Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero (Arpinus, January 3, 106 BC-Formia, December 7, 43 BC) was a Roman politician, philosopher, writer, and orator. He is considered one of the greatest rhetoricians and stylists of Latin prose of the Roman Republic.

Universally recognized as one of the most important authors of Roman history, he is responsible for the introduction of the most famous Hellenic philosophical schools in the republican intelligentsia, as well as for the creation of a philosophical vocabulary in Latin. A great orator and renowned lawyer, Cicero focused —mainly— his attention on his political career. He is remembered today for his writings of a humanistic, philosophical and political nature. His letters, most of them sent to Atticus, achieved enormous recognition in European literature due to the introduction of a refined epistolary style. Cornelius Nepos noted the ornamental richness of these letters, written "about the inclinations of leaders, the vices of commanders, and state revolutions", which transported the reader back to that time.

Cicero was also a philosopher and wrote a vast body of work for the Latin public. Although he had professors from each of the philosophical schools of his time (Platonism, Peripatetism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism), he spent his life professing his attachment to the Academy of Athens. Cicero's philosophy is one of the greatest representations of eclecticism. and the development of natural law.

Constituted one of the greatest defenders of the traditional republican system, he fought the dictatorship of Julius Caesar using all his resources. However, during his career he did not hesitate to change his position depending on the political climate. This indecision is the result of his sensitive and impressionable character. Intemperate, he was prone to overreacting to change. The writer Asinius Pollio wrote of him:

I wish I could have endured prosperity with greater self-control and adversity with greater energy!

After Caesar's death, Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony in the ensuing power struggle, attacking him in a series of speeches. He was outlawed as an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate and subsequently executed by soldiers operating on his behalf in 43 BC. C. after being intercepted during an attempt to escape from the Italian peninsula.

Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with starting the Renaissance and humanism of the Quattrocento (14th century). The height of Cicero's authority and prestige came during the Enlightenment of the 18th century, and his impact on leading Enlightenment thinkers and political theorists such as John Locke, David Hume, Montesquieu, and Edmund Burke was substantial. His works are among the most influential in European culture, and still today constitute one of the most important bodies of thought. of first-hand material on Roman history, especially the last days of the Roman Republic.

Biography

Training

The young Cicero reading. Fresco by Vincenzo Foppa. 1464. Brescia.

Cicero was born on January 3, 106 B.C. C. in Arpinum (Arpino), a municipality located 110 kilometers from the capital, within a commoner family elevated to the ordo equester, electorally belonging to the Cornelia tribe. The speaker's father was a gentleman whose delicate health made it impossible to carry out any political aspirations, for which reason he decided to remain in the countryside, where he dedicated himself to literature. We know the name of his mother, Helvia, the certainty of his belonging to a notable gens that had two praetors and his early death; In a letter to her brother Quinto, Cicero describes her as the classic Roman matron., it's not clear; According to Plutarch, he came from an ancestor of his whose nose had this shape, but it could also be that the family traded in these legumes in the past.

When he was a child he was sent to Rome to study Law with the most important lawyers of the day, such as Scaevola —among whose students were Gaius Mario, Sulpicio and Atticus— or Lucio Licinio Crassus. Thanks to the latter, he came into contact with Archias (Aulus Licinius Archias), a poet from Antioch from whom he learned the essentials of Hellenic literature and acquired the pleasure of poetry. He may have written his first poetry at fourteen in 92 B.C. C. Pontius Glaucus, which seems to give credence to Plutarch's words that he considered him an outstanding and precocious student.

Likewise, teachers such as Philo de Larisa or Diodoto gave him a solid philosophical education. Like all Roman citizens, at the age of seventeen he began military service under the orders of Pompeyo Strabo —father of Pompeyo— during the Social War of 91-88 BC C. When the conflict ended, in 81 a. C., he resumed his studies.

At the age of twenty-seven, he married Terentia, with whom he had two children: Tullia, —born in 79 a. C. and that she will be the wife of Cornelio Dolabela in her third and last marriage—and Marco, born in 65 a. c.

He would make his debut as a lawyer that same year with the Pro Quinctio, on a succession problem. In 79 B.C. C. delivered the Pro Roscio Amerino, in which there was an implicit attack on the dictator Sulla. The incredible performance of the speaker, which allowed Roscio to be released, led him to determining that the most prudent thing was to stay away from Sulla's wrath for a while, so he marched to Greece between 79 and 77 BC. c.

The first year he received the teachings of Antiochus of Ascalon —an eclectic academic and successor to Philo of Larisa, very marked by Aristotelian and Stoic doctrine—, Zeno and Phaedrus —Epicureans— in Athens; and between 78 and 77 B.C. C of the stoic Posidonius of Apamea and of the rhetorician Apollonius Molon in Rhodes.In Athens he participated in the Eleusinian mysteries and became friends with Atticus, with whom he would maintain contact by correspondence for the rest of his life.

