De Natura Deorum Liber Tres
by Marcus Tullius Cicero
Full Introduction-- Reproduced in its entirety from De Natura Deorum Libri Tres, ed. Austin Stickney. Ginn & Co.: Boston, 1881.
|
| Cicero's essay on the nature of the gods is at once our most
accessible and most complete original authority on the theology of the ancients; it gives
us a brief outline of the views of the older thinkers and a complete exposition of the
doctrines of those schools of philosophy which in later times included the greater number
of educated people. The reader will perhaps be better able to understand the book after a
few introductory remarks on the ancient theology and its various schools. The philosophy of religion has to deal with the most important questions which can occupy the human mind. These regard the questions which existence and nature of those unseen powers which are felt by man to control both his own inner and outer life, and the visible world about him. There is one answer ever ready for these questions: religion, older than any philosophy, offers a body of more or less definite conceptions which constitute the popular faith; and this faith is realized in the public worship and in the whole religious tone of the people. But in this as in all other matters there comes a time in the intellectual development of all nations when the more advanced minds feel a need, which is the beginning and end of all philosophy, the need of positive knowledge. People are no longer able to accept the traditions of religion upon mere faith; they ask for the reason of faith, for the ground of the prevailing ideas; and if religion cannot make good its claims by appeal to a higher authority, to a divine revelation, and thus raise its domain above all doubt or cavil (a thing which the religions of antiquity neither were able nor pretended to do), the necessary consequence is that reason makes an attempt to find an answer to these questions in her own way; and she then concedes the truth of the traditional faith only in so far as it coincides with or at least does not contradict her own conclusions. This is sufficient to indicate in general the relation of the philosophy of religion to the popular religion; it would of necessity be variously modified according to the greater or less degree in which speculation had freed itself from the influence of the popular faith; to hold a quite free and independent position was never an easy matter. The faith in which a person was brought up, and which prevailed around him, necessarily exercised an influence upon philosophy; and the latter, instead of taking its own course regardless of the result it might reach, was often directed to a foregone conclusion from a desire to keep in harmony with the common faith. Although there was in antiquity no catechetical instruction, yet the universal belief operated with the same force; and implanted prejudices and modes of thought in the mind, before it could test and judge them, from which it afterwards found it difficult to break loose. Even where speculative reason was least affected by such influences the factors of the problem differed according to the ability and culture of individuals; and hence the inevitable consequence, that instead of sure and demonstrable results one reached only theories and opinions; and the confusing variety of these fully justified the most conscientious persons in concluding that it was useless to hope for any positive knowledge in these matters, and that every one must adopt such opinions as best satisfied his own reason and temperament; and we find this confession to be the result which Cicero reaches in the present essay. The treatise consists of four parts: first, a brief sketch of the most noteworthy opinions on the subject from the beginning of philosophic speculation down to the complete development of the Epicurean and the Stoic systems; second, a detailed exposition of the Epicurean, and third, of the Stoic philosophy; fourth, a criticism of both these systems from the standpoint of the Academic scepticism. We have to lament that the first part affords us only incomplete, often obscure, and always untrustworthy indications<1>; enough perhaps for the Epicurean to whom Cicero assigns them, but quite insufficient to give us any real insight into the development of religious philosophy and its various systems. Unfortunately we have no means of supplying this defect satisfactorily<2>; a few general remarks however, for which there was no room in the notes, may not be out of place here. The earliest speculation of the Greeks, if it deserves the name, on the origin of the world and the forces that formed it coincides at least partially with the ideas which we find more or less plainly indicated in the oldest poetry of Homer and Hesiod. The primaeval water of Thales may be recognized in the Homeric Oceanus, the origin of all things; and the primaeval air of Anaximenes may correspond to the Hesiodic Chaos<3>. But the popular religion of the Greeks left the origin of things quite out of consideration; and, taking for granted the existence of the universe and of the gods, insisted only upon reverence to the gods as exercising the government of the world and presiding over human life, each in his own sphere and office. No one of the older philosophers thought it necessary to contradict this faith in general, although they might not have been