The Republic and The Laws (Oxford World's Classics) (35 page)

my father
: i.e. Aemilius Paulus.

A man’s true self is his mind
: this idea was part of Platonic doctrine, or at any rate part of the popular view of it; it is most clearly stated in a Platonic dialogue whose authenticity has been disputed, the
First Alcibiades
(130b).

Whatever is in constant motion . . .
: this paragraph is translated verbatim from a passage of Plato’s
Phaedrus
, 245C-C An acknowledgement of the source would clearly have been inappropriate here: Africanus’ ghost must know these things at first hand.

I awoke from sleep
: probably the end of the dialogue. What more could Laelius and the rest have said after this?

Fr. 2: the quotation is from an epigram of Ennius in which these words were put in the mouth of Scipio Africanus (see Warmington,
ROL
i. 400).

THE LAWS

B
OOK
1

this oak
: according to Cicero’s poem,
Marius
, which was probably written about 57
BC
in honour of his fellow-townsman, Marius saw an eagle rise from an oak tree, fight a serpent, and then fly off to the east—an omen of military success. The relevant passage is quoted in Cicero,
De Divinatione
1. 106.

to solicit support for yourself
: Quintus was also a poet; he had written a number of tragedies.

Scaevola
: probably Scaevola (4) in the Index of Names. The phrase is a pentameter, and no doubt belongs to an epigram of the kind represented by Catullus 95.

the olive tree
: Athena competed with Poseidon for control over Athens. She gave the city an olive tree; he gave it a salt-water spring (Herodotus 8. 55).

Ulysses
: in
Odyssey
6. 162 ff. Odysseus addresses Nausicaa, saying that the only sight of comparable perfection he has seen is ‘the fresh young palm tree shooting up by the altar of Apollo on the island of Delos’.

‘acorn-laden oak’. . . ‘tawny messenger . . .’
: quotations from
Marius
.

not far from your house
: in Rome Atticus lived on the Quirinal Hill; he also had a house in Athens.

Aquilo . . . Orithyia
: in Plato,
Phaedrus
229b Socrates is asked whether he believes the story of the north wind carrying off Orithyia.

the standard of truth
: elsewhere Cicero calls history ‘the witness of the times, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger from the past’
(De Oratore
2. 36). See Brunt (2). On occasions, however, he was prepared to condone a degree of embroidery; cf.
Fam
. 5. 12.

so closely akin to oratory
: several pupils of the orator Isocrates (436–338) became historians, e.g. Ephorus and Theopompus. Cicero held that history should supply instances
(exempla)
which could be used by orators, and that rhetoric (especially the rhetoric of display) could show historians how to compose vivid descriptions. Cf.
De Oratore z
. 62–4;
Orator
38 f., 66.

the Annals of the Pontifex Maximus
: the Chief Priest displayed a board each year with information about public (including religious) events. About T30, the surviving material of this kind was published in eighty volumes, thus laying the foundations for the Roman genre of annalistic historiography. Such chronicles had no stylistic pretensions. The early historians, like Cato, Fabius Pictor, and Calpurnius Piso, left bare records of dates, names, and events; they did not grasp, we are told, how style could be embellished, and thought that brevity and intelligibility were all that mattered; cf.
De Oratore
2. 52–3. This judgement would seem to be over-harsh. Cato, certainly, was capable of stylistic embellishment; see Aulus Gellius, 13. 25. 12–15.

Gellius
: a conjectural emendation for the corrupt
belli
.

