Ethical writings of Cicero : De officiis, De senectute, De amicitia, Scipios dream

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Decorum as regards diffierent ages and conditions in life. Decorum requires modesty and decency in dress, conduct, and speech. The coarseness and indecency of the Cynics censured. Decomm requires in dress and personal habits something midway between the extremes of slovenliness and foppish- ness, of rusticity and over-refinement, of laggard laziness and inordinate haste, — also an equipoise of the appetites and passions. Decorum in the style of conversation. Decorum excludes from the speech anger, boastfulness, and mendacity.

What sort of a house a man of distinguished rank should live in. The fitnesses of time and place. How to become aware of our violations of decorum. What trades and professions are to be considered respectable, and what are to be regarded as vulgar. Duties of justice and benevolence to be preferred to those of prudence or wisdom. To those under the head of fortitude or magnanimity. Not to those of deconim. Cicero's reasons for writing on philosophical subjects. His own philosophy of the New Academy , and its bearing on the subjects under discussion, defined.

The Expedient inseparable from the Right. Of all beings and objects man is most serviceable and most harmful to man. Inanimate objects made of service by human industry. Beasts tamed and utilized, or, when noxious, slain by man for the benefit of man. Man's harmfulness to man shown by comparison of the evil and destruction brought about by his agency with the mis- chief wrought by all other agencies. It is the province of Virtue and of the several virtues, to conciliate the kind feelings and good offices of men.

The part which Fortune has in human affairs small as com- pared with the good or evil done by men to men. The various influences by which men are made subservient to men. The influence of fear compared with that of good will. The eff'ect of oppression and tyranny upon the allies of the Roman people and upon citizens not in favor with the ruling powers. The three prerequisites to fame, — the love of the people, their confidence, and qualities that command their ad- miration. These prerequisites of fame are all created and conferred by justice, and cannot exist independently of justice.

Ethical Writings of Cicero

Kings were first chosen, and laws established, to secure the equal administration of justice. Justice the prime factor of fame.

But a young man is aided in acquiring reputation by attaching himself to the society and seeking the counsel of men already worthily eminent. Favor won by ease and affability in conversation, — by elo- quence at the bar, especially in the defence of accused persons. Accusation to be resorted to rarely, and only for special reasons, personal, official, or patriotic. Beneficence by personal service or by money.

The former more conducive to reputation. Pecuniary prodigality and liberality, — the former to be deprecated, yet sometimes necessary, as in the aedileship for those who aspire to higher office. Liberality and hospitality as conducive to reputation. Personal service, especially eloquent defence in the courts of justice, the means of gaining attached and zealous friends. Benefits better invested with poor but worthy men who will feel the obligation, than with rich men who will spurn it.

Benefits afiTecting classes of men or the whole community. The foi-mer to be so conferred as, if possible, to help, and never to injure the entire body politic. Agrarian laws and measures looking to the cancelling or arbitrary reduction of debts are not conducive to true or enduring fame. The conduct of Aratus, of Sicyon, with reference to estates confiscated by tyrants, and belonging to exiles restored by him to their country.

The efforts for the cancelling of debts suppressed under Cicero's consulship. The care of health and of prop- erty. The comparison of things expedient or useful SyTwpsis. This appears from the nature of the Right. From the nature of the Expedient. The benefit of each and the benefit of all are identical. Justice never to be sacrificed to expediency. The seeming repugnancy of the Right and the Expedient can in no case and by no possibility be real.

Even to think otherwise is morally evil, 9. The story of Gyges, showing that concealment cannot afiiect the character of moral acts. Cases where expediency may create right, by altering the primary conditions on which the Right depends, and other cases where the clearest show of expediency is inadequate to create right.

Catalog Record: Ethical writings of Cicero: De officiis, De | Hathi Trust Digital Library

The case of the Alexandrian corn-merchant who arrives with his cargo at Rhodes in a famine, and knows that other corn-laden ships are on their way to Rhodes. Shall he tell this, or keep sOence? Arguments on both sides. Must a man who is going to sell his house divulge all its defects and discomforts? A case of downright fraud in the sale of an estate. Legal provisions against criminal fraud, and how evaded. Laws seek to prevent fraud by the power of the state ; phi- losophers, by reason and intelligence; 1 8.

