Cicero and the Philosophical Schools of His Age

Let us start with affiliations . I have chosen the term quite deliberately. Another contender, allegiance , is medieval and feudal and involves no free choice. Affiliation , also medieval and feudal in origin, is derived from Latin filius and may remind us of filius-familias —but it does denote, in our modem languages, a free adoption into a society of a member who is thereafter free to end his membership or "change his affiliation."

This is no mere wordplay. In a famous passage, Seneca (NQ 7.32.2) writes: "Therefore so many communities [familiae ] of philosophers have perished without a successor," and he specifies: "Academics both older and younger [et veteres et minores ], Pyrrhonians, Pythagoreans, Sextians." Cicero himself (ND 1.11), writing in August of 45 B.C. , long after the demise of the Acad-

emy as an institution,^[1] has a similar "familial" expression: "which [Academy] I understand in Greece itself is practically bereft [orbam ]." Abandoning one philosophical school for another is "moving back into an old house from a new one" (Cicero Acad . 1.13). A claim to be heir to the traditions of the Academy is called "living off [depasci ] the ancient estate of the Academy" (Cicero Leg . 1.55).^[2]

Philosophy, then, is no mere assemblage of people: rather, it is a community made up of communities; and the label of a school is of far greater importance than purity of doctrine or degree of eclecticism. Antiochus, in his final incarnation, was Stoic in his epistemology^[3] and a Peripatetic of sorts in his ethics. For the modem historian, he is an eclectic (or Eclectic). For Cicero? ... "He was called an Academic, but was in fact, if he had made a very few changes, the purest Stoic" (Luc . 132).^[4] The first of the "eclectic" philosophers—as modem scholars have commonly viewed them—Panaetius was "a lover of Plato and Aristotle" (fr. 57 Van Straaten), who "was always ready with a quotation from Plato, Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, or Dicaearchus" (Cicero Fin . 4.79). Yet he was elected head of the Stoic school in Athens, and probably justified his Academic and Peripatetic borrowings by claiming a Socratic and Platonic descent for the early Stoa.^[5] The term eklektikos does not seem to

[1] See my Antiochus and the Late Academy (Göttingen, 1978) (henceforth referred to as Antiochus ), passim, esp. chap. 8, 330-79.

[2] Although Plato and his successors never possessed the grounds of the Academy, which was a piece of public property; cf. Antiochus , chap. 5, 226-55.

[3] Cicero Acad . 1.35-43, esp. 43, where Antiochus calls the Stoic adoption of sense-perception as the criterion of truth a mere "correction of the Old Academy." On Panaetius as the possible source of this view, see Antiochus , 28-30.

[4] By Luc . I refer in this chapter to Cicero's Lucullus , the title of the second of Cicero's Academic books, surviving only in its first version and commonly referred to as Acad (emica ) 2 or Academica priora —both titles being inventions of modern editors.

[5] On all this, see Antiochus , 28-30 again.

be used before Galen, or much after him;^[6] and even Galen is at least as interested in explaining how people become affiliated to the more definable "sects" (haireseis ).^[7] Potamo of Alexandria is the only one described as representing both—an eklektike hairesis (Suda s.v. Potamon , 2126 Adler; Diogenes Laertius 1.21).^[8] If, as the Oxford Classical Dictionary tells us, he was the "founder of the Eclectic School," we hear nothing of the subsequent fortunes of that "school."^[9]

Even when the old institutions begin to disintegrate, one does not cease to claim affiliation to their traditions and to belong to a hairesis, secta , or disciplina .^[10] Cicero, who stands on the dividing line between the Academy as a school and Academic Skepticism as a "school of thought," justifies his support for it as for an apparently "deserted and derelict school," whose doctrines, however, have not ceased to exist with the demise of their exponents (ND 1.11). A century later, one can already be a Stoic, Epicurean, or Platonist anywhere in the Empire, belonging to no institution;^[11] and Marcus Aurelius's chairs of philosophy in Athens are instituted in the four major "sects." But affiliation to one of these "sects" remains a crucial matter of philosophical identity throughout the ancient world. One can no more be a "mere" philosopher than call oneself, in our modem world, a "mere" Christian; and the chairs of Platonic, Stoic, or Epicurean philosophy are not unlike the chairs of Catholic, Evangelical, or Jewish theology in modem universities.^[12]

Affiliations change, of course, in philosophy just as in politics,

[6] Cf. Donini, Chapter 1 above.

[7] Antiochus , pp. 188-91; cf. Galen Sect. intr ., 65 Kühn.

[8] On Potamo see Long, Chapter 7 below.

[9] The error, of course, is based on interpreting hairesis as a "school" in the institutional sense: see Antiochus , chap. 4, 159-225.

[10] Anticochus , 98-120.

[11] Antiochus , chap. 4, 159-220.

[12] Although there was no "University of Athens"—only endowed, but separate, chairs in the various philosophies and in rhetoric; see Antiochus , 147ff.

albeit not so often.^[13] Arcesilaus, at first a pupil of Theophrastus, was lured away into the Academy by his friend Crantor (Diogenes Laertius 4.29-30). Antiochus changed his affiliation, as I believe, twice;^[14] and his pupils Dio and Aristo defected to the Peripatos.^[15] What happened in Greece could—and did—happen in its cultural province, Rome. Cicero's famous letter to Trebatius Testa of February of 53 B.C. (Fam . 7.12) begins with the words: "I'm wondering why it is that you have stopped sending me letters. My Mend Pansa has informed me that you have turned Epicurean."^[16] The rest of the letter, despite its jocular style,^[17] draws serious conclusions from this "conversion" as to the conduct of Trebatius's private and public life. The Epicurean injunction not to engage in politics was seriously followed by Atticus himself most of his life. By adopting an Epicurean affiliation, Trebatius was bound to change his whole outlook and conduct just like any Greek follower of a philosophical sect.

