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Sincere Humans and Insincere Beasts: Cicero’s Politics of Humanity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2015

Lazar Maric
Lazar Maric*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article analyses the ‘politics of humanity’ in Cicero’s philosophical and rhetorical works, the practice of projecting and shifting the moral and political boundary that separates the ‘human’ from the ‘inhuman’, the ‘inept at being human’, and the ‘undeserving of being human’. This practice has many affinities with the relatively modern phenomenon of ‘dehumanisation’. In the first part, the emphasis is on Cicero’s humanism, in particular his ideas on human nature as they appear in De Officiis. Here I also show the impact of this practice on Roman ideas of self-fashioning, ‘sincerity’ and social performance. In the second part, I observe the way in which Cicero’s political and legal theory fits within this ideological project. I further argue that Cicero’s humanism provided a conceptual background to the rhetorical dehumanisation of his political enemies, that is, to the claims in his invective that these men could no longer be considered as proper human beings. My final suggestion is that the goal of this practice, at least some of the time, was to make a case for excluding these individuals from the state’s legal system and thus depriving them of its protections.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 48 , 2014 , pp. 77 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2014

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References

1 Corbeill, A., ‘Ciceronian Invective’, in May, J.M. (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Cicero, Oratory and Rhetoric (Leiden 2002) 198–217Google Scholar, at 208; Koster, S., Die Invektive in der griechischen und römischen Literatur (Meisenheim am Gian 1980) 38-9Google Scholar.

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3 E.g. Powell, J.G.F., ‘Invective and the Orator: Ciceronian Theory and Practice’, in Booth, (ed.), Cicero on the Attack (n. 2) 1–25Google Scholar, at 18.

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6 For a good overview of the scholarship on these topics, see Hammer, D., ‘What is Politics in the Ancient World?’, in Balot, R.K. (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought (Blackwell 2009) 20–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Training in rhetorical arts is often seen as providing Romans with the skills to assume and create a suitable social persona as circumstances might demand. E.g. Boyle, A.J., Tragic Seneca: An Essay in the Theatrical Tradition (London 1997) 116Google Scholar, observes ‘training in declamation . . . which required diverse and sustained role playing, gave to contemporary Romans not only the ability to enter into the physical structure of another . . . but a substantial range of improvisational skills to create a persona at will.’ See also Bloomer, W.M., ‘Schooling in Persona: Imagination and Subordination in Roman Education’, CA 16 (1997) 57–79Google Scholar; Potter, D., ‘Performance, Power and Justice in the High Empire’, in Slater, W. (ed.), Roman Theater and Society (Ann Arbor 1996) 129-59Google Scholar, at 131.

8 E.g. Corbelli, A., Controlling Laughter: Political Humour in the Late Roman Republic (Princeton 1996) 41Google Scholar, observes that: ‘Whether in a dramatic or a political context, the persona did not serve as concealment but as a visual clue to the person beneath.’ See also De Pretis, A., Epistolarity in the First Book of Horace’s Epistles (New Jersey 2004) 17Google Scholar; Burchell, D., ‘Civic Personae: MacIntyre, Cicero, and Moral Personality’, The History of Political Thought 19 (1998) 101-18Google Scholar, at 114.

9 The word persona was originally an Etruscan word for mask, and among its several meanings it also designated the theatrical mask worn by Greek and Roman actors. See e.g. Elliot, R.C., The Literary Persona (Chicago 1982) 21Google Scholar; Taylor, P.A., ‘Imaginative Writing and the Disclosure of the Self’, JAAC 57 (1999) 29–39Google Scholar, at 28. Cicero himself uses persona in this way at Tusc. 5.73.3 when he lashes out at Epicurus for putting on the persona of a philosopher, rather than actually being one; also, Att. 15.1. Rhetoricians often speak of putting a persona on and off; e.g. Quint. 3.8.50. See also Hughes, J.J., ‘Dramatic Ethos in Cicero’s Later Rhetorical Works’, in Baumlin, J. S. and Baumlin, T. F. (eds), Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory (Dallas 1994) 211-27Google Scholar.

10 Allport has summed up the meanings of persona in Cicero’s writings, and observes meanings ranging from the external and ‘false’ to the internal and ‘true’ self: see Allport, G.W., Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (New York 1937) 26-8Google Scholar.