led to it by their own speculations. They either left it to stand upon its own merits, or felt its influence so strongly as to recognize it, and so to keep religion and speculation separate. Although they critised certain popular and mythological conceptions, and sometimes incurred opposition and persecution for so doing<4>, yet on the whole we hear very little of any, aggressive contradiction on their part, or even of remarks implying indifference or disparagement. The reason is that as there were no religious dogmas or doctrine authorized and protected by the state or the priesthood, the ritual worship was the only thing established and inviolable; this simply prescribed certain symbolic acts which were quite consistent with different conceptions of the gods, and might be understood and explained by different persons in different ways - so that any one, though not sharing in the prevailing belief, or even though quite breaking loose from it in his philosophical speculations, might still have adhered to the common ritual so as to avoid collision with the people or priesthood. When therefore Xenophanes declared that man had only opinions, but no positive knowledge in regard to the gods, no fault was found with him, because he did not thereby deny their existence; still less when he rejected the fables of the gods given by Homer, Hesiod, and other poets, pronouncing them ridiculous, undignified, and in part blasphemous. We are not to suppose that the priests or the people ever regarded these fables as anything more than entertaining stories or perhaps picturesque allegories, not to be taken literally; they did not consider them as real histories which the poets had received by revelation and which it was sinful not to believe<5>. Undoubtedly the fables had a real influence upon the belief of the multitude, and gave rise to very unworthy and perverted conceptions of the gods, which were only too easily taken up and held fast when the deities were imagined to be like men. The more clear-thinking minds however, though not themselves sharing these anthropomorphic conceptions, doubtless saw very well the uselessness of attempting to convince the people of their error, and were satisfied if they could succeed in clearing them of all the attendant lowness and immorality. We have, it is true, no definite information of the attitude of the older philosophers in this matter; but all that we know is quite in harmony with the view here advanced. Although Xenophanes for example and Parmenides recognized only one true god, and did not consider the popular deities as gods at all in the real sense, but only as something between god and man, they yet accommodated their language to the common usage, and designated them also as gods<6>. We have express evidence too that Pythagoras paid a pious reverence to the popular gods<7> and none of the older philosophers seems to have been accused of the contrary. It is true that Socrates was reproached by his accusers with denying the gods of the people and introducing new ones; but this reproach was in fact rather a deduction drawn by themselves from certain utterances of Socrates than one which he had deserved by his actual opinions. We know on the contrary by the most credible evidence<8> that he by no means withdrew from the traditional worship of the gods, and hence did not deny their existence; although he imagined them as different from the common conception, and thought it most advisable not to touch upon the mythological fables unless occasion required.<9> Nor did the pupils of Socrates find it necessary to deny the existence of the popular deities, although Plato held that there was a higher god above them whose creatures and servants they were; and we do not find that he was attacked for despising the popular religion. His opinion of the mythological fables may be sufficiently gathered from the fact that he banishes from his ideal state the poets who originated and circulated them; although he is not at all opposed in itself to a mythological form of discourse upon divine things; indeed he often makes use of it to express figuratively what he cannot express literally. Antisthenes too assumed, like Plato, only one supreme deity, but did not hesitate to make the multitude of popular deities subordinate to him. He regarded the mythological fables, at least in part, as allegories; and expressed in the severest manner his disapproval of the conceptions of the gods which corresponded to the literal sense of the fables.<10> Aristotle took the same course<11>: and what we read of his disciples, as for example Heraclides of Pontus or Theophrastus (Cic. Nat. Deor. I, 13, 34-35), shows only views which, though foreign to the popular religion, are still not irreconcilable with it. No more did Strato, come into collision with the popular faith in accepting, according to Cicero and others, a blind, unconscious natural force as the beginning of things; for he might have derived the gods also from this force, just as for example the Hesiodic theogony derives them from Chaos. The relation then between the philosophers thus far spoken of and the popular religion was, at the least, a peaceful one; although they did not expressly defend, they still did not attack it; they easily kept on good terms with it, and allowed it all the influence it could command. But the Sophists took up a hostile position; and