Ethical writings of Cicero : De officiis, De senectute, De amicitia, Scipio's dream

A case of venal complicity in fraud on the part of two of the chief citizens of Rome. Men are tempted to what seem very small wrongs by the prospect of immensely greater gains. Case of Julius Caesar. Cases of the observance and of the violation of right by the Roman peoi le. Cases in which under altered circumstances a promise is not to be kept. Magnanimity never to be sacrificed for expediency. Com- parison of Ulysses, according to tradition feigning insanity to release himself from his oath to avenge the marital wrongs of Menelaus, and Regulus returning to certain death in order to keep his oath-pledged faith inviolate.

The story of Regulus, as then current in Rome. The arguments in favor of his staying at home, and violating his oath, stated. Cases similar to his cited. The sacredness of an oath in the earlier times. The perjury of other Roman captives sent by Hannibal to demand an exchange of prisoners and bound by an oath to return, if unsuccessful. Moderation, temperance, and decorum never to be sacrificed to expediency.

The nullity of these virtues under the system of Epicurus. Thehe are two systems of ethical philosophy, which in every age divide speculative moralists, and are recognized with a more or less distinct consciousness in the conduct of life by all in whom the moral sense has attained mature development. They are, indeed, in different ages and by different writers stated more or less explicitly, in widely varying terminology, and with modifications from culture, religion, national character, and individual proclivities.

They are, also, sometimes blended by an eclecticism which cannot wholly transcend the lovrer, yet feels the intense attraction of the higher sphere. One system is that which makes virtue a means ; the other, that which makes it an end. According to the one, we are to practise virtue for the good that will come of it to our- selves or our fellow-beings ; according to the other, j we are to practise virtue for its own sake, for its intrinsic fitness and excellence, without reference J X Introduction.

Of course, this general division admits of ob- vious subdivisions. The former system includes the selfish and the utilitarian theory of morals, — the selfish making the pursuit of our own happi- ness our duty, and adaptation to that end the sole standard of right ; the utilitarian identifying vir- tue with benevolence, accounting the greatest good of the greatest number the supreme aim, and be- neficent utility the ultimate standard of duty. The alternative system, according to which virtue is to be practised, not for what it does, but for what it is, includes, also, various definitions of virtue, according as its standard is deemed to be intrinsic fitness, accordance with the aesthetic nature, the verdict of the moral sense, or conformity to the will of God.

These latter theories, widely as they differ, agree in representing the right as having a validity independent of circumstances and of human judgment, as unaffected by the time-and- place element, as possessed of characteristics connate, indelible, eternal ; while the selfish and utilitarian schools alike represent it as mutable, dependent on circumstances, varying with time and place, and possessed of no attributes dis- tinctively its own.

The Epicureans regarded happiness — or, according to their founder, painless- ness — as the sole aim and end of moral conduct, and thus resolved all virtue into prudence, or judi- cious self-love, — a doctrine which with such a disciple as Pliny the Younger identified virtue with the highest self-culture as alone conducive to the happiness of the entire selfhood, intellectual and spiritual as well as bodily; but with Horace and his like, and with Eousseau, who professed adherence to that school, afforded license and am- nesty to the most debasing sensuality.

The Stoics regarded virtue as the sole aim and end of life, and virtue is, in their philosophy, the conformity of the will and conduct to universal nature, — intrinsic fitness thus being the law and the criterion of the right. Complete conformity, or perfect virtue, is, according to this school, attain- able only by the truly wise ; and its earlier disci- ples, while by no means certain that this ideal perfectness had ever been realized in human form even by Zeno, the great master, yet admitted no moral distinction between those who fell but little short of perfection and those who had made no progress toward it.