11 In her recent study, Bartsch, Shadi, The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire (Chicago 2006) 221-2Google Scholar, has rejected both of the above positions as extreme, observing that they ‘are difficult to map into Roman culture because they map persona into a true/false axis in the mind rather than understanding it in terms of propriety and impropriety, or in terms of Roman civic performativity’. Inasmuch as an individual’s social and political roles constituted an important part of that person, she observes, the persona was neither felt to be the whole of the individual nor a fake: ‘the persona represented an aspect of being, rather than an exposition or a dissimulation of that person.’

12 Zeno’s follower Aristo described the wise man as ‘like the good actor who, whether he puts on the mask of Thersites or Agamemnon, plays either part in a proper way’: LS 58G. ‘Remember’, says Epictetus (Encheiridion 17), ‘that you are an actor in a drama, as the director wants you to be.’ For a long history of acting as a metaphor for human social existence, see Edwards, C., ‘Acting and Self-Actualisation in Imperial Rome: Some Death Scenes’, in Easterling, P. and Hall, E. (eds), Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession (Cambridge 2002) 370-84Google Scholar, at 370-1. Also, Long, A.A., From Epicurus to Epictetus: Studies in Hellenistic and Roman Philosophy (Oxford 2006) 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Sorabji, R., Self: Ancient and Modern Insights about Individuality, Life and Death (Oxford 2006) 160CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Cicero also illustrates the great variety of characters formed by nature and habits (mores) and insists that none of them ought to be criticised (vituperari: 1.109).

15 The emphasis on theatricality in De Officiis, as Dugan has observed, invites each person to adopt a quasi-aesthetic attitude towards himself and his life, and so ‘it parallels the assumption within rhetorical theory and practice that one can deliberately fashion a self’: Dugan, J., Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-Fashioning in the Rhetorical Works (Oxford 2005) 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Plato is usually regarded as ‘the first active exponent of the Beast Within’ in that he presented in the Republic a psychological theory which proposed that the human soul consists of three components: the rational (nous), the spiritive (thymos) and the appetitive (epithymia) (580d-e). See also, Lorenz, H., The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle (Oxford 2006) 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilhus, I.S., Animals, Gods and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas (London 2006)Google Scholar.

17 In the Republic Plato made it clear that a person is made most fully human by identifying with reason and made least human by identifying with his or her bestial desires (589b-d). Aristotle, who largely adopted Plato’s psychological theory, held that in the virtuous person the appetite and the spirit are brought into perfect harmony with reason by being affected and improved over time by the cultivation of virtuous habits of behaviour: Eth. Nic. 1.13.1102a 26-1103a3.

18 It is important to note that in Cicero the term virtus does not usually denote what it traditionally denoted in Rome, namely ‘manliness’ or ‘courage’, but is a philosophical and purely ethical concept, the result of the proper hierarchy in the human soul. See e.g. Eisenhut, W., Virtus Romana (Munich 1973) 64–71Google Scholar; McDonnell, M., Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic (Cambridge 2006) 9Google Scholar. Also, Ernout, A. and Meillet, A., Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine, 4th edn (Paris 1960) 739Google Scholar.

19 In Paradoxa Stoicorum, for instance, he contrasts several great men from Roman history, who were characterised by virtus, self-restraint and abstinence, with the pleasure seekers of his own time. Only the former, Cicero asserts, are truly human, while the latter are merely ‘cattle’ who have accepted that there is really no difference between them and some four-footed animal (1.14). See also Baldry, H.C., The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought (Cambridge 1965) 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Veyne, P., ‘Humanitas: Romans and Non-Romans’, in Giardina, A. (ed.), The Romans (Chicago 1993) 342-69Google Scholar, at 342.

20 Cic. Off. 1.11-14, 101; Tusc. 2.47-48, 51-53; Rep. 1.60. As Hadot has observed, the first persona requires that we ‘exercise our share in the universal stock of reason . . . to recognise ourselves as a part of the reason-animated cosmos’: Hadot, P., Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Oxford 1995) 86Google Scholar. See also Gill, C., ‘Peace of Mind and Being Yourself: Panaetius to Plutarch’, ANRW 2.36 (1994) 4599-640Google Scholar, at 4620; Baldry, , Unity of Mankind (n. 19) 201Google Scholar.