the most noted among them, however differing in other matters, had this in common, that, as Protagoras expressed it, they made man the measure of all things; that is, they denied to the human mind the faculty of forming anything more than a subjective judgment of things, and held that objective truth was unattainable. For them therefore, least of all things, could the substance of the popular religion lay claim to pass for anything more than a subjective conception. Protagoras expressed himself thus: that whether there were gods or not, that is, whether there was any actual reality corresponding to the common religious conceptions, he did not attempt to say. Prodicus seems to have regarded the belief in the gods in the same way; he thought that mankind had revered, deified and worshipped the objects they found most beneficial and indispensable to their life, such as the sun, moon, stars, fire, rivers and the like. Others declared religion to be simply the invention of shrewd lawgivers who tried to control the passions and bridle the fierceness of men by the fear of supernatural powers.<12> Finally, others explained the supposed gods to be only men of old times, rulers and heroes, who had been deified; and they regarded the myths as distorted accounts of their doings and sufferings. This last view is called the historic or pragmatic, because it claimed to find in the myths actual events, though not free from falsification; it is also called the Euhemeristic view, after Euhemerus of Messana spoken of in the note to I, 42, 119, who elaborated it and applied it to almost all the popular deities, although many similar explanations of the myths had been tried before him. But Euhemerus does not seem to have set out from a distinct philosophical system or any positive views on the deity based upon it. The circumstance that he is spoken of as an atheist must not be taken for a proof that he entirely denied the existence a deity; for that term was not unfrequently applied to such as only declared their disbelief in the gods of the people. Euhemerus had many followers. Among them were the theologi, mentioned by Cicero, III, 21, 53; from the same passage we learn that, in consequence of the many and contradictory fables that were current about each of the gods, it had been found necessary to distinguish several persons of the same name, in order to remove the contradictions. For this reason Johannes the Lydian (De Mensibus IV, 48) calls this view the heroic and separatist view, ton hêroikon kai meristikon logon; the first, because it explained the gods to be heroes of the olden time, the second, because it distinguished the fables in the manner just alluded to. Other philosophers, antagonists of the popular belief, directed their arguments not against the existence of gods of all sorts, but only of such gods as the people imagined. To this class belong especially Democritus and Epicurus, who conceded the truth of the popular faith only to a limited extent; they held that a belief so universally diffused and so fast-rooted in the minds of men must be more than a mere illusion, that some reality must lie at the foundation of it. But further than this they did not go; they allowed no voice to the common belief in regard to the nature of the gods, to their power and influence over the world and mankind; on these points they claimed that speculation alone had a right to be heard. Accordingly Democritus explained the gods to be atomic shapes, emanations from a universal divine substance, evidently very different beings from the popular deities; yet not without influence, sometimes benevolent, sometimes hostile, upon the lives of men.<13> But Epicurus went further. His gods, atomic shapes like those of Democritus, lived in happy idleness, without the slightest influence upon the world, with no evident relations to human life; and when he spoke of a religious reverence due to the gods in view of their happiness and their majesty, he evidently did so with no real conviction; although it would be too much to say that he did not believe the existence of any gods, and only pretended to do so for fear of persecution. The reasons against this opinion may be found at the end of the Summary of the first book. The Stoics maintained a very different attitude towards the popular belief; to a certain degree at least they undertook to support and defend it. They distinguished at the outset a threefold theology: the political, the mythical or poetical, and the philosophical or physical.<14> By the first they understood the religious ordinances recognized in the various states, and placed under the control of the public authority; that is, the traditional or legally established regulations about the deities to be worshipped in the state, and the manner of paying this worship. The second head comprised the fables recounted by the poets of the gods and their doings. So far as these pretended to be narratives of actual events, they were entirely rejected by the Stoics as being equally destitute of external or internal truth; that is, they neither contained any basis of fact, nor were they in harmony with the nature of the gods. Of course they thought they discovered a kernel of truth in many fables, a physical or ethical proposition under a mythical form, but certainly not in all; and they disapproved in general of the mythical form of treatment of these