The later Stoics, however, xu IntroducHon. This philosophy was, from Cicero's time till Christianity gained ascendency, the only antiseptic that preserved Eoman society from utter and remediless corruption. The Peripatetic philosophy makes virtue to con- sist in moderation, or the avoidance of extremes, and places each of the individual virtues midway between opposite vices, as temperance between excess and asceticism ; generosity between prodi- gality and avarice ; meekness between irascibility and pusillanimity.

It admits the reality of the intrinsically right as distinguished from the merely expedient or useful ; but it maintains that happi- ness is the supreme object and end of life, and that for this end, virtue, though essential, is not sufficient without external goods, — so that the wisely vir- tuous man, while he will never violate the right, will pursue by all legitimate means such outward advantages as may be within his reach.

The New Academy, whose philosophy was a blending of Platonism and Pyrrhonism, while it denied the attain ableness of objective truth, main- tained that on all subjects of speculative philoso- phy probability is attainable, and that wherever Introduction. The disciples of this school accepted provisionally the Peripatetic ethics.

Cicero professed to belong to the New Academy, and its ethical position was in close accordance with his nature. Opinion rather than belief was his mental habit, — strong opinion, indeed, yet less than certainty. His instincts as an advocate — often induced by professional exigencies, not only to cast doubt on what he had previously affirmed, but with the ardor of one who threw himself with his whole soul into the case in hand to feel such doubt before he gave it utterance — made the scepticism of this school congenial to him. At the same time, his love of elegant ease and luxury and his lack of moral enterprise — though not of courage when emergencies were forced upon him — i were in closer affinity with the practical ethics of the Peripatetics than with the more rigid system I of the Stoics ; while his pure moral taste and his genuine reverence for the right brought him into sympathy with the Stoic school.

Under no cul- , ture short of that Christian regeneration which is less a culture than a power could he have become i heroically virtuous ; under no conceivable influence xiv Introduction. He believed in vir- tue, admired it, loved it. His aesthetic nature was pre-eminently true and pure. His private character indicates high-toned principle.

In an age when all things were venal, no charge of cor- ruption was ever urged against him, even by an enemy. He neither bought office, nor sold its functions. Associating familiarly with well-known convivialists, who regarded a wine-debauch as always a welcome episode in the pursuits whether of war or of peace, we have no vestige of a proof that he ever transgressed the bounds of temper- ance, and there is not a word in his writings that indicates any sympathy with excesses of the table. Living at a time when licentiousness in its foulest forms was professed without shame and practised without rebuke, we have reason to believe that he led a chaste life from his youth ; and though as an advocate he was sometimes obliged to refer to sub- jects and transactions offensive to purity, and in his letters there are passages which might seem out of place in the correspondence of a Christian scholar of the nineteenth century, it may be doubted whether in all his extant writings there is a single sentence inconsistent with what a purist of his own age would have deemed a blameless moral character.

But by the best standard that he knew, though not by the Chris- tian standard so profligately ignored and outraged in our own section of Christendom, he was more than justified. His wife was no little of a virago, had wasted a great deal of money for him in his absence, and had willed property under her control in such a way as to give him just dis- pleasure; and it appears from his letters that he exercised the then unquestioned right of di- vorce solely on these grounds, with no specific marriage in view, and that the alliance which he actually made was preceded by overtures both to and from other candidates for that honor.

More- over, the charge of mercenary views in this mar- riage is negatived by its speedy dissolution on his part, with the sacrifice of the entire and large fortune which it brought to him, on the sole ground that his bride had manifested unseemly satisfaction in the death of his daughter Tullia, whom she regarded as her rival in her husband's affection.

Yet there were heights of virtue beyond Cicero's scope. He was wholly destitute of the martjn: He was much of a Sybarite in his habits. His many villas, furnished with equal taste and splendor, gave him the sumptuous surroundings and the aesthetic leisure without which he could not regard even virtue as sufficient for his happi- ness, and times of enforced absence from wonted pursuits and enjoyments were filled with unmanly complaint and self-commiseration.

