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CICERO
Aeneid6. 1 'The starry spheres far surpassed the earth in size. Indeed the earth
itself now seemed so small to me that I was disappointed with our empire, no
bigger than a spot, as it were, on the surface' (16). The message is, that while
you are on earth it is your duty to serve your country, but that human glory
is transient sub specie aeternitatis; you should set your affection on things above,
for there is a reward of immortality in heaven, amid die harmony of the spheres;
and that not only for men of action, but for all who have already caught that
harmony and reproduced it for mankind. Mens cuiusque is est qidsqtte ' the mind
is the true man', and that mind is immortal. Nothing in Cicero was to prove
more congenial to Christians down the centuries than this vision.
If the De oratore is Cicero's apologia, the De re publica is his consolatio. He
planned the De legibus to follow it. This again was on the analogy of Plato; but
whereas Plato in his Laws was creating a construct unrelated to the Republic,
Cicero gives, after a discussion of the nature of law, an account of the actual
laws of Rome, with only occasional, if sometimes important, amendments, an
appendix in fact to the De republica. z The setting is idyllic, and again intentionally
reminiscent of Plato's Phaedrus. Cicero and his brother, at their native
Arpinum in the hills, are talking to Atticus on his first visit there, walking along
the bank of the Liris till they come to an island that splits the cold, swift
Fibrenus before it plunges into the larger river. There are interesting discussions
in Book 3, which deal with magistrates, of the institution of the tribunate
(19—26), and of whether voting should be open or secret (33—9). But the
dialogue form is purely pro forma: indeed the brothers make a joke about
this (3.26). The composition of the work was interrupted by Cicero's governorship
and the subsequent civil war, and it may not have been published in
his lifetime. Out of at least five books only the first three, and they with gaps,
have survived.
In 46, when, after the defeat of the Pompeians, Cicero had been finally allowed
by the Dictator Caesar to return to Rome, he reverted to the subject of oratory,
apparently in reaction to growing criticisms of his style (see p. 240). In the
treatise Orator he depicted the perfect orator, and also elaborated the rather
hurried precepts his Crassus had deigned to vouchsafe in De oratore 3; and in
the dialogue Brutus he traced the history of oratory at Rome up to its culmination
in himself. Both are dedicated to Brutus, most promising of the young
friends he sought to mould. The following year, 45, was one of great misery
for him. He had divorced his wife Terentia after thirty years of marriage, he had
for some time been estranged from his much loved brother, and worst of all,
1 For Cicero's sources and originality see Harder (1929).
2 His tenor is reactionary. On religion in Book, 2 he seems concerned to re-establish even the
obsolete, on politics in 3 to reinforce the nobles, priests and censors. Rawson (1973) 342—5$.
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