subjects, because few persons understood it, and the majority were misled by it into false and perverted conceptions of the gods. They thought, however, to find the key to the understanding of the most important fables in the third part, the physical or philosophic theology; this not only undertook to prove in general the existence of divine beings and a divine order and government of the world, but also recognized the deities proposed by the political theology as objects of worship; and although not representing this recognition as necessary, it at least sought to justify it as reasonable and probable. As the chief heads of this physical theology of the Stoics are contained in Cicero's second book, and are grouped together in the Summary of that book, we may refer to that for the details, adding however here a few observations. It is customary to call the theology of the Stoics pantheistic; and it is so in so far that it places the deity in the world, and regards it as coextensive with and pervading all its parts. The deity of the Stoics is not a purely spiritual, immaterial being; it is at once matter and spirit inseparably united. But this spiritual and material essence manifested itself in the creation of the world in such a way that two modes of its activity may be distinguished. Its material essence, represented as the finest, fire-like ether, condensed itself in part to a coarser nature, and thus arose the matter of the world, the hulê, at first only an apoios ousia with no definitely marked qualities<15>; this matter then divided itself in gradations into different elements, from the continual action of which each on the other, under the influence of the law implanted in them by the original divine being, a well ordered whole, the kosmos, the universe proceeded. The universe is thus an emanation from the deity, the connection between the two still of course subsisting. We may regard it as a body, in which the deity is present as the animating soul. But we must not be misled into considering the deity only as the soul of the universe; it is rather only a part of the original deity that is embodied in the universe<16>; the deity does not itself for that cease to exist, exalted above the universe; it is not simply immanent, it is also transcendent. The divine ether mingled with no grosser stuff encircles the world that has proceeded from it; from it soul and life continually flow forth into the world, without its ever being exhausted; the grosser elements rather, out of which the corporeal world has been formed, will all gradually be dissolved by it and absorbed into it; the world returns to the deity, to come forth again from it anew.<17> The primaeval deity is conceived of as a self-conscious, thinking, willing, wise, or in other words as a personal being; but in the universe that has proceeded from it there arise, as individual manifestations of the all-pervading divine ether other beings likewise self-conscious thinking, willing, hence personal beings; and these are of two sorts: the less perfect, laden with coarser bodies, limited to a short life, burdened with manifold weaknesses and, defects, but still capable of perfection and of wisdom; these are mankind; and, secondly, the more perfect beings, of purer etherial substance, without gross bodies, sinless and wise from the beginning; these are the gods (see II, 13, 35). Considered in this respect the theology of the Stoics may be characterized as a monotheism and a polytheism combined. For the one being, whence everything has proceeded, is alone God in the true sense of the word, uncreated, imperishable, and eternal. The other gods are not eternal, but created and perishable beings, that at the universal dissolution of all things will return into the primaeval being whence they came. Further, in the recognition by the Stoics of different sorts of such created gods we may recognize on the one hand a logical deduction from their speculative physics, on the other only a concession to the popular faith. It followed from their physical views of the constitution of the firelike ether, that they also had to explain the constellations, which consisted of it, to be gods. But when they accepted gods that were only deified mortals, or gods only as originators and controllers of certain human relations and moral forces, or as givers of various gifts, they evidently only followed the popular belief; and so in Cicero's account of their doctrines (II, 23, 60) we do not find, as in the case of the highest deity and of the constellations, a demonstration of the existence of these gods, but only the simple remark, that such deities were accepted by wise men not without reason. The same is the case with the gods which we may designate as natural spirits, which bear rule in various parts of the world, the earth, the sea, the fire, etc. The Stoics accepted these too, because they found the belief in them among the people, and because they felt obliged, not to reject, but rather to recognize a sort of natural revelation in the popular faith, so far as it contained nothing contradictory to reason, nothing plainly false and perverted. But it cannot be ignored, that all these deities occupied an uncertain and ambiguous position in their system of theology; and if we had fuller accounts than have actually come down to us of the views of individual Stoics, we should doubtless find not only that they had differed among themselves on this point, but that the same thinker had not always consistently held the same opinion. The Stoics were reproached by their antagonists with believing that the popular gods were such only in name, not in reality; partly because they represented them as created and perishable beings, and conceded immortality only to the one highest being, whom it is true they called Zeus,<18> and partly because these gods according to the Stoic explanations were no persons, but things, relations, capacities, etc.