Latin hacks
: these were teachers of rhetoric in Latin. Cicero speaks of them as intellectually superficial; politically they were suspected of fostering populist ideas. Lucius Crassus and his colleague in the censorship closed the school in 92. In De
Oratore
3. 94 Crassus refers to it as ‘a school of impertinence’.

a good deal. . . lack of propriety
: reading
multa sed inepta elatio, summa impudentia
with Mommsen.

those who have not yet published their work
: one such writer may have been Julius Caesar, whose
Commentaries
are mentioned in Cic.
Brutus
262.

the glorious and unforgettable year
: 63
BC.

a diplomatic mission
: as Atticus hints, a so-called ‘free mission’, for which senatorial permission was needed, entailed no official duties; it was, in effect, a period of leave abroad. In L. 3. 9 and 18 Cicero disapproves of the custom.

the sung passages
: there were three formal elements in Roman comedy: spoken verse, recitative, and lyric. Cicero is probably referring to the last two, which were accompanied by the pipe and called for greater vocal effort.

calm philosophical discourse
: the style which Cicero has in mind is described at greater length in
Orator
64.

Scaevola’s consultations
: Atticus and Cicero attended the consultations of Scaevola (2), the Augur. See also Nepos,
Atticus
1.4. On Scaevola’s death in 87, Cicero studied with Scaevola (3), the Pontifex (De
Amicitia
1. 1).

party walls
: a neighbour might not demolish a party wall.

gutters
: rain-water might be directed on to a neighbour’s land.

as he describes it
: Plato,
Laws
625 (Penguin trans, p.
46)
.

so clearly
: reading
tarn manifesto
with Watt (1) 265.

the praetor’s edict
: Each year, when the chief legal magistrate took office, he published an edict, setting out the principles on which he intended to administer justice. His successor would take over the edict, making whatever changes and additions were necessary. Thus a body of law grew up, supporting or complementing the code of civil law.

the Twelve Tables
: c.450 a Committee of Ten had codified Roman civil and criminal law in the Twelve Tables. See
ROL
iv; Crawford, 555–721.

a person
: thought to be Servius Sulpicius Rufus (consul 51), who was the leading jurist of his age; cf. Cic.
Brutus
152.

the most learned men
: in particular, the Stoics. ‘Zeno holds that the law of nature is divine, and that it has the function of commanding what is right and forbidding the opposite’ (Cic.
De Natura Deorum
1.36; for parallels see Pease’s note). ‘The law of all things ... is that which commands men, who are by nature political animals, to do the things which ought to be done and forbids them to do what ought not to be done’ (Chrysippus,
SVF 3
. 3T4).

its Greek name
:
nomos
is the Greek for law;
nemo
means ‘I assign’ or ‘distribute’.

its Latin name
: Cicero, rather unconvincingly, connects
lex
(law) with
lego
(I choose, i.e. I choose what is just and right; cf. L. 2. 11). The actual derivation is uncertain.

those six books
: i.e.
The Republic
.

Quintus’ view
: Quintus seems to have believed in providence
(De Divinatione
1. 10). In
De Finibus
5. 96 he endorses the position of Antiochus as expounded by Piso.

impetus
: reading
motu
with Watt (1) 266.

I’ll grant it if you insist
: as an Epicurean, Atticus did not believe that the gods ruled the world; but he makes the concession for the sake of the argument. Hence the teasing tone of what follows.

they . . . become very angry
: according to Epicurus, good men did
not
become angry.

god is never concerned
: see Epicurus in D.L. 10.

139: ‘A blessed and immortal being has no trouble itself and causes no trouble to anyone else. Hence it is devoid of anger or favour.’

the only one that participates in reason
: recent studies of animal behaviour make it clear that most of the ancients seriously underestimated the reasoning power of many species. See Sorabji.

What is there . . . more divine than reason?
: the saying is attributed to the Stoic Cleanthes in Cic.
De Natura Deorum
1.37.

a single community shared by gods and men
: for the long pedigree of this idea see Pease on
De Natura Deorum
2. 154.

blood-relationships
: strictly Cicero’s term
(agnationes)
refers only to persons under the authority of the same
paterfamilias
, e.g. sons, sons’ wives, and unmarried daughters.

sowing the human race
: Cicero does not wish to dwell on the origin of human life; so he moves quickly on. The idea of sowing may recall God as the ‘seminal’ reason of the universe (D.L. 7. 36 on Zeno); cf. Plato,
Timaeus
41e-42a and 42d.

remembers his place of origin
: he recognizes that his soul has come from God. There is no reason to think that Cicero has in mind the idea that an individual soul had an earlier existence (Plato,
Meno
81–6).

for man’s use
: compare ‘The Stoics hold that everything produced by the earth is created for the use of men’
(De Officiis
1. 22, based on Panaetius).