Because of the many teachers that Cicero had, he applied different conceptions in solving ethical problems. His approaches related to morality were close to stoicism, while in epistemology he defended a moderate skepticism; All this will lead to the eclecticism present in his work, in which he will synthesize the classical tradition that he will rewrite in Latin.

After the period of rhetorical and philosophical training ended, he returned to the capital in 77 a. c.

Early political career

He began his political career in 75 B.C. C., when he reached the quaestorate —first step of the cursus honorum — in Lilibea (Sicily). However in 70 a. C. is when he begins to be recognized as a result of the process against Verres; Cicero represented the Sicilians who accused him, the former administrator of the province, of being involved in multiple cases of corruption and the theft of works of art. Cicero's speech was so forceful that Verres, although he was represented by the most famous orator of the time —Hortensio— went into voluntary exile in Massilia (Marseille) immediately after this first intervention —the so-called actio prima —.

In 69 B.C. C. he obtained the mayorship and in 66 a. C. the preture. That same year he defended the bill of the tribune of the plebs Manilius, which proposed granting Pompey command of the fight against Mithridates; the speech he delivered — De Lege Manilia — distanced him from the conservatives (optimates ) who opposed the project. At that moment Cicero decided to lead a “third way”, that of the “good men” —boni viri— between the conservatism of the optimates and the radical “reformism” of the populares; As a consequence, the appearance on the scene of popular figures such as César or Catilina led him to approach conservatives again.

The year 63 B.C. C

When he was closest to the optimates he obtained the consulate, prevailing in the elections against Catiline (63 BC) with the help of his brother Quintus. With this he became the first consul homo novus in thirty years, which irritated certain aristocrats:

... for until then the most of the nobility could not hear him name; and he judged that it would be like to degrade the consulate, if a man of his sphere, though so insigned, came to get him.

As consul, he opposed a project by the radical tribune Rulo, by virtue of which a ten-member commission with broad powers should be constituted that would be responsible for dividing the ager publicus. He obtained the neutrality of the other consul —Híbrida— closely linked to Catilina, by promising him the proconsulate of the province of Macedonia for the next year. His speech De lege agraria contra Rullum led to the rejection of the proposition.

Ciceron denounces CatilinaCesare Maccari's work (1840-1919) "no one of the senators wanted to sit with him, but they moved from that seat"

Catilina, defeated again in the consular elections of October 63 BC. C., he decided to lead a coup of which Cicero would be informed.On November 8 he denounced Catilina in the Senate; he would start his speech-the first Calilinaria -by saying:

Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? [How long, Catilina, will you abuse our patience?]

That same speech contained a well-known sentence of the orator, famous even in our days:

Or tempora, or mores! [O times, oh customs!].

Aware that it was a matter of time before they arrested him, Catilina opted to go to Etruria and lead the insurgents from there; Numerous accomplices of the rebel remained in the capital, whom he entrusted to carry out the uprising in the city.

On November 9, Cicero published a new Catilinaria and declared that they would not retaliate against seditious people who surrendered on the spot. That same day, the senators approved the senatus consultum de republica defendenda, a decree adopted in times of crisis that authorized state leaders to recruit troops, fight, have the necessary resources, and become the highest civil and military authority.

The crisis worsened when Sulpicius and Cato accused Licinius Murena —elected consul for 62 BC. C.— to buy votes. It was unfeasible to cancel the result of the elections and carry out a new one, so Cicero decided to act as Murena's lawyer —Pro Murena— during the process, in which he ironized about Cato's inflexible stoicism in extreme situations:

If all the faults are equal, every crime is a crime; strangling a father is only guilty of the death of a hen...

The conspirators took advantage of the process to begin recruiting men. They contacted the allobroges with the promise of granting them tax benefits if they started a revolt in Gallia Narbonensis, but they decided to alert the senators. Cicero ordered them to ask the traitors for a written copy of the reforms they were committing to, to which they agreed. With these evident proofs, the consul publicly denounced the five conspirators, among whom was the ex-consul and praetor Lentulus Sura.

In one of the debates, the senators —inspired by the fourth catilinaria— ordered the death of the rebels, depriving them of the right to a trial. Caesar proposed life imprisonment, but the opinion of Cicero, supported by Cato, prevailed. Catilina would die shortly after in Pistoia.

From now on, Cicero wanted to be recognized as the savior of the State —Cato called him pater patriae (“father of the country”)— and he tried to ensure that the Romans never forget the way in which he acted during your consulate.

Crisis

Return of exile Cicero by Francebigio (c. 1519-21)

In 62 B.C. C., dead and Catilina, he decided to retire momentarily from politics, then dominated by ambitious radicals; this parenthesis concluded in 60 a. C., when he declared his opposition to the triumvirate formed by Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. In 59 B.C. C., the year of the consulship of Caesar and Bibulus, he tried to neutralize the speaker by naming him commissioner responsible for the distribution of the lands of Campania among the veterans who fought against Mithridates. However, Cicero considered it prudent to decline the post.