<19>; hence the Stoics have been attacked as being atheists. But these two reproaches are easily seen to neutralize each other; for if these gods were for the Stoics only things, relations and capacities, and if they were only called gods by way of personification, the Stoics could not be blamed for considering them mortal; they could not of course exist longer than the world. The other reproach could only reasonably be made by those persons who acquitted the Stoics of the second (namely that the gods were only to be held as such by a figure of speech), while they recognized their belief in the personality of the gods. And in reality it is difficult to see why the Stoics, if not all, at least some or perhaps many of them might not have held that belief. The consistency of the system certainly in no wise forbade their acknowledging the existence of superhuman beings who, as servants and helpers of the supreme god, presided over the world and human life in various spheres and relations; and thus they could always without hesitation assent to the popular faith which offered them such deities. It was a contradiction with the popular faith that they conceived them to be mortal, but not one worthy of blame. The popular faith was not shocked at the idea of gods that had had a beginning; and if in spite of this it held such gods as immortal, the Stoics were on the other hand more consistent; and the whole reproach, carefully examined, amounts to no more than this, that, since immortality is necessarily included in the idea of the deity, their gods, as not being immortal, were really no gods but only superhuman, demonic beings: but on the other hand as a compensation for this they conceived the one supreme God of a majesty truly divine. A third reproach, which is often made against the Stoics, is that they degraded the gods by teaching that man owed to them only inferior endowments and external goods, while he could attain to wisdom and virtue by himself alone.<20> This reproach too has no sense except we concede that the gods were for the Stoics real persons, and not simply names; and secondly it does not touch them all, nor does it touch the system at all. The only idea in harmony with the system was that the origin of all virtue and wisdom is in the one highest, the only true God. Man, whose spirit is an emanation from the divine being,<21> bears within him for this reason the capacity for virtue and wisdom; but this is much restrained and borne down by the body to which it is bound; and the task of man is to break loose from the fetters. But there was in the system of the Stoic theology no clear decision whether in this task man must rely simply on himself and his own power, that is on the power of the indwelling divine being, or whether he could have the comforting aid of friendly gods; and a person might think as he pleased on this question.<22> It is undoubtedly true that we very often find among the Stoics proud utterances, which seem to imply a presuming arrogance, a self-sufficient reliance upon one's own power, far removed not only from Christian humility, but even from the self-knowledge and modesty of the heathen; but we must not overlook the fact that such utterances always speak of the God in man, that is, of the part of the divine being that dwells in him; and that they rest only upon the consciousness of the true and higher nature of man and of its becoming attitude towards the exterior world. When the Stoic appeals to this consciousness, he does so in a sense not materially different from that in which the Christian teacher reminds men that they are the children of God and that the spirit of God dwells in them.<23> Nor must we forget another thing, that in such utterances the reference is only to the wise man, or the man in whom the ideal of human perfection is realized; an ideal which the individual rarely or never succeeds in reaching. But the Stoic Balbus (Cic. N. D. II, 66) states very plainly that in the struggle for perfection man needs the help of those higher powers that are kindly disposed towards him and are free from the imperfections and faults of human nature; and the assertion, that we must rely upon ourselves and our own powers for wisdom and virtue, and can ask and expect from the gods external good things only, is not made by the Stoic, but by the Academic as against the Stoic (III, 36, 87). He is wrong in presenting this view as generally prevailing (as is shown in the note to that passage); but those who consider it as the only opinion held by the Stoics are no more in the right; for in the Stoic system there was nothing which clashed at all with the directly opposite view. While the Stoic theology attempted in the manner just described partly to correct and complete, partly to explain and so support the popular religion, it encountered, in common with the irreligion of Epicurus, which in reality was little better than atheism, the opposition of the critical scepticism of the New Academy, which held any certain knowledge on any subject to be impossible, conceding only a greater or less degree of probability; and hence carried on a continual strife with the dogmatism of the other schools. Arcesilas, the founder of this later Academy, not only repeated the famous proposition of Socrates, that he knew only one thing, and that was, that be knew nothing; but he went beyond him, saying that even this, that he knew nothing, he did not know, but only surmised it.