What, then, of Cicero himself? Modem scholarship tends either to emphasize his continuous loyalty to Academic Skepticism and its last representative, his teacher Philo of Larissa, or to dwell on his "eclectic" inconsistency, especially in the field of

[13] The reason is probably that there were no fixed political parties in the ancient world, whereas the philosophical schools and sects had a more permanent tradition.

[14] The crucial text is Cicero Luc . 69-71. For Antiochus's early apprenticeship in the Stoic school of Mnesarchus and Dardanus, cf. Antiochus , 28-30, esp. 28 n. 52.

[15] Antiochus , 95-96.

[16] This, although I have not seen it noticed by commentators, is probably the first joke in this letter. An Epicurean, "who measures everything by his own pleasure," no longer feels obliged to answer letters. This is of course a travesty of Epicurean egoism, forgetting their idea of friendship and Atticus's untiring correspondence with Cicero.

[17] For a convincing argument that the report itself is not a joke (as had been maintained by C. Sonnet), but is based on a fact, see A. Momigliano, review of B. Farrington's Science and Politics in the Ancient World, JRS 31 (1941), 149-57, esp. 152.

ethics.^[18] But despite such slight deviations, and with a few honorable exceptions to which we shall soon return, Cicero's lifelong

[18] I shall only provide a selective doxography. E. Zeller, Philos. d. Gr . , vol. 2.1 (Leipzig, 1865), 574, treats Cicero as an adherent of the New Academy from the time when he was first introduced to it by Philo and regards his position as "only in general an eclecticism founded on skepticism," on 577 (unchanged in the 5th, most recent, edition revised by Wellmann [Leipzig, 1923], 672, 675). F. Ueberweg, Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Philos ., vol. 1 (Berlin, 1863), 149: Cicero is an eclectic, tends toward the skepticism of the New Academy, but incorporates Stoic elements in his ethics; see also 152. (The same passages are reproduced, with slight variations, in the revised edition by M. Heinze [Berlin, 1894], 305, 309.) Ueberweg-Praechter of 1926, 465, repeats the same eclectic recipe but begins with the words: "The new Academy was embraced by... Cicero and Varro" (and speaks of Varro, the pupil of Antiochus, whom he represents in Cicero's Academici , and of Posidonius, as a "new Academic"!). W.S. Teuffel, Gesch. d. röm. Lit ., 6th ed. by W. Kroll and E Skutsch (Leipzig, 1916), 401: Cicero is an eclectic, and even the Academic Skepticism, "which he often embraced," is something he had learned in its milder form from Philo, not to mention Antiochus's influence. W. Windelband, Gesch. d. abenell. Philos. im Altertum , 4th ed. (Munich, 1923), 256-57: Cicero counted himself as an Academic Skeptic but was influenced mainly by Philo. R. Philippson, RE 7A₁ (M. Tullius Cicero, philosophische Schrifien ), col. 1181: "One thing remains firm, that from his early writings onward he always embraced the Skepticism of the new Academy"; cf. also col. 1175. K Büchner, Cicero (Heidelberg, 1964), 41: "Cicero maintained allegiance to Philo and the Skeptical Academy throughout his entire life, even when he seemed to incline to other directions. The evidence for this is the... Academica" (which, presumably, were written by Cicero "throughout his entire life"!). E.J. Kenney and W.V. Clausen, eds., The Cambridge History of Classical Literature , vol. 2, Latin Literature (Cambridge, England, 1982), chap. 11, "Cicero," by L.P. Wilkinson, 230: "Philo of Larissa, head of the 'New' Academy, visited[!] Rome and it made a deep impression on him.... So when Cicero, later, visited Athens to study he chose to join the Academy[!]." In a footnote, we are told that the Academy, "now under Antiochus of Ascalon,... had become eclectic... but Cicero remains true to Philo's undogmatic spirit of discussion." I find it invidious but necessary to remark that Antiochus had been available since 1978. A.A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy (London, 1974), 230, describes Cicero as "professing to be an adherent of the moderate skepticism of Philo of Larissa"; but his section (229-31) deals exclusively with Cicero's later philosophical writings. Not so Walter Burkert, in his classic article "Cicero als Platoniker und Skeptiker," Gymnasium 72 (1965), 175-200, esp. 181, where he maintains that Cicero opted decisively for Philo's brand of Academic Skepticism from his first encounter with philosophy, embracing it in De inv . and repeating this allegiance in almost all his philosophical writings. And on 182: "Yet he remained loyal to Philo, although he thereby stood alone in Rome." It may not be accidental that he quotes ND 1.6 as desertae disciplinae et iam pridem relictae patrocinium esse susceptum , omitting not only a nobis , but also the awkward necopinatum . See also n. 20 below. (The quotations from works in German have been translated into English by A.A. Long.)

loyalty to Philo and Skepticism is taken for granted. The reason is not far to seek.^[19] As a contemporary scholar who is well aware of the importance of affiliations reminds us, we find declarations of allegiance to the Skeptical Academy both in Cicero's earliest theoretical work, De inventione , written about 81 B.C. , and in his last work, De officiis (2.7-8), written in the last few months of his life.^[20]

The passage in De inventione is sharp and dear. One identifies in it immediately such Academic Skeptical terms as affirmatio (apophasis ), quaerentes dubitanter (skeptomenoi ), and assentior (sunkatatithemai ), and its last sentence is a strong promise of lifelong allegiance. But promises—in philosophy just as much as in religion or politics—are often made to be broken. In 81 or 80 B.C. , when he wrote De inventione ,^[21] Cicero was young, relatively unknown, and still under the strong and fresh influence of Philo of Larissa. A year or two later, in 79, he studied in Athens itself under Antiochus. His subsequent career, especially after his prosecution of Verres in 70 and his consulate in 63, turned him into

[19] One partial exception is M. Schanz and C. Hosius, Gesch. d. röm. Literatur (Munich, 1927), 528: "The New Academy, of which he was an adherent not without fluctuations and deviations...." But when we come to the evidence for this on the following page, we find only references to Cicero's allegiance to the Skeptical Academy from his late writings.

