Department of the Classics, Harvard University

Cicero and Greek Philosophy

Author(s): Gisela Striker
Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 97, Greece in Rome: Influence, Integration,
Resistance (1995), pp. 53-61
Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University
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 CICERO AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY*

GISELA STRIKER

T O speak about Cicero and Greek philosophy is to speak about

Cicero and philosophy, period. Philosophy, for the Romans of
Cicero's age, was a Greek thing, and there was no other philosophy
around. Philosophy was one of the disciplines the Romans of the first
centuryB.C.took over from the Greeks as a partof higher education. It
was both a prestigious and a suspect branch of Greek culture-
prestigious because it was intellectually demanding, suspect because
philosophical argumentcould be seen as subversive;witness the notori-
ous story of the futile attemptby Cato the Censor in the second century
to banish philosophersfrom the city in orderto safeguardthe morals of
Rome's young men.
To judge from Cicero's prefaces, the suspicions never quite went
away, although Stoicism, at least, turned out to be highly respectable.
Cicero tried with varying success to raise the status of philosophy by
introducing famous Roman statesmen as speakers in his dialogues,1
while assuring his readers that the affairs of the state would of course
take precedence over philosophical pursuits.2 But the prejudice
*I am grateful to Zeph Stewart for encouragementand stylistic advice. This short
piece was writtenfor the conference, with no intentionof developing it into a largerpro-
ject. It is merely an attemptto put Cicero's philosophical writings in perspective, as it
were, in the hope of attractingthe attentionof those studentsof antiquitywho still take a
dim view of Cicero's achievementon the groundsthat he was neitheroriginal nor a great
philosopher.
1 With varying success: the "Scipionic Circle" of the Rep. was apparentlya success,
but Cicero gave up on the attemptto present some of his own older contemporariesas
involved in a technical philosophical debate; see Att. 13.16.1 Illam &lcaKa6TlutKv(Uv-
TxCtv totam ad Varronemtraduximus.Primofuit Catuli, Luculli, Hortensi; deinde, quia
T(apatoX Ti7npov videbatur,quod erat hominibusnota non illa quidem&arlXt6e'oia sed in
his rebus atxpilia, simul ac veni ad villam, eosdem illos sermones ad Catonem Bru-
tumquetranstuli.
2 See,
e.g., Div. 2.2.6 Ac mihi quidem explicandaephilosophiae causam adtulit casus
54 Gisela Striker

remained that professional philosophers, at any rate, were engaged in

hairsplittingand endless debates about obscure points, to the detriment
of more importantconcerns like politics.3 In short, the Roman upper
class displayed the same attitudes as the Athenian contemporariesof
Socrates and the Sophists, so amusingly described in some of Plato's
earlierdialogues.
Cicero seems to have been the first educatedRoman who developed
a real flair for philosophy and a serious attachmentto it, consideringit
not just as an intellectual hobby or a kind of spiritualsupportin times
of personal or political turmoil, and attemptingin earnest to make it a
part of Roman culture. I do not mean, of course, to overlook the great
poet Lucretius. But Lucretius,perhapsprecisely because he was a great
poet, but also because he adopted the tone of a fervent missionary,
seems to have remainedan isolated figure, at least as far as philosophy
was concerned. It was Cicero who gained a lasting place in the history
of European philosophy by creating a vocabulary in which Romans
could debate philosophical questions; not just read, but write and dis-
cuss philosophy. No doubt Cicero's own auctoritas helped here, too.
Not quite a century later, in the works of Seneca, the "povertyof the
Latin tongue" (Lucr. 1.139, 832; 3.260) so eloquently lamented by
Lucretiusseems to have been overcome.
What I have said so far is familiar and, I take it, uncontroversial.
Cicero's role as a mediatorprobablyalso explains why he remaineda
respected philosophical authorso long as Latin, alongside Greek, was
one of the main languages of philosophy. Until the end of the eigh-
teenth century at least some of Cicero's philosophical books were part
of a standardeducation, and indeed, before the Renaissance, Cicero
was seen as a philosopherratherthan a politician or an orator. But over
the last two hundredyears, Cicero as a philosophical writerhas pretty
much vanished from the philosophical curriculum. I cannot here
rehearse all the various reasons for Cicero's loss of prestige, which
have to do as much with philosophical and intellectual fashion as with
historians'varying assessments of his role as a politician. Some of the