Following Watt (1) 266, we have omitted the phrase
frugibus atque bacis
, ‘crops and fruits’, as an explanatory gloss on ‘what shoots forth from the earth’.

bis enjoyment
: presumably Cicero is thinking of wool and hides.

By copying her
: for example, the Stoic Poseidonius said that clever men devised the rudder by imitating fish (Seneca,
Epistulae
90. 24).

senses . . . as servants and messengers
: cf. Cic.
De Natura Deorum
2. 140.

man alone erect
: cf.
De Natura Deorum
2. 140 and Pease’s note.

The Greeks . . . have no equivalent
: the Latin is
vultus
(expression) as distinct from
fades
(face). As Kenter points out, the Greek
prosopon
could denote ‘expression’.

speech . . . the promoter of human fellowship
:
ratio
(reason) and
oratio
(speech) are said to provide the bond of human society
(De Officiis
1. 150).

the books which you have read
: Cicero dealt with this subject in the lost
R
. 4.

not on opinion, but on nature
: ‘nature’ here means objective reality—things as they really are.

apparently leads to the dissolution . . . :
but only apparently, because the soul is supposed to survive.

those who worship a dog or a cat
: the Egyptians.

nothing human is alien to them
: in Terence’s
Self-Punisher
(77) Chremes, an old busybody, excuses his inquisitiveness by saying T am a man; I consider nothing human to be none of my business’
(homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto)
.

Socrates was right to curse
: according to Clement of Alexandria (second century
AD
), Cleanthes said in his work on
Pleasure
, Book 2, that Socrates uttered this curse
(Stromateis
2. 131).

that famous saying of Pythagoras
: perhaps ‘Friends have all things in common’ (D.L. 8. 10). There is a gap in the text.

some people
: i.e. the Epicureans. Actually, Epicurus said: ‘Of all the things that wisdom obtains for the blessedness of the complete life, far the greatest is friendship’
(Principal Doctrines
21); ‘All friendship is desirable in itself, even though it starts from the need of help’ (
Frag
. 23). Cicero himself wrote an essay on the subject; see Powell (1).

the older lot
: e.g. the Presocratics and Plato.

philosophical factories
: in
De Finibus
5. 7 the Old Academy (represented by Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo, and Crantor) and the early Peripatos (headed by Aristotle) are called factories, but without any hint of irony.

that everything right and honourable should be desired for its own sake
: Cicero distinguishes
(a)
those who accept this thesis,
(b)
those who reject it (the Epicureans), and
(c)
those who question it (the New Academy). Within
(a)
he distinguishes
(ai)
the Old Academy (Speusippus, Xenocrates, and Polemo),
(az)
the Peripatetics (Aristotle and Theophrastus), (#3) the Stoic Zeno, (#4) the Stoic Aristo. Cicero claims that (
a
1) and (
a
2) are virtually in agreement. In 53–5 he goes on to suggest that the gap between (
a
1) and (
a
2) is not unbridgeable.

the Old Academy
: founded by Plato. In the third century
BC
its character changed under the sceptical Arcesilaus and Carneades. See Long 88–106.

Aristotle
: Aristotle’s school is often referred to as the Lyceum or the Peripatos (covered walkway).

their own little gardens
: a patronizing reference to the Epicureans, who held their discussions in a garden in the suburbs of Athens. Cicero was opposed to the school for several reasons; one of the most important was that it discouraged its disciples from engaging in public life.

Let us ask it to keep quiet
: as Atticus will have to suspend his devotion to Epicurus ‘for a little while’, so Cicero will have to keep the troublesome Academy at a distance. See Introd. pp. xiv-xv.

the plays
: e.g.
The Eumenides
of Aeschylus.