In March 58 B.C. C. his political adversaries headed by Piso and Clodius —with the one who fell out during the Bona Dea scandal (62 BC)— They accused him of illegally murdering Roman citizens during his consulship and coerced the senators into decreeing his exile in Dyrrhachium (Durazzo). Lucius Ninnius Quadratus, tribune of the plebs that year, he opposed banishment; in early June he filed a motion for the return of the arpinate.January 25, 57 B.C. eight tribunes of the plebs headed by Quinto Fabrizio proposed a law for his return that was blocked by Clodius However, that same year other tribunes of the plebs (among which was Quintus Numerius Rufus) opposed the return of he.

On August 5, 57 B.C. C. Cicero returned to Italy thanks to the support of Milo and immediately resumed his activity as a lawyer in the trials against Publio Sestio —Pro Sestio— and Celio —Pro Caelio—involved in the riots caused by the bands of Clodius and Milo. Cicero persisted in rebuilding his house—and even the senators indemnified him with two million sesterces—but getting the land back was going to prove problematic after Clodius built a temple there; when he pushed for the building's sacrosanctity to be removed, Clodius —who at the time was edile— accused him of sacrilege before the citizens and ordered his men to prevent the development of the works and burn down his brother's house. Finally Pompey decided to intervene to restore order.

Cicero reciprocated the help of the triumvirs with a speech in which he supported the five-year extension of Caesar's proconsulate in Gaul as proposed by Trebonius: the Lex Trebonia.

Bust of Pompey the Great at the National Archaeological Museum of Venice.

The political struggle took to the streets, where sympathizers from both sides —optimates and populares— provoked violent riots that marred the regular conduct of the elections.

In 52 B.C. C. Clodio died murdered in one of these altercations; Cicero accepted the case as Milo's lawyer, accused of ordering the death of his adversary. However, the political climate was so tense that he was unable to perform properly during the process and lost, Milo avoided conviction by self-exiling himself in Massilia. Years later, Cicero would publish Pro Milone, one of the orator's most famous speeches.

Proconsulate in Cilicia

In 53 B.C. C. the Senate imposed an interval of five years between the exercise of a magistracy and that of the corresponding provincial magistracy to prevent politicians from recovering the money they invested in electoral campaigns, plundering the territory. Due to the lack of leaders in 51 a. C. the senators decided to send ex-consuls who had renounced them in the past to administer the provinces. Rejecting his proconsulate in Macedonia, Cicero marched into Cilicia—a small Roman province located in Asia Minor—where he served unenthusiastically but uprightly. At this time Cilicia occupied territory corresponding to Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, Lycaonia, and the newly annexed Cyprus.

Levert writes that Cicero took advantage of the occasion to put into practice his ideal of how to administer a province, based on peace and equity, essentially tax: he visited the leaders of the populations of the entire territory, suppressed abusive taxes, He moderated the usurious interest rate and established friendly diplomatic relations with Deiotaro I of Galacia —king of Galacia— and Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia. Likewise, he had to crush a revolt on Mount Amanos, near Syria, where Antioch was threatened by Parthian incursions; To do this, he recruited numerous troops and named his brother, a veteran of the Gallic War, legatus After two months of siege, he took the city of Pindenissus, the center of the insurrection, which precipitated the capitulation of the rebels. After the combat, the soldiers acclaimed the speaker as imperator, so he could claim the celebration of a triumph.

During the government, he had disagreements with his quaestor Lucio Mescinio Rufo.

Civil war and attitude towards Caesar

Cicero's bust at the Vaux-le-Vicomte Palace, Maincy.

In 50 B.C. C., on his return to the capital, a serious political crisis faced Caesar and the conservatives led by Pompey. Cicero sided with the Picentine trying unsuccessfully not to distance himself too much from Caesar.

When Caesar began his invasion of Italy (49 BC) Cicero fled Rome like most senators, hiding in one of his country mansions. His correspondence with Atticus expresses the bewilderment and doubts that tormented him. He considered the outbreak of the conflict a disaster, regardless of who he won.

César, who intended to gather the moderate senators, wrote to him and visited him in his villa, asking him to return to the capital as a mediator. Cicero rejected the proposal, declaring himself a loyal supporter of Pompey, with whom he ended up meeting in Epirus.

Plutarch writes that Cato recommended that he remain in Italy, where he would be more useful to the Republic; the orator, aware that these words showed his little importance, decided not to intervene directly in the fighting, and, after Pharsalus (48 BC), he returned to the capital and reconciled with Caesar. In a letter to Varro written on April 20, 46 B.C. C. he explains his role during the dictatorship:

If no one serves us, we will write and read about the constitution of the State, and if we could not in the Curia and the Forum we will try to serve the homeland with our writings and our books.

Cicero secluded himself in his residence in Tusculum, where he dedicated himself to writing prose and poetry, and translating the works of the Hellenic sages. C. he divorced Terentia, shortly after marrying Publilia. The death of his eldest daughter, Tullia (in February 45 BC), to whom he was very close, caused him enormous grief, which he expressed in several epistles, and in the part of the Quaestiones Tusculanae which deals with the pain of the soul. He divorced again when he saw that Publilia received the news of the death of her stepdaughter with joy.