gravis civitatis, cum in armis civilibus nec tueri meo more remp. nec nihil agere poteram
nec quidpotius, quod quidemme dignumesset, agerem reperiebam.
3 See, e.g., Luc. 2.5 Ac vereor interdumne taliumpersonarumcum amplificarevelim
minuametiam gloriam. sunt enim multi qui omnino Graecas non ament litteras, plures
qui philosophiam, reliqui qui etiam si haec non inprobenttamen earum rerumdisputa-
tionemprincipibuscivitatis non ita decoramputent.
 Cicero and GreekPhilosophy 55

prejudices-as we would now say-that became prevalentin the nine-

teenth century with regard not just to Cicero, but to the Hellenistic
period in general have, I think, been overcome in the last few decades.
For example, we no longer consider the "post-Aristotelian"period as an
era of sad decline that ended only with Plotinus and the emergence of
Neoplatonism. There is also now a concerted effort to get rid of the
invidious label "eclecticism,"used to describe the philosophers of the
late Hellenistic period.4It is not entirely clear what was meant by this
term, but one suggestion seems to have been that an "eclectic"philoso-
pher's views would lack rigor and coherence. If he picked up the most
attractivebits of doctrinefrom variousincompatiblesystems, one might
expect the results to be inconsistent-if not on the surface,then at least
as far as the theoretical foundations are concerned. Different schools
started from different principles, and so one could hardly expect a
consistent set of argumentsbehind a philosophical view that combines
heterogeneous elements. If this was behind the derogatory use of
"eclecticism" it must be pointed out that the argument is not com-
pelling. True, a philosopherwho tries to bring togetherplausible theses
from different theories cannot embrace all those systems at the same
time. But the same philosophical theses can be supportedby different
arguments,and it is surely legitimate to try and produce a theory that
combines, as it were, the best of all availableviews by introducingnew
or modified argumentsfor old doctrines. This is, in fact, what Cicero's
teacherAntiochus seems to have done in ethics, as one can see from De
Finibus5.5
Sometimes the term "eclecticism"also seems to carrythe suggestion
thatthe eclectic philosopherhas no comprehensivesystem at all, so that
his views, consistent or not, are not solidly supported. This is an objec-
tion thatcould be raised againstCicero's otherteacher,Philo of Larissa.
But the objection fails against a philosopher who holds, by explicit
appeal to skeptical arguments,that there is very little knowledge to be
had, and that we must thereforebe content with trying to find the most
plausible or probableview, case by case. As a studentof Philo, Cicero
may have had some fairly strong convictions, but no overarchingWelt-
4 See the collection of
essays in J. M. Dillon and A. A. Long eds., The Question of
"Eclecticism"(Berkeley 1988), in particularthe opening chapterby P. Donini.
5 For this
point see J. Barnes, "Antiochusof Ascalon," in M. Griffin and J. Barnes
eds., Philosophia Togata (Oxford 1989) 51-96, and for Antiochus' ethics, J. Annas, The
Moralityof Happiness (Oxford 1993) chapters2.6 and 4.20.3.
56 Gisela Striker

