Lucius Crassus and Cicero: The Formation of a Statesman

Extract

If we remember anything about Cicero's political ideas, it is that he believed in the right and duty of the senate to exercise supremacy in Rome, but that he also advocated a concordia ordinmi, an alliance between and recognition of the common interests of senators and equites, to whom property and the status quo were sacred. Closely connected with this is the idea of a consensus omnium bonorum, a wider alliance to include most of the plebs, and Italy. In the service of this ideal of unity he believed that the conservative statesman should be concordiae causa sapienter popularis, though he should consult the true interests of the people even more than their wishes; and that all government should be mild and conciliatory. These are the views by which we distinguish him from his more obstinate optimate contemporaries, above all Cato, who are less flexible, more rigidly reactionary. Although, since Strasburger's famous study of Concordia Ordinum, students of Cicero ought to have been prepared to pursue some of these beliefs of his back into the Roman past, too many historians and biographers still give the impression that they were Cicero's own invention (and an unhappy and unrealistic one too, it is often implied). But this is rash. Cicero, pace some of his detractors, was an intelligent man; but he was not a man of deeply original mind, as would be generally admitted. His greatness lay not in originality, but in the life and form that he could give to the Roman tradition, enriching or illuminating it, sometimes even criticising it, from his knowledge of Greek history and thought.

We should be chary therefore of supposing that Cicero's political programme was wholly his own; and, where a programme on a practical level is concerned, we should probably look more closely for Roman than for Greek sources. The first place to search is of course in a man's immediate family background, its position, traditions and contacts. This is true of all ages and places; but it is especially true of Rome. In the recent and justified reaction against the idea of fixed family parties, allied to or warring with certain other families from generation to generation, we are in danger of forgetting that family tradition in a broad sense was often very important. Cicero explains in the de officiis how one should imitate not only the maiores in general, but one's own maiores in particular – thus successive Scaevolae have become legal experts, and Scipio Aemilianus emulated the military glory of the first Africanus.