He loved ap- plause, suffered keenly from unpopularity, and vacil- lated in his political allegiance, sometimes with the breeze of public opinion, sometimes with his faith in the fortunes of an eminent leader. He often worshipped with manifest sincerity the ascending star, and had little sympathy with fallen greatness. He was thoroughly patriotic, would have sacrificed for his country anything and everything except his own fame, and coveted nothing so much as oppor- tunities like that afforded by the Catilinian conspi- racy for winning celebrity by signal service to the republic.

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He had, too, large and profound wisdom as a statesman ; but his best judgment generally came too late for action, so that had he derived a surname from classic fable, it would have been Epimetheus, not Prometheus. As an advocate he was supple and many-sided, yet he always im- presses his reader with his sincerity, and probably a prime element of his pre-eminent success in the courts was the capacity of making a cause his own. His lot was cast in an age when only an iron i wiU could have maintained, along with the con-j scions integrity which, as I think, characterized Cicero's whole life, the perfect self-consistency which no stress could bend or warp.

When we compare him with his most illustrious contempo- raries, it is impossible not to assign to him a pre- eminent place both as to private virtues and as to public services. Cicero's only son, with the heritage of his name, Marcus Tullius, seems to have inherited few of his father's distinguishing characteristics,, and not im- probably may have borne, in some respects, a close moral kindred to his high-spirited mother. He was impetuous, irascible, headstrong, brave as a soldier, and though indolent except when roused to action, not without ability and learning.

At the age of sixteen he served with great credit in Pompey's army. After the defeat of Pharsalia he was sent to Athens to complete his education. He fell there into habits of gross dissipation, being led astray by one of his teachers. He, however, yielded to his father's earnest remonstrances, ex- pressed great grief and shame for his misconduct, b XVIU Introduction. He suhsequently fought with distinction under Marcus Brutus, and after the battle of Phi- lippi joined Sextus Pompeius in Sicily. Returning to Rome when peace was concluded with the Triumvirate, he was an object of special regard with Augustus, and after holding several offices of lower grade, became his colleague in the consul- ship.

He afterward went as proconsul to Asia Minor, where his name drops from history, which but for his father might never have found place for it. When it appeared that Brutus and Cassius had effected nothing for the republic, and Antony was becoming all-powerful in the state, in the spring of 44 B.

He beguiled his dis- appointment and sorrow at the issue of public affairs by philosophy and ethics, and this summer seems to have been, at least for posterity, the most fruitful season of his life, being the epoch of the completion of his Tusculan Disputations and his De Natura Deorum, and of the composition of several of his smaller treatises. In June of that Introduction. Deceived in this hope, he repaired to Eome, and pronounced his first Philippic against Antony in the beginning of September. In November he writes again about his ethical work, tells Atticus that he has com- pleted two books and is busy on the third, and announces and explains the title.

The work was completed before the end of the year. Cicero's time was a period of eclecticism in philosophy, especially so among the cultivated Eomans, with whom philosophy was not indi- genous, but a comparatively recent importation. Cicero himself was pre-eminently a lover of philo- sophical thought, study, and discussion, and prob- ably was more intimately conversant with the history of opinions and the contents of books in that department than any man of his time; yet he seems to have lacked profound convictions on the subjects at issue among the several schools.

It is as if a Mohammedan, while recog- nizing the divine mission of the Arab prophet, were to write for his son a treatise on the ethics of the New Testament as better adapted than the moral system of the Koran for the training and confirming of a young man in the practice of virtue. This treatise, then, may be regarded as an expo- sition of the ethical system of the Stoics of Cicero's time, yet with a special limitation, purpose, and adaptation. It is not designed for the ideally perfect philosopher, nor for a candidate for that exalted position, but for one on the lower plane of common life.

It therefore defines not the moral consciousness of the truly wise man, but the spe- cific duties by the practice of which one may gi-ow into the semblance of true wisdom. Nor does it purport to be a compendium even of these duties. It is simply a directory for a young Eoman of high rank and promise, who is going to enter upon pub- lic life, and to be a candidate for office and honor in the state. It prescribes the self-training, the social relations, and the habits of living, by which Introduction.