21 Cic. Off. 1.13-14, 94-8, 107, 110-1, 113-4, 120, 125. Mitchell, T.N., Cicero: The Senior Statesman (Yale 1991) 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De Lacy, P.H., ‘The Four Stoic Personae’, ICS 2 (1977) 163-72Google Scholar, at 165; Gill, C., ‘Personhood and Personality: The Four-Personae Theory in Cicero, De Officiis I’, OSAP 6 (1988) 169-99Google Scholar, at 191-2.

22 E.g. Gill observes that in his treatment of decorum Cicero ‘seems to presuppose a degree of awareness of one’s own actions and of others’ reactions that assimilates social life to a theatrical performance’: Personhood and Personality (n. 21) 194-5.

23 Conversely, to be morally wrong and unjust in one’s actions is always inappropriate and contrary to decorum (et iusta omnia decora sunt, iniusta contra, ut turpia, sic indecora: Off. 1.94).

24 Cic. Off. 1.96.

25 Cic. Off. 1.27, 96,141.

26 Cic. Off. 1.126-32, 135-7, 144.

27 Cic. Verr. 2.1.39, 2.4.6. See Bartsch, , The Mirror of the Self (n. 11) 226Google Scholar.

28 Cic. Off. 3.72. In De Officiis Cicero dealt extensively with the relationship between virtuous and advantageous conduct (honestum et utile), arguing that in essence they are one and the same: every truly virtuous act is expedient and every truly expedient act is also virtuous. Off. 1.9, 2.9, 3.7. It is never expedient to do wrong, he asserts further, because that is always immoral (turpe) and it is always expedient to be good because that is morally right (honestum), Off. 3.64.

29 See also Cic. Amic. 95-7.

30 Cic. Off. 1.153-7.

31 See Heinze, R., ‘Fides’, Hermes 64 (1928) 140-66Google Scholar.

32 Cic. Off. 1.102.

33 E.g. Mitsis, P., ‘Natural Law and Natural Right in Post-Aristotelian Philosophy: The Stoics and their Critics’, ANRW 2.3 6.7 (1994) 4812-50Google Scholar, at 4843, observes that ‘both the wise and unwise perform the kathekonta enjoined by the natural law; but while their actions share the same descriptive content, there is a crucial difference in intentional content.’ Also, Pohlenz, M., Die Stoa: Geschichte eine geistigen Bewegung, 3rd edition (Göttingen 1964) 186ffGoogle Scholar; Reesor, M., ‘The Indifferents in the Old and Middle Stoa1’, TAPA 82 (1951) 102-10Google Scholar.

34 Cic. Off. 3.13-14, 17; Am. 20-1; Fin. 4.15; Leg. 2.8, 1.18-19.

35 See also Cic. Fin. 4.15; Leg. 1.18-19, 30,2.8; Am. 21.

36 This idea can be traced to Greek writers and theorists who often asserted that only in a functional human state could members of the human species forsake ‘beastly’ violence in favour of peaceful and mutually advantageous social co-operation. Aristotle’s famous definition of the human being as a ‘political animal’ (politikon zoon), for example, excluded from the human community anyone who was not subject to the laws and norms of the polis; such individuals, according to Aristotle, are either gods or beasts: Pol. 1.1.1; Balot, , Greek Political Thought (Oxford 2006) 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Trigg, R., Ideas of Human Nature: An Historical Introduction (Oxford 1988) 32-4Google Scholar.

37 Cic. Rep. 3.38.

38 Cicero describes Numa’s introduction of religion as motivated by a desire to turn the warlike Romans from savagery to ‘humanity and gentleness’ (quibus rebus institutis ad humanitatematque mansuetudinem revocavit animos hominum studiis bellandi iam immanis ac feros . . . : Rep. 2.27). Cicero has Scipio argue that kingship is probably the best single form of government, and the argument he particularly emphasises is that everything in the universe is ruled by the authority of one, and most importantly, as he forces Laelius to concede, the different parts of a human’s mind should all be ruled by one single force ’ reason: Rep. 1.54-60.

39 Cic. Rep. 1.50, 1.68,3.43,3.45.

40 See below, nn. 76 and 77.

41 Cic. Rep. 1.39. Cicero often presents humanitas as the difference between primitive, ill-ordered societies with brutish concerns and brutish habits and those where unity, justice and order prevail: Rep. 2.27; Off. 1.90, 3.32; Part. Or. 90; De Or. 1.33; Leg. 2.36; Mitchell, , Cicero (n. 21) 38Google Scholar.

