INTRODUCTION

Cicero's reputation as a legal philosopher seems to be somehow discredited by his role as a politician and advocate. Despite admiration of his intellectual capacity, there is a prejudice that politics as well as legal practice require a day-to- day pragmatism incompatible with the aim of searching for a reliable, timeless truth. The move towards reading Cicero's writings in context did not change the particular reluctance to believe in what Cicero says or– more importantly– to believe that Cicero himself believed in what he said. Given his different faces, one is prone to read his writings against the background of a multi-layered set of rhetorical, political or tactical functions forming his words and making them understandable in the eyes of a modern reader. As far as substance follows function in this sense, there is no place for a pure, abstract theory of law.

However, during the years of his political retreat after the Luca Conference, Cicero did develop a comprehensive and coherent theory of law and its nature. This theory, mainly found in his Laws and the Republic, is not – as often assumed – a theory contrasting man-made laws and natural law. It is a theory of law in the widest sense of the word, dealing with natura iuris, that is, the nature of law in general. This theory finds its origins in Stoic writings, especially in the oikeiosis doctrine; but Cicero amalgamates nomos and physis towards a new holistic understanding of law, which is not grounded in any dichotomy of leges and a higher-ranking ideal of natural law. For Cicero, law is nature– and what is not nature, is not law. Given this background, Cicero's understanding of law goes beyond the idea of law as a specific tool among others to regulate society. Law has no function in this sense; it rather is the very essence of practical wisdom in a society of rational human beings. This practical wisdom is described as the highest form of human insight; it results from the very moment when gods and men join up to constitute a societas communis.

There is no evidence that Cicero's legal philosophy strongly influenced legal practice in the long term;