Two large-scale treatises, the voluminous De oratore and the now tattered but once majestic De re publica, represent Cicero's most ambitious intellectual ventures of the 50s bce and by all accounts his most original contributions to Roman literature. Yet these important works are not easy to read today, with their elaborate architecture, their dense cultural references, their bold and yet subtle argumentation and, of course, the fragmentary preservation of the De re publica, reconstruction of which requires skills that few people now possess. We can be glad, then, to have the guidance of Z.'s first-rate study. With Z.'s inimitable combination of authority and insight, The Lost Republic should be owned and consulted frequently by everyone who has an interest in Cicero and his times.
Building on many years of research, Z. brings to bear a dazzling range of methodologies: from historical reconstruction, analysis of argument and comparison with relevant points in Rome's political and literary culture, to the palaeography and source criticism required for reconstructing De re publica from its fragments, to close reading of nuance, allusivity and figurative language. Inevitably, some will disagree with Z. on points of detail; thus does scholarship advance. On his central claims, though, he is utterly convincing: that these two treatises are closely related – more closely than De re publica is to De legibus, which may well have been written after the civil war of the early 40s – and that they work as a pair to lay out ‘the intellectual and philosophical underpinnings of Roman public life’ (p. 10); further, that both works are written in a self-consciously literary mode, their very literariness being central to their interpretation (pp. 10, 11). If what we want is to read De re publica with understanding and appreciation, we must read it in tandem with De oratore, and we must realise that the two works together constitute Cicero's intellectual manifesto, the project that was to consolidate his influence at Rome not only in the immediate circumstances of the triumvirs’ ascendancy but for future generations as well.
Readers will appreciate Z.'s thoroughness in providing an overview of the content of the two treatises. The book is arranged to proceed systematically through Cicero's texts, making it easy to use as a companion while rereading the dialogues. The exercise is instructive at every turn. A case in point is the treatment of Marcus Antonius, the second principal speaker of De oratore. Antonius is often interpreted as a mere foil to an all-wise Licinius Crassus, who states the views of Cicero. An argument is made here, though, that Antonius, with his healthy scepticism and his distinctive view of what a perfectus orator must be, represents Cicero's perspective just as much as Crassus does (p. 58). Following the schema laid out by W. Görler (Untersuchungen zu Ciceros Philosophie [1974], pp. 27–42), one can read Antonius’ expert practical orator as the attainable level of achievement, ‘no less cogent and far more realistic’ than Crassus’ ideal orator and far preferable to the technical rhetorician (pp. 107–8).
In reading De re publica, we are reminded early and often that the portions of the work that survive via the palimpsest are by no means a representative sampling. The broad summaries in Book 1 that have received the lion's share of scholarly attention were not intended by Cicero to be definitive; they serve, rather, as initial formulations to be revised as the dialogue advances, in what Z. sweetly terms the ‘technique of dissatisfaction’ (p. 195). We learn, too, that while Augustine is our best source for some portions of De re publica, he sometimes mischaracterises Cicero's intent. Just as Augustine shapes his citations of Cicero's views on the theatre to suit his own rhetorical aims (p. 187), so, also, he is not to be trusted when he asserts that for Cicero Rome was no longer a res publica at the time of writing (pp. 285–6). Cicero did not believe the Republic was lost; he did believe that Rome was in serious trouble and needed the intervention of genuine public servants to put it to rights.
An important strand for Z. as for Cicero is the status at Rome of Greek theory. Far from considering Rome's intellectual culture to be subordinate or merely derivative, Cicero is adamant that Roman rhetorical theorists, political theorists and philosophers are fully capable of reading the achievements of Graecia capta critically and deploying them strategically. The point is made explicitly and repeatedly in De oratore; in De re publica it is usually left implicit – because it can be, since the sequel can assume knowledge of what has come before. But De re publica is nonetheless constantly engaged with the views of Plato and even more with the Hellenistic philosophical schools.
Concerning those Hellenistic schools, I cannot help but register a disagreement with the contention that the preface to Book 1 polemicises specifically against Epicureanism (pp. 173–4). Like some interpreters before him, Z. takes iucundissime in 1.1 as a reference to Epicurean hedonism and draws a parallel between the exceptio of 1.10 and the Epicurean nisi si quid intervenerit in Sen. Ot. 3.2. But the arguments against public service that Cicero discusses are not otherwise attested as Epicurean arguments. We know that many Academics and Peripatetics favoured the quiet life of study, the θεωρία of Nic. Eth. 10.7, and were indeed criticised for serving their own pleasure by that choice (see Luc. 127, Off. 1.28; Plut. St. Rep. 1033d). We also know that Cicero had studied the arguments of Theophrastus and Dicaearchus on this point (Att. 2.16.3, Fin. 5.11; S. McConnell, ‘Cicero and Dicaearchus’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 42 [2012]). A more inclusive consideration of the βίος θεωρητικός tradition sees that Cicero's target in DRP 1.1–11 is not the Epicurean λάθε βιώσας. That would be all too easy. Rather, it is the inclination of philosophers of every stripe to retreat into intellectual activity at the expense of civic engagement – an inclination that had sometimes been Cicero's own, but which did not represent his considered opinion of how a person of conscience should behave.
Never shy of thin ice, Z. occasionally carries a point beyond what the evidence seems to me to bear. The case for Lucretius being an important influence on the De re publica rests primarily on the fact that both DRP and De rerum natura refer to the dream of Ennius as well as that both works are in six books paired 1–2, 3–4, 5–6. These are interesting points, but not ones that rise to the level of ‘almost certainly’ (p. 176) or ‘unquestionably’ (p. 307). I was dissatisfied, too, with the claim that the debate on justice in DRP 3 is presented as between two speakers who would each prefer to make the opposite case, namely ‘Philus the Stoic’ and ‘Laelius the pragmatic skeptic’ (p. 268). Of course, Philus favours justice, and it is perhaps not wrong to read his remark about the mundus at 1.19 as indicative of a Stoic inclination, though we have no other evidence on that score (p. 200). But Laelius is a different matter. His objection at 1.19 was to astronomy, not to justice, and his tendency to ask questions does not make him anything like a sceptic in the philosophical sense; in fact, he is the one who has Stoic credentials (e.g. Fin. 2.24). Finally, while the treatment of the Somnium Scipionis is illuminating in many ways, it becomes rather strange when it comes to the way the dream was introduced. Z. presses the reports of Favonius and Macrobius to yield a level of metatheatricality that strains credulity: apparently, Scipio himself must have said not only (with Favonius) that speculations about the soul's immortality ‘are not the fictions of dreaming philosophers’ but also (with Macrobius) that he chooses to avoid the foolish criticism directed against Plato's myth of Er by having himself awakened rather than brought back to life. Z. sidesteps this last awkward implication of his analysis on pp. 301–2, but it is there. I should prefer to believe that Macrobius, at least, editorialises at this point.