Her relationship with César became more and more distant. The dictator was not the model of enlightened leader that Cicero writes about in De Republica, nor was he the cruel tyrant that the orator feared; regardless, he was now the absolute owner of the Republic and nothing seemed to be done. Cicero warned that the disintegration of the Republic would lead to a cycle of destructive rulers. Without the balance of a mixed constitution the government would lurch like "a ball".

He dedicated a eulogy to Cato, whom he calls "the last republican", with which he tried to distance himself politically from the administration. Caesar responded by publishing the Anticathon, a collection of accusations against the praetor. Cicero praised the literary quality of the writing, concluding a "duel between equals" in the words of the speaker.

In December 45 B.C. C. César and his entourage dined at the villa that Cicero had in Pozzuoli. To comfort the speaker, César wanted a relaxed meeting with a cultured and interesting conversation in which only literary topics were touched on.

Opposition to Marco Antonio and execution

The Death of Cicero by François Perrier (1635).

Fulvia and Marco Antonio with Ciceron's head closed by Francisco Maura and Montaner (1888).

On March 15 of the following year, Caesar was assassinated, in which Cicero did not intervene; Although his opposition to the dictator was known, the tyrannicide decided not to count on him because of his well-known caution. After Caesar died, a huge political crisis broke out in which Cicero led a Senate that proposed an amnesty to Cicero. the conspirators to reduce the tension until Antonio, consul and person in charge of the dictator's will, took power again.

In April, when Caesar's heir Octavian returned to Italy, Cicero unsuccessfully tried to use it against Antony. Five months later he published several speeches, the fourteen Philippicae or Philippicas in which he violently attacked the consul. Cicero describes his position in a letter to Cassius, written that same month.

However, the political situation was not the same as in 63 BC. C., and his Philippics would not have the same result as his Catilinarias. The Senate, decimated by civil strife and made up of numerous Antonians, refused to declare the consul a public enemy. A year later, Octavio and Antony were reconciled in Modena and formed a new triumvirate - which received full powers - with Lepidus.

The triumvirs were quick to finish off their political opponents. Octavian abandoned his ally and allowed Antony to proscribe Cicero. On December 7, 43 B.C. C. the consul ordered his assassination, as well as that his head and hands were exposed on the rostra of the Forum, as had been the custom in the times of Sulla and Mario, although he was the only one of the outlaws to receive such a fate. Cicero did not oppose his execution, and, offering his head, limited himself to asking that he be killed correctly. His brother, Quintus, and his nephew would also be eliminated; Only his son Marco Tulio survived.

About the death of Cicero and what Fulvia, wife of Marco Antonio, did, Dion Casio tells:

"And when they sent them the head of Cicero (because when he fled he was caught and slew), Antonio, after directing him many unpleasant improper, ordered her to be placed in a prominent place, more visible than the others, in the forum of speakers, there from where he had pronounced so many soflames against him, and there he could be seen along with his right hand, that he had been swallowed

At the end of his fourteenth Philippic, Cicero had sighted the increasingly certain possibility of being assassinated by the anti-republicans. And he wanted to record the two things that had moved his entire political career:

A couple of things only anxious: the first, to leave free, to my death, to the Roman people; this will be the greatest favor that the immortal gods can bestow upon me; the second, that to everyone what is worthy according to the good or evil that he has done to the republic / Duo haec opto, unum ut moriens populum Romanum liberum relinquam (hoc mihi maius ad dis immortalibus dari nihil potest), alterum, ut ita cuique eveniat, ut re publica quisque mereatur. (M.T. Cicero, PhilippicaeXIV, 119).

Speech

Statue of Cicero at the Palace of Justice of Rome, Italy.

Cicero's notoriety as an orator during his lifetime would increase after his death. Pierre Grimal considers that there was no one more capable of developing a Roman theory of eloquence, described as a vehicle of expression and a political instrument.

The Tusculan deals with the subject in many of his works, both didactic and theoretical, and even historical - Brutus; in which he traces a brief history of the most famous Roman orators up to Caesar, of which the quality of his expression stands out.

Philosophy

Cicero was also a philosopher and wrote a vast body of work for the Latin public. Although he had professors from each of the philosophical schools of his time (Platonism, Peripatetism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism), he spent his life professing his attachment to the Academy of Athens. In his youth he followed the lessons of the peripatetic Philo of Larissa, of the Stoics Diodotus and Posidonius, and of the academic Antiochus. He was also a disciple of the Epicureans Zeno of Sidon and Phaedrus. Despite having been among the most prominent critics of Epicureanism, according to Saint Jerome, Cicero edited the poem De rerum natura of the epicurean Lucretius.

Cicero's philosophy as a whole is one of the greatest representations of the eclecticism of Antiochus, a philosophical school that is characterized by not being subject to certain paradigms or axioms, assimilating theories of stoicism, skepticism and peripateticism. However, Cicero's philosophy was marked by many issues, including the distinction between civil law and natural law. Cicero is also noted for creating the Latin philosophical terminology and developing the political philosophy of natural law. He was also a great influence on philosophers like Agustín de Hipona.

