CONSTRUCTING AUTHOR AND AUTHORITY: GENERIC DISCOURSE IN CICERO’S DE LEGIBUS

Extract

Atticus: Lucus quidem ille et haec Arpinatium quercus agnoscitur, saepe a me lectus in Mario. Sin manet illa quercus, haec est profecto; etenim est sane uetus.

Qvintus: Manet uero, Attice noster, et semper manebit. Sata est enim ingenio; nullius autem agricolae cultu stirps tam diuturna quam poetae uersu seminari potest.

Atticus: Indeed I recognize that grove and this Arpinate oak, which I’ve often read about in the Marius. If that oak still stands, it must be this one; for old it certainly is.

Quintus: Of course it stands, my dear Atticus, and it will always stand, for it has been planted in the imagination. Indeed no farmer’s cultivation can produce a plant as long-lasting as that which is sown by the verse of a poet. De legibus 1.1

The image of the Marian oak begins De legibus with almost postmodern abruptness. This is in part due to the absence of an authorial preface, such as the long statement of purpose partially preserved in De re publica 1.1–14, which leaves De legibus without a chronological or situational frame of reference. The result is that the treatise begins in a particularly Platonic fashion, as the contemplation of an object in the natural landscape proceeds into a discussion of its symbolic meaning, setting up the dichotomy between perception and reality, ficta and vera, the past and its memory.