[20] Alfons Weische, Cicero und die neue Akademie (Münster, 1961; repr. 1975), 9 and n. 23. This is repeated by P.L. Schmidt, Die Abfassungszeit von Ciceros Schrift über die Cesetze (Rome, 1969), 175.

[21] W. Kroll in RE 13 (1939), cols. 1091-95 (M. Tullius Cicero, Rhetorische Schriften, De inventione ).

one of the leading orators and statesmen in Rome, a pater patriae despite his equestrian origins. Such a career called for resolute action and firm convictions—at least in ethics and in political theory—rather than doubt, an open mind, and constant deliberation and vacillation.

Having already anticipated a later stage, let us now jump to Cicero's later philosophical writings. Cicero never tires of speaking about himself, and the philosophical writings of his last years are just as full of self-revelations as any of his speeches and letters. Many of these passages are often quoted in modem research in support of the prevailing view that Cicero owed a lifelong allegiance to Academic Skepticism. Two crucial passages are rarely discussed or mentioned, and in such cases they are misunderstood. I therefore quote them in full:

Tum ille: "istuc quidem considerabo, nec vero sine te. sed de te ipso quid est" inquit "quod audio?"

"Quanam" inquam "de re?"

"Relictam ate veterem Academiam"^[22] inquit, "tractari autem novam."

"Quid ergo" inquam "Antiocho id magis licuit nostro familiari, remigrare in domum veterem e nova, quam nobis in novato e vetere? certe enim recentissima quaeque sunt correcta et emendata maxime..."
(Acad . 1.13)

"I will deal with your point," he rejoined, "although I shall require your assistance. But what is this news I hear about yourself?"

"What about, exactly?" I asked.

[22] Bentley's Academiam for iam of all the mss. is so obvious that one wonders how so many generations of editors, including Cratander, Paulus Manutius, Lambinus, Turnebus, and Davis (two editions), could go on reading veterem iam assuming an ellipsis, and with iam in the wrong place. Reid, at least, noticed that iam could not stand here and accepted Madvig's illam ; but I find his reason—"the 'Academia' is so permanently before the mind of the ancient reader"—rather feeble.

"That the Old Academy has been abandoned by you, and the New one is being dealt with."

"What then?" I said. "Is our friend Antiochus to have had more liberty to return from the new school to the old, than we are to have to move out of the old one into the new? Why, there is no question that the newest theories are always most correct and free from error..."
(trans. adapted from Rackham, Loeb Classical Library)

Multis etiam sensi mirabile videri earn nobis potissimum probatam esse philosophiam, quae lucem eriperet et quasi noctem quandam rebus offunderet, desertaeque disciplinae et iam pridem relictae patrocinium necopinatum a nobis esse susceptum.
(ND 1.6)

Many also, as I have noticed, are surprised at my choosing to espouse a philosophy that in their view robs the world of daylight and floods it with a darkness as of night; and they wonder at my coming forward out of the blue to take up the case of a derelict system and one that has long been given up.
(trans. adapted from Rackham, Loeb Classical Library)

I start with the second of these pieces of evidence, if only because I have found it quoted nowhere. The philosophy that takes away the daylight, covers all in darkness, and is now deserted and abandoned even in Greece itself (ND 1.11) is, of course, Academic Skepticism, or—to use Cicero's expression—that of the Academici (ND 1.1, 11).^[23] It is no new method (ratio ); it has endured since Socrates (ND 1.11). Yet Cicero has taken up its case (pa-

[23] Since he had by now accepted Philo's view that there had always been only one Academy, with a continuous skeptical tradition and, as a consequence of this, rejected Antiochus's claim to represent the doctrines of the early Academy; see Acad . 1.13, 46, and Antiochus , 102-6.

trocinium ... susceptum, ND 1.6; patrocinium suscepimus, ND 1.11), in his own words, "out of the blue" (necopinatum ).^[24]

We return to our first passage, Academica 1.13. Any unprejudiced reader would take it to mean just what it says. Varro is accusing Cicero of having recently deserted Antiochus's "Old Academy" for what he—and Antiochus—called the "New Academy." The parallel with Antiochus in Cicero's answer makes it quite dear: both Cicero and Antiochus before him had deserted one type of Academy and "migrated" to another. In the eighteenth century, when the floodgates of modem secondary literature had not yet been opened, and scholars could still read and reread their ancient texts with the proper attention, this was quite dear to Conyers Middleton, who wrote:

This it was that induced Cicero, in his advanced life and ripened judgement, to desert the Old Academy, and declare for the New, from a long experience of the variety of those sects, who called themselves the proprietors of truth, and the sole guides of life, and through a despair of finding any thing certain, he was glad, after all his pains, to take up with the probable.^[25]

Middleton quotes as his evidence our passage of Academica 1 as well as Tusculans 1.17 and Orator 237. Modern scholarship, in the person of James S. Reid, cannot ignore the first of these

[24] It would not do to quote the following sentence in 1.6: "As a matter of fact, however, we have not suddenly [subito ] taken up philosophy, nor have we devoted any small amount of time and energy to it in the early period of our life." This sentence, with its subito —and everything that follows down to the end of 1.9—is an answer, not to the question in our sentence, but to the sentence that preceded it; to the questions of those "who have wondered about this sudden [subito ] enthusiasm of ours for philosophy." It is only in 1.11 that Cicero answers the question posed in the passage I have quoted as evidence: why has he taken up the defense of the Skeptical Academy, of all things?