anschauung. If skepticism or anti-dogmatismis what accounts for the

label "eclectic,"we need not find it damaging.
Philo and Antiochus are now treated with greater respect,6 but
Cicero still does not seem to be taken seriously. It may be true, of
course, that Cicero, who was not a professional philosopher,was even
less of an original thinkerthan his teachers. But originalitywas not an
issue at a time when philosophers,far from advertisingtheir own inno-
vations, were anxious to show that their doctrines went back to the
great founding fathers-Socrates, Plato, Aristotle or even Pythagoras.7
If we for our partwish to insist that some degree of originalityor inde-
pendence is crucial, we should admit that we are in no position to form
an accuratejudgment of Cicero in this respect, given that most of his
sources are lost. The two works most likely to give us an impressionof
Cicero working on his own would no doubt be the De Republica and
the De Legibus, in which he set out to produce a Roman-not just a
Latin-version of political and legal philosophy. But we have only
fragments of the De Republica, and the first book of the De Legibus,
which contains the philosophical discussion of naturallaw and of the
objective foundationsof justice, has a numberof lacunae that make it
difficultto follow the course of the exposition. A lot of work still needs
to be done to reconstructthese arguments,as opposed to identifyingthe
Greek authoritiesallegedly behind them. In De Officiis 3 (4. 19-20),
Cicero tells us that he is trying to fill a gap in Panaetius' theory. He
offers a "formula"to deal with apparentconflicts between moral duty
and expediency-a topic that Panaetius had promised to discuss, but
failed to treat in his Ilepi ro3 Ka0ljKOVTO;.8 Cicero's solution is not
6 For Philo, see H. Tarrant,
Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth
Academy (Cambridge 1985); for Antiochus, see J. Glucker, Antiochus and the Late
Academy(Gottingen 1978 [Hypomnemata56]).
7 For this point see D. Sedley, "PhilosophicalAllegiance in the Greco-RomanWorld,"
in Griffin(above, n. 5) 97-119.
8 See Off 3.2.7 Panaetius igitur, qui sine controversia de officiis accuratissime dis-
putavit quemquenos correctionequadamadhibitapotissimumsecuti sumus, tribusgener-
ibus propositis, in quibus deliberare homines et consultare de officio solerent, uno cum
dubitarent,honestumneid esset, de quo ageretur,an turpe,altero, utilene esset an inutile,
tertio, si id, quod speciem haberet honesti, pugnaret cum eo, quod utile videretur,quo-
modo ea disceri oporteret,de duobus generibusprimis tribus libris explicavit, de tertio
autem genere deinceps se scripsit dicturum nec exsolvit id, quod promiserat. Ibid.
3.4.19-20 Itaque, ut sine ullo errore diiudicare possimus, si quando cum illo, quod
honestum intellegimus,pugnare id videbitur,quod appellamus utile, formula quaedam
 Cicero and GreekPhilosophy 57

entirely convincing, but it does cohere, as he says, with Stoic doctrine.

But as I said, it would be a mistake to judge Cicero's competence and
achievementsprimarilyby referenceto standardsof originality.
A different aspect has been emphasized by A. E. Douglas,9 who
points out that some of Cicero's treatises belong to a genre that is not
much in fashion among philosophers today-consolation and moral
advice for everyday life. In this group fall the TusculanDisputations,
the Cato Maior (De Senectute), the Laelius (De Amicitia) and to some
extent also the De Officiis. This is a genre in which eloquence has a
larger role to play than in other philosophical works, since the aim is
not so much instructionor explanationas psychological guidance and
moral education. It seems that some philosophersare beginning to be
less dismissive about this kind of "appliedphilosophy,"and in any case
it is an interesting feature of Hellenistic philosophy in general that is
well worth investigating.10But I think it is still fair to say that few
philosopherstoday would subscribeto Cicero's famous little "hymnto
philosophy"(Tusc. 5.2.5): o vitae philosophia dux, o virtutisindagatrix
expultrixquevitiorum.... Most of us would probablyratheragree with
Aristotle, who thought that philosophy may indeed help us to clarify
our moralideas, but thatit cannotreplace a good upbringing.
There remains the group of dialogues in which Cicero, toward the
end of his life, attemptedto provide a kind of philosophicalencyclope-
dia in Latin:1lthe Academici libri, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum,
De Natura Deorum, De Divinatione, De Fato. I suspect that what lies
behind the lack of respect on the partof philosophersfor these treatises
is not an argumentat all, but the habit of reading Cicero as a "source."
When philosophical scholars began to rediscover the Hellenistic
schools as a serious subject in the last two decades or so, they naturally
also began to read Cicero in order to find out about Epicurus, Zeno,
Chrysippus, Arcesilaus, and so on. Although we have finally left
behind the excesses of Quellenforschung,according to which Cicero's

constituendaest; quam si sequemurin comparationererum,ab officio numquamrecede-

mus. erit autem haec formula Stoicorumrationi disciplinaequemaxime consentanea ...
9 "Cicerothe Philosopher"in T. A. Dorey ed., Cicero (London 1965) 135-170.
10See MarthaNussbaum'srecent book, The
Therapyof Desire (Princeton1994).
1l For this project see Div. 2.2.4 Adhuc haec erant; ad reliqua alacri tendebamus
animo, sic parati ut nisi quae causa gravior obstitisset nullumphilosophiae locum esse
pateremur qui non Latinis litteris inlustratuspateret. quod enim munus rei p. adferre
maius meliusvepossumus quam si docemus atque erudimusiuventutem. . .
58 Gisela Striker