Of course, many of the details in this treatise were of merely local and transient import and value; but its underlying principles are in such close harmony with the absolute and eternal right that they can never become obsolete. At the same time, the division and arrangement of the treatise give it, so far as I know, the precedence over all other ethical treatises ancient or modern. The division is exhaustive. The arrangement is such as to leave an open space for the insertion and full treatment of any topic within the scope of ethical philosophy.

The First Book treats of the Eight. The right consists in accordance with nature, with the nature of things, with the nature of man. Hence is de- rived its imperative obligation upon the human conscience. Its duties are evolved from man's own consciousness. Man by his very nature de- sires knowledge, and craves materials for the active exercise of his cognitive powers. He is by his birth, by his instinctive cravings, by the necessity of his daily life, a gregarious being, a member of a family, of society, of the state, and as such cannot but recognize justice, including benevolence, as his imperative duty.

He postulates distinction, emi- nence, a position from which he can look down on xxii Introduction. He has also an innate sense of order, proportion, harmony, which can satisfy itself only by practical reference to the due time, place, manner, and measure of whatever is done or said. Under each of these heads Cicero shows what was demanded by the highest sentiment of his time from a youth of spotless fame and of honorable ambition. The Second Book has Expediency, or Utility, for its subject.

Outside of the province of duty or of things required there is large room for choice among things permitted, — consistent with the Eight, yet forming no part of it.

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The question that underlies this Book is, By what honorable methods, other than the discharge of express duty, can a young man secure for himself the favor, gratitude, assistance, and — in case of need — the suffrages of his fellow-citizens? The Third Book deals with the alleged or seem- ing discrepancy between the Expedient and the Eight.

Cicero denies the possibility of such mu- tual repugnance, and maintains that whatever is expedient must of necessity be right, and that what is right cannot be otherwise than expedient. I have not used his moods and tenses in the in- stances in which our English idiOm would employ a different form of the verb. I have not infre- quently omitted the connective and illative words that bind sentence to sentence, in cases in which we should use no such words. This opinion can- not of course be verified ; yet could we have phonographic re- ports of Cicero's orations, I am inclined to think that we should miss some of the conjunctions that are found in their written form.

As to Greek particles I have no right to an opinion ; but I will hazard the conjecture that they would have been scattered with a more sparing hand, had the art of punctuation been coeval with " the letters Cadmus gave. I may have made mistakes in translating ; but if so, it has not been for lack of close and careful study, with the help of the best editions which I could procure for myself or find in the Harvard College Library. I have used Beier's text as the basis for my translation, and have preferred not to deviate from it even where a different reading seemed to me intrinsically probable ; for in every such instance Beier gives satisfactory reasons for his preferred reading, and destitute as I am of the needed appa- ratus for textual criticism, I cannot but regard his judgment in such a case as much better than my own.

Although you, my son Marcus, having lis- tened for a year to Cratippus, and that at Athens, ought to be well versed in the maxims and princi- ples of philosophy, on account of the paramount authority both of the teacher and of the city, — the former being able to enrich you with knowledge ; the latter, with examples, — yet, as for my own benefit I have always connected Latin with Greek, and have done so, not only in philosophy, but also in my self-training as a public speaker, I think that you, too, ought to do the same, in order that you may be equally capable of either style of dis- course.

Therefore, while you will be the pupil of the first philosopher of our time, and will continue so as long as you please, — and that ought to be as long as you can profit by his instruction, — yet by reading my writings, which dissent very little from the Peri- patetics for both they and I regard ourselves as disciples both of Socrates and of Plato , though on the subjects of discussion I would have you freely exercise your own judgment, you will certainly acquire a fuller command of the Latin tongue.

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Nor in speaking thus ought I to be regarded as presumptuous. For while in the science of phi- losophy I may have many superiors, if I claim for myself what belongs properly to the orator, aptness, perspicuity, and elegance of diction, since I have passed my life in this pursuit, it is not without a good measure of right that I proffer the claim. For while in oratory there is a greater force of expression, the more even and moderate style of writing that belongs to phi- losophy ought also to be cultivated.