[25] Conyers Middleton, The Life of M. Tullius Cicero (new edition, revised, London, 1837; first edition, 1741), 712. The passage may also be a reflection on the unfortunate experiences of the author's academic life and theological controversies. On Middleton, see Leslie Stephen, "Middleton, Conyers," Dictionary of National Biography , vol. 37 (1894), 343-48.

passages. But Reid is obviously disturbed by the plain sense of that passage. When, in his great commentary, he reaches the word tractari ("to be dealt with"), he comments with relief: "tractari : it is important to notice that this implies a reference to some writings of Cicero, which can only be the 'Academica' itself (cf. Introd. p. 15). The illusion of the dialogue is not here carefully preserved."^[26] Let us turn, then, to page 15 of the Introduction:

It has been supposed by many scholars,^[27] on the strength of certain passages in the AcademicaPosteriora ,^[28] that Cicero had for a time abandoned the views he learned from Philo, and resumed them just before the Academica was written. In 13, Varro charges Cicero with deserting the Old Academy for the New, and Cicero seems to admit the charge. But. one of the phrases used by Varro (tractari autem novam ) points to a solution of the difficulty. Varro evidently means that Cicero, having in earlier works copied the writings of the "Old Academy" philosophers, is about to draw on the literary stores of the New Academy.^[29]

We have already seen that this is hardly the sense of our passage—or of the other piece of evidence, ND 1.6, where the word

[26] M. Tulli Ciceronis Academica (London, 1885; repr. Hildesheim, 1966), 106. Even on Reid's interpretation, the illusion of the dialogue could still be maintained. Cicero had already published his Hortensius which, we shall soon see, contained some clear allusions to his renewed skepticism. At the same time as the Academic books, he was also composing De finibus ; cf. Antiochus , 407-15, with references to Cicero's letters of the period and to modern literature.

[27] Reid was a far better Ciceronian than any of us can ever hope to be. But I have examined numerous earlier editions of Cicero's Academic books as well as older works on Cicero or on the history of ancient philosophy, and apart from Middleton and Wyttenbach (n. 67 below), I have found no scholar who took Cicero's words seriously.

[28] That is, what Plasberg has taught us to call Academicus Primus . Note that Reid does not mention ND 1.6 and 11. (Nor, for that matter, does Middleton.)

[29] As, for example, the doctrines of Antiochus himself, expounded by Cicero's Lucullus in his namesake dialogue and by Varro in ours; or the doctrines of Stoics, Epicureans, and Antiochus in Fin . and ND ; or Panaetius's in Off .

tractari is not used and the terminology of affiliation is quite dear. But what of Reid's "solution," his new interpretation of tractari (for which he adduces no evidence)?

In late medieval and Renaissance Latin, tractare does indeed mean "to treat in writing," and one could fill bookshelves with books called Tractatus de .. . But to the best of my knowledge, this is not Classical Latin,^[30] and certainly is not Ciceronian.^[31] For Cicero, tractare is simply "to deal with," and if writing is involved as a matter of fact, it is no part of the sense. Thus the orator, he says (Or . 118), "should be in possession of all the topics familiar to and treated by [tractatos ] philosophy," and when he delivers his speech he should be able to "deal with the subject-matter" (rem tractare, De or . 2.114, 116; cf. argumenta tractare, De or . 2.117). More frequent and specific is causam (or causas ) tractare (Cluent . 50), often coupled with agere (De or . 1.70; 3 Verr . 10) or with agitate (Cluent . 82; Planc . 4): i.e., take up a case and deal with it thoroughly as counsel, a sense reminiscent of our "taken up its case" (patrocinium ... susceptum ) of ND 1.6, 11. Another Ciceronian idiom, not peculiar to him,^[32] is personam tractare , "to act someone's part" (Arch . 3, Q . Rosc 20, Off . 3.106).

Take or leave either of these Ciceronian senses. Cicero is accused by Varro either of taking up as a lawyer the cause of the "New" Academy (his own patrocinium... susceptum ), or of representing in his own person, as an actor in the dialogues of his

[30] The only example given by Lewis and Short for tractatus in the sense of "treatise, tractate, tract"—Pliny NH 14.4.5 and 44—is subsumed by the Oxford Latin Dictionary under "the act or process of dealing with a subject or problem, treatment, discussion." OLD has no entry for the senses of written work, tractate, and the like.

[31] The tractatio literarum of Brut . 15 is no exception. Cicero is speaking of his own reading and study of Atticus's Liber annalis . A. E. Douglas in his commentary on Brutus (Oxford, 1966), 10, s.v. ipsa mihi , rightly comments: "The mere renewal of interest in literature benefited Cicero."

[32] OLD , tractare , 7b: "(of an actor) to render, perform (the part of a character)." Cf. Horace Ep . 1.18.14, and Gellius 2.23.13.

own composition, the view of that sect—as he does, indeed, in Fin . 5 and has most probably done in the lost Hortensius . And, whatever the sense of tractari in Acad . 1.13, the expression "the Old Academy has been abandoned by you" (relictam a te veterem Academiam ) in it is highly reminiscent of "a derelict system and one that has long been given up" (desertaeque disciplinae et ism pridem relictae ) of ND 1.6, accompanied, as it is, by "my coming forward out of the blue to take up the case" (patrocinium necopinstum a nobis susceptum ).^[33] Cicero is not a careless writer.

So much should be dear even from our two passages. It was dear to Rudolf Hirzel in 1883—two years before the appearance of Reid's edition—and his footnote 1 on pp. 488-89 of the third volume of his monumental Untersuchungen zu Ciceros philoso-phischen Schriften is a model of lucidity, brevity (in a book not distinguished for that quality), and good sense. Hirzel reads correctly our passage of Academica 1 (although he makes no reference to ND 1.6 and 11), and deduces from it that before his later volte-face (and probably ever since 79 B.C. and Antiochus in Athens), Cicero regarded himself, and was regarded by others, as a follower of Antiochus's "Old Academy." But the evidence he adduces for that period (Att . 5.10, Fam . 15.4, 6, Leg . 1.39) is only part of what is available. Since Cicero's espousal of the "Old Academy" in a period between De inventione of 81-80 B.C. and Academica I of 45 B.C. is my demonstrandum , I shall deal with his own evidence in some detail.

