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Liberalitas – the Decline and Rehabilitation of a Virtue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

C. E. Manning
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Extract

By the end of the first century A.D., the teachings of the philosophers as expounded by Cicero on the practice of liberalitas had been largely accepted, often even in detail, by members of the governing class at Rome. Such would not have been the situation in the last generation of the Roman republic. This paper will seek to explain the cautious attitudes to the quality shown in the last three quarters of the first century B.C., and the declining relevance of these reservations, with the consequent rehabilitation of the virtue, in the early principate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , April 1985 , pp. 73 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1985

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References

NOTES

1. Kloft, H., Liberalitas Principis (Cologne, 1970), p. 44Google Scholar.

2. For the influence of Panaetius on the De Offidis, Off. 2.60 and 3.7: Panaetius igitur, qui sine controuersia de officiis accuratissime disputauit, quemque nos correctione quadam adhibita potissimum secuti sumus, and his emphasis on absence of self-interest, Kloft, , op. cit., pp. 23 and 40Google Scholar.

3. The view taken here differs from that of Kloft who (p. 165) sees Pliny as offering a much more realistic approach than those of Cicero or Seneca. While Cicero does not use the word pauper of potential recipients, as Pliny does (Ep. 9.30) we do find (Off. 1.49), si cetera paria sunt, hoc maxime officii est, ut quisque magis opis indigeat, ita ei potissimum opitulari.

4. Inter alia we may cite, Ad Fam. 1.9.12 and 18; 4.9.4; 7.5.3; 7.7.2; 7.8.1; 7.10.3; 7.17.2 and 3; 9.13.4; Ad Att. 9.11A.3; Pro Rab. Post. 41; Pro Lig. 6; 23; 31; Pro Marcello 16.

5. For an analysis of Sallust's summation of Caesar and Cato, Syme, R., Sallust (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 115ff.Google Scholar, with the significant comment that Sallust declines to use the emotionally charged abstract clementia in the Catiline (p. 119).

6. For Livian usage, Packard, D. W., A Concordance to Livy, (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), vol. III, p. 74Google Scholar.

7. On the derivation of liberalis, Walde, A., Lateinisches Etymologisches Worterbuch (Heidelburg, 1938), p. 791Google Scholar, Ernout, A. and Meillet, A., Dictionnaire Etymologique de la langue Latine (4th Edition, Paris, 1959), p. 355Google Scholar.

8. Borsanyi, K., ‘L'histoire de I'idee de liberalitas’, E. Ph. K. 1938, pp. 40–1Google Scholar takes very much the view outlined. Kloft, , op. cit., pp. 34–37Google Scholar appears to take this view, but his final conclusions on the development of liberalitas in the Republican period (p. 71) are much nearer to the truth: ‘The development of liberalitas and the form of it described can only be traced back in a limited sense to Greek influence, more precisely to Greek mediation of its literary garments … in so far as the rise of great individuals is bound with the expansion of Roman power over Italy, the origins of the change in behaviour with Gold lie not in an arranged takeover from without but are so to speak inherent in the structure.' The present article and its reasoning were developed independently of Kloft, and differ from it in that while Kloft is concerned chiefly with the practice of liberalitas in the sense of ‘finanzielle Grosszügigkeit’, this article is concerned with the perception of the terms in their widest meaning in the first centuries B.C. and A.D. While I differ from Kloft in a number of points, I have learned much from his thorough and perceptive study.

9. On the date of the Ad Herennium, Fowler, W. Warde, Roman Essays and Interpretations (Oxford, 1920), pp. 91–9Google Scholar; Clarke, M. L., Rhetoric at Rome (London, 1953), p. 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Caplan, H., Introduction to the Rhetorica ad Herennium (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. xxv–xxviGoogle Scholar, reprinted in H. Caplan, Of Eloquence (Ithaca and London, 1970), pp. 16–17; Leeman, A. D., Orationis Ratio (Amsterdam, 1963), pp. 25–6Google Scholar.

10. Hellegouarc'h, J., Le Vocabulaire Latin des Relations et des Partis politiques sous La République (Paris, 1963), p. 219Google Scholar, citing Caes. Bell. Gall. 1.18.3.

11. Kloft, , op. cit., p. 75Google Scholar.

12. On Caesar's clementia, Weinstock, S., Divus Iulius (Oxford, 1971), pp. 233–43Google Scholar.

13. Ch. Wirszubski, , Libertas as a political ideal at Rome (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 150–3Google Scholar: ‘And if Cicero's Pro Marcello and Pro Ligario represent the initial decline of the idea that ”libertas in legibus constitit”, Seneca's De clementia represents its final collapse'; also Hellegouarc'h, , op. cit., pp. 261–3Google Scholar, Kloft, , op. cit., p. 61Google Scholar, and Griffin, M., Seneca, a philosopher in politics (Oxford, 1976), pp. 125–7Google Scholar.

14. Veyne, J. C., Le Pain et Le Cirque (Paris, 1976), pp. 110 and 375–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar rightly distinguishes the motives of the senator from those of the municipal magistrate when giving entertainments. He perhaps goes too far in suggesting that individuals were not the object of liberalitas, p. 54: ‘ce que nous appellerions assistance … était destiné ou censé au peuple comme tel, à l'universalité des citoyens et à elle seule.’

15. For Tacitus' uses, Gerber, A. and Greef, A., Lexicon Taciteum (Hildesheim, 1962), vol. 1. p. 767Google Scholar.

16. For a full discussion of the forms and sources of imperial liberalitas, Kloft, H., op. cit., pp. 73–170Google Scholar.