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Was Cicero Aware of Natural Beauty?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
It has long been fashionable to believe that the Romans had little conception of natural beauty, and to assume that any sympathetic awareness of nature which they displayed could be accounted for in terms of their moral or utilitarian preconceptions. The moral relationship which in much of classical Greek literature was assumed to exist between man and nature had been reflected in and strengthened by the philosophical theories of Plato and, later, the Stoics. Yet this conception was already an anachronism by the time of the appearance of Lucretius' theory of Voluptas, and appears to have been progressively weakened in the later Republic and early Empire until in Ovid natural processes become the mere backcloth of human activity and emotion. Professor Segal has recently illustrated the employment of nature by Ovid as a literary symbol for the reflection of human emotion, and earlier work had revealed the emotional and moral attitudes to nature of Virgil and other poets, but it is questionable whether awareness of natural beauty as such, unalloyed by moral or emotional symbolism, is to be detected in Roman poetry, much less in Roman prose writing. This view may be supported by a careful scrutiny of Roman literature, where the reader will find it difficult to locate any obvious similarity to some of the commonest modern reactions to natural beauty; and further practical confirmation of this attitude may perhaps be derived from the apparent disdain of the Roman road-builders for any of those concessions to natural contours made by twentieth-century rural conservationists.
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References
page 152 note 1 Cf. Grassi, E., Die Theorien des Schönen in der Antike (Cologne, 1962).Google Scholar
page 152 note 2 C. P. Segal, ‘Landscape in Ovid's Metamorphoses’, Hermes Einzelschriften, 1969, Heft 23.
page 153 note 1 Cf. Amicit. 12; cf. also ibid. 86.
page 153 note 2 De Orat. i. 249.
page 153 note 3 Ibid. ii. 22–3.
page 153 note 4 Phil. viii. 9.
page 153 note 5 Lucr. v. 195 ff.
page 153 note 6 Pis 8.
page 153 note 7 Ibid. and cf. De Orat. i. ., Planc. 15, Pis. 44 and 57.
page 153 note 8 Pis. loc. cit.
page 153 note 9 Harusp. Resp. 4.
page 154 note 1 De Oral. i. 196.
page 154 note 2 Amicit. 68.
page 154 note 3 De Orat. i. 69.
page 154 note 4 Brut. 258.
page 154 note 5 Ibid. 259.
page 154 note 6 Planc. 22.
page 155 note 1 As, for example, in Amer. 50–1.
page 155 note 2 De Oral. iii. 178–9.
page 155 note 3 For example, Tusc. i. 62.
page 155 note 4 Ibid. i. 68.
page 156 note 1 Tusc. v. 69.
page 156 note 2 Mil. 83.
page 156 note 3 Senect. 51.
page 157 note 1 Ibid. See also especially De Nat. Dear. ii. 154ff. for functional aspects of nature.
page 157 note 2 Oral. 81.
page 157 note 3 Tusc. i. 69, quoting probably from Ennius' Eumenides.
page 157 note 4 Leg. Agr. ii. 76.
page 157 note 5 Senect. 70.
page 158 note 1 De Orat. iii. 25.
page 158 note 2 Cf. Monteil, P., Beau et laid en latin (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar
page 158 note 3 Op. cit. 344–5.
page 159 note 1 Cf., inter alia, Verr. iv. 107Google Scholar: ‘Henna autem, ubi ea quae dico gesta esse memorantur, est loco perexcelso atque edito, quo in summo est aequata agri planities et aquae perennes, tota vero ab omni aditu circumcisa atque directa est; quam circa lacus lucique sunt plurimi atque laetissimi flores omni tempore anni …’
page 159 note 2 De Orat. i. 28.
page 159 note 3 Ibid. iii. 180. This is perhaps the most explicit example of the link between beauty and utility: ‘Columnae et templa et porticus sustinent, tamen habent non plus utilitatis quam dignitatis. Capitoli fastigium illud et ceterarum aedium non venustas sed necessitas ipsa fabricata est; nam cum essethabita ratio quemadmodum ex utraque tecti parte aqua delaberetur, utilitatem fastigii templi dignitas consecuta est, ut etiamsi in caelo capitolium statueretur ubi imber esse non posset, nullam sine fastigio dignitatem habiturum fuisse videatur.’
page 160 note 1 Cf. Segal, op. cit.
page 160 note 2 Cf. infra, p. 162.
page 160 note 3 Cf. Michel, A., Maia xviii (1966), 3 ff.Google Scholar
page 161 note 1 Nat. Dear. ii. 98.Google Scholar
page 161 note 2 Ibid. ii. 120.
page 162 note 1 Nat. Dear. ii. 98.Google Scholar On the mainly prosaic Roman attitude to colour in nature see especially André, J., Les Termes de couleur dans la langue latine (Paris, 1949).Google Scholar
page 162 note 2 Nat. Deor. ii. 96.Google Scholar
page 163 note 1 Ibid. ii. 97; cf. also Michel, , Rhétorique et philosophie chez Cicéron (Paris, 1960), 298 ff.; 310ff.Google Scholar
page 163 note 2 Cf. supra, pp. 160–1.
page 164 note 1 Cf. the Aristotelian teleology with its emphasis on the process from what exists potentially (δυν⋯μει) to its actual fulfilment (⋯ν⋯ργεια), inter alia, Met. xii. 1071a. The full implications of the movement from δ⋯ναμις to ⋯ν⋯ργεια have yet to be fully explored within Cicero's theory of nature. However, if we once accept the generally agreed Aristotelian source for his theory of the harmony of all forms of life, there would appear to be no doubt of the influence upon him of the further Aristotelian concept of nature fulfilling its true function in the service of man—a tendency possessed potentially (δυν⋯μει) and capable of realization (⋯ν⋯ργεια) or not, according to the efforts which man chooses to exert upon it.
page 164 note 2 Cf. Nat. Dear. ii. 98 ff., and p. 159 n. 1.Google Scholar
page 165 note 1 In one place he calls the last laetissimi (Verr. iv. 107), and perhaps this gives us a clue to Cicero's attitude to all discrete natural objects. If Cicero is unconsciously ‘personifying’ the flowers at Henna, he is also referring to particular striking manifestations of the ordered life-force present in all nature.