Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

DIALOGUES AND TREATISES
dared to breathe in a public speech {Civ. Dei 2.30). Cotta in the De natura
deorum is a pontiff who adheres scrupulously in public to the traditional cults
but is largely sceptical about them in private (1.61) — like some Renaissance
Pope, and no doubt like Cicero himself. Nevertheless Cicero was careful to
distinguish between superstition and true religion (Div. 2.148). Again, at the
end of the De natura deorum, despite his disclaimer at 1.10 (see p. 230), he
briefly intimates in propria persona that he himself considers the Stoic view put
by Balbus in Book 2 'most like the semblance of truth'. Yet he has reservations:
although ' the argument from design' convinces him of the existence of a providential
deity (indeed outright atheists were very few in antiquity), and he
takes his conscience as evidence that the soul is divine and comprehends the
divine law (though 'no one has ever owed his virtue to god'), he rejects the
(inconsistent) Stoic doctrines of divine interference and determinism because of
his predisposition to believe in freewill and the reality of moral choice- 1 The
Tusculans in particular, though ostensibly a detached exposition of various
views, betray by their tone his own commitment to belief in the immortality of
the soul. Books 1 and 5 are really emotional declamations. Pain and death were
particularly topical subjects at that time.
As literature these works are perhaps not exciting by modern standards.
Their significance lies in their having become the medium by which the substance
of Greek philosophy was transmitted to the West and kept alive until
Greek works were studied in the original again. They are enhanced by the
illustrations, literary, historical and anecdotal, that came so readily to Cicero's
pen, and by the mastery of language that never failed however fast he wrote. His
last and most influential work, astonishing considering that he was now in the
forefront of the struggle with Mark Antony, was not a dialogue but a treatise
ostensibly addressed to his student son, the De officiis (On moral obligations).
This has therefore a special status as representing his own views, though the
first two books are avowedly based on Panaetius; and for once he deviates into
dogmatism. Though he incidentally criticizes Caesar (without sparing Pompey),
approves of his assassination, and deplores the flouting of the republic by
Antony, that is not sufficient reason for supposing the work to have been
politically motivated. It carries on from the Definibus. Books 1 and 2, somewhat
encumbered by repetitions but relieved by Cicero's perennial abundance of
illustrations, deal with right (Jionestum) and expediency (utile) respectively.
Book 3 examines cases of apparent conflict between the two. (There could be no
real conflict, for the advantages of expediency are short-term; by doing wrong
you harm your own soul.) Book 1 introduces, a propos the cardinal virtue of
1 In the partially extant De fato (jiff.)- The extant Paradoxa Stoicorum shows his interest in
Stoicism. It is a rhetorical elaboration of the paradoxes, composed in the spring of 46, probably as an
intellectual exercise, and dedicated to Brutus.
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