42 Cic. Rep. 1.45, 53, 2.55-6, 69; Leg. 3.5.8, 10, 11, 24, 28; Polyb. 4, 6. See also Pl. Leg. 3-4; Arist. Pol. 1293a-1295b, 1318b-1319a; Mitchell, , Cicero (n. 21) 52Google Scholar; Asmis, E., ‘A New Kind of Model: Cicero’s Roman Constitution in De Re Publica’, AJP 126 (2005) 377–416Google Scholar.

43 Cic. Off. 3.60.

44 Wood, N., Cicero ’s Social and Political Thought (Oxford 1988) 135-36Google Scholar. Referring to his post in Sicily, Cicero relapses into theatrical analogy and says, ‘When I was a quaestor in Sicily I felt all men’s eyes directed upon me and me only. I imagined myself and my office staged in a theatre and the entire world as my audience’: Verr. 2.5.35.

45 Cic. Rep. 1.45, 2.45, 2.67-8.

46 Cicero argues that a distinction between the highest and most distinguished individuals and the lowest and meanest ones is necessary in every people and that ‘those men who are superior in virtue and in spirit should rule the weaker (imbecillioribus) while the weaker should be willing to obey the stronger’: Rep. 1.51-3, 3.34-8.

47 On Stoic natural law, see Annas, J., The Morality of Happiness (Oxford 1993) 302Google Scholar; Mitsis, , Natural Law (n. 33) 4813Google Scholar.

48 Cic. leg. 1.18; Rep. 1.39,3.33.

49 He argues that civil law (lex civilis), the statutory and customary law of any state and people, should conform to the universal ethical principles of the law ornature - if it fails to do so, by definition it is not a true law (Leg. 2.13). Cicero refers to true law as ‘right reason squared with nature’ (Leg. 1.28, 3.33), ‘the beginning of justice’ (Leg. 1.18), and ‘the supreme mind (mens) of God and divine wisdom’ (Leg. 2.8.10); Wright, M.R., ‘Self-Love and Love of Humanity in De Finibus 3’, in Powell, J.G.F. (ed.), Cicero the Philosopher: Twelve Papers (Oxford 1995) 189Google Scholar.

50 Cic. Leg. 1.22.58, 2.24.61-2; Rep. 3.22.33.

51 Cic. Rep. 3.22.33. See also Ferrary, J., ‘The Statesman and the Law in the Political Philosophy of Cicero’, in Laks, A. and Schofield, M. (eds), Justice and Generosity: Studies in Hellenistic Social and Political Philosophy, Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium Hellenisticum (Cambridge 1995) 48–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 69.

52 Cic. Off. 2.1-6, 23-29, 3.4, 83-5; Rep. 5.2. Suetonius reports that Caesar commented that the Republic was a contentless artefact ’ an imago sine re: Suet. Iul. 77.

53 Cic. Off. 1.26.

54 Cic. Off. 1.65, 1.68, 85-7. See also Long, , ‘Cicero’s Politics in De Offlciis’, in Laks, and Schofield, (eds), Justice and Generosity (n. 51) 213–40Google Scholar, at 216, 226.

55 In his youthful De Jnventione, Cicero defines justice as ‘a mental disposition which gives every man his deserts (dignitatem) while preserving the common interest’ (communi utilitate conservata: Inv. 2.160). His definition of justice in De Re Publica emphasises its role as guardian of the common good (3.24), while, in De Officiis, the greatest emphasis is on its common utility (1.15, 20-49, 153-9,2.38-43).

56 Cic. Off. 3.76, 82; Leg. 28.49.

57 Cic. Sest. 97-8, 103-27, 138. On true and false populares, see Leg Agr. 1.23, 25; Cat. 4.2; Dom. 77, 88; Phil. 7.4; De Or. 3.138; Seager, R., ‘Cicero and the Word Popularis’, CQ 22 (1972) 328-38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 333; Morstein-Marx, R., Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge 2004) 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Cic. Sest. 16.

