The Republic and The Laws (Oxford World's Classics) Read online

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  First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 1998

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  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Cicero, Marcus Tullius.

  [De republica. English]

  The republic; and, The laws/Cicero; translated by Niall Rudd;

  with an introduction and notes by Jonathan Powell and Niall Rudd.

  (Oxford world’s classics)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  1. Political science—Early works to 1800. 2. State, The—Early

  works to 1800. 3. Rome—Politics and government—265–30 B.C.

  I. Rudd, Niall. II. Powell, J. G. E III. Cicero, Marcus Tullius,

  De legibus, English. IV Title: Laws. V. Series.

  JC81.C613 1998 320.1—dc21 97–23394

  ISBN 0–19–283236–0 (pbk.: alk. paper)

  5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  Typeset by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong

  Printed in Great Britain by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd.

  Reading, Berkshire

  OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

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  Refer to the Table of Contents to navigate through the material in this Oxford World’s Classics ebook. Use the asterisks (*) throughout the text to access the hyperlinked Explanatory Notes.

  OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

  CICERO

  The Republic and The Laws

  Translated by

  NIALL RUDD

  With an Introduction and Notes by

  JONATHAN POWELL and NIALL RUDD

  OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

  THE REPUBLIC AND THE LAWS

  MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO (106–43 BC) was the son of a Roman knight from Arpinum, some 70 miles (112 km.) south-east of Rome. He rose to prominence through his eloquence at the bar and in the Senate; but, without hereditary connections or military achievements, he lacked a solid power-base; and so, in spite of strenuous manoeuvres, he failed to reconcile Pompey and later Octavian (Augustus) to the Senate. He could have joined Caesar, but he refused and was eventually murdered at the insistence of Antony, whom he had castigated in his Philippics. But although Cicero was ultimately a political failure, he became for long periods of Europe’s history a symbol not only of constitutional government but also of literary style. More important still, he is recognized as the main vehicle for the transmission of Hellenistic philosophy to the West. As a historian of thought, his lack of personal commitment in the main served him well. But in his political theory, where he purported to be describing a constitution or framing laws, his conservatism tended to outweigh his intellectual open-mindedness. Hence, in his vision of political life, he remained above all an old-fashioned Roman.

  JONATHAN POWELL is Professor of Latin, Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published commentaries on Cicero’s De Senectute (1988) and De Amicitia and Somnium Scipionis (1990) and has edited a volume of papers on Cicero’s philosophy (Cicero the Philosopher, Oxford University Press, 1995). He is preparing a new text of De Republica and De Legibus for the Oxford Classical Texts series.

  NIALL RUDD is Emeritus Professor of Latin, Bristol University. His books include an edition of Horace, Epistles 2 and Ars Poetica (Cambridge, 1989), a verse translation of Juvenal’s Satires (Oxford, World’s Classics 1992), and a study of certain English poems and their Latin forerunners, entitled The Classical Tradition in Operation (Toronto and London, 1994).

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Abbreviations

  Introduction

  Note on the Text

  Note on the Translation

  Bibliography

  Table of Dates

  THE REPUBLIC

  THE LAWS

  Appendix: Notes on the Roman Constitution

  Explanatory Notes

  The Republic

  The Laws

  Index of Names

  PREFACE

  Although parts of the Republic have been translated fairly recently, and a full version has been published by Bréguet in the Budé series, this is the first English translation of the whole work since that of Sabine and Smith (1929). It is also the first English translation of the Laws since Keyes’s Loeb edition (1928). Students of Latin have Zetzel’s commentary on selections from the Republic (1995) and the elementary edition of Laws 1 by Rudd and Wiedemann (1987). But most of the scholarship on these two works has come from the Continent, especially Germany, as may be seen from the bibliographies of Schmidt (1973) and Suerbaum (1978). A particularly relevant example is Büchner’s edition of the Republic.

  This translation is based on an eclectic text, but special mention should be made of Ziegler’s text of the Republic (5th edn. 1960) and Ziegler and Görler’s text of the Laws (1979). Where other readings have been adopted their sources can usually be found in the apparatus criticus supplied by those editors. In addition, several of Professor Watt’s conjectures have been gratefully accepted. Many of the decisions taken will be reflected in the Oxford Classical Text which Jonathan Powell is preparing. In the present work the division of labour has been roughly as follows: J.P. wrote the introduction to the Republic, the section on the text of both works, and the notes on the
Republic. He also helped with the revision of the volume as a whole, including the translation. The rest of the work is by N.R.