Our first piece of evidence comes from Pro Murena 63-64, of the year of Cicero's consulate, 63 B.C. Cicero is comparing his own milder brand of philosophy with the harsher approach of

[33] Joseph B. Mayor, M. Tulli Ciceronis De natura deorum , vol. 1 (Cambridge, England, 1880), 73 (s.v. desertae et relictae ), comments: "Des . refers to desertion by an adherent, such as Antiochus; rel . to general neglect." His comment is quoted with approval by A.S. Pease ad loc., M. Tulli Ciceronis De natura deorum liber primus (Cambridge, Mass., 1955). Our Acad . I passage would not bear out this interpretation, and desertarum relictarumque rerum of 1.11 would tend to confirm that we have here a mere hendiadys.

the Stoic Cato. (My footnotes to the passage will serve as comments on the sort of philosophy represented [tractata ?] here by Cicero.)

Those men of our school, I say, descending from Plato and Aristotle,^[34] being moderate and restrained people, say that with the wise man gratitude counts for something; that it is characteristic of the good man to feel pity;^[35] that there are distinct types of crimes, with different penalties attached to them;^[36] that there is a place for forgiveness with the consistent man;^[37] that the wise man himself often holds some opinion with respect to what he does not know;^[38] that he is sometimes angry;^[39] and is open to persuasion and mollification;^[40] that he sometimes alters what he has said, if it proves to be better so; that he on occasion departs from his opinion;^[41] that all his virtues are controlled by a kind of mean.^[42]

Except for one short sentence, everything in this passage represents Antiochus's "Old Academy."

[34] A basic tenet of Antiochus's "Old Academy," that the early Academy and the Peripatetics were one and the same school: Acad . 1.17-18.

[35] Cf. Luc . 135, Tusc . 4.46.

[36] Cf. Luc . 133: "The Stoics hold that all sins are equal; but with this Antiochus most violently disagrees."

[37] Cf. Luc . 135, Tusc . 4.46.

[38] This (Luc . 59) is one version of Carneades' position. Arcesilaus agreed with Zeno in taking the opposite view (Luc . 66-67), and Antiochus (in the person of Lucullus) returned to this position, because it was Zeno's, not because of Arcesilaus. This, then, is the only place in our passage where the view of a Skeptical Academic is admitted and accepted.

[39] One of the "motions of the soul" of Luc . 135; but see mainly Tusc . 4.43.

[40] Cf. Luc . 135, Tusc . 4.46.

[41] A regular feature of the dialectic of Plato's dialogues—especially what we call the later dialogues—which anyone who counted himself a follower of Plato would accept. After all, Antiochus himself (Acad . 1.30-43) accepted the criticism of Aristotle and his contemporaries of Plato's theory of Forms, as well as Zeno's epistemology, as a "correction of the Old Academy."

[42] The famous Aristotelian doctrine of the "ethical virtues" as intermediaries between two extremes, accepted by Antiochus's "Old Academy": Luc . 135, Tusc . 3.22ff.

Our next piece of evidence comes from the lost De consulatu suo of 60 B.C. Cicero himself (Div . 1.17-22) has preserved for us, from the second book, a long speech addressed to himself by the Muse Urania. These are the relevant lines:^[43]

Haec adeo penitus cura videre sagaci 
otia qui studiis laeti tenuere decoris 
inque Academia umbrifera nitidoque Lyceo 
funderunt clams fecundi pectoris artis. 
e quibus ereptum primo iam a flore iuventae 
te patria in media virtutum mole locavit. 

Such were the truths they beheld who, painfully
     searching for wisdom, 
gladly devoted their leisure to study of all that was
     noble, 
who, in Academy's shade and Lyceum's dazzling
     effulgence 
uttered the brilliant reflections of minds abounding
     in culture, 
torn from these studies, in youth's early dawn, your
     country recalled you, 
giving you place in the thick of the struggle for
     public preferment. 
                (trans. Falconer, Loeb Classical Library)

Cicero, of course, never studied in the umbriferous Academy, which was deserted during his stay in Athens (Fin . 5.1-2) and in which we have no evidence that Antiochus ever taught.^[44] Nor could he have studied in the nitid Lyceum, since Aristotle's school had, by that time, almost certainly ceased to exist.^[45] The references are metaphorical and poetical. The combination of Academy and Lyceum signifies Cicero's philosophical ancestry at the time he was called back in a hurry by his country; it is that

[43] W. Morel, Fragmenta poetarum Latinorum (Leipzig, 1927), 70 (Cicero fr. 11 [3], lines 69-76).

[44] Antiochus , 111, 242.

[45] J.P. Lynch, Aristotle's School (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972), 201-7.

combination of early Academy and early Peripatos which was the hallmark of Antiochus's school.

Ten years after the De consolatu , Cicero could still declare himself a votary of the Ancient Philosophy. I refer to the peroration of his letter to Cato (Fam . 15.4, 6), written in December of 51 or January of 50 from his proconsulate in Tarsus:

Haec igitur, quae mihi tecum communis est, societas studiorum atque artium nostrarum, quibus a pueritia dediti et devincti soli prope modum nos philosophiam veram illam et antiquam, quae quibusdam oti esse ac desidiae videtur, in forum atque in ipsam aciem paene deduximus, tecum agit de mea laude.

This community of studies and disciplines which you and I share, to which being practically alone devoted and bound since childhood, we have drawn that true and ancient philosophy, thought by some to be a matter for leisure and relaxation, into the public sphere and practically into the line of battle—this summons you to embark on my praise.