Arrival of Greek philosophy in Rome

A taste for philosophical speculation about themselves was something foreign to the Romans. Rome began to embrace Greek philosophical ideas in the early II a century. C. with a certain mistrust, embodied by the anti-Hellenism of Cato the Elder, while aristocrats, such as the Scipios, expressed her interest in her.

One of the first philosophical currents to arrive in Rome was Epicureanism, a school whose doctrines very soon collided with the old Roman customs. And it is that the senators did not want people, and especially young people, to dedicate their time to studies that absorbed all intellectual activity, sought only leisure and produced indifference towards the things of real life. Thus, in 173 a. C., two Epicurean philosophers, Alcio and Filisco, are expelled from Rome, suspected of perverting young people with a doctrine based fundamentally on the search for and obtaining pleasure, and in 161 a. C., the praetors are authorized to expel Epicurean philosophers and rhetoricians from the city. C., were Carneades, Diogenes of Babylon and Critolao, none of them Epicureans.

Stoicism, on the other hand, soon took hold in Rome, with Panaetius of Rhodes at its head, protected by Scipio Aemilianus, who exercised a profound influence on the members of his circle (Lelio, Furio, Aelius Stilo and the jurisconsults Fifth Aelius Tuberon and Mucius Scaevola). Other doctrines were not long in presenting themselves to Rome as well and having disciples there. At the end of the century II a. C. the first philosophical works written in Latin appeared under the pen of the epicurean philosopher Amafinio. The success of these books is such that Epicureanism spread rapidly. After Sulla's capture of Athens in 87 BC. C., the writings of Aristotle are taken to Rome; Lucullus assembled a large library, where works of Greek philosophy are deposited. At the same time, the Romans see the representatives of the main schools of Greece arrive in their city. According to the common opinion of Cicero's contemporaries, the Stoics, the academics and the peripatetics express the same things with different words. They all support the civic spirit of the Roman tradition and are opposed as a whole to Epicureanism, which advocates pleasure, the withdrawal to private life, in the restricted circle of friends.

Philosophy built a bridge between Greek and Roman philosophy. Apart from Lucretius and his poem De rerum natura, Cicero ranks as one of the first Roman authors to write works of philosophy in Latin. The expression "Cicero translator of the Greeks" It shows his success through the philosophical terms that he invented in Latin from the Greek words and that he knew a great fortune in the West. It is he who develops a specific vocabulary to explain Greek philosophy.

Logical philosophy: the determination of the true

In ancient philosophy, logic, related to reason and argumentation, is the way to distinguish what is true from what is false, recognize coherence and what is contradictory. Therefore, it is the instrument that underlies the theories built in the other two philosophical domains, physics and morality. In fact, each reflexive action requires distinguishing between what should be done and what should not be done, and therefore seek certainties on which to base the choice.

Cicero, therefore, begins by taking stock of the reflections on this search for truth, certainty or opinion in his Academic Questions. The writing is laborious, a first version carried out in the spring of 45 a. C. in two books is quickly followed by a second in four books. These editions have reached our time only very partially, more than three quarters of the work is lost. The question is to establish what the human being can understand as true through his perceptions and his reason. Cicero presents the various positions supported by Plato's successors, including those of Arcesilaus, who refutes the Stoics' conclusions about the possibility of certainties, Carneades, who introduces the notion of probabilism, Philo of Larissa, who softens Arcesilaus's skepticism, and Antiochus of Ascalon who wants to reconcile the positions of one and the other. However, Cicero refuses to align himself with the doctrine of a particular school and rejects too dogmatic conclusions: since, in his opinion, the absolute truth is outside scope, each thesis has its quota of probability, more or less, its method is to unite them, oppose them or make them support each other.

Moral Philosophy: How to Live Well

After examining the problem of the search for truth, Cicero continues with the fundamental question of happiness, the goal of every man. Written in parallel with the Academic Questions and published in 45 a. C., in De finibus he develops this notion presenting in five books the answers offered by the contemporary Greek philosophical schools of Cicero. Each school has its definition of happiness, in other words, of the Supreme Good: pleasure, or absence of pain (Epicureism), or even conformity with nature (Stoicism). But what nature, that of the body or that of the spirit? Cicero through fictitious dialogues will expose the position of each doctrine, then the criticism of this doctrine so that the reader can form his own opinion of him. The order of presentation follows Cicero's preferences, beginning with epicureanism which he completely rejects, passing to stoicism and concluding with Academic Questions .

The publication Tusculanes of the year 45 a. C., Cicero addresses the existential questions that philosophical schools traditionally deal with, but gives an original and personal form to the five books of the treatise, presenting them as conferences in which he himself explains to an anonymous young man the great themes: death, physical pain, moral pain, passions that affect the soul, virtue and happiness.

