Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Philosophical norms and political attachments: Cicero and Seneca 429
but also sorrow and excessive pleasure and anger – in order to gain that
tranquility of spirit, that freedom from care, which ensures both constancy
and standing” (Off. I.66, 69). This is pure Stoicism, and we
even see Cicero using Stoic terminology as he lists the major categories
of passion that the good person will lack.
So much for theory, now to practice. I shall not speak here of the
love of money or the love of glory, both of which are large themes
in Cicero’s life. There are two attachments, however, that go way beyond
all others: Cicero’s love of his daughter Tullia, and his love for
Rome. Tullia died in childbirth during her third marriage, in February
45. Shortly before this, Cicero wrote a letter of consolation to a bereaved
friend, uttering orthodox Stoic sentiments (Fam. 5.16). Tullia’s
death then produces a total desolation, which he movingly expresses
to his primary correspondent, his close friend Atticus, again and again,
despite his friend’s repeated urging to moderate his grief. He tells Atticus
that he cannot stop grieving, and he does not even think that he should
(Att. 12.28.2). So too with Rome. Cicero tells Atticus that he has, in
fact, been in a state of mourning for a long time for the Roman Republic,
but that Tullia’s presence mitigated that grief somewhat (ibid.). Now
there is nothing to stop grief, on both fronts, from being overwhelming.
He speaks of uncontrollable fits of weeping (Att. 12.15).
Cicero is up to a point a good Stoic. About to meet his equally bereaved
son-in-law for the first time after their shared loss, he says,
I’m not so broken that I’ve forgotten I’m a human being or think that one
has to knuckle under to fortune. Still, that cheerfulness and wit that used to
delight you more than anyone else has been altogether snatched away from
me. As for my firmness and constancy, however, you will find those just as
you left them. (Fam. 9.11)
So he doesn’t lie down and take life’s blows in a servile way. Moreover,
he movingly attempts to console himself by reading all the philosophical
works he can find on the topic of grief – and then by writing a work of
self-consolation, which, famous in antiquity, unfortunately does not survive.
In his intimate letters to Atticus, however, he confesses that these
attempts have all failed; he confesses to a profound desolation, like wandering,
he says, in a dark and gloomy forest – and he adds that he has lost
his cheerfulness forever (Att.12.40.3). Even the high value Cicero attaches
to cheerfulness and urbanity shows his distance from Stoicism.
Where Tullia was concerned, her father’s mourning continues until
the end of his days, as Cicero becomes obsessed with the project of