"Since childhood" reminds us of "in youth's early dawn" from our last passage—that is, Cicero's studies in Athens under Antiochus. The expression "that true and ancient philosophy" should leave no doubt. Not only is "ancient" an obvious allusion to Antiochus's "Old Academy," harking back to "the philosophy of the ancients" (antiquorum ratio, Acad . 1.43), but calling such a philosophy "true" could not have been the act of a Skeptic.

We come now to De legibus 1.39:

Perturbatricem autem harum omnium rerum Academiam, hanc ab Arcesila et Carneade recentem, exoremus ut sileat; nam si invaserit in haec, quae satis scite nobis instructa et composita videntur, nimias edet ruinas; quam quidem ego placare cupio, summovere non audeo.

As for that disrupter of all these matters, this recent Academy of Arcesilaus and Carneades, let us plead for its silence. For if it makes an assault upon those things which we find elegantly enough set out and arranged, it will cause too much destruction.

For my part, I would seek to placate it, since I dare not try to dispose of it.

Hirzel, in the footnote I have referred to, and Pohlenz^[46] took it for granted (with reservations on Hirzel's part, on which more later) that at the time of writing Cicero was still a follower of Antiochus. Meanwhile, a controversy has raged about the date of composition of De legibus , some scholars putting it as late as 44-43 B.C. This controversy has been largely settled now by P. L. Schmidt's thorough and convincing treatment of most of the issues involved, returning the work to its traditional milieu, the late 50s B.C.^[47] But when it comes to our passage, Schmidt's discussion is rather disappointing.^[48] He is quite aware of the view of Hirzel^[49] and Pohlenz.^[50] Yet he rehearses the old tale of Cicero's lifelong allegiance to Skepticism, quoting again our two old friends, Inv . 2.10 and Off . 2.7ff., in support of this view.^[51] How does it happen, then, that we have in our passage such a severe criticism of the Skeptical Academy? "If we just ignore Inv . 2.10, Cicero was not faced by any necessity from themes in the works of the 50s to represent himself as a New Academic, and still less so by the tenor of our work."^[52]

This will not do. It is not just that Cicero does not represent himself as a "New" Academic; he criticizes the "New" Academy

[46] Max Pohlenz, Die Stoa (Göttingen, 1949), vol. 2, 126, n. on vol. 1, 243f.

[47] Schmidt's book is cited in n. 20 above. See also Elizabeth Rawson, "The Interpretation of Cicero's De legibus ," ANRW 1 (1973), 334-56, and R.G. Tanner, "Cicero on Conscience and Morality," in J. R. C. Martyn, ed., Cicero and Virgil: Studies in Honour of Harold Hunt (Amsterdam, 1972), 87-112, esp. 104-6.

[48] "Skepsis und Dogma" (n. 20 above), 174-79.

[49] Although he refers only to the brief and unimportant footnote in Hirzel's Untersuchungen , vol. 3, 471 n. 2, and not to the more fundamental one on 488-89.

[50] Pohlenz is cited in n. 46 above.

[51] Schmidt (n. 20 above), 175.

[52] Ibid., 177 (translated from the original German by A.A. Long).

as severely as only an outsider can do (although also as respectfully as only an old alumnus would). Even the words of Rep 3.9, "make your reply to Carneades, who is in the habit of casting ridicule on the best causes by his talent for misrepresentation," are not quite as harsh; and at least they are not spoken by Cicero in his own person. No, our passage of De legibus —just like the refutation of Carneades' speech "against justice" which follows on Philus's "advocacy of immorality" (improbitatis patrocinium, Rep . 3.8)—could hardly have come from Cicero's last years when, as a born-again Skeptic, he was an admirer of Carneades. It belongs to the period when he was still an avowed follower of Antiochus.^[53]

When did Cicero change his philosophical affiliations and take up again the case of the Skeptical Academy? For a long time I believed that the moment of truth came in July of 51 B.C. when, on his way to his Asian proconsulate, he stayed for a while with Aristus, Antiochus's brother and successor, in Athens and may have become finally disillusioned with the "Old Academy" and its doctrines. The text of the relevant passage, Att . 5.10.5, is hopelessly corrupt. Its first sentence, "Athens powerfully pleased me," etc. (valde me Athenae delectarunt . . .), is fairly secure. But the crucial sentence is the next one. Tyrrell and Purser read: "sed multum†ea†philosophia sursum deorsum, si quidem est in Aristo,

[53] In his later philosophical writings, Cicero rejects the appellation "New Academy," invented by Antiochus, and is only prepared to use it as a gesture of courtesy to Varro (Acad . 1.13, 46). He uses this terminology without reservations only in De or . 3.68 ("more recent") and in Leg . 1.39. De oratore is no later than November 55 B.C. (Att . 4.13.2), that is, during Cicero's Antiochian period, a point I should have noticed in Antiochus , 104 and n. 27. His use of this odd Antiochian term in the other passage strengthens the general assumption that De legibus belongs to the same chronological milieu—and especially the choice of "more recent" rather than "new" in both passages.

apud quem eram." They take it that Cicero's strictures on the topsy-turvy state of Athenian philosophy (the mss. agree on this part of the text) are meant to include, if not to single out, Aristus, of whom Plutarch (Brut . 2) is also critical.^[54] Shackleton Bailey, however, emends: "sed mu<tata mul>ta. philosophia sursum deorsum. si quid est, est in Aristo, apud quem cram." He translates: "But many things have changed, and philosophy is all at sixes and sevens, anything of value being represented by Aristus." His comment is: "I do not believe that Cicero wrote this of his hospes et familiaris [host and friend] (Brut . 332), particularly as slighting criticism of a friend of Brutus ... might have jarred upon his correspondent. Agroikia [boorishness] was not among his failings."^[55]