After the Tusculans and remaining close to Rome, Cicero wrote at the beginning of the year 44 a. C. two small treatises, the first on old age and the other on friendship, addressed to Atticus and evocative of a mythical past. In the first treatise, the Cato Maior de Senectute, a very old Cato the Elder converses with Scipio Aemilius and his friend Lelio, then a young man. He responds to the criticisms that are made against this last period of life. Cicero reaffirms the usefulness that a prudent and experienced old man can have as an adviser in the management of public affairs. He had already described this role in De Republica, and he seems to express his hope of participating in public life in this way. Faced with death, inevitable from old age, he hopes for the survival of the soul, even if it were a death. illusion of which he would not want to be deprived while he lives. Here we find the argument about death that Cicero already expressed in Hortensios, the Songe de Scipion and in Tusculans.

In the second treatise, Laelius de Amicitia, the same Lelio who has just lost his friend Scipio talks to his sons-in-law about the practice of friendship. The death of Scipio Aemilianus marks for Cicero the end of the golden age of the Republic, formerly administered by a small group of men united by friendship. Cicero justifies the Roman practice of friendship with theoretical and philosophical arguments and turns it into a political program, a necessity for society to recover this virtue.

In De gloria of the year 44 B.C. C., is a text in two books of which only brief citations remain in Noctes Atticae. While in Rome some speak of deifying the late Julius Caesar, there is talk of euhemerism, the Greek concept of deification of great men by their compatriots. Cicero has already addressed the issue of glory in De Republica and Tusculanes, and returns to the question in his next treatise De officiis. According to Pierre Grimal, Cicero undoubtedly wants to make propaganda work by opposing a true and just glory, translated by the affection of the citizens, to a false glory, applauded by ill-intentioned supporters who hope to derive personal benefit from it.

Natural Philosophy: The Rejection of Fatalism

Portrait of Marco Tulio Cicerón by Pedro Berruguete (c. 1472-1476).

Natural philosophy encompasses the physical, that is, the visible and invisible principles that give matter form, cohesion, and life. However, Cicero is hardly interested in the explanatory theories of the world, the atomism of the Epicureans or the theory of the four elements, but focuses on what transcends human existence, the manifestations or divine wills, and that can influence our personal freedom. A series of treatises published in the space of a year constitutes a general reflection on metaphysics: the De Natura deorum (On the nature of the gods), De divinatione (On Divination) and De fato (On Fate).

After the De natura deorum, in 45 B.C. C. he translated into Latin Plato's dialogue Timaeus , of which important fragments remain. The preface of him learns that he spoke with the neo-Pythagorean Publius Nigidius Figulus during his trip to Cilicia. They discussed physics in the ancient sense, that is, speculations about the universe and the causes that produced it, and Cicero's translation is presented as a result of this meeting. The first passage studies the opposition between the eternal and the mobile, between what is to become and the immobile, between the mortal and the immortal, and connects the eternal with the beautiful. The translation then presents a summary of the genesis of all that exists, in particular the birth of the gods. This story, in which Plato and Cicero probably only see a myth, is their only foray into the part of ancient physics devoted to the history of the world and its structure. In the second book of De natura deorum, Cicero declared that the universe is ultimate perfection and used the term "God" to refer to the universe. Knowledge of God arises from the contemplation of nature, which requires a designer just like a watch. Cicero also wrote about superstitions, which he describes as excessive fear of the gods. The remainder of the book is devoted to an attack against Stoic doctrines, such as; providential care for man, the identification of heat with intelligence or the attribution of life and thought to the universe and celestial bodies.

After the study of the gods, two derivative problems are the subject of in-depth study: divination, linked to the political and civic use of theology, and destiny, the analysis of which will determine the degree of freedom of human action.

The De divinatione is one of the only ancient treatises dedicated to divination that has come down to us, so it is of historical interest for the knowledge of Greek, Etruscan and Latin divination practices and ancient attitudes toward phenomena outside of ordinary experience. Cicero skeptically discusses the various forms of divination, such as oracles and the Etruscan haruspicin. He criticizes the theories of the Stoics who defend him and refuses to admit that the principle according to which any event depends on a cause implies that future events can be predetermined. However, he is less critical of the Roman augurs, not because it is auspicious, but because they are not used to tell the future, but only to obtain the prior opinion of the gods during important acts of magistrates. In this they have a political and social utility for the Republic.

In De facto, Cicero once again rejects all determinism and rejects the Stoic view that would render the freely chosen individual act impractical or wholly determined outside of human will. Although Cicero defended the human freedom against Stoic determinism, attacked in De natura deorum the randomness implicit in the Epicurean deviation of the movement of atoms to explain free will.

