It
may well be that the title of this entry will eventually be replaced by
something more appropriate, but for the moment I find it irresistible. I
am talking about the person of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC.), one of the
most fascinating, famous and momentous people in history. Everybody (which
includes myself) who has ever studied Latin, academically or otherwise, knows
the name of Cicero, and has read plenty of him in the original, because without
him Latin textbooks would have been half their normal size.
Cicero’s
influence on his and subsequent generations has been immense, as, through his
Latin translations and comments, the Western non-Greek world originally learned
the names of Plato, Euclid, the Stoics, and others. He was accepted as a
righteous pagan by the Christian Church, and all eminent Christian thinkers and
theologians were known to have read Cicero with great appreciation. The title
of this entry reflects the story of St. Jerome’s unusual experience with the
great Roman, interestingly related in one of his letters. In this letter to his
own Christian convert Eustochium he writes about his difficult ascetic
experience. Having cut off his ties to family and friends, “and, harder still, from the dainty food which I had been
accustomed to,” he still could not bear to resist his last
temptation: the library of books, which he treasured. Departing for the desert, where he was going to fast for
Christ, he took certain books with him. “And so,
miserable man that I was, I would fast only that I might afterwards read
Cicero.” Apparently, St. Jerome’s biggest problem was not reading
Cicero, but preferring him to the prophets of the Bible, as one night, in a
feverish dream, he was encountered by Christ at the Last Judgment, who
challenged his claim of being a Christian: “Though
liest, thou art a follower of Cicero and not of Christ.” Needless to
say that after this experience, St. Jerome considerably moderated his zeal for
Cicero and other Latin classics, but, rather surprisingly, he would never burn their books or drop them for
good.
By
no means surprisingly, a very similar experience is recorded by St. Augustine
in his Confessions. Note that he uses the name of Tully (as in Marcus
Tullius), as well as Cicero, in his references to him.
“I studied books of eloquence, wherein I was eager to be eminent
from a damnable and inflated purpose, even a delight in human vanity. In the
course of study, I lighted upon a book of Cicero, whose language, though not
his heart, almost all admire. This book of his contains an exhortation to
philosophy, and it is called Hortensius. This book, in truth, changed my
affections and turned my prayers to Thyself, O Lord, and made me have other
hopes and desires. Worthless suddenly became every vain hope to me; and, with
an incredible warmth of heart, I yearned for an immortality of wisdom,(1) and
began now to arise (2) that I might return to Thee. Not to improve my language
did I have recourse to that book; nor did it persuade me by its style, but its
matter.” Like St. Jerome, Augustine
compares Cicero to the Bible, only to find the Bible
wanting. “I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind
to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I perceive
something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, but lowly
as you approach, sublime as you advance, and veiled in mysteries; and I was not
of the number of those who could enter into it, or bend my neck to follow its
steps. For not as now did I feel when I tuned towards those Scriptures, but
they appeared to me to be unworthy, compared with the dignity of Tully.”
Our
next question addresses Cicero proper, rather than through his countless
readers:
Was
Cicero a philosopher? (This could be
an alternative title for this entry!)
In
my view he can be called a philosopher no less than Marcus Aurelius was one,
and with infinitely more justification than the whole class of professional
philosophers call themselves, who are philosophers mostly by college education
and by choosing to write philosophical comments on other people’s ideas.
Perhaps, it is possible to call him a philosophical dilettante, because philosophy
was not his main occupation, and he is neither a founder nor a follower of any
particular school, although of them all, he is the closest to Stoicism.
Throughout his life, he had a great love for philosophy. Superbly educated in
Greek language and culture, he was fond of translating Greek philosophical
works into Latin, and, finding the Latin language wanting in many abstract
terms existing in Greek, he worked on enriching his native language by coining
a parallel set of terms in Latin. This last accomplishment of his is, for some
reason, the least known to non-linguists but, theoretically, it elevates him to
a level of excellence that very few great men in history can boast of.
Having
studied Roman law with greatest distinction, Cicero is also famous for
elaborating a philosophy of jurisprudence, having articulated an abstract
conceptualization of rights based on ancient law and custom. His legal
background determined his later philosophical emphasis on public, rather than
private good. For this reason he criticizes Epicureanism but praises the
Stoics, in his philosophical opus De Finibus, where he advances the
Stoic view that “the greatest good consists in
applying to the conduct of life a knowledge of the workings of natural causes,
choosing what is according to nature and rejecting what is contrary to it; in
other words, the greatest good is to live in agreement and in harmony with
nature.”
In
87 BC he became a student of Philo of Larissa, the head of Plato’s Academy in
Athens, who had arrived in Rome at the time. Cicero declared his love for
Plato, but nevertheless showed intellectual independence, by rejecting Plato’s
key doctrine of Ideas. He continued his studies of philosophy and traveled to
Athens to familiarize himself with different schools of thought, plus to learn
rhetorical skills for his public office.
As
I said earlier, Cicero being a good Roman citizen, his conception of virtue
centered on public virtue. In his work De Officiis, written for the
instruction of his son Marcus, he writes:
No phase of life, whether public or private, whether in business or
in the home, whether one is working on what concerns oneself alone or dealing
with another, can be without its own moral duty. On the discharge of such
duties depends all which is morally right, and on their neglect all that is
morally wrong in life. By the same
token, the concept of justice centers on “the
conservation of organized society, with rendering to each his due, and with
faithful discharge of obligations assumed. The first office of justice is to
keep each man from doing harm to another, unless provoked by a wrong; and the
next is to lead men to use common possessions for their common interests, and
private property for their own.
Very
appropriately for a philosopher and a good man (if I am allowed to speak this
shocking truth), Cicero ended his life as a martyr. Remembering him, the
Emperor Augustus Caesar, according to Plutarch, called him “A learned man who loved his country.” Perhaps,
for a Roman, this was not an understatement, but the highest compliment…
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