works were just a patchwork of paraphrasesand Greek passages in

translation,it is still tempting to try to discern, for example, the argu-
ments of Panaetiusbehind Cicero's admittedlybrieferversion in the De
Officiis,and I would not wish to claim thatI can always resist the temp-
tation. The interests of present-dayreaders attemptingto understand
Stoicism or Academic Skepticismdo not always coincide with Cicero's
own intentions. More often than not, such readers would find Cicero
frustrating. His outlines of philosophical doctrines are sketchy; they
often seem to skip details that might be crucial for a properunderstand-
ing of the relevantarguments,and the very elegance of his Latin may
compound the difficulties by making him less faithful to the terminol-
ogy of the schools. Occasionallyone also suspects that Cicero has mis-
understoodor missed a philosophicalpoint. Add to this that he has the
annoying habit of indulging in rhetoricalflourishes from time to time
and of interruptingor inflating an argumentby more or less irrelevant
stories from Rome's glorious past or deplorablepresent, and you will
easily understand why a philosophical reader might lose patience.
Finally, there are those who never find the time to read one of Cicero's
books from beginning to end. This tendency will be reinforcedby the
use of collections like von Amim's Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta or
Usener's Epicurea, which present us with excerpts from Cicero's
reports of a school doctrine, leaving out his comments or placing the
following paragraphin a differentsection because it introducesa differ-
ent topic. In these collections, Cicero is treatedon a par with authors
like Diogenes Laertiusor Stobaeus, whose books would indeed be of
merely antiquarianinterestif the literatureof the Hellenistic period had
not been lost. Cicero thus comes to look like a not entirelyreliable and
sometimes misleading witness-and why should we take such an
authorseriously?
This way of looking at Cicero's books, however, is grossly unfair
because it takes his treatisesto be what their authornever intended. In
beratingCicero for superficialityor lack of detail, we overlook a crucial
fact that is obvious upon a moment's reflection, but rarely taken into
account:he could not possibly foresee that all the works, not only of his
own teachers, but of their Hellenistic predecessors as well, would be
lost. He wrote what might today be called introductorysurveys of
major fields in philosophy-epistemology, ethics, philosophical theol-
ogy-trying to give an outline of the main positions, highlightingwhat
he saw as their most importantstrengthsand weaknesses. Because he
 Cicero and GreekPhilosophy 59

was following the Academic practiceof presentingall sides of a debate,

he purportedat least to be fair to each school's doctrine, offering the
readera set of interestingproblemsto think about, but leaving the final
judgmentopen. But of course he assumedthat a readerwhose curiosity
had been awakenedby his outline would easily be able to pursuepartic-
ular points of detail by getting the relevantGreek books. The educated
Romans for whom he was writing could be expected to be bilingual or
at least able to read Greek. This is, after all, why Cicero himself has
Varroobject that the entire project of translatingor putting philosophi-
cal doctrines into Latin is superfluous-why seek out mere rivulets
when you can drinkfrom the sources? (Acad. 1.2.8: sed meos amicos in
quibus est studiumin Graeciammitto id est ad Graecos ire iubeo, ut ex
fontibus potius hauriant quam rivulos consectentur). Cicero never
intendedhis books to replace the more technical Greek ones.
But apartfrom the fact that he realized, unlike some of his friends,
how importantit is to be able to talk philosophy, not just to read it,
Cicero may have been quite right to think that his books fulfilled a
function that the more technical and austereworks of the Greeks might
have neglected, or did not fulfill as well. On this point we are of course
reducedto guessing; we do not know how well the genre "introductory
survey"was representedin the Greek literatureof Cicero's time. The
books to which Cicero himself explicitly refers do not seem to have
been of this kind.12In fact, it is clear that Cicero's literarymodels came
from the early Academy-Plato, Aristotle, from whom Cicero claims
to have taken the form of his dialogues,13Theophrastus,Polemo and so
on. For surveys, we might compareEpicurus'letters, which do purport
to offer simplified summaries-and here, I would say, the comparison
would be in favor of Cicero. And while we do not have enough from
an earlier period, we do know that the books we now describe, after
Diels, as "doxographical"tend to leave out what Cicero, on the con-
12
Although Cicero tells us that Panaetiusused ordinarylanguage when writing about
everyday subjects (Off. 2.10.35), he clearly still finds it necessary to abbreviatewhat
Panaetiushad treated"with greatprecision"(accuratissime;Off 3.2.7). In the Acad. libri
he claims to have combined Antiochus' acumen with his own stylistic elegance (nitor;
Att. 13.19.5). Philo of Larissataughtrhetoricas well as philosophy, and Cicero says that
he used to quote lines from the poets, as Cicero himself likes to do (Tusc. 2.11.26). But
the "Romanbooks" mentioned in the Luc. (4.11) belonged to a ratheresoteric epistemo-
logical dispute and can hardlyhave been intendedfor beginners.
13 See Att. 13.19.4 quae autem his temporibusscripsi'Apiatoxo?3Xtov moremhabent in
quo ita sermo induciturceterorumut apud ipsumsit principatus.
60 Gisela Striker

