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CICERO
but the syntactical flexibility of the Greek he found in his sources. 1 Thus lack of
the definite article made it hard to deal in abstractions. 2 Omne bonum has to
serve for to agathon, 'the Good'. Sometimes however a neuter adjective alone
would do — honestum, uerum. Lack of a past participle active (except in deponent
verbs) sometimes drove him to clumsy periphrasis. But terminology was a more
serious problem. The Romans had not dealt much in ideas. Cicero realized that
existing words in the two languages were not complete equivalents, translating
physis sometimes as natura, sometimes as ingenium. He might use an old word
in a new sense, as decreta for dogmata. Euidens, a word not found in the speeches,
does duty for enarges. We find him groping for the mot juste. Thus pathos is
rendered by moots animi or commotio or perturbatio; but the ultimate rendering
passio that has come down to us dates only from Augustine. He did however
make some lasting coinages, such as moralis, prouidentia, qualitas, quantitas, and
perhaps essentia. Sometimes he tells us he is inventing; but he was inhibited by
his innate respect for the Latin language. He shrank from overfeeding it with
indigestible neologisms or straining it with unfamiliar constructions. Thus he
could not bring himself to countenance the word medietas (' middle position'),
only going so far as to say, 'take it as if I had said that". 3 (Others coming later
had no such scruple; and from their use of medietas came the Italian meta and
die French moitiS.) He even apologized for venturing beatitudo, though beams
was a good Latin word found in his speeches, and -itudo a recognized suffix for
producing an abstract word: 'whether we call it beatitudo or beatitas (both
sound utterly harsh; but we should soften words by use)'. 4 Despite this last
concession he seems never to have used eidier again. It is going too far to say
that he created a supple philosophical language: he strove, as far as his fastidiousness
would allow him, to enlarge his meagre linguistic patrimony, and to make
philosophy comprehensible to the common reader; 5 in his own words, 'to
teach Philosophy Latin and confer Roman Citizenship on her' (fk. 3.40).
One means of enrichment to which he did have recourse was metaphor,
which he rightly held to be a natural factor in die evolution of languages (De
or. 3.15 5). A letter to Atticus gives us a glimpse of his workshop. Taking a hint
from Lucilius, he had used sustinere to represent Carneades' Greek word for
suspending judgement. Atticus had suggested instead inAibere, a metaphor from
rowing. But now Cicero writes: 'I diought that sailors, when ordered inhibere,
1
We possess translations by him which enable us to appreciate his problems: of a large part of
Plato's Timaeus, and passages from his Phaedrus embedded in the De oratore and De republica.
Unfortunately his translations of Aeschines' speech In Ctesiphontem and Demosthenes' De corona are
lost; we have only the introduction, which goes by the name of De optima genere oratorum. His
translation of Plato's Protagoras (Fin. 1.7) is also lost.
2
For 'the conquest of the abstract' in Latin see Marouzeau (1949) ch. v.
3
Tim. 7.13. For Cicero's philosophic language see Meillet (1928/1948) 115—17. Glossary and
discussion of renderings of technical terms in Iiscu (1937).
4 5
De nat. dear. 1.95.
Poncelet (1957); conclusions, 363—7J.
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