<24> He and his followers considered nothing as absolutely certain but reason and the right of using it; even this however they held could not help us to a sure knowledge of things. All thought, so they argued, can only proceed upon certain data; the only data we have are those of experience, which come from impressions on the senses; but these impressions are unreliable, they are undoubtedly often false, and there is no perfectly sure criterion whereby to distinguish the true from the false. Hence complete certainty of knowledge is imposible; we can only attain to mere opinions. These may be true, they may be false as well; and after all testing and comparing we can do no more than distinguish various grades of probability; and, since actual knowledge is beyond our reach, we must content ourselves with reasonable opinion and belief. Hence, whenever a definite opinion was advanced on any subject, they were accustomed to take the opposite side, in order to show that there was nothing which did not admit of discussion, and that it became the wise man to withhold any definite and confident judgment; assensionem cohibere, Book I, Ch. I -Cicero himself held this doctrine, as he also professes in the present book I, 5, 10-12; reserving at the same time his right, while giving up the hope of certainty, to hold the opinion, which might in any case seem the most probable. We notice that he uses this right at the end of the third book. While Velleius declares his entire agreement with the simply negative criticism which Cotta had made of the discourse of Balbus, Cicero says that for himself the positive views of Balbus seemed the more probable; and there is no reason to doubt that he thereby expressed his real opinion. For however much he recognized the want of scientific rigor in the Stoic dogmatism, and however strong he found many of the objections made by the Academic, his faith in the existence of higher beings and a divine providence and government of the world was none the less a living one. But it is not necessary to suppose that all the details of the Stoic system, all the sorts of gods they accepted, and all that they held in regard to divine apparitions and revelations were equally a part of his faith. He held only to the general truth of the existence of divine beings and the divine government of the world<25>; and as the Stoics held this too, their doctrine appears to him for this reason to come nearer to the truth than the Academic negation, which however, as Cotta plainly enough remarks, is not so much a negation of religion itself as of the reasoning advanced by the Stoics in its behalf. The Academic way of thinking is quite in harmony with a sort of Eclecticism which seems to have been the only resource for a heathen of religious and thoughtful mind in a matter like this, where the limits of human nature make absolute knowledge impossible. The opinion, held by some, that Cicero has inserted much in the discourse of Balbus that was gathered not from his Stoic predecessors but from other quarters, seems to be not well founded. It has been remarked above that various views about the gods and divine things were found in the Stoic system without regard to consistency; and it is capable of proof that in fact the most noted Stoics held conflicting views on many points. Hence there is no sufficient reason to suppose that Cicero did not really take from some Stoic or other the whole discourse which he puts into the mouth of Balbus. We cannot say with certainty who this predecessor was; but many reasons, which need not be given here in detail, point to the Rhodian Posidonius, who is spoken of in the note to I, 3, 6, and who, as Cicero says in that passage, had been his teacher; and doubtless the teacher of Balbus also, since Cotta 1, 44, 123, calls him familiaris omnium nostrum. His work peri theon was one of considerable extent: Diogenes Laertius, VII, 138, cites the thirteenth book; so that Cicero gave only a short extract. It is possible, though we have no evidence, that he also made use of other Stoic writings. All that he cites from Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus and Panaetius, even if he had ever read them, he might have found in Posidonius; and even what he says in II, 34 of the sphere of Posidonius could have been found in the same author. He however differs from him in some particulars, as for example the size of the moon, II, 40, 103; and the whole astronomical part of § 104 appears to have been worked up independently. Of course the etymologies of the Latin names of the gods, II, 26, 27, as well as the examples from Roman history are Cicero's own, given perhaps in place of others used by Posidonius.