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Cicero's Political Ideal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Marcus Wheeler
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Extract

The fragmentary state in which Cicero's treatise De Republica has come down to us has given rise to considerable speculation as to the exact nature of the political ideal contained in it. Very varying conjectures have been advanced as to the significance and status of the rector or moderator rei publicae, and very different answers given to the question: Is the ideal a revised and improved form of the πάτριος πολιτεία or is it some kind of enlightened monarchy? The assumption on which this paper rests is, however, that the issue has not yet grown so academic but that a further examination of it may serve either to reveal some new, or to stress some neglected, feature of the traditional problem.

It is first necessary to say something about the use of the word ‘ideal’ in reference to the Republic. It is customary to talk of the ‘ideal’ which Cicero propounds in that work, yet there is patently something unsatisfactory in the term, since historians are unable to agree as to what that ideal is. It may be suggested that the reason for this is in part an ambiguity of the word ‘ideal’ corresponding to a distinction in Cicero's intention in writing the Republic. What this might be is most easily seen from comparison with Aristotle's Politics, which similarly is said to contain its author's political ideal, and similarly has given rise to dispute as to what exactly that ideal is. In this case, however, there need be no doubt as to what is intended, since Aristotle explicitly distinguishes two senses of ‘ideal’ as applied to constitutions, namely that which is best a priori (ή κατ εὺχήν) and that which is the best that can be expected relative to circumstances (ή ἐκ τν ύποκειμένων).

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 21 , Issue 62 , June 1952 , pp. 49 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1952

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References

page 49 note 1 The controversy of recent times was opened by the articles of Reitzenstein, R. (in Nachr. d. Göttingen G. d. W., 1917, pp. 399 ff., 436 ff.Google Scholar ) and Heinze, R. (Hermes, 1924, pp. 73 ff.)Google Scholar , and by Meyer, E. treatment of the subject in Caesars Monarchie und das Prinzipal des Pompeius (Stuttgart, 1918), pp. 176 ff.Google Scholar In opposing the interpretation of Reitzenstein and Meyer I follow Heinze as to the usage of the term princeps, and, more generally, the views of Sabine, G. H. and Smith, S. B. (Cicero on the Commonwealth: Ohio U.P., 1929, pp. 91 ff.Google Scholar ) and of How, W. W. (Journal of Roman Studies, 1930, pp. 24 ff.).Google Scholar

page 49 note 2 Pol. iv. I. 3: 1288b.

page 50 note 1 Sabine and Smith refer also to the doctrines of the Neo-Pythagoreans (op. cit., p. 95).

page 50 note 2 Cf. Herodotus iii. 80-82; Plato, Polit. 302; Arist. Pol. iii.

page 50 note 3 Pol. i. 5; Cic. Rep. iii. 37.

page 50 note 4 Pol. i. 1; iii. 6; Cic. Rep. iv. 3.

page 50 note 5 Rep. ii. 51.

page 50 note 6 Pol. iv. 11. 10.

page 50 note 7 Rep. i. 45; cf. i. 54.

page 50 note 8 Rep. i. 69.

page 51 note 1 De Legg. iii. 13–14.

page 51 note 2 iii. 14; cf. ad Att. 11. xvi. 3.

page 51 note 3 i. 45, 54, 69; cf. Polybius vi. 11.

page 51 note 4 i. 70.

page 52 note 1 i. 39.

page 52 note 2 iii. 43.

page 52 note 3 Rep. ii. 51; v. 6: ad Att. VIII. xi. 1.

page 52 note 4 137 ff.

page 52 note 5 ad famm. I. ix. 14.

page 52 note 6 ad Att. VII. xi. 1.

page 52 note 7 ad Att. X. viii. 2.

page 52 note 8 ad famm. IX. xvii. 1.

page 52 note 9 ad famm. IV. iv. 3.

page 52 note 10 ad famm. X. xxviii. 2.

page 53 note 1 ad famm. VII. iii. 5.

page 53 note 2 Cf. St. Augustine's summary of the contents of the lost books as being ‘de instituendo principe civitatis’. De Civ. Dei v. 13.

page 53 note 3 Grandezza e Decadenza di Roma, Eng. tr. iv, p. 132. My dismissal of Ferrero is not wholly just: his view on the one–many question, substantially followed by Reitzenstein, is relevant, but in my opinion mistaken.

page 53 note 4 Op. cit., p. 37. Sabine, and Smith, (op. cit., p. 97)Google Scholar argue that ‘the view that Cicero aimed to supply Pompey with a theory and an office cannot be proved from Cicero's own words and is at the most only a plausible reconstruction’.

page 54 note 1 ad Att. VIII. xi. 2.

page 54 note 2 e.g. de domo 66; de prov. cons. 41; pro Planc. 93; ad famm. I. xi. 11; ad Att. VIII. ix. 4; listed by How.

page 54 note 3 Syme, , The Roman Revolution, p. 10.Google Scholar Cf. the honorific title princeps senatus.

page 54 note 4 ad Att. II. i. 7; IV. v. 1.

page 54 note 5 139.

page 54 note 6 Cf. ad famm. V. vii. 3.

page 54 note 7 In particular the De Legibus, which is explicitly designed to furnish the constitution for Cicero's ideal State. C. W. Keyes, who seeks to locate original elements in the laws in De Legg. iii, admits Cicero, ‘love for the old spirit of republican patriotism’ and his ‘idealization of the period of the Scipios’. A.J.P., vol. xlii (1921), pp. 319 ff.Google Scholar

page 55 note 1 Rep. i. 34.

page 55 note 2 i. 71.

page 55 note 3 Op. cit., p. 26; cf. p. 41.

page 55 note 4 ad Att. VIII. xi. 2.

page 55 note 5 Rep. v. 5.

page 55 note 6 Rep. ii. 51.

page 55 note 7 There is, moreover, no mention of any such magistracy in the De Legibus.

page 55 note 8 Cicero is, of course, the chief character in the De Legibus.

page 55 note 9 ad famm. V. vii. 3.

page 56 note 1 Cf. moderatum (Rep. i. 45).

page 56 note 2 This interpretation is, in fact, suggested by Adcock, in C.A.H. ix (1932), p. 624.Google Scholar

page 56 note 3 ad famm. II. vi. 4.

page 56 note 4 ad Att. II. xviii. I; II. xix. 3.

page 56 note 5 138–9. This is the view of Heinze (op. cit., p. 75), who thinks that the use of the singular by Cicero (as rector, moderator, etc.) is purely idiomatic and compares Plato's use of the term πολιτικός.