This argument would not make me lose much sleep. Cicero's correspondent is not Brutus but Atticus, on whose perfect discretion he can rely; and in other letters to Atticus, he says much more damaging things about Brutus himself and about many another "host and friend." But even if he were disappointed with Aristus, this does not imply giving up his advocacy of Antiochus's school. After all, his letter to Cato from Tarsus which we have just noted, Fam . 15.4.6, was written later, and in it he still adheres to "that true and ancient philosophy." As to his disputation with Aristus recorded in Tusc . 5.22—whether it took place on the same occasion or on his way back from Asia^[56] —it is the

[54] R. Y. Tyrrell and L. C. Purser, The Correspondence of M. Tullius Cicero , vol. 3 (Dublin, 1914), 39-43, with a number of alternative suggestions for emending the more problematic parts. (In Antiochus , 112, I still took a position similar to theirs.) Watt's OCT reads siquidem aestimes Aristo , which makes little difference to the sense.

[55] Cicero's Letters to Atticus , vol. 3 (Cambridge, England, 1968), 26 (text), 27 (translation), 205 (comments).

[56] Shackleton Bailey (n. 55 above) claims that although Cicero calls himself imperator in Tusc . 5.22, and the title was only conferred on him in Cilicia, it is clear from Att . 6.9 that on his way back (October 50), Cicero lodged in the "citadel" (arx ) of Athens, not with Aristus. See also his remarks on 6.9 on page 277. But Cicero reached Piraeus on 14 October 50 (Att . 6.9.1, 7.1.1). He was at Brundisium only on 25 November or later (7.21.1). Even assuming a week or ten days for the journey, he still had a good month in Athens, during which he could stay at the citadel on his arrival as imperator, but also spend some time with Aristus, his "host and friend."

same old argument he had held "frequently with Antiochus," whose echoes we hear in his discussion with Piso in Fin . 5.79ff., and on which, as he tells us in Luc . 134, he had never been able to make up his mind: the choice between the logical consistency of the Stoics and the realism of the Peripatetic and Antiochian "three kinds of goods." No new matter here.

More to the point is the language of our first two pieces of evidence, Acad 1.13 and ND 1.6, 11. "But what is this news I hear about yourself" and "out of the blue" both sound like recent news. The earliest evidence for Cicero's renewed allegiance to Academic Skepticism comes at the end of his Orator (237, on which more later). The first dear evidence in a properly philosophical work can be found in two fragments of his Hortensius , from February of 45 B.C. The first fragment (Augustine C. Acad . 3.14-31) reads: "If therefore there is nothing certain, and it is not for the wise man to hold an opinion, the wise man will never approve anything." A. Grilli^[57] ascribes this sentence to Hortensius of the dialogue and takes the passage of Augustine, C. Acad . 1.3.7—formerly printed by Plasberg as a fragment of Cicero's Academicus 2^[58] —to be Cicero's answer to Hortensius.^[59] His arguments seem to me utterly convincing. Since the second fragment is readily available in Plasberg's edition of the Academic books of Cicero, I shall not quote it here. The reader can see for

[57] M. Tulli Ciceronis Hortensius (Milan, 1962), fr. 51, p. 31.

[58] M. Tullius Cicero, Academicorum reliquiae cum Lucullo (Leipzig, 1922), p. 21 lines 10-14. In his Teubner editio major of Paradoxa Stoicorum, Academicorum reliquiae cure Lucullo (Leipzig, 1908), 59 ap. ad 5, Plasberg comments that although he formerly regarded it as a fragment of Hortensius , he had been convinced by Hirzel's arguments to transfer it to the Academic books.

[59] Grilli (n. 57 above), fr. 107, p. 50, and commentary, pp. 145-50.

himself that the position taken in it is dearly that of the Skeptical Academy—and, since Augustine introduces it with the words "in our Cicero's opinion" (placuit Ciceroni nostro ), it is by now also Cicero's.

Cicero, then, changed his affiliations twice: once, from a youthful enthusiasm for Philo of Larissa and Academic Skepticism to Antiochus's "Old Academy"—albeit with reservations and with a lingering respect for the Skeptical tradition^[60] —and then, some time in 45 B.C. , back to the Skepticism of Carneades and Philo. Cicero's own evidence seems so overwhelming that one wonders what it is that made so many scholars ignore it, or feel uncomfortable when faced with it and attempt to find an unsatisfactory solution to an imaginary difficulty.

The combination of Cicero's early statement in Inv . 2.10 with his repeated statements of allegiance to Skepticism in his later philosophical corpus is one reason for this. It has caused even some of our contemporary experts such as Weische and Schmidt, both fully aware of the significance of philosophical affiliations, to ignore the rest of the evidence or to try to get around it.^[61] But one other possible cause for the persistent adherence of so much of modern scholarship to this picture of the ever-faithful Cicero may be the "evidence" of Plutarch in his Life of Cicero 4 (862C-D):

[60] Hirzel, in his footnote 1 referred to above, has noted that the last sentence of Leg . 1.39 shows "a certain wavering in him." I would rather compare it to De or . 3.67-68, where a favorable passage concerning the "more recent Academy" is included in a doxography which is Antiochian in its essentials; or with the words of Lactantius Epit . 50.8 (Cic. Rep . 3.11) on Carneades' speech against Plato's and Aristotle's (i.e., the "Old Academics'," in Antiochian terms) idea of justice, which are probably based on some statement of Cicero's: "not because he [sc . Carneades] thought that justice should be maligned, but to show that its defenders had nothing certain or firm to say about it." For the same sentiment, see also ND 3.44. That is, even during his Antiochian period, Cicero did not go so far as a wholesale repudiation of the Skeptical Academy.

[61] Cf. nn. 20 and 47-52 above.

