul” for “counsel”; 159, non licet for non liquet; 410, the dramatic date of De oratore is 91, not 92 BCE; 577 n.85, “Septumus” for “Septumius”; 582, De oratore has prefaces for every book, not just odd-numbered ones; 696 “razing” for “raising.” I have not checked the thousands of references in Dyck’s notes.
[2] On this see K. Volk, The Roman Republic of Letters: Scholarship, Philosophy, and Politics in the Age of Cicero and Caesar (Princeton, 2021).