In this book M. presents an overview of Cicero's philosophical output, with particular reference to its scholarship. The De Gruyter series of which the book is a part aims, according to the blurb on the back cover, to offer in its volumes ‘a critical reappraisal of research conducted in recent decades that illuminates the state of contemporary scholarship’. M. tells us in the preface that he ‘focuses on relevant studies pursued in the last decades’ (p. vi). Given the burgeoning literature on Cicero's philosophy, this is a worthy aim.
Before turning to the question of how successfully M. fulfils it, let us start with a brief overview of the book's contents. It has five main chapters. Chapter 1, ‘Cicero's Philosophical Apprenticeship’, traces Cicero's evolution as a philosophical thinker and its relationship to his views on oratory and philosophy; Chapter 2, ‘Cicero's Philosophical Employment’, sketches the content of some of Cicero's main philosophical works; Chapter 3, ‘Contemporary Research on Cicero as a Philosopher’, summarises various works of scholarship on aspects of Cicero's thought; Chapter 4, ‘Problems in Cicero's Philosophy’, tackles a series of controversies pertinent to understanding and interpreting Cicero's philosophical project; and Chapter 5, ‘Cicero's Philosophical Vocabulary’, explores a selection of Cicero's choices of Latin words to translate key Greek philosophical terms. A short epilogue comprises Chapter 6, followed by a bibliography and useful indexes.
In his general outlook M. belongs in the camp, now pretty representative of current scholarship, that takes Cicero seriously as a philosophical thinker and reads him as engaging autonomously, in the midst of the crisis of his beloved Republic, with the ideas he inherits. To this picture M. does not add anything particularly novel; nor do his terms of reference require it. I found M.'s comparison of Cicero's approach ‘to what a modern scholar of ancient philosophy would do today’ (p. 109) stimulating, with Cicero's originality assessed on that basis. The comparison provides a foil against what perhaps remains a tendency to withhold the label of ‘philosopher’ from Cicero on the grounds that he lacks the standing of some of the giants among his predecessors. M. reminds us that, even if we ignore Cicero's immense influence on the subsequent course of Western thought, a sense of perspective is necessary in determining what counts as ‘good philosophy’.
I was less sure about some of the moves that M. makes in laying out the scholarship. A basic requirement, I take it, of a volume in this series is that it give a reliable description of the secondary literature it discusses. As a test case, I chose a work over whose content I felt I had some authority: my 2015 monograph Cicero: The Philosophy of a Roman Sceptic. The result was disconcerting. Bracketing the monograph with Sean McConnell's Philosophical Life in Cicero's Letters (2014), M. writes (pp. 1–2): ‘McConnell and Woolf focus on the meaning of philosophical life and Sceptical philosophy in Cicero's correspondence’. In my monograph I do not discuss Cicero's correspondence. That may have been a fault, though I explain the exclusion in the introduction, which leaves it baffling why M. describes the monograph as he does.
This may just be an unfortunate one-off; I have not attempted to verify on a large scale M.'s descriptions of other pieces of secondary literature. Nonetheless, readers are alerted that M.'s reporting of the scholarship may not be altogether reliable. There are other signs of sloppiness in this regard. In the course of his discussion of the question of Cicero's independence from Stoic sources in De officiis, M. writes (p. 78): ‘In his recent book Brunt, Studies in Stoicism (2013), 180–240, opposes this thesis, which, however, almost everyone today agrees [sic].’ Peter Brunt died in 2005; Studies in Stoicism is a posthumous collection of his essays edited by Miriam Griffin and Alison Samuels. The editors tell us in the introduction that the previously unpublished essay to which M. refers (‘Panaetius in De Officiis’) was found among Brunt's papers dated September 1998. M.'s use of ‘recent’ in conjunction with the year 2013 is therefore liable to mislead, since it gives the impression that Brunt is writing at that time against contemporary scholarship rather than this being a view at least fifteen years older that (rightly or wrongly) does not, as the editors also note, command much sympathy at their time of writing. All this may sound like quibbling on your reviewer's part; but given the objective of M.'s book it is right to warn readers unfamiliar with the details of the scholarship to treat M.'s reportage with caution. (M.'s page reference is also incorrect; for ‘180–240’ read ‘180–242’.)
A final, small, example, but one further indicative of a certain laxity on M.'s part in his presentation of the literature. In discussing the Tusculan Disputations, M. speaks (p. 31) of ‘the thesis supported, with excellent insights by I. Gildenhard, T. Whitmarsh, J. Warren, in Paideia Romana (2007)’. This work is the sole authorship of Gildenhard – Warren and Whitmarsh being then editors of the journal of which the monograph is a supplementary volume. That M. has allowed the impression to be conveyed, here and in the bibliography too, that the monograph is a three-way co-authorship is troubling, given the volume's purposes.
Somewhat disappointing as well, in view of its rubric, is the way in which the book engages with the substance of the secondary literature. M. is almost entirely uncritical; what he mostly gives is short paraphrases. Different views are noted, but M. rarely uses this as a springboard to engage in debate or make a critical assessment of who has the better of an argument. Sometimes even a paraphrase is lacking. An example once again is the case of Brunt's ‘Panaetius in De Officiis’, where M. writes (p. 78) that Brunt ‘opposes’ the currently prevalent view, but gives no indication of the content of Brunt's argument, let alone a critical appraisal of it.
More often than not, one is left frustrated by a refusal on M.'s part to offer substantive reflections on the state of scholarly debate. Mostly we are given little sense, other than some rather bland approbations, of M.'s views of the literature. As a result, readers who do not already know their way around the territory may feel short-changed. Even in cases where M. clearly has a view, there is an apparent unwillingness to argue his case in the scholarly context. For example, in relation to the debate about whether Cicero upheld a ‘radical’ or ‘mitigated’ form of scepticism, M. writes (p. 89): ‘Thorsrud believes that … Cicero does not reach a point of radical scepticism, but falls back on a mitigated version of it’. A footnote (p. 89 n. 30) informs us that ‘Unlike Thorsrud, Brittain 2016 … argues that Cicero is not a mitigated sceptic, but rather a radical or Carneadean sceptic’.
As to the actual content of either Thorsrud's or Brittain's argument we are given no further information, even though the debate on the nature of Ciceronian scepticism has been one of the liveliest in recent scholarship on his philosophy and even though M. indicated earlier (p. 59) that he favours the ‘mitigated’ reading. Nor are we given a clear and concise setting out of what the terms of the debate are, so that readers new to it could orient themselves. Add to this that M.'s English is at times rather stilted and occasionally defies comprehension, and the volume, in terms of its treatment of the scholarship on Cicero's philosophy, while a useful compendium in some ways, must be judged a missed opportunity overall.
