Introduction

Summary

When Cicero observed in De legibus that Plato, “the most learned of men and the greatest of all philosophers,” had written a book “on the republic” (de republica), he was bearing witness to a quiet revolution. Aristotle had called his master's dialogue the “Politeia” (Πολιτεία), employing a Greek term which could mean “citizenship,” “constitution,” “government,” or, more generally, “way of life.” Centuries later, Plato's editor Thrasyllus added the now customary subtitle, “On Justice” (περὶ δικαίου). Cicero himself had called the dialogue “Politeia” earlier in his career, preferring simply to transliterate Plato's Greek into the Latin alphabet, rather than to search for a Latin analogue. But in this passage from De legibus Cicero takes a fateful step; his rendering of “politeia” as “respublica” is not so much translation as authorization. Plato's dialogue is no longer a mere entertainment for the Roman erudite, a treatise written in Greek by a Greek author about a uniquely Greek political arrangement. It emerges instead as a text about the respublica, the constituent unit of Roman political life, and accordingly invites careful scrutiny by theorists interested in discovering the optimus reipublicae status, the best state of a republic. With one innocuous gesture, Cicero brands Plato as a republican, ensuring that for the next two millennia important political theorists would derive their view of the “republic” from a Greek philosopher who had never even heard the term.