  As we are dealing with incomplete texts, the sequence of ideas is not always clear. Headings have therefore been supplied to the main sections, and where possible some indication has been given of the contents of the lost passages.

  J.P.; N.R.

  January 1997

  ABBREVIATIONS

  Cicero:

  L

  The Laws

  R

  The Republic

  Cicero’s letters:

  Fam.

  Ad Familiares (to his friends)

  Att.

  Ad Atticum (to Atticus)

  Q. fr.

  Ad Quintum Fratrem (to his brother Quintus)

  Other abbreviations are as follows:

  ANRW

  Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt

  CP

  Classical Philology

  D.L.

  Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, tr. R. D. Hicks, 2 vols. (Loeb Classical Library: Cambridge, Mass., repr. 1959)

  Festus

  Sextus Pompeius Festus (late second cent. AD). His partly extant abridgement of Verrius Flaccus’ De Verborum Significatu was edited by W. M. Lindsay (Teubner, 1913)

  JHI

  journal of the History of Ideas

  JRS

  Journal of Roman Studies

  Nonius

  Nonius Marcellus (early fourth cent. AD?). His dictionary was edited by W. M. Lindsay, 3 vols. (repr. Hildesheim, 1964)

  OCD

  Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd edn.

  OLD

  Oxford Latin Dictionary

  P-A

  S. E. Platner and T. Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (London, 1929)

  REL

  Revue des Études Latines

  ROL

  Remains of Old Latin, tr. E. H. Warmington, Loeb Classical Library, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., repr. 1961)

  SIFC

  Studi italiani di filologia classica

  SVF

  Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. H. von Arnim, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1903–5)

  INTRODUCTION

  The Importance of Cicero’s Republic and Laws

  The two works of Cicero translated in this volume have suffered much damage in transit to the modern world, and on this account have usually been regarded as the preserve of specialists, largely inaccessible to the public or even to classics students. Yet they offer considerable rewards to the modern reader, and especially to the student of the history of political thought. Despite the gaps and problems in the text, it is still possible to appreciate something of their literary qualities, and the ideas discussed in them are in many ways as relevant to the modern world as they were to their original historical context. The lasting merit of these works is that they concentrate on first principles. The concepts of legitimacy, justice, and responsibility in government; the nature of liberty and equality, and the conflict of these ideals with the need for directed policy; the evils of tyranny and unjust government in general; the question of the character and qualifications of those who are to be politicians; the nature of law and its relationship to morality—all these are matters which cannot be ignored as long as the human race continues to have any kind of political organization.

  Both the Republic (De Republica) and the Laws (De Legibus) have had considerable and varied influence over the centuries. There is little evidence for the latter’s circulation in antiquity, but there are indications that the former enjoyed great popularity both immediately on publication (as a letter to Cicero from one of his friends testified1) and later during the first century AD.2 Tacitus shows signs of engagement with the ideas of the Republic, but takes a cynical and pessimistic line far removed from Cicero’s, and directly rebuts Cicero’s view that the mixed constitution is especially durable.3 For the Christian writers of late antiquity, to whom we owe such knowledge as we have of some parts of the lost text, Cicero’s Republic represented the culmination of pagan thinking about political theory and about the Roman state in particular, and this naturally served as a foil for their own reflections on these matters. At approximately the same period, the Neoplatonist Macrobius picked out the concluding passage of the dialogue for detailed commentary,4 and may therefore have been responsible for setting the so-called Dream of Scipio on its way as a separate literary entity. The Dream, thus torn out of its context, was the only part of the text known in the Middle Ages, and, as a vision of the cosmos and of life in the hereafter, it became a highly formative influence on medieval and Renaissance views of the world.5

  The fragments of the rest of the Republic were collected in the sixteenth century,6 but could give little idea of the overall shape of the work. With the discovery of the Vatican manuscript in 1820, it became possible again to speculate more fruitfully about Cicero’s political message, although the mutilated state of the text has allowed more latitude for debate than is the case with many classical works. Victorian Englishmen could see the De Republica as a prophecy of British parliamentary democracy,7 while one influential view at the beginning of this century interpreted Cicero’s ideal statesman as a kind of saviour-dictator.8 Ronald Syme’s dismissal of the Republic, on the brink of the Second World War, as ‘a book about which too much has been written’,9 doubtless reflects more on Cicero’s interpreters than on Cicero himself. Subsequently the work suffered some neglect, particularly in the English-speaking world. However, scholarly interest in it has recently started to revive, and it appears that the time may now be ripe to take a fresh look at the Republic and at its companion, the Laws, which has been less prominent in modern debates, but was influential in informing Renaissance and early modern theories of natural law.