Philosophy of law: natural law as the source of all rights and duties

In De re publica (On the Republic) Cicero defends a better form of government combined with the monarchy, the aristocracy; and in De legibus (On Laws) he expounds his natural law theory of Roman law, explicitly rejecting skepticism as dangerous if people do not believe in the sanctity of laws and justice. And he puts it this way in his De re publica (III, 17):

There is a true law, the right reason, according to nature, universal, immutable, eternal, whose mandates stimulate duty and whose prohibitions depart from evil. Whatever he commands, whatever he prohibits, his words are not vain to the good, nor powerful to the bad. This law cannot be contradicted by another, or repealed in any of its parts, or abolished in whole. Neither the Senate nor the people can free us from obedience to this law. He does not need a new interpreter, or a new organ: it is not different in Rome than in Athens, nor tomorrow other than today, but in all nations and in all times this law will always reign unique, eternal, imperceible, and the common guide, the king of all creatures, God himself gives the origin, the sanction and the publicity to this law, that man cannot be unaware without fleeing from himself, without any other cause,.

The Treatise on Duties (De officiis) is Cicero's last work with a philosophical scope, published at the end of the year 44 BC. C., when he resumed his political activity with his first speeches against Marco Antonio ( Philippics ). The work, voluntarily concrete, gives prescriptions and advice to his son and, in general, to good men (the bonos viri of Cicero's social class) so that they behave appropriately in all circumstances within of his family, society and city.

This work is not only a practical moral treatise, it also expresses Cicero's wishes for a Roman government governed by Justice, expressed by respect for private property and public property, and by Fides in the observance of contracts and treaties, in the protection of cities and towns allied to Rome, and finally in the stabilization of the Empire with the end of the wars of conquest. Those in charge of the State must behave as guardians of the Republic, ensuring the good of all and not the advantage of one faction, a concept declared ten years earlier in De Republica. We must not only to act justly, but also to fight against injustice, and refraining from doing so is tantamount to committing an injustice. Cicero is now determined to fight Mark Antony and, he says, to give his life for freedom, according to a grand but foreboding formula.

Work

Cicero's bust at the Mazarino Library, Paris.

He wrote different dialogues on various topics:

Laelius, sive De amicitia, "Lelio, or On Friendship" he lectures on this subject affirming that the only possible friendship is between equals and ponders its importance for human happiness, elevating its principle to what is most worthy of human nature.

In the dialogue, Cato maior, sive De senectute (Cato the Elder, or On Old Age), he manifests the benefits of a healthy old age and the advantages that reports in experience and wisdom.

Known is also De officiis (On Obligations), a work consisting of three books, written in the epistolary genre. They were addressed to a & # 34; you & # 34;, who was his son Marco. The last book is the most original and contains a serious attack against dictatorial governments; it was written when he was fleeing from the persecution of Mark Antony, shortly before his death.

As a jurist, Cicero was the greatest and most influential of the Roman lawyers of his time, using his skills in rhetoric and oratory to set numerous precedents that were widely used. As a writer, he provided Latin with an abstract lexicon that it lacked, transferred and translated numerous terms from Greek and contributed to the Latin language, definitively transforming it into a cultured language, suitable for the expression of the deepest thought. He wrote numerous Discourses, sometimes grouped by thematic cycles (the four Catilinaries, the Verrinas, the fourteen Philippics against Marco Antonio...) and many treatises on Rhetoric and Oratory, such as De oratore.

In the iv century AD, the reading of Cicero's Hortensius (a currently lost work) awakened the Augustine's mind the spirit of speculation. During the Renaissance Cicero was one of the models of prose and his four collections of letters, preserved and edited by his personal secretary Tiro (who is credited with perfecting shorthand), among which the Epistulae ad familiares (Letters to family members), where his political whims, his philosophical and literary tastes are perceived, and the daily life of his home and of the Rome of his time, as well as of its intimate contradictions.

Almost all of his work expresses a great concern about what should be the formation of the orator, which he believes must be comprehensive and be undertaken from the cradle, in what had the greatest follower in dates much later than Marco Fabio Quintiliano.

As a moralist, he defended the existence of a universal human community beyond ethnic differences and the supremacy of natural law in his masterpiece, the De officiis or "On Obligations" 3. 4; and he spoke out against cruelty and torture.

As a philosopher, he was not satisfied with any Greek school and preferred to adopt the thought of eclecticism, taking the best of both. Contrary to radical skepticism, he maintained the need for innate and immutable concepts necessary for social cohesion and the relational bonds of individuals. His ideas about his religion, expressed in De natura deorum , (On the nature of the gods), reveal his beliefs and his support for free will. Almost all of his philosophical works owe much to Greek sources, which he treats with familiarity and enriches with his own judgement; he was, therefore, a great popularizer and preserver of Hellenic philosophy.

In politics he was a convinced republican, an absolute enemy of tyranny, and dialogue works such as De re publica and De legibus ("On the republic" and "On the Laws"). He also composed a treatise De gloria that has not been preserved and whose traces are lost in the hands of the humanist Francesco Petrarca, who managed to read it in the Middle Ages.

Works by Cicero

Opera omnia1566.