trary,tends to emphasize-the theoreticalframeworkand the arguments

behind the theses, not to mention otherphilosophers'objections. What
Cicero offers us is a frameworkin which to place more technical con-
siderations, and a guide to the fundamentaldoctrines of each school.
His books provide orientationand incentive to furtherstudy, and in this
they seem to me to be quite successful. Cicero is surely right to think
that a clear and fluent style will appeal to inexperiencedreaders, and
the presentationof conflicting views in the form of a debate is an effec-
tive pedagogical device to get readers involved in thinking about the
problems for themselves. On the other hand, one cannot overburdena
conversation, even an imaginary one, with too much detail without
defeating the dialogue's purpose. Some lines of argumentwill have to
be abbreviatedor condensed and Cicero, to his credit, often points this
out himself. There is no reason to believe that he left out the details
because he regardedthem as superfluous. I cannot think of a modem
introductorybook that would not be open to the kind of complaints
some scholarshave made about Cicero-sketchiness, lack of detail and
occasional misrepresentation.Nobody expects an encyclopedia article
about Aristotle to give a full and adequate picture of his philosophy.
Still, such books or articles are useful in setting their readers on the
right track,as it were, but they are not meant to be the last word about
anything. If we sometimes end up thinkingthat Cicero must have mis-
understoodan argument,we should not forget that it was often Cicero
himself who enabledus to see that somethingwent wrong.
We have every reason to thinkthat the loss of the works of the major
Hellenistic philosophers is among the more regrettablecalamities of
our fragmentarytradition, and it would be ridiculous to pretend that
Cicero can make up for it. But I suspect that even if we had much
more, we might still find ourselves turning to Cicero's judicious and
lively little surveys to help us find our way, for example, throughthe
laborious volumes of a Chrysippus,who was famous for his dreadful
style.14

14For
Chrysippus' style, see Dion. Hal. Comp. 4. 30-31 (p. 21 Us.-Rad., SVF II 28)
o6no'uy Kai oi0 riv (pqhooocplav E:ayyEXXdOgEvotKcai rCxaS&aXKTiKac ?Kpc?povT?;
6Xao'o{TQo eioiv a0Xtoi Irepi TiV cvO0eoav TiV ovop&drov,
rZcvac ai6SeiOal Kca
Xtyetv; an6oprIl 6e T?Kjl:1piOXpliGaooa TO Xo6yPXpuoi"tou ro ZXToIKco' i- epavctipo
yap OVcK av 7ipopairlv. roUJov) yap Oi)' axIeilvov 06eiS 'aI; 15aXEKTZKaS;rEXvaS
icKpipatev, OiTE XEipOVI aplpovia CovTvax0?Va<; >iveyKe X6yoV; tXV 6vo!&XTov Kai
860Sq atloOe:VTrov.
 Cicero and GreekPhilosophy 61

When Cicero had finished his Academici libri, he wrote to Atticus

(13.13.1): "the books have turned out-unless I am deceived by that
common failing, amour-propre-better than anything of their kind,
even in Greek" (tr. J. Barnes. libri quidem ita exierunt, nisi forte me
communis (pitxauia decipit, ut in tali genere ne apud Graecos quidem
simile quicquam). Nobody seems to have taken this remarkseriously,
given that Cicero is well known to have been particularlyprone to the
"common failing." But in this case I am inclined to think that he may
well have been right.

HARVARD
UNIVERSITY