And indeed I do not see that it has fallen to any Greek author to exercise himself in both styles, and to pursue at once forensic eloquence and unimpassioned philo- sophical discussion ; unless, perchance, this may be Cicero de Officiis. But what proficiency I have made in either style , let others judge ; I certainly have pursued both. Indeed, I think that Plato, too, if he had been dis- posed to attempt forensic eloquence, would have spoken with equal fluency and power; and that Demosthenes, if he had retained and had wished to put into writing what he had learned from Plato, would have done so in a style both graceful and magnificent.

I have the same opinion of Aristotle and Isocrates, each of whom, charmed with his own department, held the other in low esteem. But, having determined to write expressly for your benefit something at the present time, much hereafter, I have thought it best to begin with what is most suitable both to your age and to my paren- tal authority.

Now, among the many important and useful subjects in philosophy that have been discussed by philosophers with precision and fulness of statement, their traditions and precepts concern- ing the duties of life seem to have the widest scope. Driven from Athens, he took refuge in Alexandria ; and it was owing to his influence that Ptolemy Lagi commenced the collection of books which grew into the famous Alexandrian library. No probably genuine work of Demetrius Phalereus is now extant.

Indeed, no part of life, whether in public or in pri- vate affairs, abroad or at home, in your personal con- duct or your social relations, can be free from the claims of duty ; and it is in the observance of duty that lies all the honor of life, in its neglect, all the shame. This, too, is a theme common to all phi- losophers.

For who would dare to call himself a philosopher, if he took no cognizance of duty? Yet there are some schools of philosophy that utterly pervert duty by the view which they propose as to the supreme good, and as to the opposite extreme of evil. For he who so interprets the supreme good as to disjoin it from virtue, and measures it by his own convenience, and not by the standard of right, — he, I say, if he be consistent with himself, and be not sometimes overcome by natural good- ness, can cultivate neither friendship, nor justice, nor generosity ; nor can he possibly be brave while he esteems pain as the greatest of evils, or temperate while he regards pleasure as the supreme good.

These things, though too obvious to need discussion, I yet have discussed elsewhere. This 1 In the De Finibus. In this treatise I shall follow the Stoics, not as a translator, but drawing from their fountains at my own discretion and judgment, as much, and in such way, as may seem good. I think it fit, however, since duty is to be my sole subject, to define duty at the outset. Pyrrho, the founder of the school of the Sceptics, in denying the possibility of attaining any objective truth, denied the possi- bility of determining any condition, object, or action to be bet- ter than any other.

Herillus — like Ariston, a professed Stoic — regarded knowledge as the supreme good, and external life, with all its doings and objects, though practically necessary, as of no ethical value, because not contributing to the supreme good. Offidum may be abbreviated from opifidum, i. I am inclined to think that it is in this latter sense that Cicero made choice and use of the word. The discussion of duty is twofold. One divi- sion relates to the supreme good in itself consid- ered ; the other, to tlie rules by which the conduct of life may in all its parts be brought into con- formity with the supreme good.

Under the first head belong such questions as these: Whether all duties are of perfect obligation; whether any one duty is greater than another ; and, in general, inquiries of a similar kind. It is of these that I am going to treat in the present work. There is also another division of duty. Duty may be said to be either contingent or perfect.

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According to their definitions, what is right in itself is perfect duty ; that for the doing of which a satis- factory reason can be given is a contingent duty. According to Panaetius, in determining what we ought to do there are three questions to be consid- ered. It is first to be determined whether the con- 1 The direct, i. Then there is room for inquiry or consultation whether the act under discussion is conducive to conven- ience and pleasure, to affluence and free command of outward goods, to wealth, to power, in fine, to the means by which one can benefit himself and those dependent on him ; and here the question turns on expediency.

The third class of cases is when what appears to be expedient seems repugnant to the right. For when expediency lays, as it were, vio- lent hands upon us, and the right seems to recall us to itself, the mind is distracted, and laden with two- fold anxiety as to the course of action.