59 Cic. Cat. 1.2-3.

60 Cic. Pis. 1, 19, 31; Arena, V., ‘Roman Political Invective’, in Dominik, W. and Hall, J. (eds), A Companion to Roman Rhetoric (Maiden 2007) 149-90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 152.

61 The notion that the face and body mirror the soul is commonplace in Roman moralising texts. In De Officiis, for example, Cicero argues that disturbed inner hierarchies tend to manifest externally through a distorted voice, posture or face. ‘Not only our minds,’ Cicero argues, ‘but the bodies as well are disordered’ by such appetites (. . . non modo animi perturbantur, sed etiam corpora: 1.102). When men are no longer subject to the law of Nature, their ‘faces, voices and motions undergo a change’ (. . . voltus, voces, motus statuesque mutantur: 1.102). See also Corbelli, A., Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (Princeton 2004) 148-50Google Scholar.

62 Cic. Sest. 17. Corbelli, Nature Embodied (n. 61) 119.

63 Cic. Sest. 38. For more examples see Lévy, ‘Rhétorique et philosophie’ (n. 2) 139-57; May, ‘Cicero and the Beasts’ (n. 2) 43-153; Wood, , ‘Populares and Circumcelliones: The Vocabulary of “Fallen Man” in Cicero and St Augustine’, History of Political Thought 7 (1986) 33–51Google Scholar, at 35.

64 See also, Cic. Off. 1.26, 2.23.

65 This passage refers to Tarquin the Proud, who was reputedly a notorious despot.

66 ‘The psychological basis of tyranny is . . . the appetite . . . it is a brutal and lawless appetite – the lust of the flesh and pride of power – which man has in common with beasts’: Barker, in Dunkle, J.R., ‘The Rhetorical Tyrant in Roman Historiography: Sallust, Livy and Tacitus’, CW 65 (1971) 12–20Google Scholar, at 16. See also Forsdyke, S., ‘The Uses and Abuses of Tyranny’, in Balot, (ed.), Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought (n. 6) 231-46Google Scholar.

67 The vices characteristic of a tyrant are avarice (avaritia), force (vis), arrogance (superbia), lust (libido), and cruelty (crudelitas). Cicero’s Verrine Orations provide abundant examples of his use of the terms rex, dominus and tyrannus to describe Verres (2.1.82, 2.5.103), claiming that he exhibited every one of the tyrant’s vices and modes of behaviour during his infamous governorship of Sicily (1.14, 2.2.9, 1.56, 2.1.14, 2.1.122-3). Similarly, Piso and Gabinius are charged with superbia, crudelitas and libido (Prov. Cons. 6, 8). For more examples, see Dunkle, The Rhetorical Tyrant (n. 66); see also Sklenar, R., ‘La République des Signes: Caesar, Cato and the Language of Sallustian Morality’, TAPA 128 (1998) 205-20Google Scholar, at 207-11.

68 For a good discussion of Cicero’s justifications of the murder of Caesar, see Belliotti, R.A., Roman Philosophy and the Good Life (Lanham 2009) 143-79Google Scholar.

69 For Caesar’s suppression of libertas see e.g. Phil. 1.6, 1.13,2.26, 11.36. For numerous other examples, see Cowan, E., ‘Libertas in the Philippics’, in Stevenson, T. and Wilson, M. (eds), Cicero’s Philippics: History, Rhetoric and Ideology (Auckland 2008) 140-52Google Scholar.

70 For numerous examples of Antony being described in the Philippics as possessing tyrannical traits, see Stevenson, T., ‘Tyrants, Kings and Fathers in the Philippics’, in Stevenson, and Wilson, (eds), Cicero’s Philippics (n. 69) 95–113Google Scholar, at 100-1.

71 Stevenson, , ‘Tyrants, Kings and Fathers’ (n. 70) 195Google Scholar.

72 Cowan, , Libertas (n. 75) 145Google Scholar.

73 See Shapiro, S.O., O Tempora! O Mores!: Cicero’s Catilinarian Orations (Oklahoma 2005) 65, 190Google Scholar.

74 Cic. Fam. 7.24.1.

75 There is much in Philippics that would speak to potential assassins who may have been contemplating such an act at the time of the speech’s delivery. For example, recalling the assassination of Caesar, Cicero states (2.117): ‘Do you not understand that it is enough for brave men to have realised how beautiful in act, how grateful in benefit and how glorious tyrannicide is?’