<26> Besides in I, 44, 123 he himself cites the fifth book of Posidonius De Natura Deorum. It has been conjectured that Cicero took his account of the Epicurean doctrine from a work of the Epicurean Phaedrus peri theon which he requests the loan of in a letter to Atticus (XIII, 39)<27>; and as we find among the fragments of an Epicurean theological treatise discovered at Herculaneum a portion with which the exposition of Cicero in I, 15, 39-41, though much shorter, yet in the main coincides, the conclusion has been drawn at those fragments were a part of this treatise of Phaedrus.<28> But it is now conceded that the fragments of Herculaneum, which were published subsequently in the Herculanensium collectio altera, Neap. 1862, tom. II, belonged rather to a treatise of Philodemus peri eusebeias. It is very probable that Cicero made use of this treatise, considering the coincidence of several passages above alluded to, but not quite certain; for similar notices and opinions doubtless occurred in many other Epicurean documents.<29> The discourses assigned by Cicero to the Academic in the first book against the Epicurean doctrine, and in the third book against the Stoics, were without any doubt taken from one of the many writings of Clitomachus. There existed no less than four hundred books of this philosopher, in which he had made note of the oral teachings of his master Carneades. But not only does Cicero himself several times appeal to Carneades, but many of the arguments which he makes against the Stoics are found in the same form in Sextus Empiricus in the ninth book of the treatise against the mathematicians, i.e., against the dogmatics, and they are there ascribed to Carneades. Although they are in part evidently sophistical, they are still in general well adapted to prove what Cicero makes Cotta say, that there is a great difference between religious faith and scientific knowledge; that faith rests upon something different from dialectic argument, and that whoever seeks to found it upon such runs the risk rather of weakening it. But we may well suppose that many among the ancients were reasonable enough to see with Cotta that faith itself was not overthrown by the refutation of insufficient rational grounds, and that there was such a thing as an immediate certainty of faith, independent of the strength or weakness of logical arguments.<30> It remains now to add something in regard to the persons whom Cicero has introduced as advocates of the three schools of philosophy. We know little more of the Epicurean Velleius, probably of Lanuvium (see Orelli on I, 29, 82), than that he was tribune of the people in the year 664 A.U.C. In De Orat. III, 21, 78, Cicero calls him a familiaris of the famous orator L. Licinius Crassus, but himself rudem in dicendi exercitatione. We will not discuss the truth of the compliment that he was considered the most noted representative among the Romans of the Epicurean school. Lucretius, of whom we have a didactic poem, excellent in its way, on the Epicurean philosophy, was much younger than Velleius, but was no longer living when Cicero wrote this. We know no more of the speaker for the Stoic school than we learn from Cicero. It seems from a fragment of the Ciceronian Hortensius (Orelli, P. 484) that he was also introduced in that treatise as one of the speakers. C. Aurelius Cotta, the Academic, born in 630 A.U.C., and so eighteen years older than Cicero, was one of those who were accused of maiestatis under the Lex Varia (see note on III, 33, 81). He went into exile; but returned to Rome with Sulla in 672 A.U.C., where he was made pontifex and consul in 679 A.U.C. In the latter office he carried a lex tribunicia: ut tribunis plebis liceret Postea alios Magistratus capere, quod lege Sullae iis erat ademptum. Ascon. in Cornel., P.78 Or. After his consulate he went to Gaul and succeeded in establishing a claim to the honor of a triumph, which was granted him; he did not live to enjoy it, but died a few days before it was to happen. Ascon. in Pison., P. 14. He is very highly spoken of not only for a most exact knowledge of philosophy, but also as an orator; and even when a young man he had made a bold defence in court of Rutilius, his maternal uncle (see note on III, 32, 80). He was plainly in every respect a fitting, representative of Cicero, who takes for himself in the conversation only the part of a quiet listener. Cicero represents these three men as assembled on one occasion during the Latin feast at the house of Cotta, probably in one of his villas, - and as giving their various views about the nature of the gods in a conversation, where he was himself present, as he happened to be visiting Cotta at the time. The date of this supposed conversation must be placed between the year 679 A.U.C., the year of Cotta's consulship, and 676 A.U.C., in which Cicero returned from a prolonged absence in Greece, where he had busied himself particularly with philosophic studies; and these are alluded to doubtless in I, 6, 15. The book opens with a dedication to M. Junius Brutus, afterwards the murderer of Caesar, a man whose finished philosophical culture and writings are often mentioned with the greatest deference by Cicero, who was himself twenty-one years his senior. Excellens omni genere laudis, he says of him in Acad. I, 3, 12, ac philosophiam Latinis litteris persequitur, nihil tit iisdem de rebus Graecia desideret. He professed the doctrines of the Academy of Antiochus, for which the note to I, 3, 6 may be consulted. We have none of his works remaining; but Seneca, Consol. ad Helv. c. 9, quotes a short passage from his book De Virtute, and in epist. 