Cicero stands with Varro, Seneca and Augustine as Rome's most prolific writers of philosophy. The majority of his works were composed over a three-year period. Shut out of politics by Caesar's dictatorships, Cicero turned his attention to writing philosophy, and from 46–44 b.c. incredibly produced over a dozen philosophical works. Epistemology; the emotions; religion; fate; ethical theory; a variety of topics in practical ethics; rhetoric; and even an apology for the study of philosophy itself – these writings covered a wide range of philosophical topics. Though differing widely in subject matter, Cicero's philosophical works composed under Caesar constitute a consistent and clearly articulated political project. Or so B. argues in her ambitious book, which explores the ‘cultural, social, and political positioning of the philosophica’ (p. 4).
From his exhortation to philosophy in the Hortensius through to his last philosophical work, De officiis, Cicero consistently attempts to put Greek philosophy to work in order to stabilise the increasingly unstable traditional ideology of elite Romans; and by doing so, he hopes to restore republican government at Rome. However, in order to carry out his project, he must first sell philosophy to elite Romans, who were highly suspicious of this Greek import. According to B., it is above all in the prefaces to his philosophical writings that Cicero carries out this challenging task. Thus, the heart of B.'s book consists of a series of careful readings of the prefaces to the philosophica.
B.'s book charts a fresh approach to reading Cicero's philosophical dialogues, for scholars have typically paid little attention to the prefaces. The primary reason for this scholarly neglect arises from a slip-up to which Cicero confesses in a letter to his friend Atticus. While rereading his Academica, Cicero realises that he had mistakenly used a selection from his volume of ready-made prefaces twice, once in the work he is currently reading and a second time in a book he had earlier sent to Atticus (Cic. Att. 16.6.4). This anecdote is usually taken to indicate that the prefaces were virtually interchangeable and, consequently, contribute little to the overall literary and philosophical design of any given work. However, as B. astutely observes, the existence of an independent collection of thematically linked and somewhat interchangeable prefaces is a boon to the interpreter of the philosophica as a whole, for it provides evidence of a set of concerns common to the dialogues composed both under Caesar and after his death.
It is unclear whether B. wishes to go so far as to argue that the prefaces are carefully integrated into the rest of the works of which they are part: at times she appears to endorse such a view (see e.g. p. 148), although she offers little argument in its support. What B. does argue, both extensively and convincingly, is that the prefaces are carefully crafted and rhetorically nuanced pieces of writing. And they had better be, if they were going to have any chance at serving their purposes. B. explains why in her first two chapters, which focus on attempts outside Cicero's philosophical dialogues to justify intellectual endeavours in the face of the criticism that these undertakings constitute the abdication of one's duties as an elite Roman citizen. The first chapter explores Sallust's exploitation of a dominant paradigm (in this case, the importance of memory for elite Romans) to justify his writing of history; the second chapter turns to Cicero's letters to show how he increasingly came to identify intellectual activity with more traditional forms of public service. Together these chapters suggest why the project undertaken by Cicero in the prefaces to his philosophical works is highly ‘daunting’ (p. 95). Unlike Sallust, Cicero, who still identified strongly with his membership among the elite, must take special care to avoid offending or alienating his readers. At the same time, Cicero does not enjoy the luxury of adapting his presentation of philosophy to individual readers as he did in his letters, but now must address the possible objections of multiple readers representing different degrees of hostility towards his project.
Chapters 3–5 turn to the prefaces of Cicero's philosophica and examine the strategies he employs to win his audience to philosophy. Chapter 3 focusses on Cicero's translation of philosophical concepts from the Greek language and culture into the Latin language and Roman culture. Drawing on the prefaces to the first books of De natura deorum, the Tusculans and De finibus, B. argues that for Cicero both his own decision to translate Greek into Latin and his readers' decision to read philosophy in Latin (as opposed to Greek) were patriotic acts. Chapter 4, which deals with the preface to Paradoxa Stoicorum and returns to the prefaces from De natura deorum 1 and Tusculans 1, demonstrates how Cicero seeks to carve out a place for philosophy within Roman public life by aligning it with oratory, a move ‘calculated to give philosophy a more familiar face’ (p. 149). Chapter 5 uses the prefaces of Topica and De senectute to show how Cicero uses a work's dedicatee to manage his readers, ideally securing a favourable response to the work by the end of the preface.
The final chapter examines how the changed political situation under Caesar impacted Cicero's philosophical project. While Cicero continues to see writing philosophy as beneficial to the res publica, now that he sees an opening for political participation he no longer needs to portray intellectual pursuits as a substitute for political engagement. Instead, he repositions himself as the pater patriae, taking on a more authoritative persona, which is reflected in both the choice of addressee and form of De officiis. In the final analysis, on B.'s account, Cicero's project must be judged a failure according to his own goals as articulated in the prefaces: republican government was not restored and Romans remained by and large hostile to philosophy. Though B. is obviously correct to point out that Cicero achieved neither of these goals, I am none the less not completely satisfied by this final verdict on Cicero's project. While he never quite puts the point in as many words, surely part of Cicero's ‘philosophical politics’ involved employing philosophical writing both during and after Caesar's dictatorship as a means of creating, cultivating and perpetuating his image as a public figure. Far from indicating Cicero's failure, I would instead suggest that the fact that we have on hand no other ready examples of such an ‘integration of the political and philosophical self’ (p. 223) among later elite Romans bears witness to the uniqueness of his achievement.
Some readers may also question the extent to which we should take Cicero's statements in the prefaces as the ‘best window that we can have into Cicero's thinking about the overall meaning of his project’ (p. 7). As B. so ably demonstrates, Cicero's presentation of his project in the prefaces is conditioned by his need to portray himself and his project as favourably as possible to a broadly sceptical audience. However, it is possible that there may be some distance between Cicero's public justification of his project and what he actually attempts in the dialogues themselves. Thanks to B., we are now better equipped to find out.
In short, this is a clearly argued, well researched and innovative book, from which those interested in Cicero's philosophica and late Republican intellectual history and culture will learn much.
