As the latest addition to a series of Ciceronian translations, framed as ‘how to’ guides to a topic, F. gives us How to Think about God. This edition offers the reader a sizeable chunk of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods (2.1–44) and the Dream of Scipio, in a free-flowing and down-to-earth translation. Indeed, the translation, to which I will return, is the undisputed strength of this short volume.
The book's subtitle might lead you to expect a variety of Roman theological views on display, but instead F. gives us one distinctive view of God in this volume. His two texts are framed as insights into an optimistic period in Cicero's life and thought, during which ‘he seems to have believed hopefully in the God of the Stoics’ (p. xiv). F. presents Cicero's Stoicism to a modern audience ‘not so much for imitation in one's own life’ (puzzling in light of the emphasis on this book as a ‘guide’) as to instil appreciation of a ‘profound and influential view of the divine’ (p. xiv).
F.'s portrait of Roman religion, which prefaces the translations, is traditional to the point of old-fashioned, presenting Roman religion as the unsophisticated cousin of Greek religion, unable to satisfy real intellectuals: hence Cicero's attraction to Greek philosophy, especially Stoicism. Despite my disagreements with this background explanation for Cicero's theology, I do think that F. succeeds in his goal of presenting Cicero's Stoicism as a radical and profound view of the divine. In this volume he points us to two breathtakingly bold ways of thinking about God: first the idea that ‘the universe is God’ (p. 49) and second that virtuous humans can be gods: ‘know therefore that you are a god’ (p. 133). F.'s no-nonsense translations perfectly capture the theological boldness of Cicero's text.
Indeed, the translation is worthy of praise. It is smooth and colloquial, allowing easy access to rather difficult and technical Latin texts. To give one example: ne egere quidem videtur oratione prima pars (2.4) is rendered as ‘it seems to me that the first point – that the gods exist – scarcely needs discussing’ (p. 9). F. produces an easy-to-read line, recapping the substance of the ‘first point’ to keep the reader on board, which Cicero had not bothered to do. F. also engages with the musicality of Cicero's text: for example, the significant alliteration in consentiens conspirans continuata cognatio (2.19) is recreated in the phrase ‘consider also the harmony, connection, and continuity of all things’ (p. 43). Finally, F. has a talent for pulling out the imagery latent in Cicero's text: thus, discussion of seeds and conception in 2.26 becomes a more overt image in ‘the seeds the earth holds within her womb’ (p. 57). Such a pictorial approach breathes new life into two Latin texts that deserve more readers.