95 something from that peri kathekontos (de officiis)<31>; but Quintilian, X, 1, 123, says that in his philosophical writings he was egregius multoque quam in orationibus praestantior; and further suffecit ponderi rerum; scias eum sentire quae dicit. Besides the books De Natura Deorum Cicero dedicated to him De Finibus, the Tusculan Disputations, the Paradoxa and the Orator; and called by his name the book De Claris Oratoribus, where Brutus is one of the speakers. The date of writing this book may be determined, if not with entire certainty, yet with the greatest probability. That it was written before the murder of Caesar, that is before the Ides of March, 710 A.U.C., follows without any doubt from the manner in which Caesar's supremacy is spoken of in I, 4, 7; and that Cicero was occupied upon it in the summer of 709 A.U.C. may be inferred from the letter<32> to Atticus written in June of this year (XIII, 39, 2), where he asks him for the book of Phaedrus peri theon doubtless to make use of it in the composition of this book. - But the greater part of Cicero's philosophical works, the Academica, De Finibus Tusculan Disputations, De Divinatione, De Fato, De Senectute, De Officiis, De Amicitia, and the De Universo or Timaeus, a translation of that of Plato, among those which are wholly or in part extant and the De Consolatione, Hortensius, De Gloria, and perhaps De Virtutibus among those which are lost with the exception of a few fragments, were written in the short interval between the spring of 709 and the autumn of 710 A.U.C., in the sixty-second and sixty-third years of his life; and while we are astounded at a literary activity of such extent, we learn, partly from the prefaces to these treatises and partly from the letters to Atticus, the occasion of writing them, and Cicero's state of mind at the time. Hortata est, he says, N. D., I, 4, 9, ut me ad haec conferrem, animi aegritudo, fortunae magna et gravi commota iniuria, cuius si maiorem aliquam levationem reperire potuissem non ad hanc potissimum confugissem. This hard stroke of fortune alluded to was the death in March, 709 A.U.C. (45 B.C.E.), of his daughter Tullia, his favorite child, to whom he was most tenderly devoted, and whose loss afflicted him most deeply. He expresses his state of mind in a letter to Atticus (XII, 14, 3), written in March 709 A.U.C.: Nihil de maerore minuendo scriptum ab ullo est, quod ego non legerim; sed omnem consolationem vincit dolor. Quin etiam feci, quod profecto ante me nemo, ut ipse me per litteras consolarer.<33> Affirmo tibi nullam consolationem esse talem. Totos dies scribo, non quo proficiam aliquid; sed tantisper impedior, non equidem satis, - vis enim urget, sed relaxor tamen enitorque ad animum reficiendum. There was no opportunity, as public affairs were at the time, for him to engage in them with dignity and success, and so obtain relief from his sorrow; and this condition of the state itself for a man like Cicero was no less a source of sadness, than his own domestic grief. When we consider these circumstances we are little disposed to pass a strict judgment on Cicero's philosophical works, but rather to excuse many undoubted shortcomings in an old man afflicted and borne down by sadness and care. Even a philosopher by profession would hardly have been able in such a state of mind and in so short a time to write satisfactorily upon all the most difficult problems of philosophy at such length; how much less a man, who, however earnestly he had studied these subjects, was really only a dilettante; and who for the larger and better part of his life had been occupied as a statesman and an advocate with great activity and brilliant success. His philosophical writings are in fact little else than translations or extracts from Greek predecessors<34>; and we should not wonder at many misunderstandings or other traces of haste and carelessness, which have been occasionally noticed in the notes of this volume, and which have given a welcome opportunity to critics fond of emendations to show their skill. A striking case of this haste is the hesterno die II, 29, 73, and nudius tertius III, 7, 18, as if the conversation had occupied three days, whereas the beginning of the second as well as that of the third book represent it as begun and finished on one and the same day.<35> These defects must not however prevent us from a thankful recognition of Cicero's merits even as a philosophical writer. He was the first to develop the Latin language so as to make it fit for the treatment of philosophical subjects; more than any one else he promoted and made easy the pursuit of these studies for his countrymen; and finally we owe to him an acquaintance with many portions of the ancient philosophy of which we should otherwise be quite ignorant; and however disparaging the judgment of many people nowadays, no one can deny the importance of these works for the history of philosophy. |
| Footnotes -- <return> hyperlink will take you back
to the footnote number in the text. 1. Compare the similar
but shorter summary in the Academ. II, Ch. 37, where many things appear in a quite
different light. <return> |
 [Cicero Page] |
 [Title Page] |
 [Top of Page] |
 [Liber I] |