740. Cicero and the Roman Republic by Manfred Fuhrmann. This was an interesting biography. The author is widely read in Cicero and those works which pertain to his life. Fuhrmann also does not quote modern authors. Thus quips and clever phrases for and against Cicero are left out as unworthy of a biographer. This fellow draws his own conclusions. He draws a great deal from Cicero’s speeches to reconstruct his life. He combines these with the letters, et al., but does not let off hand comments in the letters unfairly color his views.
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| Gerome- Death of Caesar- Cicero on the right, seated. |
The house which Cicero purchased on the Palatine once belonged to Marcus Livius Drusus. He was a Tribune who attempted reform in the late Republic and was murdered in that house.
In 88 BC Philo of Larissa, the head of the Academy in Athens fled to Rome during the turmoil caused by Mithridates. Cicero was devoted to the man and spent much time listening to his philosophical discussions. From him Cicero learned of the value of applying reason to all matters of problems of life. Philo was a sceptic and taught the young lad how to analyze. This system Cicero applied to philosophy of the Romans, law, government and speech in terms of scepticism. It allowed him “ to become one of the most versitle, elegant and humane philosophical authors of the ancient world.”
It seems that Cicero realized that this system, which allowed allegiance to what seemed probable, encouraged him to learn and think the rest of his life. ( One thing which I learned in teaching was that anyone who thought that the knew it all was either impossible or very difficult to teach .)
But other philosophers came: Diototus the Stoic, Phaedrus the Epicurean and Staceas the Peripatetic.
From all of these and others, Cicero learned to think (in many different ways).
During the 70’s there were roving slave gangs in Italy. Some of these resulted in court cases which Cicero handled. But Fuhrmann suggests that these gangs were the result of the activities of Sulla. Sulla created instability. This is an interesting idea.
Cicero prosecuted Verres for his activities as governor in Sicily. Fuhrmann covers the efforts to squeeze Cicero out as prosecutor, to hinder his search for evidence and make his case against Verres impossible. It is all very colorful and worth reading. (In fact Fuhrmann’s uses of the speeches is masterful, because he was the first in many years to translate all of Cicero’s speeches.)
But Fuhrmann does something very interesting with the speeches against Verres. He uses these to show that Cicero enjoyed travel and sight seeing in Sicily. A neat idea.
He also mentions after examining Cicero’s appreciation for art that he did not believe in collecting walls filled with art but only those pieces which were representation of his views. He was a modest collector.
A very common gripe against Cicero is the letter where he coldly mentions that his father has died. Fuhrmann suggests that according to ancient evidence that his father died in 64 BC, not 67 BC. It is in the letter of 67 BC that Cicero mentions the death. However, Fuhrmann suggests the letter probably refers to the death of his cousin. He had mentioned it in another letter, but as was often the case in antiquity,there was no way to know for sure when a letter would arrive and sometimes information was repeated. The Latin word for cousin is frater. So he suggests that pater, found in the current letter, should be emended to frater.
This and other observations set this apart from other biographies- in that he does not pull out all of the old songs and play them again. He has examined other comments by ancient authors and applies these.
When Caesar enters the picture, Fuhrmann claims that Caesar wanted to end Senate control of the state from the beginning. This is interesting.
This is typical of how Fuhrmann uses Cicero’s speeches. In 55 BC Lucius Calpurnius Piso was recalled from his province. He was recalled because Cicero blamed him for his own exile of 58 BC. So in the Senate Cicero made a strong case to bring him back. He was recalled. When Piso returned he complained to Cicero in a Senate meeting. Cicero replied with what is called In Pisonem. In the speech Fuhrman cites a passage which relates to the accomplishments of Cicero’s Consulship (63 BC):
He opposed the agrarian law proposal which would have given sweeping power to a board of ten.
He defended Gaius Rabirius on trial for treason, but in reality the trial was designed to question the right of government to defend itself.
He declined the petition of certain people to run for office whom he deemed unfit.
He kept his colleague under control who favored Catiline.
He declined to be governor of Gaul, because he felt he was needed in Rome during the crisis.
I drove Catiline out of the city.
I caught those conspirators in Rome.
This passage is wisely used in terms of Cicero’s Consulship and its history. But later in the biography, he uses the same speech to discuss how Cicero went too far against Piso and missed the real issues at hand.
In his coverage of the conspiracy of Catiline, Fuhrmann asserts that Cicero’s success made the Senate bold to resist Pompey, that Cicero felt he could deal with Caesar and Pompey but did so in light of his faith in the traditions of the Roman Republic. Fuhrman says that Cicero was wrong.
But then Fuhrmann suggests that Cicero’s failure drove him to write about political theory and philosophy. Thus he became Rome’s most influential philosopher. And of course this was so fine and of such high quality because of his own intellect but also because of the thrust which people like Philo gave to Cicero’s study of philosophy and the approach his scepticism gave to those thoughts.
There is a quote from the book which is important:
(Cicero’s) tragedy consisted in the fact that he hopelessly overestimated the moral potential and the regenerative resources of the senatorial aristocracy. Cicero, at heart a reformer, had the misfortune to be born in an age of revolutionaries, men who were not seeking to preserve the status quo in an improved form, but who were intent on shattering it to make way for something else.
This sentence is the basis which Fuhrmann uses to evaluate Cicero. Thus he does not call him stupid or inept. So Cicero misjudged the power of the Senate and himself. The main power rested with Caesar as the Conference at Luca makes clear. These ideas are very interesting. So Cicero’s dilemma was that there was no good choice.
Fuhrmann’s discuss of De Oratore is excellent. His main point is that Cicero, after a 300 plus year lapse, tried to combine thought, speech and action back together. Neat idea.
When Cicero was on his way to his province. He spent time in Athens. While there, he received a letter from Patro asking him to save the house of Epicurus. Gaius Memmius (the same one mocked in a poem by Catullus) was planning to buy the house, tear it down and put something else in its place. Cicero wrote to Memmius and convinced him not to do so. The whole episode is so interesting because Cicero did not like Epicureanism’s tendency to rely too much on pleasure. Remember, too, that Cicero once studied under Phaedrus, an Epicurean.
After the Civil War, Fuhrmann asserts that Caesar was in the process of establishing a theocracy. This is not the common remark relating to the development of the conspiracy against Caesar.
In the final conflict, Fuhrmann claims that Cicero’s defense of the Republic was doomed because he operated on a higher standard than those who opposed him and he was guided in his actions by those traditions he held so dear. Author also blamed Cicero for treating his opponents as isolated phenomenon, instead of seeing a larger movement.
But if one thinks about it, Cicero would not have been the person he was, nor would have written what he did if he simply looked at the republic as dead in the water. He was an optimist up to just short of the very end.
Signed,
obstinateclassicist
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