  The Background to the Composition of the Republic and Laws: Cicero’s Career to 54 BC

  In May 54 BC Cicero wrote from his villa at Cumae to his brother Quintus: ‘I am writing the political treatise I mentioned. It’s a pretty heavy and laborious work. But if it goes according to plan, the effort will have been well spent. Otherwise I shall throw it into the sea on which I am looking out as I write, and I shall start on other things, since I can’t stay idle.’10

  The word political, here italicized, is in Greek. It refers not primarily to practical politics, but to a branch of philosophy, the theory of the polis or city-state; this was regarded as a part of the larger study of ‘ethics’, the theory of human character and behaviour. Cicero, in other words, was writing a work in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle (as far as we know, the first of its kind in Latin) which would cover not only the theory of constitutions and laws, but also matters such as the moral education and training of citizens, the place of culture and the arts in a well-run society, the character of the kind of individual best equipped to take part in government, and (perhaps more surprisingly for a modern reader) the place of well-run states in the cosmic order.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero had made his own way to the top in Roman politics, as a ‘new man’ from an Italian country town, the first of his family to seek office in the capital.11 His father had been on companionable terms with Roman aristocrats, but had forgone a political career owing to uncertain health. Cicero himself, however, was ambitious to succeed not only in the political sphere but also in cultural and intellectual activities: he had studied philosophy with enthusiasm in his youth (see the following section) and also fancied himself, not without some justification, as a Latin poet. He was highly accomplished in Greek as well as in Latin; his balanced, rhythmical style owed much to the great Greek orators, especially Demosthenes and Isocrates, but also to the current fashions of the Greek East. This mastery of style could be turned to advantage in literary activity as well as in political or legal oratory. When the political situation went against him Cicero easily cast himself in an alternative role of thinker, writer, and educator of his fellow-citizens, presenting to them the critical spirit and high-minded values of
Greek philosophy while at the same time affirming the patriotic duty owed to the Roman state and its empire.12

  In his year as consul in 63 BC, he had defeated the conspiracy of Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina). The importance of this episode has been variously assessed by historians, but at the very least it was a threat to stability and a symptom of recurrent problems. Cicero claimed to stand for reconciliation of factional interests for the sake of the common good: his catchwords were concordia ordinum (i.e. that all social classes should work together), consensio omnium bonorum (consensus of all good citizens), otium cum dignitate (peace with honour). The Catilinarians, to him, represented only an extreme and criminal minority; once they had been flushed out, the state could return to normal. Cicero did apparently succeed in uniting the Roman people behind him for a short time. But by his high-handed action in executing the conspirators without proper trial (even though he did so on the advice of the Senate), he offered a handle to his political enemies, one which was seized a few years later by the tribune P. Clodius Pulcher. Cicero incurred his enmity in 61 by testifying against him in the curious case of the profanation of the rites of the Bona Dea (see note on L. 2. 36). Now Clodius had his revenge by passing a law which enacted that anyone who had put Roman citizens to death without trial was to be outlawed. Cicero, as Clodius intended, withdrew into exile rather than face trial under this law (cf. R. 1. 6, L. 2. 42).

  Some fourteen months later Cicero was recalled, largely at the instance of Pompey, who had himself begun to suffer harassment at Clodius’ hands. Cicero’s orthodox progression up the cursus honorum had led him to identify himself more and more with the interests of the senatorial aristocracy. After his consulship he had attempted to keep on good terms both with Pompey, whom he admired and whose influence he valued,13 and with the so-called ‘optimates’,14 aristocratic senators who were protective of the Senate’s role in government, and jealously obstructive of anyone who tried to circumvent it. But one of the chief targets of optimate obstruction was Pompey, and Cicero found himself in an impossible position, especially after the ‘Conference of Luca’ in 56 when Pompey, Crassus and Caesar reinforced their informal alliance and gained effective control of Roman politics. Cicero’s political debt to Pompey obliged him to move away from the ‘optimates’, in whose eyes he consequently lost all credibility, and he confessed privately to Atticus that he had been a prize ass.15 Thereafter Cicero could no longer play a leading part in senatorial politics. Although he continued to attend the Senate from time to time and was continually occupied in the lawcourts (not least in defending various friends of Pompey whom he had previously opposed), he sought distraction from the turbulent political situation about which he could do nothing, and turned to writing.