Legal Speeches

• (81 BC) Pro Quinctio (In defense of Publio Quinctio)
• (80 BC) Pro Roscio Amerino (In defense of Sexto Roscio Amerino)
• (77 BC) Pro Q. Roscio Comoedo (In defense of comic actor Quinto Roscio Galo)
• (70 BC) Divinetio in Caecilium (Fifth Cecilio)
• (70 BC) In Verrem (Against Gay Verresalso known as Verrinas)
• (71 BC) Pro Tullio (In defense of Tulio)
• (69 BC) Pro Fonteio (In defense of Marco Fonteio)
• (69 BC) Pro Caecina (In defense of Aulo Cecina Severo)
• (66 BC) Pro Cluentio (In defense of Aulo Cluentio)
• (63 BC) Pro Rabirio Perduellionis Reo (In defense of Gayo Rabirio)
• (63 BC) Pro Murena (In defense of Lucio Licinio Murena)
• (62 BC) Pro Sulla (In defense of Publio Cornelio Sulla)
• (62 BC) Pro Archia Poeta (In defense of Aulo Licinio Archia)
• (59 BC) Pro Antonio (In defense of Gayo Antonio[lost]
• (59 BC) Pro Flacco (In defense of Lucio Valerio Flaco)
• (56 BC) Pro Sestio (In defense of Publio Sestio)
• (56 BC) In Vatinium testem (Against the witness Publio Vatinio in the trial against Sestio)
• (56 BC) Pro Caelio (In defense of Marco Caelio Rufo)
• (56 BC) Pro Balbo (In defense of Lucio Cornelio Balbo)
• (54 BC) Pro Plant (In defense of Gneo Plancio)
• (54 BC) Pro Rabirio Postumo (In defense of Gayo Rabirio Póstumo)
• (54 BC) Pro Scauro (In defense of Marco Emilio Scauro)

Political speeches

Early political career (before exile)

Cicero's bust at Trinity College's library in Dublin, Ireland.

• (66 BC) Pro Lege Manilia or From Empire Cn. Pompei
• (64 BC) In Toga Candida
• (63 BC) De Lege Agraria contra Rullum
• (63 BC) In Catilinam I-IV
• (59 BC) Pro Flacco

Center of his career (between exile and the Civil War)

• (57 BC) Post Reditum in Quirites
• (57 BC) Post Reditum in Senatu
• (57 BC) De Domo Sua
• (56 BC) De Haruspicum Responsis (On the answer of the arúspices). Cicero uses the prodigy of 57 BC against Claudio.
• (56 BC) De Provinciis Consulars
• (55 BC) In Pisonem
• (52 BC) Pro Milone

Late Race

• (46 BC) Pro Marcello
• (46 BC) Pro Ligario
• (46 BC) Pro Rege Deiotaro
• (44 BC) Philippicae

Political and Rhetorical Writings

• (84 BC) Invention
• (55 BC) De Oratore ad Quintum fratrem libri three
• (54 BC) De Partitionibus Oratoriae
• (51 BC) De Re Publica
• (46 BC) From Optimo Genere Oratorum
• (46 BC) Gross
• (46 BC) Orator ad M. Brutum
• (44 BC) Topic
• (? C.) From Legibus
• (? C.) From Consulatu Suo
• (? C.) De temporibus suis

Philosophical work

De natura deorum (1880).

• (89 B.C.) Translation of the Ωμενα of Arato (Aratea)
• (46 BC) Paradox Stoicorum (Stoic paradoxes)
• (45 BC) Hortensius
• (45 BC) Academic Priora. In two books, of which only the second is preserved, Lucullus. The first, CatullusIt's gone.
• (45 BC) Academica Posteriora. In four books, of which only the first is preserved, Varro.
• (45 BC) Consoletio
• (45 BC) De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (On the sumo bien and the sumo malice): Contraposition of the epicure, stoic, platonic and peripathetic theories.
• (45 BC) Tusculanae Quaestiones
• (45 BC) Translation of Plato Time (sections 27d - 47b)
• (? C.) Translation of Plato Protoires (only quotes are kept in Prisciano, Jerome, and Donate)
• (45 BC) De Natura Deorum (About the nature of the gods)
• (45 BC) De divinatione (About divination). It is a rich historical source to know the conception of scientificity in classical Roman antiquity.
• (45 BC) De Fato (About destination)
• (44 BC) Cato Maior de Senectute (The old man, on old age)
• (44 BC) Laelius de Amicitia (Laelius about friendship)
• (44 BC) Officiis (On duties). Perhaps the masterpiece of Ciceron; the last of his three books is the most personal, written in part under his aversion against the tyranny of Marco Antonio.

Fake Date

It is believed that Cicero wrote in 55 BC. C. the following sentence:

The budget must be balanced, the treasure must be resupplyed, the public debt must be reduced, the arrogance of public officials must be moderate and controlled, and the aid of other countries must be eliminated, so that Rome would not go bankrupt. People must learn to work again instead of living at the expense of the state.

Although it coincides with Cicero's thinking, the quote is apocryphal since it belongs to Taylor Caldwell's novel published in 1965, The Iron Pillar, which makes abundant use of Cicero's speeches and letters, hence the confusion.