On coming to Athens he attended the lectures of Antiochus of Ascalon and was charmed by his fluency and grace of diction, while not approving of [ouk epainon ] his innovations in doctrine. For Antiochus had already fallen away from what was called the New Academy, and abandoned the sect [stasis ] of Carneades, either swayed by clarity [enargeia ] and sensations or, as some say, by a feeling of ambitious opposition to the disciples of Clitomachus and Philo to change his views and cultivate in most cases the Stoic viewpoint. But Cicero loved [egapa ] those things [sc . the stance of Carneades] and devoted himself the rather to them, intending in case he was altogether driven out of a public career, to change his way of life away from the Forum and the state, and live quietly in the company of philosophy.
(trans. adapted from Perrin, Loeb Classical Library)

Plutarch has always been one of the most popular authors both with Classical scholars and with the general public, read in the original or in one of the numerous translations produced ever since the Renaissance. But what is the value of his "evidence"?

No independent court or jury would accept his testimony as against the dear evidence of the numerous passages of Cicero himself. But other points in his passage show dearly that it is far from being historical. Plutarch claims that Cicero continued his philosophical studies ever since his youth, with the express purpose of retiring into a life of philosophy if he were to be removed from politics. Not only does Cicero, ND 1.7-8, see things differently even in retrospect—for he says there that because he had been ejected from public life, he was now applying himself to philosophy. But in Leg . 1.9ff., having been asked by Atticus (5ff.) to apply himself to writing history, he replies that if he has the time on his retirement from the Republic, he intends to employ it, like his teacher Mucius Scaevola, in giving free legal advice to people. This, by the way, is another proof that Cicero could not have written De legibus in the last years of his life, when forced retirement from politics was no longer a remote prospect and when he was dedicating his time to philosophical

works. But it also shows that as late as 50 B.C. , Cicero had no plan of that retirement into a philosophical otium ; how much less so, then, in 79 B.C. ?

Plutarch, of course, is no more reliable than his sources; and when it comes to Roman affairs, his understanding of the information and the background of his sources is likely to be deficient, especially if he relies on Latin sources and his own imperfect command of Latin.^[62] It has been the prevailing view, most probably ever since A.H.L. Heeren's De Fontibus et auctoritate Vitarum parallelarum Plutarchi of 1820, confirmed on this point by Hermann Peter's Die Quellen Plutarchs in den Biographien der Römer of 1865, that Plutarch's main source for his Life of Cicero was the Greek biography written by M. Tullius Tiro.^[63] But it was argued as long ago as 1902, by Alfred Gudeman in a little-known work called Tile Sources of Plutarch's Lift of Cicero ,^[64] that Plutarch's source or sources could not have been Tiro or any other contemporary or near-contemporary like Sallust or Livy (for no one would dream of accusing Plutarch of having read the various writings of Cicero in the original for himself—as Gudeman need only mention),^[65] but a post-Augustan source, and in Latin . Gudeman opts for Suetonius's lost Life of Cicero , which is not unlikely. What concerns us here is that the source is most prob-

[62] For a specimen of Plutarch's misunderstanding of Latin sources, with examples of other mistranslations from Latin and a discussion of the modern literature on this issue, see Antiochus , Excursus 1, "Plutarch, Lucullus 42.3- 4," 380-90.

[63] In Antiochus , 15 n. 6 and subsequently, I also accepted this view without referring to later discussions.

[64] Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Philosophy and Literature, vol. 3, no. 2.

[65] In fact, R. Flacelière and É. Chambry, the editors of the Budé text of Plutarch's Life of Cicero , do claim that it is "incontestable" that Plutarch consulted various writings of Cicero directly; see Antiochus , 385 and n. 22. With Plutarch's knowledge of Latin being what he tells us it was in Demosthenes 2.3, I still find such a hypothesis highly improbable.

ably Latin and late, and thus liable to confuse issues and chronology.

An attempt to translate Plutarch's passage back into Latin would repay the effort. Many of his expressions have exact, or almost exact, parallels in Cicero's extant writings.^[66] The presumed later Latin source dearly drew on passages in Cicero's writings. I shall take as one example Plutarch's words "But Cicero loved [egapa ] those things." If this is meant to refer to the views of Clitomachus and Philo—or even to the general view of the Skeptical Academy—this is hardly dear or very good Greek. But a Ciceronian parallel, Luc . 2.9, could illustrate what may be lurking behind it: "but somehow or other most men prefer to go wrong, and to defend tooth and nail the system for which they have come to feel an affection [adamaverunt ]."^[67] Another example: Plutarch's "his innovations in doctrine [dogmata ]" would make no sense, as it stands, in a Ciceronian text. Antiochus, after all, could introduce no innovations into the dogmata

of the Skeptical Academy, since it had—and Cicero is one of our main sources for this—no dogmata . But the source might have misunderstood Cicero's own statement (Luc . 132), "he was called an Academic, but was in fact, if he had made a very few changes, the purest Stoic," to mean that Antiochus did, indeed, introduce some changes into the doctrines of the Academy. Here it is possible that the misapprehension arose already in Plutarch's source. In the case of "while not approving" (ouk epainon ) the error is dearly Plutarch's own.

The "synchronization" of events that occurred (more or less) in various periods of Cicero's life may have been already the work of Plutarch's source, or it may have been done by Plutarch himself.^[68] Whoever did this telescoping may already have anticipated the error of modem scholarship and combined Cicero's statement in De inventione with his frequent references to his Skeptical affiliations in his later writings. Be that as it may, Plutarch's testimony is in no way a piece of reliable evidence, to be preferred to Cicero's own genuine and datable statements. It is, in the best case, the result of a misunderstanding of earlier sources by Plutarch or his source or both, and in the worst case, an ancient piece of speculation which is no better than any modem speculation when faced with Cicero's own words. Even if it were a smoother and a more consistent piece of narrative, it could hardly outweigh our firsthand evidence.